From StuartL - On the wings of Ravens.

Hello all.
Two posts in the same week, this is a better result for me than I've managed so far in this challenge. Today I have another 3D printed mini to show off. A friend of mine printed this up for me after I found the file online. It's a Dark Angels, Ravenwing attack bike for the Horus Heresy/Warhammer 30,000.

Currently neither Games Workshop, nor Forge World offer a suitable 30K miniature of their own, but the rules for it have been around for years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the hobby community took it upon themselves to design their own model and release the designs for free. As far as kits go, it looks great, but there are some parts that don't fit together perfectly (the gunner and the handles of the weapon for example). Still, it does the job very nicely

I've been playing about recently with adding extra weathering to my minis, paint chips along with dust and grime. In my imagination, battlefields of the grim dark future are probably pretty dirty places. I'm still getting the hang of the weathering powders, so I may have gone a  bit overboard with them. A lot of it will probably rub off over time though, so I am not too worried.

This marks the first mini for a Dark Angels Legion army (my 5th Heresy era force, though I haven't really finished any of them yet). I have a squad of infantry on the way, which I hope to get finished off over the weekend.

From StuartL - New-crons

Hello again. Long time, no see.

My painting pace continues to be glacially slow, though I am making little bits of progress here and there. I have managed to finish up two Necron models for Warhammer 40,000. They are both from the Indomitus boxed set that was released to promote the new edition of Warhammer 40K. Not that I will ever go near that set of rules (I am happy sticking with a mix of 5th edition and home-brew to be honest), I just really, really wanted the new Necrons as they are absolutely gorgeous in my opinion.

This first chap is a Skorpekh Lord and is a massive hunk of mini. Standing twice the height of most other models in the game, this three legged, three armed, death-dealing monstrosity is the best of the new models for me. I'd like to get another one, but GW are unlikely to ever release a more modular figure with variant weapons and poses, which is a shame as there is a lot you could potentially do with it. 

To accompany him is a Plasmancer, one of the Necron's mysterious caste of Crypteks, mad scientists with otherworldly weapons designed to wreak maximum carnage. The designers have done a good job of making this model look like it's hovering just above the ground. Whereas the Skorpekh has a leg to spare, the Plasmancer has none at all.

I have had these guys primed and ready since before the winter challenge, so it is good to get them out of the 'to do' pile and into the 'done' pile. Sadly (or happily depending on how you look at it), the former still outweighs the latter. 

And that's it from me for now. I have another batch of minis that are in need of a spot of weathering and then will be finished off. Fingers crossed I can get them done and dusted sometime soon.

From StuartL - Unleashing the 3D Printed Demons

Hello again.

I'm steadily (and very slowly) pushing on with my to do pile. There is still no chance of me getting the vaccine anytime soon as the roll-out here in Japan is incredibly slow.

In the meantime I have painted up my first 3D printed minis. A friend of mine recently bought one of these modern marvels and printed up some figures for me. I have to say that I am impressed by the quality of the minis.

I'm trying to put together a collection of Samurai-era Fantasy models to use for Saga: Age of Magic and saw these Oni figures online. My friend was kind enough to print them out for me. They are from a designer called Artisan Guild and they are very nice indeed. The two headed chap above is on a 50mm base, as is the black fellow below. The red boys and girls are all on 40mm bases, so you can get an idea of scale.

These figures have all been printed on a resin printer, so I was dubious at first as I really, really don't like working with resin. Thankfully my friend had done most of the clean-up work after the printing and I just had a few odd supports to trim off. The detail is really good and the figures went together perfectly on the first try. Unlike traditional resin casting, there were no bubbles and no warping to be seen. A couple of the models have very faint lines where the printer didn't quite line things up perfectly, but they are barely noticeable once painted.

The figures are all very characterful and are great for skirmish type games. I would still prefer plastic for more rank and file, mass-battle games, but I'm sold on the benefits of 3D printing. Sadly due to the number of chemicals and the smell they produce I don't think my wife will ever let me get a 3D printer myself, which is probably for the best. Having the ability to produce armies of minis from home will eventually lead to me having to buy an extension (or two) for my house.

I'll keep plugging away at the lead mountain. Finger crossed there will be more to come from my painting table soon. 

