The Fifth Boy Reports In
Stas checked in with another painted mini and, honestly, we love seeing these steady little progress reports. The fifth boy has officially joined the growing pile of painted models, and that always feels good.
This time the real struggle was the leather straps and belts. Stas went back and forth on the color and ended up using four different paints to get them where he wanted them. Classic hobby energy: “I just need one thing,” and suddenly there’s another trip to the shop involved. Very relatable.
According to him, the result looks better in person than in the photos, so this is one of those cases where we’ll have to do the proper hobby thing and judge it together live over the table. But even from the picture, you can already tell there was some extra attention paid to breaking up the leather details and making them read better.
The gun is still a work in progress. The plan is to push it toward a tinny, rusty look, but the rust effect isn’t there yet. That feels like a very familiar stage of painting too: the model is mostly done, one detail still nags at you, and you know you’ll be thinking about how to solve it while doing completely unrelated things.
And of course, there was also the very realistic hobby timeline estimate: at this pace, the whole Combat Patrol should be ready for Nerd Holiday 2026. We believe in the project. Probably. Mostly. In the meantime, model number five is done, and that’s what counts.
Slow progress is still progress, and painted minis always beat unpainted plans.