From StuartL - I'm Still Here

Um... It's been far too long since I last posted. Sorry.

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy with hobby stuff, just not really very much painting. I've been assembling minis and drafting up army lists (handily doing double duty as shopping lists) and all of the other things that go into this wonderful hobby of ours. I have done some painting, but my inner Squirrel has had me start a batch of minis, get distracted, put them to the side, start another bunch and so on. Thankfully some of those batches have started to get close to completion, so I do have something to post today and a bit more to come sooner rather than later.

This cyclops is from Reaper Minis' Bones range and it was a very easy paint job. Which is actually kind of depressing as it has taken me far too long to get done. He's quite a chunky fellow and stands about 50mm tall.

At some point I'm probably going to use him for D&D, along with all the other RPG minis I have painted over the past year and a bit that my group has been socially distancing.

From StuartL - WW2 Japanese and some RPG minis.

With the deadline for the AHQC drawing closer, it's time for me to make my final post. Since my return to full time work at the start of June I haven't had a lot of time for painting, nor have I had a lot of energy, so I haven't done quite as much as I had hoped to.
My first entry for this challenge was a bunch of Japanese infantry for Bolt Action, so I figured that I would round out the challenge with the same. All of the figures and the flag are from Warlord Games.

To provide some fire support, I have a 47mm AT gun painted up and ready to (hopefully) knock out any Shermans that stray into their sights.

I was also able to finish up the bulk of my infantry for this project. Above there are 16 standing figures and 9 prone, including some LMG's, a Sniper, some command figures and a bunch of riflemen. I think I still have a few more figures left for this project, but they haven't been built yet. I'll probably try and get them ready for the winter challenge, unless something else distracts me.

Finally, a handful of Reaper minis I have had cluttering up a corner of my workbench for a while. A goblin, a gator-man, a giant boar and a were-boar. To give you a sense of scale, the goblin is roughly 25mm tall.

Which brings me to the final round-up for the totally unofficial and un-minioned points I have been awarding myself.

1 gun + crew = 25 Points

16x Japanese infantry = 80 Points

9x prone infantry = 22.5 Points

1x 25mm monster = 5 Points

3x 40mm monsters = 21 Points

Total = 153.5 Points

This gives me a grand total of 1093 Points for the challenge, exceeding my AHPC-X total by 36 points, and by 456 Points if you don't include the bonus points for Challenge Island.

As for my Bolt Action Era side duel with my esteemed rival Noel, the Japanese troops from this entry bring my score up to 865 Points. I'm looking forward to seeing what he manages to achieve with his final round of entries.

Thanks for all of the support and kind words over the past few months!

From DrQ: a Dwarf and a Tortle

Sorry for the late posting for the week. My city has been interesting the past few days—nothing like riots on top of a pandemic!

In any case, two small offerings for this week. First up, the Reaper Bones version of Pathfinder's iconic ranger, Harsk:

This is one of the first generation Bones minis, so the detail isn't nearly as crisp as it is with the later formulae. Still, he painted up alright.

Second is a kit-bashed tortle merchant I made from bits from Super Dungeon Explore and a Reaper Bones. The tortle is from the Caverns of Roxor box, and the pack is off of the Dreadmere Tortoise. The banner is a 3x5 card that has been hardened with super glue.

My plan is to use this little guy as a traveling merchant NPC in a future D&D game. My hope is that a tortle with a few high-power spells will be beefy enough so that a murder hobo party doesn't just kill him and grab his wares. 

Stay safe!

From StuartL - Here Be Dragon (singular).

As penance for failing to post anything last week, I have managed to get a second submission ready for this week. As the title of the post implies, I have painted a dragon. I prepped the model for the winter challenge, but couldn't find time to work it in to my plan for Challenge Island, so it has been sat in my to do pile demanding some attention for nearly 6 months now.

As any fan of Dungeons and Dragons well knows, evil dragons come in various colours (red, green, black etc.) while good dragons are a variety of different hues of metal. A while ago I painted a red dragon, so this time I figured I would do one of the good guys and eventually settled on a Brass dragon. (The fur on the spine is bronze and the thick line of scales running down the flanks is gold).

The model was initially painted in an orange-ish brown colour. The wings were quickly drybrushed and the teeth and claws painted, then everything got a wash of brown. After that, all of the scales were painted, one by one. It took a while, but I feel the overall effect was pretty good.