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 - Inquisitorial Team

Hello again,

Despite my best intentions, my painting pace hasn't picked up by much, but I do have some finished figures to show off. This Sunday I will be attending my local gaming club to pick up some 3D printed minis from a friend. Since I am going to be there anyway, I figured "Why not take some minis along and play a game?" I've been toying with the idea of trying out Inquisitor again. Inquisitor is a game released by GW a couple of decades ago, intended to be a cross between a skirmish game and an RPG. For whatever reason, GW sold the game alongside 54mm scale minis, which meant that it didn't do very well. The figures (while nice) were expensive and nobody really wanted to build a whole new set of terrain at that size. Luckily the rules were pretty good so a lot of players simply played with their existing 28mm collections, an hence Inq28 was born. 

I've played the game before and the rules can be fairly solid so long as players don't try to abuse them and you have someone running the game. I've managed to rope two friends into playing, so I plan to be the GM this time. 

The above figure is an Imperial Navy officer which came with one of the old 40K intro sets for the game, along with a crashed shuttle. For a monopose figure, it's really nice and painted up really quickly.

Inq28 is popular online for it's weird and often grotesque conversions. Inspired by the likes of John Blanche, GW's lead artist, the hobby side of the community is very active in producing all sorts of oddities and nightmares. This is my attempt to kitbash something for the theme. I see this guy as being a prisoner who has 'volunteered' to aid the Inquisition to reduce his sentence. Sadly the Inquisitor's interpretation of reducing a life sentence is simply to reduce the amount and quality of life you get.

For those situations where a gun isn't the answer, we have a heavily cybered up savant. This scrawny looking fellow and his companion come from one of GW's old metal Inquisitor sets. Loads of character and details in the sculpt, and they fit the theme perfectly.

Including the Guardsman I painted recently we have the full team of 4, plus the servo-skull. Will they be enough to get the job done this weekend? I'm not sure, but at least they look the part.

See you all next time.

From StuartL - An Imperial Guardsman

Hi All,

I haven't posted anything for a while, so first off I'd like to apologise for that. Sorry. After AHPC XI, I thought that I was ready to get back to the painting desk straight away, but as it transpires, I needed a little time to refresh. Having previously painted up a single marine for the Vaccine Challenge, I have now painted up a single Imperial Guardsman. 

I started painting up a bunch of minis a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't seem to get them looking right. In frustration I gave up on them and decided it was time for a break. Over the winter holidays, I had downloaded a bunch of PC games, so I figured that they would provide a bit of a distraction from the old painting desk. I got really into a game called Wargame: Red Dragon, a cold-war tactical simulator with US, Chinese, and Russian armies among others. I spent every free minute for the past week or so playing it until I finally got bored. I finally went back to my hobby room on Friday evening and started looking over the models I had started previously to see where I could pick up from.

There are a few more models in the works, but I did get this one guy finished and ready for photographing. I'm trying to avoid batch painting for a while, so there is just one lone guardsman here. I've added some insignia to the shoulder pads as well as some weathering on his armour and gun.

Hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of my posts over the next few weeks. I've got my head back in the game and a stack of minis to paint up.

From StuartL - The Tyrant of Badab

After the end of the Chambers of Challenge, I spent a few days getting my hobby room sorted out. I had to arrange all of the Challenge XI minis for photos and that took a couple of days, then I had to find homes for them all, and that took a while too. Thankfully though, that's all more or less taken care of and I can concentrate on painting again. Or not. Towards the end of the challenge I was getting itchy feet (or itchy hands to be more precise) and wanted to start sticking minis together, trying out a few kit bashes and generally get stuck into the big pile of sprues I have cluttering up the place. So I'm probably going to be taking this Vaccine Challenge at a slower pace to begin with as I get more of the assembly side of the hobby done. 

One project that I am keen to work on is my Warhammer 40,000 Badab War collection. I have one army built and painted for it already (The Tyrant's Legion from Imperial Armour 9) and a second underway, (Space Sharks), but I have plans in my head for several more. After decades of buying marines, I have a million of the blighters and not that many painted 40K armies. Back when I was a callow youth of 25-30ish, I never really bothered with painting that much. It was only when I got into historical gaming that I started to force myself into an 'Only painted minis on the table' mindset. Now that I am focussing on 40K again I'm going to try and get some more marines done. 

