Pride Miniatures 2025

 For the past couple years I've painted a miniature with colors themed around one of the various Pride flags during the month of June; it's not something I choose to make a big deal out of, but I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself. This year I decided to push myself a little harder and paint three. I pulled a trio of female space pirate-types from Diehard Miniatures out of my stash and set to work; I decided this year I would paint the Bisexual, Lesbian, and Asexual Pride flags. 

Asexual Pride - black, white, gray and purple.

Lesbian Pride - a range of oranges and pinks with white accents

Bisexual Pride - blue, purple, and pink.

Above and beyond recognizing Pride Month, it was an opportunity to use some colors that I don't use all that often. Of the three, I think the Lesbian Pride figure came out the best, and I'm especially proud of the tattoo I freehanded on to her left forearm - a Labrys axe, another symbol associated with the lesbian community. 

Bases still need to be finished, but I'm pleased to have completed the figures themselves before the end of the month.

Figures Purchased in 2025: 90

Figures Painted in 2025: 112

Fistful of Lead: Under the Blood Moon

 I finally got another demo game of Fistful of Lead going at my local game store, Harlequin Hobby, today. A guy was nice enough to drive out to Buffalo from Rochester for it, and in a few weeks' time I'll return the favor and drive out to Rochester so he can run a demo game of Test of Honour for me, which I'm looking forward to. 

I put on the scenario "Under the Blood Moon," out of the "Tales of Horror" expansion; I played Werewolves, and my opponent took control of Lefty LaRue and his band of intrepid Canadian monster hunters. 

As an aside, right after I got things set up, one of the Warhammer 40K players in the store came over, examined the table, looked directly at the cover of the Fistful of Lead rulebook, and asked me if this was Trench Crusade. I tried giving him the spiel of what Fistful of Lead was and how it played, but his eyes glazed right over and he wandered away pretty quickly. Ah well.

Half the hunters (in this case, Lefty himself, Sgt. Blaine of the RCMP, and a trio of stalwart but largely-ineffectual Mounties - a Grunt Group, in the parlance of the game) were in the cabin in the center of the table, while each turn after the first my opponent would roll to see if the remaining two (Quinn the Eskimo and Frenchie Sinclair) would arrive by the main road. Meanwhile, my werewolves would be trying to get into the cabin and eat the delicious hunters and lumberjack family inside. The game would end automatically at the end of the 7th turn as the sun rose and drove the werewolves away. 

The first few turns were a bit of a stalemate; the werewolves rolled abysmally while trying to break down the doors to the cabin, and my opponent rolled really high while trying to bring his reinforcements on to the board. Once Quinn and Frenchie arrived, however, they quickly started stacking Shock and Wound tokens on to the leader of the Werewolf pack.

I didn't take a lot of pictures during the game.

Two of the lesser werewolves ended up fleeing the table due to poor Recovery rolls while trying to shrug off the Shock tokens they were accumulating from the rifles of Lefty and the Mounties, and the pack leader actually succumbed to his wounds while trying to stand back up. With the sun rising at the end of the 7th turn, Lefty and Quinn finished off the last werewolf. One Mountie had fled the table due to a failed Recovery roll, and one had been eaten by a werewolf, but the named characters in the hunter group were all unscathed. 

All in all, a really good game. My opponent and I agreed that if I'd succeeded in breaking down a door into the cabin on turn 2 or 3, the game likely would have gone very differently and might have been a win for the werewolves. He had a great time, and said he'd likely be adding Fistful of Lead to his library. So a day well spent! 

More Figures For Devilry Afoot

 I've done some digging to pull figures out of my leadpile that can work for Irregular Wars' Devilry Afoot, and here's the first batch of them finished. I've started experimenting again with speed/contrast paints to move things along, with I think decent results. 

Farmer by Wargames Foundry, Andre the Giant-sized thug from Dunkeldorf

"Dulcima, Mooning Peasant" from Lucid Eye. She'll be a Pact Devil in Devilry Afoot, luring in the unwary with her charms.

Imps from Reaper Miniatures

Ghouls from Heresy Miniatures

I've also received an order of Hunters from Bloody Miniatures - beautiful ECW sculpts that arrived with barely a whisper of flash on them, and even more impressive, every sword and musket arrived ramrod straight, nothing needed to be bent back into place despite a very speedy trip across the Atlantic to my doorstep. 

Look at that - that helmet is cast completely hollow. I didn't have to clean any excess material around the nasal bar. I didn't know casting something that complex that cleanly was possible! 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 90

Figures Painted in 2025: 109

Unexpected Acquisitions

My wife and I stopped in at Harlequin Hobbies, my friendly local game store (there's something like 40+ game stores of various stripes in my county, including two that are, on a cool day, within walking distance of my house. Due to niche partitioning amongst game stores in order to not overly compete in a limited ecosystem, not every store is going to stock things I want to buy, but Harlequin is very much a wargamer's game store) on our way to try a new Vietnamese restaurant today.

