Everything I Painted in 2024

For the last couple of years (2022, 2023), I've done these roundup posts. They're a nice way to review a year's work, which I find helps with motivation, and they're also great for accountability.

In the last few years I've made repeated half-hearted attempts to paint more figures than I buy; only in mid-2023 did I pull my finger out and start recording everything in a spreadsheet, which means that 2024 is the first year for which I have reasonably complete records.

The Rules

The rules of this accounting are pretty simple:

• Only figures completely ready for the tabletop count as done - painted, varnished and based.
• You ‘bank’ each figure in the year it was finished, even if you started it the year before (or earlier!) I think of it as an incentive to finish half-completed figures.
• 28mm infantry score one point regardless of complexity; a single Napoleonic figure takes up the same table space as the most simply-attired peltast in a tunic.
• If you haven’t finished with more figures than you started, then it doesn’t count; repainting and rebasing figures already completed in the collection scores nothing.
• Other figure types and scales should be pro-rated sensibly. I count cavalry as two, tanks and other medium sized vehicles as 5, and any sort of weapon which wouldn’t be carried, such as a cannon, counts as one. For 6mm figures each strip of four infantry or three cavalry counts as one.
• Terrain doesn't count; it's listed separately (I know that I failed to do this last year!)

The Score

In 2023 I beat my previous all time record (255 figures) by a huge margin, and managed to paint 372 28mm-equivalent figures.

In 2024 I dropped off this high water mark significantly, and only finished 261 figures - this was somewhat below my purchased total of 290. Not ideal, but not far off! Unfortunately my accounting wasn't quite detailed enough to tell how many figures I worked on total, as that 261 includes some that were painted in 2023 but only based in 2024, and the 260 assembled includes a few that didn't get as far as paint.

I'll go through the individual categories, listing how many figures I painted in each and how many I bought, showing where my focus flitted between through the year.

Napoleonics - 12

I began the year as I have done the last few, preparing for Herts of Lard. In 2024 Duncan and I once again ran a Sharp Practice game, this time refighting the 1809 Raid on Saint-Paul by the Royal Navy, immortalised in Patrick O'Brien's The Mauritius Command. 

Most of my work for this year's event consisted of making 28mm frigates (which will be covered in the year's terrain roundup), and writing a supplement for Sharp Practice to cover their usage. This latter can be found in the 2024 Lard Mag, should you be interested in playing your own nautical SP games.

Much of the rest of the required painting I got through in the tail end of 2023, determined not to repeat the previous year's mistake of leaving myself too much to do, so all that was left to paint by the time January came were a few stragglers - a handful of officers and eight more Royal Marines to round out that force to two full Groups.

While I used Perry metals for the first Group, I wanted to avoid the repetition of poses that another 8 would require, so instead I bought the metal heads from Brigade Games and a set of Perry plastic British infantry. This required a bit of sculpting on their packs, but vastly reduces the repetition. I suppose I should round out the Marines to a full 24-figure battalion now!

Fantasy Goblins - 139

Conspicuous in the back of the picture, you'll have noticed the large number of goblins! With GW's (re)release of The Old World, I collected the goblin army which I'd wanted since 2006. This consumed over half of my total painting output for the year and unfortunately also a lot more of my purchasing too!

While my love for the greenskins is rooted in the 2000s era plastics, the force contains models from the 1980s right the way through to the 2020s - a celebration of all things green!

The squig hoppers are certainly an oddity - that's because I started painting them a few years ago with an eye to a horse squig racing game which never got off the ground! They languished in a partly-completed state until this year, when TOW gave me the impetus to finish them off.

2025 will definitely bring more goblins - I'm aiming to round the force out to a full 2000 points, and I need at least another 40 more basic gobbos to fill out the line.

Greeks - 9

The final units I'm planning to add to my long-running Syracusan Greek army are these Thracian mercenaries from Wargames Foundry. Also accompanying them is this lone hoplite hero, who hid in a figure case for several years before being plucked from the foam .

Italian Wars - 41

I continue to work on-and-off on my French army for the Italian Wars - this year I added more gendarmes, enough Swiss pikemen to take me to two full units, three more units of light crossbowmen and another general. 

Once again the horsemen proved a labour of love, but the result justifies the time taken! 

The project is also a great opportunity to practice sculpting - inspired by the likes of Army Royal - and these crossbowmen have a fair amount of greenstuff work to bring them into the early 16th century.

2025 will include more Italian Wars progress - indeed I have already finished the first tranche of light cavalry - and should bring this army to the point where it can take the field in anger.

Pulp - 24

Another long-running project, I continued to pick away at my pulp forces for my Adriatic game. As ever, the figures come from a variety of sources and I remember few if any of their specific manufacturers.

This delightful car pretending to be a tank is from 1st Corps' c20th Follies range, and I believe the motorbike and sidecar is from their WW1 British range. Most of these figures will fight for the liberal faction in my game.

Necromunda - 11

I've resisted getting into Necromunda for years, mostly out of a conviction that if I did try it I'd be caught hook, line and sinker. That assessment proved correct when a friend offered to run a campaign last year for my historical gaming group. I loved it, and despite vowing to make my gang for that campaign (Chaos Helots) solely* from figures I already had, as soon as the first campaign ended and we started preparing for another I found myself with an unaccountable pile of Goliath boxes!

*I allowed myself the luxury of one Spawn model, should I happen to gain one during the campaign...which I did!

WW2 - 8

Unusually, this year didn't see another 28mm platoon for Chain of Command. I did actually start one (no45 Royal Marine Commando for late 1944), but the timing was wrong and the project got no further than assembly.

Instead, I came back to 6mm (my other love) and a matched pair of British and German platoons for 1944/5. These are from the exquisite new Baccus range.

In the fullness of time this will be expanded to full companies for playing O Group and the like, but for now they provide an extremely portable way to play Chain of Command - once I finish the accompanying terrain, that is!

Odds & Ends - 17

I've been thinking about playing Turnip28 since it first became a thing a few years ago. What pushed me into painting these five fodder this year? The lucky coincidence of a few Napoleonic French on a sprue from Wargames Illustrated, and a bright idea about a bee-themed regiment! Perhaps I'll return to the project in 2025 and flesh them out into a playable force - who knows?

I suspect that these animals came from Warbases. I painted them for our Salute game, which centred on a viking raid on London - I'll cover this in more detail when I do my yearly terrain post. Unlike most models I added no static grass here, as I imagine them wandering dirt roads or in a denuded chicken coop.

2025's Herts of Lard game will feature a large number of orcs; these are only the first five to be completed.

Ah, Battlefleet Gothic - one of the few things Games Workshop could tempt with by re-releasing (the others were WHFB, Warmaster and Epic).  A friend has been steadfastly trying to tempt me, and late last year I painted this lone cruiser. 

More will follow - if only because I have half a dozen other ships in a box awaiting their turn for a Nelson chequer!

Everything Else

The keen-witted amongst you will have noticed that the tallies and pictures above don't total the exact number figures I painted. Some I forgot to photograph, some I lent to friends and other I may have simply miscounted! 

2025

So, what does (the rest of) 2025 hold? I'm not doing a Salute game this year, so my main project at the minute is preparing a Midgard game for this year's Herts of Lard. After that, I expect a continuation of my existing projects - Necromunda, Italian Wars, WW2, 6mm Napoleonics - and at least one thing totally out of left field. Onwards!