I’m a few weeks late with this as it is now mid July but I’ve been busy with other scales lately. My goals I set at the beginning of the year were:-

“In 2025 I hope to complete 800 figures and 180 vehicles/aircraft.“

And how am I going you ask? Well, pretty good actually. Despite my new job being busier than the old one, I have managed to paint 852 figures and 71 vehicles/aircraft. So I have already exceeded my figure goal for the year and I reckon I can paint another 600 figures before the end of the year. The vehicle and aircraft count is lagging behind, but the target is still achievable. Like last year, FPW was the main focus with 586 figures painted and the Prussians finished), 170 Napolenic repaints, 44 Orcs and about 50 Dark Ages Welsh.

My plans for different periods and armies are mostly on track, but the Fantasy has climbed the list to near the top, while Sci-fi has slide down to priority.

Scenery plans

I have made good progress painting some German buildings but I have not progressed to the basing stage yet. I have a lot to base it it seems that I don’t know where to start so I will just try a few trial bases and see how that goes. Rome wasn’t built in a day….

Purchases and sales

Despite having 7000 unpainted figures I decided to buy more, and I placed a couple of orders – one to Baccus for some FPW Bavarians and Prussians, and Alexandrian Persians and Greeks late last year. And the second order was to Microworld games for Orcs, Goblins, Humans and Wood Elves, and those 2 orders have added another 1800 figures to the unpainted pile!

Recently I decided to downscale some of my 6mm Moderns and I sold a painted 6mm Modern British army as well as half (of a large) Modern French army. I don’t play the period as much anymore and I had 8 armies which seemed excessive (to me).

In some good news for fellow 6mm gamers, Battlescale has now taken over the production of Leven Miniatures and are in the process of adding the range to their site. I’ll be ordering once they release the Biblical ranges and other bits

Gaming plans

Like previous years I have not achieved as much as I would have liked. I have had a slight paralysis coming up with solo campaign ideas and I have decided to start a FPW campaign using the Programmed wars scenarios book and the “Reconnaissance in strength” campaign. I’ve been heavily inspired by the wonderful blog Grymauchs solo blog https://grymauch.blogspot.com/2021/05/ww2-reconnaissance-in-strength-mini.html , who played a WW2 version of the campaign. The sticking point for me was coming up with a decent campaign system, so I tried out some AI prompts for this using ChatGPT, and it provided a great start for a set of campaign rules and ideas. I’ll also try ChatGpt for my abandoned ideas for a Dark Ages campaign with Ravensfeast. More on this in a future post.