2025 Painting Log

I picked up this 3D printed model at a local shop — it came in a plain orange box without any branding that I can recall, so I have no idea what range (if any) it’s from.

On first glance I though it was a cat with a feather in his cap. On closer inspection I think it’s actually meant to be a rabbit, but one of the ears is missing so I stuck with the feather idea. With the orange fur it could also be a fox, I suppose. Does it really matter?

2025 models painted so far: 217, for 13 different games

I put off getting the Good Soldiers Follow Orders squad pack because I wasn’t particularly interested in the characters, and let’s be honest, they weren’t going to be very interesting to paint. But I did end up needing them for a particular match-up I wanted to play, so I decided to make the painting a little more interesting by using three different techniques.

The Elite Squad Troopers were done in Speedpaints over light grey primer. ES-04 “Firebrand” was done mostly by drybrushing over black primer, with a gun metal base coat followed by a Dark Tone Wash for the weapon. For the Squad Leader (aka Crosshair) I tried to stick to the Dallimore triad approach, with areas of flat color working up from dark to light.

I’ve got three more Shatterpoint boxes on the pile of opportunity, along with a ton of the other stuff. I’m currently working on some MEP Miniatures stuff, but I’m having trouble deciding what to do after that — I need to finish up Ragnarök, but Guards of Traitor’s Toll is beckoning…

2025 models painted so far: 216, for 13 different games

Getting back to the Lost Heresy Away Team Red range for a moment. A friend of mine bought a batch of the Romulan stand-ins and gave me two of them, so I told him I’d do up a painting guide that he could use for the rest of them (our eventual goal is to pit his Romulans against my Federation, most likely using Modiphius‘ Red Alert miniatures rules). This seemed like a great opportunity to blatantly steal from hazyboy75 and maybe rack up some of those coveted tutoring points…

The Neo-Aquilon uniforms are a weird mix of the Original Series and Next Generation Romulans — I wanted to do them primarily in Original Series colors, but since the models aren’t an exact match I had a little leeway, which I decided to exercise by adding a color to the right sleeve.

I’ve been re-watching the Original Series and I’ve been quite taken by the bright color palette they used for the costumes and especially the backgrounds, so I thought I’d reflect that by adding some tufts from the Gamers Grass Mystic Nebulae Set.

From here it’s just a matter of cleaning up the base edges and varnishing. For varnish I’ve been using a coat of Army Painter Matt Varnish, which is actually more of a semi-gloss/satin finish, and then a 1:1 mix of AK Interactive Ultra Matte and Speedpaint Medium (I find the finish of the AK Ultra Matte to be a little too chalky on its own).

2025 models painted so far: 212, for 13 different games

Well, Mythic Battles: Isfet showed up a couple of weeks ago, so I failed in my quest to get Ragnarök done before Isfet arrived. The one time I would have preferred a Kickstarter to deliver a little late…

With these seven I’ve got the core box done, at least, so I’ll be able to play some more games of Ragnarök. I still have the Asgard and Destroyers Box expansions to do, plus the new Kraken expansion that came with the new Kickstarter stuff, but I will probably take a short break to finish up some non-Mythic Battles stuff before I tackle those, and who knows when I’ll get to Isfet…

2025 models painted so far: 210, for 13 different games

Seven more done for Mythic Battles: Ragnarök. I want to make sure the painting style is reasonably consistent for all of these, so I’m using more or less the same techniques I always use. The base edges are color-coded to what type of unit they are in the game: gold for gods, green for monsters, silver for heroes and copper for troops. Since I’m down to just the larger models, it’s going to be mainly gods and monsters from here on out.

Here we have Idunn, goddess of the golden apples (seems like an oddly specific thing to be goddess of) and Baldr, who is Thor’s brother but doesn’t seem to be the god of anything in particular.

The artwork for Tyr has him surrounded by a nimbus of lightning, so I thought I’d try some freehand to see if I could give the miniature a similar look. The tangle of vines is Mimir, the Aesir god of wisdom but for some reason the game has him classified as a monster. I really should read more Norse mythology, most of what I know is from the flavor text in this game and the Marvel Thor comics.

This jolly fellow is Freyr, Lord of Alfheim, and the mechanical boar is Gullinbursti. These two are in the same bit of artwork so I presume they are related — they never made it into the Marvel comics so I’m not really sure. At certain angles Freyr looks like he’s giving some cartoon side-eye, but the pose for this miniature is pretty goofy anyway so I didn’t try to fix it.

Finally we have my favorite of this batch: Garm, the guardian of the world of the dead. These larger miniatures have really large, flat bases which I’ve been texturing and painting to match the game artwork as best I can. For most of them it’s either snow or just indistinct dark grey, but Garm’s background had what looked like some lava streams so I tried to reproduce that without overthinking it too much.

Only 7 more to go and the base set will be done, then it’s on to the Asgard expansion.

2025 models painted so far: 203, for 13 different games

I made a fair amount of progress on Mythic Battles: Ragnarök last year, but stalled out towards the end of the year. With Mythic Battles: Isfet supposedly delivering next month, I thought I should probably try to finish this up. I have 21 figures in the core box still to do, 13 in the Asgard expansion, and 3 giant models in the Destroyers Box. That’s 37 all together. No problem, right?

Since these are for a board game, the primary goal is to try to match the artwork as closely as possible. In this case, the art is pretty dark, so I’m starting with black primer followed by a few drybrush layers in shades of grey. Then it’s spot colors here and there, done with a mixture of traditional painting and speedpaints. It’s pretty much the same technique I use for the vast majority of my painting — since I want to get so many done as quickly as possible, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel too much.

30 to go…

2025 models painted so far: 196, for 13 different games

One of those problems that only other miniature painters can relate to: I needed three clear 25mm bases for a project (I don’t even remember what it was), but had to order a pack of 24. Later on, I found myself with a set of 24 Star Trek crewmen, who I decided to put on clear bases for a specific project. But of course, I only had 21 bases. Rather than order another pack of 24, I just decided to leave the last three crewmen for later, and put them on regular bases.

My additional reasoning was that these three models are in running poses which would make their attachment point too small — they came on tabs so I would be better off using slotted bases anyway. And I just happened to have exactly three of them…

I tried to match the style and colors of the other Away Team models I painted earlier, although it probably wasn’t that important since these are based so differently. I don’t usually do a lot with tufts on bases, but lately I have been, and in this case I suppose I was over-compensating, making these as different from the clear bases as possible.

2025 models painted so far: 189, for 12 different games

More Star Schlock! I’m remembering how much fun it is painting skeletons…

The Puppet Master (weird skull thing) was a pre-order bonus miniature. He makes the otherwise slow Necro-Guards and Necronauts more effective in the game. And, he’s a giant skull with arms coming out of his eye sockets.

Ensign Packman’s helmet might look familiar if you spent any time in arcades in the 1980s, which is why I had to paint the Necronauts the way I did…

2025 models painted so far: 186, for 12 different games