I am looking for a solution to build a sandbox that has a combination of machines all on W10, W11, and/or Server 2022.
All the machines are identical laptops.  
Acronis used to be the tool I'd use, but now it's gone to subscription licensing.  I need permanent, on-prem licensing.

What I'd like to do is build up all the machines, run windows update, then back them up to an external USB drive, then use a bootable USB drive that has the "magic" software package on it.
There are no hypervisors or AD in this sandbox.  It's literally a dumb sandbox and each machine has a specific set of software installed.
Web server, NTP server, Syslog, Management machines (W10/W11).  

I am not looking for a free solution as I can license this lab as needed.  All the machines will have activated MS licensing in the image that is going to backed up.

The scenario is that I will build out this sandbox for each set of test devices from various vendors, then blast them all to bare metal and restore the backup images to the sandbox machines.  I want to have it as simple as possible so even my wife can assist in getting all the machines rebuilt.
Thoughts?  Prayers?  Any advice is welcome.  
I'm looking at Paragon and Macrium now.  I only have two machines now to test/play with.  The other machines will be here by the end of next week.

I do bare metal machine back ups with Veeam. The only downside to what you're asking is I think they are subscription licensing only.

Veeam has an agent that can backup to a fileshare for free.

I don't want subscription licensing.  Veeam doesn't support permanent licensing anymore.  I wish I'd have kept my old copy of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/15nysfx/backup_imaging_software_which_i_actually_can_own/

a similar discussion on reddit.
Macrium Reflect
Veeam Agent
Rescuezilla (GUI version of Clonezilla)

never used any of them.
done something similar, bootable usb but had it network to a server where the images were kept instead.
but I was doing like 10 machines at a time. so it was just easier to keep track of instead of individual usb's.

What software were you using with the network image server?  That sounds exactly like what I need.

Veeam Agent is perfect.  It's working just fine, and is free.  Thank you.

Just found it.  The name oddly enough is Veeam Agent.  And you're right, it is free, on-prem software.