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Like many of us, I made a 2025 New Year's Resolution to paint at least one miniature a day. Surprisingly, I kept at it and currently have finished 327 minis so far (today is Day 228).

I don't really have any method to my madness other than to pick ancient (some decades old) projects off of my gaming table or from a nearby drawer or cabinet. Then I paint them. Because I have the laser beam focus of a gerbil, I have collected a lot of different miniatures for varied games, periods, and genres.

Since I have already completed 327 minis, I will post pics and notes of them a few at a time until I catch up to the present and then continue the blog weekly or so from then on until the last day of this year.

The first project completed were 26 15mm scale Russian Napoleonic skirmishers for the General d'Armee 2nd Edition ruleset. My local gaming group plays a lot of historical miniatures and our favorite periods are the Napoleonic Wars and World War 2. We favor the 15mm scale as most of us have been at it since the 1980s when 15mm miniatures were the hot new thing (taking over from 25mm).



The 26 Russian skirmishers are comprised of 8 line infantry in shakos, 8 line infantry in caps, and 10 Jagers in shako. The metal miniatures are by Old Glory 15s (OG15) produced by 19th Century Miniatures in the USA.







The detail on 15mm minis is limited but I did try to paint buttons and the sword knots with the right colors for these units. The line infantry have white trousers and the Jagers have dark green trousers with red stripes as well as shako plumes to distinguish them.

All in all a good start to my year of painting.

I wish that I could say after starting this year off right by painting the Russian skirmishers, that I pressed on diligently with more miniatures. However, I got distracted by several projects that had nothing to do with painting my pile of shame.

The first distraction was terrain. My gaming group needed more hills so I bought a couple of one inch thick 2' x 2' XPS foam panels and cut them with a hot wire foam cutter into the hill shapes that I wanted. I managed to give them sloped edges without making the edges so thin or feathery that they would break easily.





For paint, I asked my hardware store to mix me a quart sized can of nice bright green latex paint. Unfortunately, my idea of nice was something akin to GW Moot Green.



After my eyes recovered from the retinal burn, I went back to the hardware store and got them to mix me a nice, sane brown and a very comfortable green. This enabled me to paint my new hills with hues that my gaming group could enjoy.



The last photo is from today, and the hills have survived two or three gaming sessions per month for the last seven months. I should have sealed the flock on top of the hills. It has scuffed off a bit. When I reapply flock, I will make sure to seal it.

All of the hills came from one 2' x 2' XPS panel. I still have one more to make more hills, but that project has yet to distract me.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

The second distraction was a miniature wargame rule set for ancient battles, Age of Hannibal, by Little Wars TV. The rule set allows fast and simple, but really fun, simulated battles of the ancient times. The rule set also includes quite a few battle scenarios. My friends and I had already played the Battle of Issus, Alexander the Great's crushing victory over the Persians in 333 B.C. Now we wanted to play something with Romans so we settled upon the 218 B.C. Battle of the Trebia River.

Now, neither I nor my friends own any ancient miniatures so we play these large battles using paper miniatures! I download them from a website called Juniorgeneral.org, edit them to make units that do not already exist on that site, and print them in a 10mm size. Then I cut them out, glue them with PVA to thicker paper, cut them out again, and glue them to 40mm x 40mm square bases. It takes a few days but voila, a cheap and easy army.

My friend agreed to create the Romans so I only had to create the Carthaginians.















It is not art but it is very effective and the armies are very light and easy to transport to the game store.

The good news is that after these distractions and working on scatter terrain trees, which I will not inflict on you, I returned to painting my pile of shame.

After finishing my terrain and paper ancient projects, it was already April of 2025. I was already three months into the year and had only finished painting 26 miniatures!

I forced myself to refocus and concentrated on my 15mm Napoleonic Austrian army projects. Since the Habsburg Austrians are my primary army for Napoleonic warfare, I had a lot of unpainted minis sitting around my project table. Between the beginning of April and the middle of June, I painted 118 of my 15mm Austrians.



