How Have I Done? A Look Back At My 2025 Goals

 Last year, I wrote a blog post laying out 2025 goals for myself for the hobby - "an actionable plan for responsible hobbying," I called it. And while it's not been quite a year since writing that, I think it's a good time to look back over what I've accomplished towards that set of goals. Also, I've wrenched my knee good and hard and hobbling downstairs to my work bench is more hassle than I'm eager to engage in right now. 

I set three goals for myself:

• Focus my efforts on one era and locale - modern urban skirmishes.
• Play at least two games a month, solo or otherwise.
• Paint more figures than I buy. 

So how'd I do?

1) Focus my efforts on one era and locale: I did really well with this for the first six months of the year. And I think part of that came down to me having a specific goal I was painting towards - the Spring Wargames Among the Warplanes show, where I put on a modern urban skirmish using Fistful of Lead. After that is where I started to drift and flail about, picking up new games, new eras (ECW with Devilry Afoot, Mayans, Modern Africa, Dracula's America) and falling off the wagon of discipline. I had initially intended to demo Devilry Afoot at the fall Wargames Among the Warplanes, but I didn't feel confident enough in my grasp of the game, and defaulted back to a modern urban skirmish using Perilous Tales. 

2) Play at least two games a month: This one I aced, because if I did have a month where I only played one game, I made up for it with three games the next month. And I don't see myself falling off the wagon with this one in the last month and a half of 2025. No notes, I'm great at this.

3) Paint more figures than I buy: So as of right now I'm 80 figures in the red. And a lot of that is directly attributable to the post-June flailing I mentioned in point 1 above; picking up new eras meant picking up new figures. Some of these purchases are more forgivable than others, in my eyes. Getting invited to join a group of guys playing Dracula's America and consequently buying 15 or so Wild West figures and getting half of them painted up to start playing with immediately is one thing; adding 20-30 figures to my "Back of Beyond" leadpile because I'm interested in the period and I've got a pipe dream of running a game (that I would have to paint 2-4 separate armies for!) at an event with them is something different. 

So what can I learn from all this?

I think going forward I want to set some more specific goals for myself, in the form of "I am painting these figures because I want to play X game with them on Y date." Having Wargames Among the Warplanes in June kept me pretty well focused from January on, with a few small side forays along the way. 

I also think I've done pretty well overall with not impulse buying (at least not too severely). Any time I made a purchase it was "I have a project in mind for this," even if that project (*cough* Back of Beyond *cough*) was a bit nebulous. Dracula's America is where I've done the best at that - I bought my initial posse, and only ordered 7 additional figures, of which only one was really an "impulse" figure (I couldn't resist throwing a Rooster Cogburn-lookalike into an order from Brigade Games!). Again, I think the more tightly focused and detailed my gaming plan is, the better I do with the shopping aspect of things. 

For 2026, I am looking at running games at both the spring and fall Wargames Among the Warplanes again, so maybe this means I set a "first six months" goal of prepping for the spring show, then a "next three months" goal of prepping for the fall show, and then after September I begin planning for 2027. I am thinking about attending "Fall-In!" convention in Pennsylvania next November (I've got a couple people tugging on my sleeve to attend, and the pictures on Facebook were enticing to say the least) if I can swing it financially; our driveway really needs to be redone and that is going to be a hefty chunk of cash. 

It's all going to take more thought; I'll get a blog post up in the coming weeks outlining specific hobby goals for 2026. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 244

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Nickel City Smoke Shop (As Finished As It's Gonna Get in 2025!)

 Last night it began to snow here in Buffalo, NY. And it's been snowing all day today so far. Which means my window for priming and varnishing outdoors has closed until next spring.

The view from my WFH desk today.

Which means I can't get a coat of spray varnish on to the Nickel City Smoke Shop, and consequently can't glue the window panes into place (since I need to varnish first so the glass doesn't "frost"). It also means any furniture I order for this building likely won't get primed and painted until spring. 

So that means that, with the signs, posters and ads I glued on over the weekend, the Nickel City Smoke Shop is as done as it's going to get this year.

