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...

Full Circle - and Necromunda

It's been a hot minute since I posted to this site. In actual fact, it's been a hot seven years. In the intervening time I've changed careers, run eight successful Kickstarters, had nearly half a million words published by various game companies around the world, and self-published 7 RPG zines (see more on the Caradoc Games link at the top of the page).

The last few months though I've taken a hiatus from game design, and have been getting out the paints and brushes, dusting off miniature games I haven't played in some time, and generally doing other hobby things. It's been nice to come back to that side of the gaming hobby, and more and more I've felt like blogging about it. So here we are, full circle.

What got me back into miniatures gaming? A bit of uncertainty around what I was going to do next with Caradoc Games, and a desire to take some time. A good friend of mine had finished running a Necromunda campaign, and was talking about running another campaign later in the year. He asked if I wanted to join in; the bastard knew exactly what he was doing.

After some umming and ahhing, I finally gave in and thought to myself, 'yes, just a gang for Necromunda, that will be a nice distraction from my studies this year'. Six months later and I have a painted Necromunda gang, a fleet for Oak and Iron, a Gallic DBA army, and I have Bloodbowl sitting on a table nearby... I should have known this was how it would go.

Looking at the gangs that our local group had, and which miniatures I liked the look of, I ended up getting an Ash Wastes Nomad gang (cue the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme tune, and an episode titled: The Gang Does the Ash Wastes).

I don't think I've bought anything from Games Workshop since the late 90s. The model sprues were good quality, and the figures went together easily. I rather like these models, but boy are there a lot of layers, with bits of cloth and cowl hanging over parts of the figures here and there, chains, and cannisters and all manner of other details, which look wonderful once painted, but are sometimes tricky to get a brush to. If I had my time again, I'd almost elect to paint them on the sprues, but then again, just typing that gives me the shudders, so maybe not.

I was really happy with how these figures came out, the models are well posed and detailed, and I am pleased with the final product. According to my extensive research and exacting sources, most of dyes available in the Ashen Wastes are various shades of brown, so that's what I went with... 

My gang for Necromunda - The Ash Waste Nomads

The campaign started a couple of weeks ago, but I'll save posting about it for another day. So far it's been a lot of fun, and unusually for me, I'm actually playing with painted miniatures!