I swear, I had every intention of only going in to buy a few paints and maybe a new brush. 

We walked down the aisle that has all the non-Games Workshop terrain kits and prepainted sets (I wanted to see if they had more hills for when payday comes around later this week), and Gina pulls a box off the shelf.

"Would these work for you for Devilry Afoot?" she asked.

Why yes, yes I do believe they would. 

I balked a little bit at the $40 price tag, but Gina waved off any such objections, announcing she'd buy it for me, and insisted she cover my paints as well this trip. 

Yes, you're right, I am a very lucky man who married out of his league. You best believe I'm always deeply mindful of that fact. 

Our anniversary is coming up, and I'd already put some scatter terrain for Devilry Afoot on my Wishlist for her to shop from; and knowing her, this isn't going to detract from what else she plans to get me gift-wise. With figures for the game already on their way, I think my next step is going to be sourcing some actual buildings! 

Do I count the cows and farmer towards my tracker for the year? 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 90

Figures Painted in 2025: 98

The Wolf Clan Complete (For Now)

 My wife says she heard my satisfied exclamation of "Done!" from the living room above my painting bench as I dipped the last figure's base into Army Painter snow flock. These Cro-Magnons and Amazons from Lucid Eye definitely became a slog as I worked on them, and there were days where I was doing more touch up than actual moving forward, so I'm very happy to call them finished...for now.

I have another five Cro-Magnon males to paint at some point, but for now I'm real tired of painting earth-tones. So I'll take a break before I paint any more cavemen. 

I did finish basing the ghost I showed the other day while I was at it:

So what's next? I've got five Ghouls from Heresy Miniatures about half finished on my workbench, and I've had a dig through my leadpile and pulled out a few things I can use for Devilry Afoot - a couple of innocent civilians, a bloodhound with his nose to the ground, a Bogeyman, a couple of imps, a witch or two. I've got a suspicious looking goat that might serve as a "Pact Devil" in Devilry Afoot - wouldst thou like to live deliciously? 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 90

Figures Painted in 2025: 98

Boo!

 I've been progressing very, very slowly on the Wolf Tribe, with a lot of time spent going back and doing touch-ups or finding recessed areas I've missed. Between that and the "15 different shades of brown" color palette, I felt like I needed a quick and easy win at the hobby table. 

I think my second Tribal warband, my Northstar Neanderthals, are going to be done almost entirely in speed paints just to make the process faster. 

A dip into my Pile of Opportunity later, I pulled out "Borley, Male Ghost" from Reaper Miniatures' Dark Heavens Legends line of metal figures. Sculpted by Bob Ridolfi (my absolute favorite sculptor for undead figures), I reckoned it would be a fast and easy paint job.

Over a coat of white primer, I painted the entire figure with GW "Nilakh Oxide.". This is a fairly thin blue-green, intended for creating verdigris effects on metals. Over white, it functions like a wash, pooling pigment in the recesses. Once that had dried, I gave the whole figure a light drybrush of Reaper "Misty Gray" before giving the eye sockets a light glaze of GW "Bloodletter" (an out of production glaze). I picked out the eyes themselves with Reaper "Phoenix Red" and finally dotted the pupils with my old bottle of Vallejo "Golden Yellow." 

I think overall he looks like a glowing spectral figure, with extra-glowy red eyes, and I'm really happy with how he turned out. 

So what's next? 

I've got a few games of Fistful of Lead on the schedule at my local game store in the coming weeks, and I think I'll need to paint 2 or 3 figures for those. 

I've also picked up the PDF of "Devilry Afoot," a solo/co-op folk horror game from Nic Wright at Irregular Wars. The 17th century setting grabbed me more than The Silver Bayonet's Napoleonic era, and I do love my solo games. The ghost I've painted above join the bestiary for this game; I've got Ghouls, Vampires and Werewolves already, so I don't need much more than just Witches, Revenants and Innocents (NPC villagers for the player-characters to rescue) to add. 

Despite not intending to order anything until next payday, I had a bad day at work yesterday and responded by ordering a couple packs from Bloody Miniatures to represent my Hunters. C'est la vie. 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 90

Figures Painted in 2025: 86

Wargames Among the Warplanes, Spring 2025 Show

 I had an absolutely amazing time today at Wargames Among the Warplanes, a twice-annual 1-day event held at the National Warplanes Museum in beautiful Geneseo, New York. I went to college in Geneseo, and never knew there was a warplanes museum five minutes from campus, until now. 

Truth be told, I almost didn't make it to the show today - in the past week I've pinched a nerve in my shoulder and had my car break down (was thankfully able to get it repaired - to the tune of $1500 - on Thursday!) and this morning I woke up queasy, with last night's dinner disagreeing vigorously. I'm so glad I soldiered through and made it though. 