And just to provide a sense of scale, here is a 28mm mini alongside. The dragon measures 10" long from nose to tail and the raised wings reach over 6" off the ground. I have heavily backed all of the Reaper Bones kickstarters, simply because there are so many cool minis like this one and they are incredibly cheap. I believe that this dragon was priced at US$15 during a previous kickstarter. While some of the mold lines are a bit difficult to remove and the material is a bit bendy at times, the big pieces like dragons, demons and giants are fantastic value for money.

For unofficial scoring, I'm going to add 20 points for this fine specimen. Even though it's a huge mini, there weren't that many technical bits, just a lot of simple brushwork. This puts my tally up to 779.5 points.

From DrQ: Some Terrain and a Zombie Bunny

Taking pics last week I realized that I had no suitable modern or futuristic terrain to serve as a backdrop—everything I have is medieval fantasy or steampunk. This was clearly a problem if I want to play games in a contemporary setting, let alone the drimgark future. So, this week I did a little trash-bashing and pulled together these 8 4"x2"x2" container boxes.

The problem with large pieces like this is that you are never sure when to stop. I've painted four layers of weathering, tagged them with various styles of graffiti, and added various torn or whole posters. And yet, they still seem rather sparse when looked at from a distance like this. I could probably spend a few week adding various details, but I'm not going to sweat it at this point. They're here to block line of sight and be more thematic than a plain box or a pile of books, and they excel at that task.

Additionally, I painted up some barrels to sever as smaller scatter. 

Not much to say about these. They are part of Reaper's new Bones Black line. Supposedly they don't need to be primed. I have added a top coat of Mod Podge matte, like I do to all terrain; but we'll have to see if the lack of priming has an effect on their durability.

Finally, I did manage to finish one zombie this week:

Mr. Bitey here is from Super Dungeon Explore's Stilt Town Zombies warband box. While he looks like the stuff of nightmares, he's actually a pet that can help an allied hero. 

Stay safe everyone!

From StuartL - Thieves Guild

Have you ever had miniatures that you started painting, but could never seem to get a good feel for? That is how all of the minis in this post started out. I had some colours on each of them, but none of them felt right and had been sat in various WIP piles for ages. Resolving to get them done, I sat down early on Tuesday morning and began by repainting all of them in a base coat of dark brown. (GW Rhinox Hide I think it's called). After that I began blocking in details with a limited palette of mainly greys and browns. A wash and some highlights followed, along with cleaning up a few errors. While none of the miniatures follow a particular uniform, the same colours are used on at least 2 models in the group, creating a somewhat coherent appearance. The only exception is the orange OSL I attempted on the halfling with the lantern. 

The figures are all from Reaper's Bones range and of varying quality. At least one mini is missing his nose and his face lacks any real details, whereas the halfling and the thug in the red hood have very clean, crisp details.

All of the minis were painted in several sittings across one day with the exception of the moss on their bases which took a while to dry and had to be finished yesterday morning. They are pretty rough around the edges, but they look like rough types anyway, so it's all good. Plus I got them all out of the WIP stage and into the 'done' category, so I'm pleased with that.

I'm not sure what I will be using these for, Dungeons and Dragons perhaps as most of my Reaper minis end up in my RPG box anyway. Recently I've been pondering about attempting some kind of dark fantasy game in the vein of Mordheim, Rangers of Shadow Deep or Dark Age of Sigmar*. For the time being, they'll be off my workbench and that's what is really important at this stage. It's not like you need a plan to use the minis you buy after all.

For the purposes of tracking my own progress, these 8 figures should be worth 40 points on the challenge scale, bringing my imaginary total up to 332.5.

*Also known as AoS28 for some reason. Dark Age of Sigmar is a fan based take on GW's Age of Sigmar setting, stripping out all of the bright, child-friendly, high fantasy and replacing it with chilling horror, gritty violence and quite a lot of artistic interpretation. From what I have seen, it is largely inspired by the likes of John Blanche's older artwork. If you're interested, you can find more at https://28-mag.com/

AdamC: ACW Regiment and Evil Wizard

 Last week was my final week of fulltime employment.  So, I may have more painting time coming up then again maybe not with Evelyn to keep entertained.

 First up some left over ACW figures from a project form a few years that would have new life if John and I could get together to game.

 The figures I believe are Essex 15mm clearly men in a close-range fire fight as the officer taking careful aim with his pistol indicates.

 Finally, an evil wizard or warlock in the best tradition of 80s sword and sorcery films.

 He’ll be a good addition to the Frostgrave stable of wizards for gaming with the local cub scout pack.    

Next entry with be Black Seas related as I continue to work on stuff for the that game.