Fred’s 2026 Painting and Gaming diary

[fred.]

Another year, another iteration of my painting diary. 

Got some new image hosting sorted after the Imgur geo-fence fiasco mid 2025, so hopefully will be more consistent in posting. 

Given the general disaster zone that is my desk with the space to actually work on getting smaller and smaller I decided to excavate the pile of boxes at the back left which had started as handy places to store the next up items. Given this stack was 12-18" tall it had rather lost its original meaning. 

So what was in it

• Box of 3d printed undead pirates (a very recent acquisition - unlike all the rest of it!)
• Tray of 6-10mm stacks of oil drums and crates. Got these as freebie to use as terrain or supply markers. 
• Box of 'epic' ACW confederates - these are from a gaming mate for me to paint. Done a first pass on one of many sprues
• Stack of 28mm sprues - notionally for SciFi skirmish
• Box of proper epic sci-fi. Mainly 3d prints Some Squat flamer infantry who just need a quick finish (see below). Squat jump pack troops, squat gyro copters (metal) and various tyranid bits
• Box of 10mm Samurai lots of Pendraken metal! These are just the extras on top of what I already have painted
• MDF tray of WWI and weird WWI
• MDF tray of WWI, more Tyranids, some metal stompy walkers - not entirely sure which army for. And some Weird WWI terrain

Also on the desk is a small tray of AWI houses, some other random terrain. And trying to hide on the left hand corner a couple of boxes of 28mm plastics bought from an actual game store whilst on holiday - Afghan tribesmen and sandbags. 

Further to the left are 4 ikea shelves (I think meant as a paper storage item) that has notionally WIP stuff in it

• Assorted 10mm, Samurai (sent to the box with the others) AWI British grenadiers - the closest to 'in progress' of any of these. And 6 painting sticks of Araby archers, Renaissance hand gunners and some random characters 
• Crammed with 28mm figures mainly SciFi skirmish (largely frostgrave), but some WoTR and Ancient Greek fantasy 
• 28mm African tribesmen - half painted. Various 10mm fantasy including a couple of camps - the lizardman looking pretty complete. The Elven one needs the tent painting, then basing
• More 10mm samurai (moved to the box). 10mm WWII British armour - needs decals and basing then is done. Assorted 28mm VSF / Wild West figures

And that is just the madness in plain sight

Most of the first pile is going to return to the conservatory to join the main parts of those collections. So that I have some space to at least do stuff. 

[fred.]

The repatriation of figures to the conservatory was less straightforward than expected - both the Samurai and WWI drawers had become rather filled up - some shuffling occurred and most items were put away.

Actually did some painting too - to help with moving items from nearly done, to done and away in army storage



The 6 bases of Armoured Clash Enlightened Hellion at the back have only been built and painted over the Xmas period, with basing finished today.

Whereas the 11 (why 11???) bases of squat flamers were painted and based some considerable time ago, did the basing today, and painted the flamer packs a dark red so that they are distinct from the mass of short bright green troops

Main effort over the last couple of days has been the below Dwarves - 3d prints I think for LoTR - who are very heavily armoured so a lot of metal, so pretty quick to get to this stage.



Also being on strips painting is quick as for most figures you are only painting 2 sides, not 4.Which is good as there are 8x3x6=144 figures (minus a couple as they hadn't printed a 2-3mm slice through their tummys).

Which gives a cheeky kick start to 2026 numbers of finished figures of
2026 Total finished - Infantry 62 - Total 62

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice one Forbes

[Steve J]

Nice work there !

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Good stuff

[fred.]

Thanks chaps

[fred.]

LoTR Dwarves

More work on these little chaps today whilst hiding from the freezing weather. 

Feel most of the effort on beards, belts and tunics won't be visible once they are based up!



Next step is basing - not that there is much space for any ground cover!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Great effect on those Forbes

[fred.]

142 Dwarves

Got these little fellows glued to bases last night and flocked them this evening






Fairly happy with these but have spotted some of the printed bases aren't as flat as I thought so some gaps - thought I'd managed to trim most of these.