I ran a homebrew scenario for Fistful of Lead for four players, with me just standing to the side and refereeing. Here's the precis the players were given:

 Angela Dellamorte, the daughter of the head of the Dellamorte crime family, has been kidnapped by the Jamaican Kings, an upstart gang newly arrived in town. Her father has tasked his top lieutenants with getting her back and punishing her kidnappers. The lieutenants see an opportunity to get each other out of the way and ensure their own advancement in the family. After all, once the bullets start flying, who's to say who shot who?  

Everyone except the Jamaicans were armed exclusively with short-range weapons - pistols, submachine guns, and shotguns. The Jamaicans had a trio of submachine guns, as well as an automatic rifle and a LMG being carried by their hulking behemoth of a leader. I figured the Jamaicans could stand to have a little extra firepower since they were under siege and outnumbered, and the shorter ranges would make players move their figures around the board instead of just hunkering down and sniping at each other.

Additionally, there were a few side-missions that could be undertaken for additional victory points - collecting pallets of laundered money and hard drugs and carrying them off the table, giving a sympathetic interview with the TV news crew, and trading in their small arms for an unlicensed automatic rifle from the guy running the fireworks stand. 

Not to toot my own horn too hard or anything, but my table looked great and I got a ton of compliments on my terrain and my figures as well, which felt really good. 

To my very great surprise, I actually had more buildings than would fit on the table. Go me!

The players had a great time, especially once they learned they could hotwire the various vehicles on the table and go on vehicular manslaughter joyrides. One gang quickly piled into the Taco Truck and went on an absolute rampage of destruction before totaling it against the front of the bingo hall. Most of the pictures I took were of that rampage:

Get in, youse guys, we're going on a rampage.

They didn't even run these guys over, just gave 'em a driveby shotgunning.

Ramming speed!

The destruction smelled amazing, though.

The mobster known as "Fat Paulie" was ultimately the winner - having rescued Angela Dellamorte, put two rival gang leaders (and most of their henchmen) out of action, and having a gang member upgrade their weapon at the fireworks stand. The Jamaicans came in second place, having given an interview and collected the laundered money.

Make sure you get my good side, or you'll get on my bad side!

All Paulie is thinking about is the tragic destruction of the taco truck.

I didn't play in anybody else's games (though there was a biplanes vs. King Kong game I would have loved to have played), simply because I had a very long commute and my game took three hours to play through. I did walk around during the lunch break though and took a look at some beautiful tables.

I also had a couple people encourage me to bring my game, or something similar, to Running GAGG - the annual gaming convention put on by the gaming club at the college, which I've been attending for the past 20 years - next year, to increase the number of wargames being played there, and to better promote "Hey! There's more to wargaming than just Warhammer!" to the next generation of gamers. I'm open to the idea, but I might choose to bring something where I don't need a giant tote bin of terrain and can run 30-minute demo games instead of one 3-hour scenario. 

***

Today was really, really good for me. Like, being at Wargames Among the Warplanes today nourished my soul. I've taken a few knocks in the hobby lately - some verbal scrapping with people who think I'm an elitist for wanting to play with painted miniatures, people telling me that seeing my painted miniatures makes them feel bad about their own painting, and so, so, so many people who think tournament Warhammer is the alpha and omega of miniatures wargaming and refuse to even acknowledge that anything else exists. 

It gets discouraging after a while to be steeped in all that, but the congenial atmosphere, good sportsmanship, and just general community spirit I saw today - I helped carry drinks and snacks from the organizer's car into the venue, and had offers to help me carry my tote bins of stuff back to my car when I'd packed up - was reaffirming. This is what I want out of the wargaming hobby. I want more of this atmosphere, this community. I want to spend more time surrounded by people who just want to have a few laughs pushing painted figures around on a table with some nice terrain on it. 

And I'm going to get it. Because in chatting with the organizer, he asked if I'd be open to doing more wargaming outreach-type programs like this. He was so happy to see me add Fistful of Lead to the schedule, because he's played it before and thinks it's a great game, and regretted that he had administrative work to do alongside refereeing a Bolt Action tournament that forced him to miss out on playing it. He mentioned how happy it made him that everybody brought painted figures and terrain to the event today; there was no bare plastic or metal to be seen anywhere except the flea market table. Hearing him say that was music to my ears and affirmed that I was among my tribe. 

Plus, I bought a T-shirt so I'm now officially part of the Greater Niagara Wargamers; next up will be joining the organizer's club, the Whiskey 7 Wargamers. They've got snappy short-sleeve button-down shirts with embroidered club logos. 

I'm excited for the next show, and for what the future holds. 

organizer's photo of me talking through some of the rules with some of my attendees.