Painter Closes 2025 With 267 Minis, Plans Play-Focused Year
Community member jeffersonpowers varnished the final models and terrain they painted in 2025, completing a year-end tally of 267 miniatures across 14 games. The post highlights a fast, play-focused painting workflow using speedpaints and black primer, flags material issues with some terrain pieces, and outlines a 2026 plan to combine painting with battle reports.
On January 2, 2026, Beasts of War community member jeffersonpowers shared a year-end wrap that capped a prolific 2025 hobby run: 267 models painted across 14 games, plus assorted terrain pieces. The final batch came from Mantic’s Deep Space Pest Control advent calendar and was varnished to seal the year’s last finishes.
The entry focused on a pragmatic, time-efficient approach. Worknotes list a simple black primer as the base and heavy reliance on speedpaints to get colors down quickly. Terrain received broad treatment with drybrushing to bring out forms, while finer details were picked out with a brush after the rapid base work. Photographs accompany the post to show the finished minis and the terrain together on the table.
Not all of the report was celebratory. The author called out frustration with some terrain components made from a softer plastic that failed to hold crisp detail; a few thin elements lacked the sharpness expected at the scale. That observation matters for painters who buy advent-calendar or mass-market terrain kits: softer plastics can limit the payoff of detailed painting, and fast techniques like drybrushing will emphasize texture more than razor-sharp sculpts.
The practical takeaway is clear. Speedpaints and a black primer remain effective tools for painting-to-play workflows, especially when the goal is to produce tabletop-ready armies and terrain quickly. Drybrushing remains the most efficient way to finish terrain at scale, while brushwork can still lift important focal points. Check the plastic and feel of terrain parts before investing heavy time in fine detail; where the material is soft, prioritize broad contrast and color reads over micro-detailing.
Looking ahead, the author set a personal shift in 2026: fewer purely aesthetic posts and a tighter focus on painting-for-play, combining painting progress with battle reports to document how finished models perform on the table. The post invites readers to follow along for that combined format.
For painters balancing output and play, this entry is a useful case study in finishing a large yearly total without sacrificing tabletop usability. The images and workflow notes supplied offer concrete references for anyone planning an efficient painting year or considering calendar minis and terrain purchases for future projects.
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