These knocks me over 200 finished figures within the first week of the year. Seriously doubt this rate will be kept up

2026 Total finished - Infantry 204 - Total 204

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

They look great

[fred.]

They look great

Cheers Will

They are certainly a mass aren't they!

[Ithoriel]

"Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!"

"The axes' of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!" 

- J.R.R. Tolkien 

A very impressive host.

[fred.]

Commonwealth vs Enlightened - 1500 pts - Supply Drop Scenario

An early outing for the Commonwealth forces, who are clearly very distant in all the photos and appear grey due to the haze...



The table was Russian like, with a couple of villages, there are a couple hills that kind of make a square with the villages, but they don't show on the overhead shot. On the left flank some swamps, with one impassable toxic green one.


The view up the road kind of shows the hills to each side


My Enlightened force (all reinforced unless noted)
Back row, left to right
Mars Battle Tripods
Enceladus Mortar Crawlers
Callisto Assault Gatherers
Mono CAV Cohort
Strider CAV Cohort
Sickle Gyro Cav coptors

Front row
Seeker Outrider Cohort (Basic)
Hellion Cohort (Full strength)
Heavy Construct Devastator Cohort
3x Citizen Soldier Command (Basic)
Scythe Drone squadron

1500pts in 3 battlegroups (2x Faction and 1x SURG) to give me 3 command units for lots of Peer Review, and the flanking bonus for SURG. Which given the objectives wasn't the most useful.

Supply drop is a slightly odd scenario, 4 objectives in a narrow strip across the middle of the table, two slightly closer to each side's deployment zone. The objectives are only scored once, at the end of the first turn they are controlled by one side. And are worth 15pts each so quite significant.

We started deploying by alternate unit, but realised that neither was paying that much attention to what the other was doing, not least as we weren't that familiar with each other's armies!

Both armies had a lot of Vanguard units, which was handy for this scenario allowing units to advance to be available to control objectives.

The Right Flank


My Sickle Gyros have Vanguard moved forward, as have most of the CW forces including their Khesig Skycutters (aka land speeders), on are On Lookout. In the centre my Mono CAV and Mars Tripods (with a Boon) have vanguard moved forward. The CW Berserkers have advanced behind the wood.

On this flank I made a tactical error, I was worried about the overwatch fire from the Kheshig sky cutters - but my Gyros have twice the attack dice. So in retrospect I should have moved into short range, shot them up, likely knocking them to half-strength, and then used Hit and Run to block the objective (as roto craft can't hold objectives). But how it played out was I sat back, and in the end the CW rotos attacked, I played a command card to overwatch, but it was effective enough to knock them to Basic strength, and somehow with 5 dice they managed to cause 8 damage to knock my Sickles down to half-strength. I later attacked them, finally knocking them down to half-strength.

The CW cavalry took the objective, and the CW Cossack War Dogs moved into the wood. My units were mainly melee ones and didn't get far enough forward to charge. I did move my Strider CAV far forward - which probably wasn't that useful, as I was hoping to restrict the CW movement, but really it just made them a target.

In the background to the left you can see a couple of CW units moving forward - these have both lost stands from an alpha strike from my Scythe Drones - who had overcharged their attack (of course!) I pulled a 7 or an 8, so got a lot of dice, and killed quite a few stands. Unfortunately I got 5 blanks so blew up one of my planes, and but 2 damage on the other!

The Left Flank


Much more sedate on this flank - the Hellion infantry are loitering on the lee of the hill. With the CW troops not having moved yet either.

Towards the end of the turn the Mortar crawlers did cause enough damage on the CW infantry opposite them to cause them to Rout when they failed their suppression test - first points to the EN.

At the end of the turn we both controlled two objectives, which were scored, then removed.


The Centre


The photo is the start of turn two - but to catch-up on events at the end of turn 1.

