Beezer's 2025 Year In Review

Greetings True Believers, Legionnaires, Shattergoons, and Trenchfeet! What’s that, you say? The end of the year is approaching? You haven’t gotten enough self-indulgent “year in review” posts in your feed yet? Well, I’ll try not to pat myself on the back too much in this article, but I make no guarantees. I do, however, want to encourage you to be reflective and introspective about your own miniature gaming journey, because how often do we lose sight of the fact that it is, at the end of the day, a journey? By looking back, we can get excited about moving forward again, so let’s take a look back at this year’s journey and see what 2026 has in store!

By the numbers, there are just some things I couldn’t believe about my journey:

Created a Youtube channel, and created 5 videos for it in Q4.
Built, printed, and painted a combined 301 individual models across four game systems (Star Wars: Legion, Star Wars: Shatterpoint, Marvel: Crisis Protocol, and Trench Crusade) Link to spreadsheet here. I’ll add photos as I have time, but I think the spreadsheet is a really good way to keep track of this stuff.
Played more games than in 2024, with more on the calendar for 2026!
Wrote 16 articles for this wonderful website.

I didn’t keep a very detailed log of when I completed which models, but I can give an overview of what I did for each game system and my thoughts on it.

Trench Crusade

Models courtesy of Beezer

This whole game system can be filed under “pleasant surprise of 2025”. I had read bits and pieces and heard murmurings of this game, but didn’t decide to dive in until this year. I love that the game is miniature agnostic, but that there are official plastic models coming out, which I think is great for the long-term health of the game. I’ve discovered in my advanced age that I just don’t have time to paint up models for games that require a ton of models to field an army. Small, skirmish-style games are where my time and attention go now, and Trench Crusade is absolutely in the rotation. I only painted one warband, which you can read about in the write-up I did here. I don’t have much else to say about the warband than I said in that article, but I have thoroughly enjoyed how the rules have evolved on their journey to version 1.0. For 2026, I only have a few goals for this game: get enough terrain to have my own table, and I also have plans to paint a couple more warbands. I really like the new plastics, so I will probably pick up a box of them, and then I want to paint up a Trench Ghosts warband as well as a Red Brigade warband.

Star Wars Shatterpoint

Models courtesy of Beezer

I did the least for this game in 2025. I played very few games and painted very few models. I did exercise a ton of self-control, though, (which is rare for me) and didn’t buy any new models for it either. I nearly have my entire backlog painted, and I’m sure that will spur me on to buy some more models. Specifically, there are 3 boxes in particular that I have my eyes on: “Today the Rebellion Dies”, “All the Way”, and “This is Rogue One”. I don’t know how well these will play with what I already have, but they are also some of my favorite characters in the entire Star Wars Universe, so I don’t particularly care, either. My highlights from this game this year were definitely the members of Phoenix Squad I finished up: Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus, Chopper, Sabine Wren, and Ezra Bridger.

Star Wars Legion

Models courtesy of Beezer

Star Wars: Legion has undergone a massive change in the last year (and I think it has been for the better, too), and the model range is getting a combination of new models and re-packaged older kits. This is easily the largest model-count game I feel like playing now. This is also the game system that accounted for the largest number of models I painted this year. Of those nearly 300 models I painted this year, Legion was responsible for 196 of them. I absolutely love how these models have turned out, and I suddenly find myself with pretty decent collections for the Empire, Rebels, and CIS armies. I’ll have more How to Paint Everything articles coming out for this game system in the future for sure. My favorites this year were all characters: Cassian Andor and K2SO, Jyn Erso, Damiyo Boba Fett, and the Bad Batch. All of these characters turned out much better than I could’ve imagined.

Marvel Crisis Protocol

Models courtesy of Beezer

While I may not have painted the same number of models for this as other games (see above), this is where my heart was in 2025. MCP has become my gaming comfort food over the last three years, and it has really had a renaissance this year with the combination of rules changes/updates, Crisis rotation, and character releases. By a wide margin, this was the game I played the most over the last 12 months. The year started off with a bang when AMG decided to release all of the brand-new Crises and rotate some of the older ones very close to the World Championships at Adepticon. These completely changed what a lot of people worried was becoming a very stale game of “who can roll better dice faster”. Crises were more spread out, brought in new map shapes and mechanics, and supported a wide variety of playstyles. Now, you really could play how you wanted to play and feel like you weren’t going to automatically lose a game. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some tough matchups out there, but it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. Additionally, AMG released some absolutely game-changing characters this year. Apocalypse dropped in last year (and I finally got him painted this year) with wholly new mechanics that perfectly represented his Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and I think he is one of the best-designed characters in the game. Additionally, he has gotten several buffs throughout the year as his Horsemen have gotten character updates (looking at you, Gambit and Colossus). I haven’t put him on the table as much as I would like because it took me a while to wrap my head around his mechanics, and by the time I felt comfortable playing him, AMG had released other things that had captured my attention. The first of these big Distraction Carnifexes I had the joy of painting was Phoenix. Absolutely wonderful model to build and paint. This year also saw one of my favorite Marvel properties get some very fun (and some would argue unnecessary) reinforcements with Spider-Ham, Spiderman Noir, Silk, Spiderman 2099, and Ultimate Spiderman. They also got a crazy cool card in Web of the Spiderverse, which I have been playing a ton. I also started trying to get better as a player. I started a Youtube channel solely for the purpose of going back and watching games to see what I can do differently and improve from it. Which segues nicely into my plans for 2026. Already, I have signed up for two one-day tournaments, which will be the first tournaments I have ever participated in. Additionally, I am a short drive from Chattanooga, Tennessee, the home of the American Team Championships, which are introducing MCP to their game lineup in 2026. It will be a hyper-competitive 32-player GT (and I think officially recognized by AMG). I am putting all of my games into preparing for that. I have no delusions about winning it, but I’d maybe like to win a single game, or at the very least not get steamrolled every round. I’ve been documenting that journey and will release it as a series throughout 2026 to show my thought processes as I prepare for it.

2025 was a great year in my little corner of miniature wargaming. I hope you all have a wonderful end to your year, and I hope your 2026 is better than you could have possibly imagined. I’ll see you in 2026, and as always, play painted!

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Tags: hobby progress | Year-in-Review