Two Austrian brigade commanders (minis by OG15s produced by 19th Century Miniatures)




Eight Austrian line infantry skirmishers (minis by OG15)



Twelve Austrian volunteer "Freiwillige" infantry, Archduke Charles Legion. I had half of the 24 man battalion already painted, but I needed 12 more miniatures to finish the unit. These are very old figures from a long defunct company called Heritage USA and later produced by Empire Miniatures, which is also out of business. A nice chap traded me the 12 minis that I needed so I painted them and they are the back rank on each stand. The firing miniatures in the front rank are the ones that were already painted.




18 Austrian artillery crew and four medium guns (6 pounder) by Minifig (2nd Generation). The bases with four crew and a gun are foot artillery. In my group's system, two bases equals one artillery battery. The base with the green flock is part of another battery that was already half finished. The two bases with three crew on each represent a cavalry battery. The Austrians did not have true horse artillery, where the crew all rode their own horses. Instead, part of the Austrian cavalry battery crews rode upon a "sausage" seat on the trail of their guns. This made them slower on the move than horse artillery but fewer men had to learn how to ride horses, fewer horses were needed for the battery, and the Austrian cavalry batteries took less time to get into action once they reached their destination.




36 Austrian infantry, 2nd battalion of Infantry Regiment #42, Erbach. Note the orange facings, collars, and cuffs. This was characterized as a German regiment but was actually from a German speaking region of the Czech portions of the Habsburg Empire. These 15mm miniatures are very well sculpted and are part of the Battle Honors range sold by 19th Century Miniatures.




36 Hungarian infantry skirmishing. The Habsburg Empire of the Napoleonic period included the lands of Hungary and their infantry wore a slightly different uniform from the "German" regiments. Blue pants with yellow stripes and a lace pattern at the top of each thigh were the most noticeable differences, but the Hungarians also had a slightly different cuff design. At 15mm scale, I don't worry about the smaller details but the blue pants with the yellow stripes are too striking to avoid. Note the many different facing colors of the skirmishers as they come from several different regiments.

By the end of June, I was burnt out on painting Napoleonic miniatures and started to focus on my backlog of 15mm World War 2 German miniatures for the early war period and North Afrika.

Lovely stuff! Nice to see more historical stuff on Dakka.

Because I was tired of painting Napoleonic troops, I turned to my hoard of unpainted 15mm World War II miniatures. For several years, a large collection of primed black vehicles had sat on top of my gaming table, occupying several square feet of space. In June and July, I painted them and got into a really good rhythm. Unfortunately, I also decided to add units, so I started making new orders for miniatures from Battlefront, Khurusan, Forged in Battle, and Peter Pig.

I am collecting Germans for the Early War, North Afrika, mid-War Eastern Front, and late War Western Front. Today's update will just cover the models that I painted for the Early War.





Since I use the Blitzkrieg Commander IV rules, I needed command/headquarters units. I chose Forged in Battle Kubelwagens paired with personnel on foot from Peter Pig. The forward observer models come from Battlefront. They are older metal models that I have had for more than 20 years.




These are motorcycle troops from Battlefront. I have had them more than 20 years and they are metal minis. I always love motorcycle troops, but these models were a bit painful since the motorcycle rider's arms hold the handlebars of his bike and are difficult to glue on properly.




My Early War Germans are based on the 7th Panzer Division in France so I needed some Panzer II tanks. These are resin models from Forged in Battle. They are nice models but have a resin base on the bottom of the treads. The tanks came with metal tank commanders but I did not use mine.




7th Panzer Division's main battle tank was the Panzer 38t, a Czech tank that the Germans were quite happy to acquire in 1938 and use for their panzer divisions from 1939 on. These are also resin Forged In Battle models and once again I chose not to use the metal tank commanders that were included in the kits.




All German panzer divisions had lots of trucks of varying types. It is not easy to find good models of trucks for a reasonable price. These are more resin Forged in Battle miniatures. Some of the trucks had stowage modelled on them. If I get more trucks, I might try the plastic kits from Plastic Soldier Company since they also make Opel Blitz, Mercedes, and Steyr trucks. I wish someone made some of the other Early War workhorse trucks in plastic like the Krupp Kfz 69 and 70.

I still have quite a few Early War miniatures to paint include Polish infantry, but I found myself distracted yet again by the lure of the desert.