In the centre the CW Berserkers charged the Mars Tripods - I found this really wasn't a match I wanted! The Berserkers are very fighty, and the tripods very shooty. Astonishingly the Tripods one the first round of combat - as the Berserkers overcharge rather back fired on them, with them loosing 2 bases, and carrying 1 damage, but they did chop one tripod down, which is a good exchange given the relative sizes of the units. This meant the Berzerkers had to fall back and fell back onto the objective.

The objective was already held by the CW Winged Hussar Treadbikes - but now having two units on it, one of which was a melee monster made a charge on to this objective by my Hellions very risky.

If it had just been the Treadbikes I would have charged them - as they only have an Impact attack, so don't fight back if charged (they are very dangerous if they charge). The rules for contacting two units in melee are a little light - and its not clear that if I'd charged the Berzerkers in the flank, whether I would have made contact legally with the tread bikes or not. And then the melee would have been down to chance between the two melee units.  But I choose not to, and just jumped on the objective nearest to me.

The Berserks charged the Mars Tripods again - this time Sponsons managed to do some damage, overcharge was minor, the Tripods lost the combat, but the Berzerkers were pretty battered by now. Eventually the Citizen Soldiers lined up a shot on the Berserkers (under the tripods!) and with 3 dice, managed 5 hits killing the last Berserker!!

The left hand CW borer maker had advanced towards the hill, the right hand one fell back. One borer had a squad of infantry, the other 4 rocket artillery units. I wonder which was going to go where?


Late turn 2


On the right there have been an exchange of units, with my Striders taking out the War Dogs, then getting removed by the CW Cavalry (just off screen). I was generous and allowed them to take back a charge against the gathers as my opponent had realised they were melee monsters, not the shooting version I normally field. The CW Cavalry then slipped to the side, out of my charge arc. But the Citizen Soldiers shot them up!

In back centre the Rocket Borers have arrived - they where hit by my remaining damage Scythe Drone zoomed in, overcharged with one last hopeful shot, drew a high card, and rolled no blanks so survived for another turn!!

My two units near the borer  have just moved towards it with Hit and Run - but can't damage it due to their light weapons (well the Mono CAV could charge, but quite weakly). But by being close they should be within its minimum range.

CW now down to 3 units deployed, and the last borer and infantry about to deploy.

The other infantry deployed in the centre - and after considerable 'discussion' couldn't get out of charge are of my Heavy Devastator  Cohort - who smashed them after taking some ineffectual shots (they may have been hit by some Mortar shots too).

The borer managed to run over/through the last tripod, wiping out this unit.

But then the citizen soldiers over charged and melted the Borer - at some cost to them - but at this stage a good exchange.

Turn 3

There was a fair bit of repositioning in this turn to try to get most of my units into position to attack the remaining CW units.

The remaining Drone made a third pass - overcharged again - caused lots of damaged, but finally blew up!

Otherwise more hits on the CW units, without any losses for EN. The game kind of petered out now between it getting late and not too many CW units left.

In the end a big win for Enlightened.

I seemed to be fortunate with card draws, getting good scores for Overcharge, having high value cards I could use to Interfere with CW Commands, although some of mine were blocked too. The CW forces failed nearly all their Suppression tests, while my Peer Review bubbles meant I auto-passed most of mine (and the few I need to draw for I did well on).

Lots of CW special rules are around Suppression - so Peer Review worked well against that. And whilst my first few dice rolls where underwhelming as the game went on my dice seemed to get hotter too!

[kipt]

Fred,
What are you using to post pictures?  Since I can't use Imgur I need something else )other than making a blog).
Thx.

[fred.]

I went with https://postimages.org seems to work fine. Very simple and clean site. 

I was that fed up after Imgur geo fencing nonsense that it took me a while to be bothered to look for something else. 

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice report there

[kipt]

Thanks Fred.

[fred.]

AWI British Grenadiers

More progress on these figures - think they are about done


Fronts


Backs

Also been working on some more Armoured Clash figures - the big Sultanate Battlegroup box arrived on Monday


And 3 different infantry clipped off the spures


The officer with a sword is a conversion grafting the tank commander onto the normal officer legs

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Looking good Forbes

[Raider4]

The officer with a sword is a conversion grafting the tank commander...