I'm really proud of the sign over the window. I eyeballed sizing on the sign itself when I was making it in MSPaint, cut it out and put it up against a 20x40mm base I'd sprayed black - and barely had to do any trimming to make it fit right. 

"Anaconda Malt Liquor" is a reference to the 2009 Blaxploitation spoof "Black Dynamite," in which the drink is a major plot point. I won't spoil it, but the scene of Black Dynamite and his companions decoding the hidden message in the label is a side-splitter. 

While doing Google Image Searches for posters and ideas for signs and, admittedly, with an eye towards emphasizing a run-down seediness to the terrain, I stumbled across an ad that ran on Facebook for a strip club in California offering "Welfare Wednesdays," offering discounts to patrons who could show proof they were receiving government assistance. It was so low-brow, so tacky, I immediately saved the picture to my terrain folder.  

And on the inside of the Smoke Shop, posters for "Up in Smoke" and "Nice Dreams" from Cheech and Chong.

I do still need to figure out something to put over the pegs from the awning that stick out on the inside. 

WIP: Nickel City Smoke Shop and Community Center

With the weather getting colder, I jumped back into an MDF kit I started a few weeks back - cold and wet means no taking stuff outside to prime or varnish! This is a two story "Mean Streets" brownstone from Atomic Laser Cut Designs, the manufacturer of many of my recent modern buildings. In fact, I think ALL of the MDF buildings I've built in 2025 have been ALCD kits - the pawn shop, ramen restaurant and Off-Track Betting buildings I've built have all been Atomic Laser Cut Designs kits. This is my first two-story building, the beginnings of an effort to add more verticality to my modern terrain layouts. 

There's a street about five minutes from my house, Webster Street, which is all older two and three story buildings with a shop at ground level and apartments above, all looking very much like this kit. So Webster Street is going to be my point of reference in collecting a few more of these taller buildings from Atomic Laser Cut Designs. Incidentally, while we're still very much a Rust Belt town, Webster Street has gotten significant sprucing up in recent years thanks to efforts from our phenomenal mayor and is now a great place to go and eat or shop; my models might end up a bit more of a blend of Webster Street of today and 10-15 years ago. 

I still need to hit my local Office Max and do some color printing for signs, bill boards and interior art, but otherwise the building itself is pretty much complete. Gluing acetate into the windows will probably have to wait until spring, because I'm not sure the weather will cooperate for spray varnishing the building, and I'd like to do that before I glue the windows in so the "glass" doesn't frost. 

There's graffiti decals from both Green Stuff World and Dave's Decals on the walls, most notably the XL "pinup" graffiti next to the back door. I threw a sheet of these supersized decals in an order with Dave a while back on a whim, and this is the first one I've used; I'll leave it to the viewer to guess if the full word behind her is "SWANK" or "SPANK"! Hopefully not "STANK"...

Part of why I chose to use the XL decal is because I decided to make the ground floor shop a cannabis dispensary/head shop. A lot of these have cropped up around here since New York State legalized marijuana, ranging from high end dispensaries that look like Apple stores to grubby spots that look like they should have Cheech & Chong versions of the venerable cigar store Indian out front. There's one right on Webster Street that has a huge, lavish mural covering one side of the building done in the style of an EC Comics' scifi cover from the 1950s, so I knew I wanted some more color for mine. A detailed graffiti mural centered around a buxom blonde pinup felt right for my seedier, more run-down tabletop town. 

While my terrain is fairly generic as to location (other than America's Rust Belt), this one actually will have a reference to location; Buffalo, NY is nicknamed the "Nickel City" due to the American Bison (also called a Buffalo) on the back of the old "Indian Head" nickel, and the sign I've made for over the front window identifies the dispensary as "Nickel City Smoke Shop."

The most challenging part of the build was actually the awning over the front door - It hooks into the wall instead of just slotting in, so I had to spray each piece individually with beige spray paint and then assemble it in the wall - slotting the sides in, letting the glue dry, then fitting the top and front pieces in. 

