Hellboy: The Board Game – Sidney Leach

I have a more modest update for this week, partially because it was late in the week when I updated last time. I managed to knock out another investigator for Hellboy and this time its Sidney Leach. Its been a minute since I read Hellboy but I definitely remember this guy and that’s not just because of his soul patch! As I recall, he has a bit more personality than other B.P.R.D. members (outside of Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, etc.) who show up in the comics so he’ll be interesting to try in the game. I unfortunately forgot to look at his rules so I can’t speak to how he plays. Most of the regular human agents are noticeably weaker than the big name characters which is realistic to the comics.

Unfortunately, this miniature has a pretty bad lean and while I improved it with some heat and cold water, its still far from perfect. There are some other issues with the sculpt itself but you can’t see too many of them in the final paint job, thankfully. Outside of that, he was a very straightforward mini to work on and a nice palette cleanser after the Empire State Building. One thing that is interesting about this miniature is what Sidney’s doing with his hands. Can you tell that he’s taking one of his gloves off? Its definitely an unusual choice for a miniature sculpt but I guess that fits his unique personality.

My expectation is that I’ll chip away at some of my gaming backlog for a bit until I get fired up to do some display painting again. Part of this is because I want to have some actual miniatures to show off for Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge which will be kicking off soon and I encourage any and all to join, if they’re interested.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that I finished reading an actual book (and not comic books!) for the first time in too long. I read Patriot by Alexei Navalny, who some of you probably know was a political activist in Russia. I expected it to be a sad book because we all know how the story ends unfortunately but many parts of the book were quite uplifting. I learned quite a few things from it as well. Navalny is somewhat outspoken (which not to stereotype but I find a lot of Russian people tend to be) but he has really interesting opinions and insights into the Soviet Union’s fall and some of the leaders before Putin. I know Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin from when I was a child, but nothing really about them or their tenures in the Soviet Union. Of course, Putin and the corruption of the Russian government gets a lot of coverage too and deservedly so.

About halfway through the book, he is imprisoned for made up crimes because Putin and his government view him as an enemy and and this is also fascinating. Russian jails are very different from US ones, perhaps unsurprisingly and the way they “turn the screws” on prisoners is cruel and almost difficult to imagine. Navalny didn’t write the book to expose the prison system or anything like that but the problems are laid bare all the same. It amazes me that he was able to write this portion of the book while in jail and somehow get his diary entries out of the system through his attorneys so this book could be made. That alone makes this quite an interesting read as well. I can’t help but feel like he died trying to make a difference and this is one of his last contributions to the world and so reading it was the least I could do. I know this book is more contemporary and political than what I usually talk about but it exceeded my expectations and I was glad I read it so I thought I’d mention it, in case someone else out there might be on the fence.

As I often say around this time, this could very well by my last update of 2025. I usually take a few days away from the hobby desk over Christmas Break and this year will be no different so if I don’t update again until the New Year then I will see you then! I hope everyone has a nice holiday break and gets everything they want from Santa. I’m really looking forward to the time off and I hope to do at least a little bit of tabletop gaming as well.