It's the season! We are primarily here for this picture, and its breakdown just below. More report on the state of the hobby after that, along with goals and new year's pledges.
Alright, so we are looking at 556 miniatures painted (708 with multipliers). About 130 are not in this picture. Acquired this year: 249 (326 with multipliers). That means I am over the target by just 17 i.e. 708-(326+365)=17.
Top left corner: 92 miniatures for A Song of Ice and Fire, my new favorite tray-based wargame.
Center and right: 214 miniatures for the Imperium, mostly Guard with some Agents for fun.
Front and lower right: 110 various miniatures for D&D, including some dragons. More on that later.
Finally, 6 miniatures for Stormlight Archive.
Not in the picture: 32 pulp heroines for Call of Cthulhu, 73 commission miniatures for A Song of Ice and Fire, and 29 commission miniatures for RPGs.
The breakdown shows a narrowed focus for 2025. I completely ignored the Chaos side of things, and focused on my Guard army. As usual, random D&D minis and commissions make up a good chunk of things, with some outliers thrown in for experiments. This should have been a huge dent in my pile of potential, but the 2025 Guard codex with its brand new ways to play, as well as a surprise jump into A Song of Ice and Fire ruined the numbers. I am still overall happy with the positive final outcome.
I always joked about how rounding out the Guard was first a Q1, then Q2, then Q3, then the whole year's worth of a project. Well, it spilled over into 2026. I have the end in sight, with some more Cadians and Kriegers coming in, and then I'm calling it done. Hopefully, this year's codex won't mess up the way Command Squads are played, and especially it will leave the base sizes alone. Once that is over and the Guard will be playable in multiple detachments, not just the Bridgehead Strike (or whatever they'll call it next edition), I'll bounce back to Chaos. The Word Bearers need some rounding out as well. I have a sizable daemon collection, but not a coherent army. I might look into that. No fixed plans here, just a promise to do something about the pile.
D&D is and probably always will be a constant supply of painting projects. I expect the last Bones kickstarter to deliver in 2026, further ruining the numbers. But since I made great strides into the slapchop side of things, I also expect a lot of painted minis. Also: dragons. I have several in the pile, and I want them all done this year.
One of two smaller projects, my Free Folk army for A Song of Ice and Fire has some WIPs as of this moment, and a couple more boxes that I won during local tournaments. I will have a go at it and expect to finish my own stuff this year. A new season is upon us, and I hope it will shake up the game.
Second, the remaining minis for Stormlight should present a relaxed passion project and palette cleanser in between the army projects.
Finally, 2025 saw a drastic drop in the number of commission projects. I expect 2026 to see no increase. But those beers and 3d prints won't pay for themselves, so I always include at least some in the plan.
Overall, I have no plans to purchase more minis besides what is already coming in - but that should already be a sizable addition to the pile. So the plan is simple: keep on painting.
Alright, but what about the rest of the hobby?
Well I obviously aren't quitting Warhammer 40k. In fact, I made forays into narrative play during 2025. I want to keep it up during 2026. This is so much more entertaining then endless samey matched play.
I gave up on Sigmar/The Old World, with the tray based/fantasy wargame itch currently being scratched by A Song of Ice and Fire. It's surprisingly good - I just hope I won't get bored of its competitive nature. So far, so good. Will I jump into any new systems? Hopefully not. Or at least nothing that requires new minis.
Dungeon of the Mad Mage enters its 6th year, and I'm kind of fatigued. But the end is in sight, and we skipped playing during December, so maybe we'll jump back with new found energy soon. No fixed plans for afterwards, as of yet.
My other group carries on with Call of Cthulhu, or at least I hope it will in 2026 - December was a bust. The release of Fallout s03 revitalized my interest in all characters named Lucy, so I hope the investigation will resume soon.
Finally on the video gaming side of things, I started a group playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 in January, and we still haven't finished. The end is in sight as well, so who knows. I managed to finish another Assassin's Creed and Fallout: New Vegas during 2025, and I'm close to the end of Horizon: Forbidden West. I have to say I enjoyed all of them. Again no fixed plans for 2026, but the backlog is huge, so I'll get to something at least.
Happy hobbying, and may all our 2026 targets come true!
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