Inside, each level has a paper floor pattern from Sarissa Precision glued down into place:

The black and white tile floor is, for me at least, a bit dizzying to look at for too long - which might be either great or terrible for a shop catering to stoners! As far as interior furnishings go, I'm thinking about grabbing the "Spice Shop Interior" from Miniature Building Authority and repurposing it. I scaled down some Cheech & Chong movie posters and some counter-culture art from the 1960s and 70s - the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Mr. Natural, etc. - to decorate the walls with as well. 

The second story, with the wooden floor, is going to be a community center of sorts, an open space for people to congregate with like-minded sorts. Of course, I love hiding things in my builds that reward taking the time to look at them, so it's probably not going to be quite so straight forward as that! I won't say any more until I can show off the completed, furnished room. 

I am debating what to do with the roof; it's a lot of wide open space. I could put a 3D printed air conditioning unit up there, maybe some teeny tiny little pigeons; I have some picnic-themed bits from a Mantic Terrain Crate box, maybe someone got up there for a private party. Just something to break up the expanse of gray and add some visual interest while keeping it largely playable. 

I did do some test-fitting on an Atomic Laser Cut Designs billboard set and placed it on the roof to see how it would look; once completed it'd be something I'd keep separate so I could place it on different roofs or next to roads to maximize it's usefulness on the table.

And the only other big thing to do with this kit is going to be some advertising posted on the side walls of the second floor. A big "Camel Cigarettes" ad or maybe a billboard for a local restaurant kind of deal. Otherwise, the walls are a bit bland! I thought about some "Ghost Ads" decals from Dave's Decals, with the faded remnants of decades-old ads still lingering on the walls; I absolutely see some of those walking down Webster Street! I'm iffy though because the decals tend to have the brick pattern printed on them which won't match up with the incised brick patterning on the MDF. It might look fine, it might not. 

With the OTB next door for height comparison.

I'll probably head to Office Max tomorrow morning to do my printing, so I can finish pasting things on to this building in the afternoon. I've also got my internal furnishings for the Off-Track Betting finally primed so I can start painting those and gluing them into the building as well. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 234

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Support Indie Miniature Companies!

 I impulse bought some miniatures yesterday. I've had my eye on some of Mortal Arrow's supersized arachnids for a while now, but there was a stretch where they were just out of stock. I saw on Facebook that Mortal Arrow was running a Kickstarter for some new fantasy monsters, and I checked the website...and bought some bugs and fungus.

I've always had a fascination with the natural world, and I'm perfectly comfortable with most invertebrates - spiders, wasps, slugs, scorpions, none of them bother me (Exception: I have a knee-jerk reaction to centipedes where I just get hit with an overwhelming urge to flee from them. I blame it on one falling off my bedroom ceiling onto my face when I was a kid). One of my favorites are a lesser-known family of arachnids known as Tailless or False Whip-Scorpions. Non-venomous and pretty much entirely harmless to humans, these flattened creatures have "arms" similar to a mantis and a pair of limbs lengthened into sensory "whips" that function like antennae. Mortal Arrow first caught my eye because they produce a couple different miniatures of oversized Tailless Whip-Scorpions to menace your D&D players with when giant spiders get boring. A vivid green one is visible on the cover of the classic AD&D module "Queen of the Demonweb Pits," so they certainly have a respectable pedigree in that regard! 

Naturally, I ordered a pair of them, along with a "Corrupted Myconid Rasper" - a fungal centipede monster with a marvelously dour and alien face, which I'm eager to put into my games of Majestic 13 as an extraterrestrial threat. 

Well, it turns out Mortal Arrow is pretty much local to me, because the miniatures arrived today, about 35 hours after I placed the order. This must be how wargamers around Nottingham feel. 

