2026 in Miniature

 Having already written out some RPG related goals for 2026, it's time to turn my eye to miniatures games. 

Moving in something of a full circle in my gaming habits, I had moved away from miniatures games for about 7 years. Partly this was due to spending a disproportionate amount of time freelancing in the RPG industry, then publishing my own RPGs. Partly this was because Covid put a stop to face to face gaming for a good while. And partly this was due to burn out I experienced after working with Spartan Games on Dystopian Legions, Planetfall, Firestorm, Dystopian Wars and Halo. Halo particularly was a huge amount of time and work, and combining this with a real life full time job, and a family, left me running on empty.

Time heals all wounds as the old saying goes, and in 2025 I finally broke out the paint brushes which had been sitting silent and gathering dust. I painted a Necromunda gang, some ships for Oak and Iron, and a Gallic army for DBA, not too shabby.

So, 2026 goals, without further preamble... 

Blood Bowl is my first goal. I never really played much of it when I was playing GW games in the late 90s, but I recently got the third season box, and intend to paint and play this one. I already have the Bretonnian team assembled and undercoated, and I'm trying to decide on what paint scheme I use for the team. In the meantime I'm painting the tokens and markers (more on this in another post). 

For the Bretonnians I am thinking of doing a more setting traditional red and blue mix, but I have been tossing up doing green and yellow, or blue and yellow. I'm not entirely sold on which combination of main colours to use just yet, so I'm working my way through the bits that don't require as much thought.

I enjoyed my forays back into Necromunda in 2025, and I am looking forward to painting and playing Blood Bowl this year. 

I didn't spend all that time painting a Gallic army for DBA without intending to play it, so DBA is on the list. I'm waiting for a friend to assemble and paint his Roman army, but if he doesn't manage to get that done, I'll get and paint another army myself just so I can get this to the table. I quite like painting 15mm figures.

More Necromunda please. I realise this game is particularly enjoyable as a part of a campaign, but I find it difficult to commit the time to actually playing a campaign, especially during competition season (I'm a gymnastics coach by trade). So maybe just some one-off games here and there would scratch the itch.

Speaking of GW games, my friends tried to talk me into 40K recently, admittedly on my instigation and with my help, but on deeper reflection I don't think I want to go down that path. There's a good argument to make, that one should collect and play the games that other people play, and it's true there is a thriving 40K community around where I live, but no. I think Necromunda and Blood Bowl are enough GW for me.

Some of my friends are trying to draw me back into playing Dystopian Wars, and I'll be honest: I'm showing signs of cracking. The game is now under the auspices of Warcradle Studios, and if I do decide to rejoin the ranks of Dystopian Wars players, I'll have to get hold of a new fleet. Not sure which yet, I quite like the Egyptians, Prussians, and English, but I am also one of those people that likes to collect a fleet no-one else in the group is running, so we'll see where that lands me as the year rolls on and the cracks develop further.

Lastly Infinity... this one is a bit of a long shot. I have a heap of Yu Jing miniatures sitting in a box in my shed, all of which are assembled but unpainted. 2026 could be the year I break these out? Corvus Belli make lovely miniatures, and I would like to get some paint on them. Perhaps this could be the game that has me testing out some speed paints (which I have otherwise shied away from). No doubt I'll tell myself that I'll only do a simple and neat job on these, and then like every other time I'll end up picking out more and more detail until the 'speedy' job I was going to do ends up taking just as much time as my usual plodding method.

Fin

That's a wrap, and those are goals, for now at least. I am too often distracted by odd little miniatures games that no-one else plays that I'll probably end up wandering off and wanting to play something else entirely. I mean, I still have an unpainted English army for Sharpe Practice that could get a run, I have multiple lovely little anthropomorphic dinosaurs for Chronicles of Anyaral, and a collection of modified Hot Wheels cars for Gaslands. I have Silent Death space ships that I've been wanting to paint for years, and the itch to break out Full Thrust, a rules set I haven't played in more than 20 years. 

But I have to stop thinking about all of those, because I am far too easily distracted. 

