Everything I painted in 2025
This is now the fourth year (2022, 2023, 2024) in which I've written a roundup post to cover my painting output for the year. They provide a nice way to look back on a year's hobby, and keep me honest in my usual goal of painting more figures than I purchase!
The Rules
The rules for my accounting are simple and haven't changed since I started:
- 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 peasant in a tunic.
- Other figure types and scales should be pro-rated sensibly. I generally 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.
- 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.
- Terrain is (in theory) counted separately
The Score
2025 was another record year for my poor suffering paintbrush - by my tally 431 28mm-equivalent figures - I actually worked on 577 in one way or another, usually assembling and then not getting to the actual painting, but in a few cases painting things I'd assembled last yaer. 431 is a personal record and a huge jump over 2024's much more modest 261. I suspect the record may stand for some time, because 2026 is shaping up to be a busy year.
That big jump also meant that - for the first time in my wargaming life - I painted more figures than I bought, the latter figure being a mere 380. It's only a modest dent in the lead pile, but at least it's a first bite of the elephant.
For the rest of this post I'll go through the categories showing the different periods and projects I worked on, and the number of figures for each. The numbers won't match exactly - this is largely due to things I've painted but since lost or failed to photograph; I thought that having numbers which don't match the pictures would be more baffling than two sets of numbers which don't match!
The Lord of the Rings - 42
For the last few years I've been attending Herts of Lard in Hertford, and this has usually meant a good deal of painting for some project or the other. In 2025 that resulted in a new pile of orcs for a game mashing together Middle Earth and The Battle of the River Idle, along with a Warg-riding leader and a troll to supply some muscle.
They're all GW figures, many with conversions to add a bit of variety to my ever-growing orc horde - you can never have too many orcs, but you can have too many identical ones!
I did paint a couple of Saxons to oppose them, but these are merely the first two figures that are MIA.
Fantasy - 32
In 2024 I painted the bulk of a Night Goblin army for the newly re-released Old World. 2025 saw fewer little green bastards, but I continued to pick away at them here and there.
Blood Bowl - 25
I've not played a lot of Blood Bowl in the last few years, but every so often I get in a game or - as this summer - a small tournament with friends. This year, with the deadline of such a tournament looming, I finished an Ogre team which I've named the 'Karakoram Krushers'.
There are four ogre bruisers, a dozen snotlings, and the usual assortment of balls and markers.
Necromunda - 49
We played another Necromunda campaign this year, and this time my gang were a bunch of Slaaneshi-corrupted Goliaths obsessed with building the perfect body. They're probably the brightest thing I've ever painted!
We also played a little Inquisimunda, and as well as using some figures from the dark ages of this blog I also needed a few extras, so I painted up an Inquisitor and some of his buddies.
I also painted a large bunch of muties; all from the GW Hobbit box except the big fellow, who's a Mammoth Miniatures ogre. With a bit of rust, some artificially-dyed looking clothes, and tarmac bases they fit well enough into the 41st Millenium.
We haven't started it yet, but the next campaign will likely take place on the Sump Sea, so I've been assembling all sorts of nautical types to act as an Outcast gang, some pirates to give the players some opposition or just NPCs. These are a mixture of GW & Mammoth Miniatures, and the divers are 3d prints from a company who had a trough full of figures at Salute!
Epic 40k - 36
A somewhat more unexpected project this - I 'accidentally' got a good deal on about a company's worth of old Epic Space Marines and painted them as Imperial Fists.
There's a full battle company, plus their Rhino transports, some Terminators and a couple of command stands. I've got a few bikes and land speeders to paint to round this project out - I doubt they'll ever see much table time but they were a fun diversion.
6mm Cold War - 58
Back in the real world, but still in the smaller scale, I somehow ended up with nearly an entire Soviet tank regiment on my hands courtesy of Sabotag3d. Even with a friend taking a tank battalion off my hands, that still left me with well over 100 tiny vehicles and I didn't get through them all.
Progress also wasn't helped by interminable delays in the printing process for our chosen rules set Battlegroup: Northag which meant that by the time most of us got our hands on the rules the enthusiasm had passed us by and we'd moved on to other projects.
Perhaps in 2026 I'll paint the remaining 30-odd T64s and some infantry for the motor rifle battalion?
28mm Vietnam - 45
My group had a fairly sustained burst of enthusiasm for the Vietnam war in the first half of the year, hampered mainly by struggling to find a set of rules that made sense for the period.
With others having already painted plenty of US forces, I elected to raise a platoon or so of Viet Cong to oppose them, and a medevac chopper since they often get left out. The force includes these nifty pairs of figures in their active VC mode and civilian guise. These are from Empress, and the regulars are rounded out with some Rubicon plastics.
Among the things made but lost in storage are also a set of bunker and tunnel markers. This is another period that I may well return to, if someone can crack the problem of wargaming a conflict in which most of the time nothing happens.
Pulp - 15
As every year, I painted a few interwar figures for pulp gaming. This year it was the turn of various civilian types to populate my fictional Adriatic island kingdom. 2026 will likely be a big year for pulp, as I'm planning to actually put on a game with all of these figures which I've been hoarding!
Italian Wars - 77
The largest single project this year was my ongoing French army for the Italian Wars. This year I added more French infantry, some Landsknechts, Stradiots, medium cavalry and a variety of extras including a modest baggage train.
The arquebusiers are a mixture of Steel Fist figures & dollies, and Perry plastics with a good deal of sculpting to bring them into the c16th.
The Landsknechts are simpler - mostly Warlord Games (ex Pro Gloria, I believe) plastics with a smattering of Steel Fist figures to replace the medicore Warlord leader figures.
Perhaps the only wholly unconverted units in the army are these Stradiots from the Perrys who, along with some mounted crossbowmen, will provide a screen for the army on the march.
Research has indicated that the Ordonnance companies of Gendarmes fought split up, with the better-equipped Gendarmes themselves fighting separately to their more lightly-armed retainers. To represent this, I've mixed together Perry mounted knights and light cavalry, and judicious amounts of green stuff. I finished only one unit of these, but I have a second one on the go too. The aim is to complete one for every unit of 'proper' Gendarmes I do.
Napoleonic - 16
It's been a quiet year on the Napoleonic front after the efforts of 2023 and 2024. These men of the 95th Rifles (from Wargames Atlantic) are beautiful if very slight figures, and will do nicely for the Peninsula.
2026 will definitely feature lots more Napoleonic painting, as I have at least one full battalion of French emigres and one battalion of revolutionaries to paint for March!
Miscellaneous - 22
Every year I paint a few things which don't fit into any real project. This year, I painted an assortment of figures of dubious usefulness but excellent character.
I also managed a handful more Battlefleet Gothic ships; just about enough to play a game with.
Finally for 2025, in a fit of madness, I turned a sardine can into a pilot cutter manned by a couple of (pilot) fish, for the indie game Scabz.
I won't even attempt to explain the background, but I had enormous fun digging things out of my bits box to turn the tin can into a somewhat believable sailing boat, and the two fishy Edwardian pilots are some of the best things I've made all year.
2026
My plans for 2026 are mostly more of the same - I want to continue to chip away slowly at the lead pile, finish (or at least 'finish') a couple of projects and get some good games in with friends.
I'm already committed to painting lots of Napoleonics for Herts of Lard, and I've somehow found myself with the core of an Empire army for The Old World, so the next few months will definitely involve a lot of colourful uniforms. Beyond that, who knows?
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