Mike at Mortal Arrow was generous enough to throw in a resin 60mm base crusted with sculpted mushrooms and a nice note. And this right here is why I'm so fantastically loyal to indie miniatures companies. I don't buy from Games Workshop, and if I did, I wouldn't get extras and a nice note. But when I buy from someone working out of their garage or basement - someone like Mortal Arrow, or Forge of Ice, Crocodile Games, Wargames Foundry (on the bigger end of things for me but still fundamentally a family business), Bad Squiddo, Brigade Games - I know I matter as a customer, that my purchase makes a difference to them. There's no shareholders, no payola to influencers on social media to keep them shilling product, just one, two or maybe at most five or six people who are passionate about the hobby and eager to share that passion. 

The figures I got from Mortal Arrow are all beautifully crisp casts with minimal clean-up necessary; it'll probably be ten minutes total with an X-acto and file for all three figures, at most. The assembly for each figure is straightforward, with well defined pegs and sockets to guide placement of pieces. The Rasper in particular is really well designed in how the pieces fit together; I was able to put the pieces together on my desk and the pegs and gravity held everything together. When I'm ready to go in with file and glue, it's going to be a snap to complete. And that's something I think deserves to be shouted out because not every company, big or small, does the same (I'm having flashbacks to gluing hands to wrists on too many figures over the years as I type that!)

Mortal Arrow is running a Kickstarter currently as previously mentioned, for those interested in such things, all themed around brain monsters - drawing inspiration from the Elder Brains, Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers of D&D, but also spinning off in several new and exciting directions from that wellspring.

I've placed a small pledge which may get enlarged in the pledge manager when the time comes. I definitely want the "Intellect Constrictor" giant brain snake, but the flying brain octopus also tickles the Basil Wolverton comic fan in me. 

On the topic of Kickstarters, my friend Joshua Slater is also running one at the moment, for a small set of Paul Muller-sculpted grotesqueries themed around the idea of "twins." I've backed this as well; Josh is one of the nicest and most generous people I've met in this hobby, and that's saying something given how eager so many hobbyists I've met are to help each other succeed with their projects. I have a (woefully half-painted) regiment of mid-90s Orcs, half of which Josh surprised me with just because he found them in his stash and thought of me. I've made a modest pledge to this one as well that again, may expand in the pledge manager. That two-faced creature with the tail is the sort of thing that I'll find plenty of uses for in my games. 

So yeah, I expect I'm preaching to the choir to some degree here on my blog, but support small companies and passionate hobbyists working to bring their vision to life in resin and metal for the world to see. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 234

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Majestic 13: Operation Dirt Nap

 "They call him 'the Lieutenant.' Supposedly he's a 'Nam vet; nobody knows his real name, what rank he held or if he even served in the US Army - or any army. No one even knows if he's got a permanent address. He knows every NATO weapon better than you know your own phone number, that's for certain. You can't sneak up on him - and if you try you're lucky if you get off with just a broken jaw. He's getting some sort of task force together, real hush-hush; something about 'the Big Enemy'..."

***

With some of the modern terrain I've finished this year, it was about time I got another modern game on the table, and I decided to go with Snarling Badger's "Majestic 13" - and rather than continue with the team I started back in January, I decided to start fresh. In truth, I felt like I'd given myself the game on easy mode with my previous team - two rocket launchers and a light machine gun made short work of monsters and the base upgrades I'd collected meant that special missions would be heavily slanted in my favor. 

The new team is "The Last Liners" - a group of ordinary (for a given value of ordinary) citizens who have gotten involved in the fight against the villainous alien invaders of FORCE. Led by the Lieutenant, a veteran of the ongoing war against FORCE. Having survived horrors that butchered the rest of his previous team, he went underground and recruited his own agents, off the grid, to continue the good fight for humanity and the Earth. 

Left to Right: Becky, Hank, the Lieutenant, Maria (in back), and Sarah-Jane

Catching wind of something slithering into a run-down trailer park, the Lieutenant activated his team. It was time to prove themselves!

Arriving in the trailer park was a monster known as a Terraformer, a hulking entity that warps and degrades the landscape around it, turning stone into mud and rusting steel with its very presence. I'd previously fought the Terraformer back in February 2024, with my first team. The Last Liners' secondary objective will be to collect tissue samples from pieces of terrain the creature comes into contact with. 