Focus! 

Blood Bowl first, then we'll see what comes next...

You got a lotta Gaul there...

 Or perhaps, not so much Gaul after all, certainly not by the miniature counts of many historical wargames.

15mm is probably my favourite scale of miniature, and one of the games I used to play quite a lot in this scale was De Bellus Antiquitatus (DBA for short).

DBA, by the Wargames Research Group, and Phil and Sue Barker, is a game that manages to wrap a relatively simple game system in an ineffable cloud of nigh-impenetrable language. Why make a single statement when a rambling paragraph will contain the clues required to find that statement! Despite this barrier to entry, DBA is a good, simple, and well researched game, that has a good historical feel to it. I have fond memories of playing it. There are some 300+ army lists for this game, dating from around 3000BC to about 1500AD, so plenty of options from all around the world, which is nice.

Getting back into the painting gig this year, and chatting to a guy at our local game store a month or so ago about DBA had me rummaging through my boxes of stuff for 15mm figures I had bought with the intention of painting and playing, but which instead, had sat in a box untouched for nearly seven years. My 15mm Gauls!

I had already done up a couple of bases of Gauls for a game called Sword and Spear, but since I have no intention of going back to that game (despite it being an excellent game), I decided to rebase what I had done for DBA, and paint up all the other bits and pieces I was missing.

All the following miniatures are from Baueda Miniatures, while the shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios. The models are nicely detailed, and didn't require too much cleaning up. Probably the ones that needed the most work were the cavalry, but even so it was minor, and not really noticeable at this scale. 

The shield transfers are lovely, and really add some nice detail to the miniatures. I thoroughly recommend them, though they can be a little fiddly. One other thing to note is that the transfers worked fine, even after sitting in a box for seven years.

The bases for the Gauls I cut from some 40mm deep MDF bases I had left over from a Kings of War army. They're a little wonky on some edges, but perfectly serviceable.

The first units I finished were 8 elements of Warband. This is the core of the Gaul army. Under the latest iteration of the DBA rules I could base these either with 3 or 4 figures on each base - each representing either 'Fast' or 'Solid' troop types. But to be honest I couldn't be bothered with this. Firstly, I have a physical copy of the 2.0 rules, so if I do play DBA it will likely be with these rules. Secondly, if I do play 3.0, I'll use some tokens or something to represent the difference. I'm not painting up more than double the figures I need. Third and lastly, these figures were re-based from units I had previously painted for Sword and Spear, with some minor touch ups here and there. 

Now we're moving on to units I actually painted recently, 3 elements of Chariots, and 1 element of Psiloi, in this case slingers (and everything that follows).

The chariots were a pain in the arse to assemble, and I painted the charioteers separately, then glued them after everything had been painted and sealed. Despite being annoying to put together, I think they came out well, and look very nice!

Every army in DBA has a base, and this is my Gaulish version. A tent, some tables, a few sacks, and some camp followers, what more could an army on the march require? I think it looks really cool. Pretty happy with how this came out.

The last elements I assembled and painted were the cavalry. I ended up basing them after painting them, because I felt the proximity of the figures to one another would make it difficult to paint. I didn't enjoy doing it in this order, perhaps next time I'll try painting them already based, we'll see.

I had to modify some of the decals for these figures, as the shield sizes didn't match up very well, but the end result was solid I think. I really like how the figures came out.

And that's that, the entirety of my Gaul army. DBA is played with 12 elements (bases) per side, and most armies have some different options (Gauls can take chariots or cavalry for example). I now have all the options for the DBA Gaul army painted, based, and ready to rumble (well, all the options for the version of the rules I have).

I'm really pleased with how they've come together, and what they look like on the table. 15mm has a pleasant balance between aesthetics and scale. The bases have lots of figures, which have a great table presence, they are small enough to paint with relative ease, and still large enough to have some nice detail and definition. I'm looking forward to playing! 

Speaking of table presence, I also made a board for DBA (as seen in the last few images). I'll do a post about making it at some point in the future.