Voting for AHPC X Challengers' Choice is Now UP!

My apologies for the cross posting, but I interrupt our regular programming to announce that the voting for AHPC X Challengers' Choice is now up! So I invite you all to get a refreshing beverage, take in the gallery of worthy nominations and cast your votes.

Thanks!

Curt

PeteF: Hearthguard for SAGA Age of Magic (20 points)

There are two local groups that play SAGA - most of our games are Age of Vikings, a few are Age of Crusades and a number of people are interested in Age of Magic. Most of my fantasy stuff is based on big multibases for Kings of War so I'm starting from scratch to build my SAGA AoM armies - although some of the monsters will work for both systems on their existing bases.

These are Mantic figures for Kings of War/Vanguard from the Northern Alliance faction - not sure where they got the brilliant idea for a bunch of fur clad northern beserk beardy types wearing heavy furs and wielding even heavier weapons.  The tiny head/big shoulders aesthetic is typical Mantic.

Three of the figures are made from that Restik stuff and I'm not really a fan - there always seem to be a lot of mold lines and I inevitably miss a couple and can't face cleaning it up once there's paint on the model. Restik does support a lot of detail - perhaps too much.

Not having an Osprey to turn to I consulted with a colour expert to try and fix some of the initial problems I had trying to find something to work with the blue - I really like the colour shift paints for fantasy metallics.  This one is "Blue Raspberry" from Turbodork.

In the SAGA system a unit of hearthguard is one point and the recommended army size for Age of Magic is 8 points so I'm hoping to get a whole army finished over the course of the quarantine, even allowing for other distractions. I played my first game of quarantine SAGA on Table Top Simulator last week and it was a lot of fun - it's quite easy to accidentally drop your figures and have them go rolling all over the place - at least you don't have to reglue and repaint them.

AdamC: Dismounted Cavalry American Civil War

Here I am presenting two small units of Civil War Dismounted cavalry.  The Yankees were mostly painted before the Winter Challenge but not completed. 

 Since the goal here is to finish hobby tasks I figure the fact that these have been hanging fire for some time matters not at all.

 I have enough figures now to dismount most (if not all) of my Union Cavalry now.

 The Rebels are the left overs all using pistol which is the one thing I don't like about Bluemoon's ACW range.  Far too many of the dismounted cavalry have pistols not some sort of carbine, rifle or shot gun as their active weapon.

These guys will probably get split up among other units so they can have a more appropriate weapons mix.   For those who may wish to know how the Carriere family is doing during these difficult times I'll be posting at least once a week on my regular blog: Isolation Updates

From MartijnN: A Small Affair

Hello everyone,

As this is my first contribution a little introduction might be in order. Like so many I took up wargaming in my teens, but eventually life got in the way. Since some time I have sort of returned, although I have always kept buying and collecting so my lead/ plastic mountain is sizeable enough. I haved followed the Challenges from Challenge Ate on. I took up the brushes again some time ago but never found the courage to join in.  I have always been a slow painter and not a very good one, but find painting helps me unwind and nowadays I have more time for it. Now I should just find some opportunities to actually get some games in, but in the present circumstances that obviously will have to wait.

As I have always dreamed of being able to recreate complete historical battles these days I tend to paint smaller scale stuff: 6mm WWII for Rommel, 10mm ACW for Age of Freedom, and I am now working on 6mm armies for 1859/ 1866/ 1871.

Here I present the provisional brigade formed from the corps cavalry of III and IV Prussian corps during the 1866 battle of Königrätz, consisting of 3rd Uhlans and 2nd Dragoons. The figures are from the excellent Baccus range and I have been experimenting with the Citadel Contrast paints, as well as using the trusted Vallejo acrylics.

Then there are two artillery batteries. The guns are more suited for the Franco-Prussian War, but at this scale who really cares? In the 1866 war the performance of the Prussian artillery was less than satisfactory, would you believe it, it being often outclassed by their Austrian counterparts.

Of course, being Prussians, they took steps to correct this and 1870 would be another game entirely.

As long as you don't look too closely (which you would not, normally; the darn things are tiny!) they more or less look the part I think. 

From TomM: T'au SEED Destiny: UMF/SSO-3 ASH

Well, I had hoped to present this post as my newest Kill Team force, ready to go to battle in Kill Team at the local club.

But once again, something new isn't embrased by the local player base (you should have seen the discussion about Beta Bolters back when those where published...) so well, this is just my newest entry in the slow building force of T'au, based on the SEED Destiny anime.

The Stealth suits are in my opinion nice little sculpts, and honestly, for Kill Team they have a great skillset.  The -1 to hit and the high armour makes them pretty resistant, the multishot burst cannons can wrack an opponent to high heaven, and the fly rule of the suits makes them mobile as heck.  Sure, you are heavily outnumbered, but then again you have the cheap markerlight drones to fill out the force, take hits for your suit, AND add markerlights on the enemy...

The Inspiration:

Seen in episode 13 of the anime, when the Freedom makes his glorious return to the franchise, the ASH suits are new high tech infiltration suits created by ZAFT.  Hence the SSO in their designation, being part of the Special Ops wing of the organisation.

While the anime version is well armed as well, with beam claws and missile pods, I choose to copy their colour scheme.  The burst cannons nicely represent the fast firing pods, while the fusion blaster is a good representation of the beam weapons.

So that's the fourth unit of my force now completed, maybe it's time to build more of the actual "mainstay" suits for the force, the Crisis suits, next...

From AlexS: Depression after the event.

Hello to all! My name is Alex, I am from Russia and I have a paint depression. I participated in the tenth paint challenge, took the tenth place and now I do not really want to paint. I have something to do at home - two young children and studying students at a distance takes most of my time. But still, hobbies are an important part of my life and I agreed with pleasure to take part in quarantine challenge. But I just can’t force myself to pick up brushes. Help me! Tell me - paint! And I'll start painting! But what to steal? I just can’t choose, tell me - which is better - 

- cowboys?

- civilians in the 18th century?

  - African warriors? 

-  or do something else? Help me, write in the comments, what should I choose?