The Last Liners deployed in cover, scattered across the board. The Terraformer failed to spot any of them, and wandered towards the center of the board as the Lieutenant clipped it with a shot from his M-16, ducking into one of the trailers to avoid its alien gaze. Becky collected a tissue sample off the trailer the monster had slithered over, while Hank and Sarah-Jane chipped away at the Terraformer's hit points. Unfortunately, Maria found herself in the creature's line of sight as she took a shot at it.

The Terraformer pummeled her again and again with its pseudopods, though she resisted the stunning side-effects of the creature's touch. Spitting blood, she grinned defiantly. "Is that the best you've got?"

The Lieutenant took a shot at the monster, and scored a Critical Hit, doubling his damage - but also granting the monster an extra activation, which it used to continue clobbering Maria. On her activation, she darted over towards Sarah-Jane and her med kit, and Becky ran to get line of sight on the creature before calling down a drone strike. The monster lashed out again at Maria before getting bathed in fire.

At the start of Turn 3, I rolled FUBAR and it came up "Sudden Storm" - reducing all visibility to 12" for both the Last Liners and the Terraformer. Maria ran from the monster, luring it away from Sarah-Jane and into range of Hank's LMG; unfortunately for Maria, Hank rolled a critical hit in shooting the Terraformer, granting it a bonus action that resulted in Maria being put out of action. 

Fortunately, though, this dealt enough damage to put the monster "In Extremis" - from here on out the monster would get an extra action but take 2D6 damage every time it activated.

Enraged, the Terraformer charged Becky (the next nearest team member), lashing out with its pseudopods; unfortunately she did fail her save and became Stunned on top of taking a lot of damage. The Lieutenant ran towards her, med-kit in hand, but the Terraformer struck her again and she failed two saves; even if I rolled all 1s for damage, it still would have been more than she could take, and she went out of action as well.

Hank and Sarah-Jane both opened fire on the monster, and it finally collapsed, dying in Turn 4. Victory for the Last Liners!

I always feel like Majestic 13 brings out the best in my terrain set ups; maybe I should start using the game's terrain layout charts for other games as well. I took the opportunity to put some of the more amusing and less-serious terrain pieces I'd done this year on the table, in the form of the alligator-infested swimming pool and the giant inflatable gorilla holding an "All Stock Must Go" sign. 

I was really impressed with how well the Last Liners did; even with two characters going out of action, they scored two critical hits on the monster (versus the last time the Terraformer was on my table, in which it rolled FOUR critical hits against my agents!) and managed to call in the drone strike fairly early on in the game. If I manage to kill the monster, it's usually in the fifth and final turn of the game, so killing it on Turn 4 today was pretty cool. 

Continuing on into the post-mission part of the game, I rolled to see if and how Becky and Maria survived, and both of them came out just fine, with no lasting injuries, psychological trauma or alien parasites from their time on the battlefield. Even more impressive, I managed to successfully requisition two new pieces of gear; the Last Liners fall under the category of "The Dispersed," in game terms, which gives them some advantages in deployment, but penalizes them on bureaucracy rolls to requisition new gear. So now the Lieutenant has a Scanner, which will make it easier to detect hidden threats, and Sarah-Jane has a fancy new scope on her rifle. Unfortunately, their efforts to requisition an upgrade to their base, in the form of an Internet Monitoring Station, were lost in bureaucratic red tape. 

Everyone also scored enough experience points to buy an improvement in one attribute; the Lieutenant boosted his Combat ability, Hank his Fortitude, Becky her Acuity, Sarah-Jane her Fortitude, and Maria her Combat ability. 

All in all, a really good game and an evening well spent. Looking forward to the next one! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 231

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

More Arrivals for the Back of Beyond

 Just a quick note of a couple new arrivals at Casa de Adcock, geared towards the Back of Beyond.

I'd had a meeting with my immediate higher-up at work where she was expecting to have to tell me to work harder, smarter, and more efficiently, but quickly realized that I'm doing the work of three people, have been screwed over by two others, and I'm doing everything right and not cutting corners in the process. After being told that I'm doing everything right, and to keep up the good work, I decided to reward myself; I'd had my eye on this painting guide, available from Caliver Books, since it released a few months ago. It's a lovely volume, and it's given me a lot of ideas for painting my various sundry Russians (as well as giving me plenty of ideas of figures I'd like to acquire!)

I also received an order of Copplestone Bolsheviks - two packs of infantry (one in greatcoats, one without), a blister of Commissars, and a field gun; I thought I'd ordered the Maxim Gun team, but this works fine for my purposes as well. These were much cleaner casts than the last pack of White Russians I'd ordered; a few straightened bayonets and a few mold lines filed and all of the infantry were ready to be glued to bases. My window for priming is closing rapidly, so I'm trying to get as much ready to go before it's too cold and damp outside to start anything new. I'll probably work on the artillery over the next few days, but it may prove to be the case that it needs to wait until spring to be painted. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 231

Figures Painted in 2025: 164

Beginning a Dracula's America campaign

 Tonight, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up with a couple of local-ish guys to start a fresh campaign of Dracula's America - a supernatural western skirmish from Osprey, which really deserves the same level of releases and support as Frost/Stargrave, if you ask me! 

Premise of the game is that it's 1875, and Count Dracula used the chaos of the American Civil War to assassinate Lincoln and his entire cabinet, ensorcelling Congress into declaring him president for life. Various supernatural evils have crept in in Dracula's wake, and other forces have arisen to combat the powers of darkness. The rules themselves are perfectly servicable for a solid, non-supernatural western game as well. 

The table we played on was absolutely lavish - the game technically calls for a 3' x 3', but we played on a 4' x 4', densely packed with the the town of Shady Pines, Nebraska. I brought my posse, a group of Native Americans with a pair of lycanthropes in their midst (one turning into a bear, and the other a wolf), while Chris, my first opponent, had a warband of voodoo zombies. Our mission was to collect as many loot tokens (out of four available) as possible within the 8-turn limit of the game, with an amusingly interlinked pair of side missions - Chris got extra victory points if my posse leader was killed, and I got extra victory points if his posse leader was alive at the end of the game.

Elva Growing-Thunder darts across the street, past a drunken mountain man.

We also had civilians on the board that could get in the way, become human shields, etc. Late in the game, a complication arose - the locals were sick of us shooting it out, and began unloading their own guns at everyone around! 

Ultimately, the game concluded in a draw, though my one shapeshifter did manage to grab a loot token, transform into a wolf, and hightail it away from where all the shooting was taking place.

loot tokens portrayed by fortune cookie-shaped beads!

The second game was between myself and Set, who was also the one hosting the game. We rolled up a mission that saw our respective posse bosses squaring off in the center of town with a pair of underlings close by, and the remainder of our warbands deploying in a corner of the table. He was playing the Dark Confederacy, a group of Confederates who had stolen the secrets of reanimating the dead for their own profit. 

My boss immediately transformed into a bear, but didn't have the available movement to charge the mint-julep-slurping necromancer standing across the street. The necromancer summoned a minor eldritch entity (portrayed by a Confederate zombie holding a flag) between himself and the bear.

Unimpressed, the bear mauled the unnatural thing and sent it back to whatever hell it had been whistled up from. 

Unfortunately, the second game was all downhill from there for me, with the bear being shot down and the rest of my posse being whittled away one after another - though thankfully, most of them bled out the turn after being shot, which denied Set the victory points for either killing them outright or finishing them off. The win went to my opponent, but it was fairly close, with him ending the game with 4 VP to my 3. 

With these being campaign games, there's rolls to make after each game to determine who survived, if there are long-term injuries, and how much money your posse collects between games. Chief Kicking Bird, my posse leader, lost an eye to the Dark Confederacy, and unfortunately one of his followers, Charlie Iron-Knife (the blue-shirted figure in the staredown picture above), died of his injuries and a replacement will need to be recruited. 

All in all, I had a great time, and I'm really glad I connected with these guys and was able to meet up with them for a few games. I'm looking forward to continuing this campaign!