To start things off, I have painted Mr. Badab War himself, Chapter Master Lufgt Huron of the Astral Claws, aka the Tyrant of Badab. More accurately, I have RE-painted the model. I originally had it done up in grey, rather than the correct metallic silver colour for the Astral Claws. 

I have also taken this opportunity to mess around with weathering pigments on the legs, base, armour vents and flamer barrel. A character model is perhaps not the best thing to be experimenting with to be honest, but too late now. 

Overall, I'm quite happy with the way the pigments worked, but I may go back and tidy up the stone base the mini is standing on.

As the winter challenge was pretty intense in terms of duels and points, I am not going to be keeping score during the Vaccine Challenge. This is going to be a more casual, more relaxing time I think.

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 StuartL - Free French Goumiers

Some models are easy to paint, others can be a challenge. Minis that make us question our life choices are, thankfully a rarity. However, that is probably the category that this group fits into. I've had these on my workbench for a while now and getting them done was a grind. Painting (somewhat) neat lines onto their djellabas (robes) was a very challenging task.

These figures are the start of a Late War, Free French army for Bolt Action. Thankfully, this bunch represents the entirety of the Goumier contingent. The Goumiers were originally from Morocco and served as local auxiliaries for the French Army of Africa. When France signed an armistice with Germany, the Goumier were designated as Gendarmerie, to get round the limits on soldiers the French were allowed to have.

The Goumier fought alongside the allies in Tunisia, Italy, France and Germany, as part of the Free French forces. While highly regarded as tough, reliable fighters and excellent mountain troops, they also had a reputation for committing war crimes against civilian targets, leading to several of them going in front of a firing squad and others being sentenced to hard labour.

In total, I painted up 2 units of 12 and an officer with an assistant. All of the models are from Artizan Designs. Ideally there should be some support weapons like mortars and machine guns, but Artizan don't produce them sadly. If anyone knows of any company which does, please let me know in the comments section.

So, for my imaginary scoring, that's 26 minis at 5 points a piece giving a respectable 130 points to both my AHQC score and my side duel score. The current results therefore stand at 939.5 and 737.5 points respectively.

From StuartL - Dutch Mill

Another small post from me this week. I have stuff on my workbench, but can't seem to find the time to get it done. Fingers crossed it'll be finished by next week.
In the meantime, I have painted up some more MDF terrain from Sarissa Precision. I picked up this windmill a while back. It's a truly massive piece of terrain. The top of the mill itself is about 9" off the ground. The sails add another 6" or so to the height and to the width on either side.

When I finished the kit, I didn't like the empty spaces in the sails so I glued some tissue paper over the backs and painted it with watered down PVA glue mixed with a drop of buff paint from vallejo. I think it gives a nice impression of canvas.

To try to add some extra detail to the piece, I wanted to make the MDF look more like real wood. To that end, I scraped a modelling saw across the panels to make some small grooves, then went over them again with a hobby knife to add some deeper marks. These stand out quite nicely after I painted the model in a watered down brown paint. I added some washes to add some colour to the wood. I tried drybrushing, but it didn't work out to well and now one side (above) is a bit messy. I may go back over it with brown at some point to tidy it up.

For all it's size, the mill building isn't that big in terms of AHPC terrain cubes. At 9" x 3" x 3" for the main structure it's only 81 cubic inches. However, since I'm feeling generous, I'll add a bit extra for the stairs, the wide base and the sails. That should round it up to 10 points, giving me a slight boost 809.5 (unofficial) points scored for this challenge so far.

From StuartL - Dutch Village House

Taking a break from painting up batches of infantry and fantasy beasties, I decided to do a spot of terrain this week. As well as a lead mountain and a plastic mountain, I have a growing pile of MDF terrain that I need to reduce a little. MDF is not the best material for terrain, but it is fairly cheap, lightweight, and with a bit of extra effort it can be made to look pretty decent. This particular piece is from Sarissa Precision.

After assembling the building, I painted the walls with a textured paste from Liquitex. This served to give the walls a rougher finish (since MDF can look a bit flat) and sealed the wood so that it didn't drink up all the paint. The walls were painted white, the brickwork in a reddish brown and all of the woodwork in a pale brown. After that everything was washed with watered down brown paint.

Once the wash was dry, I repainted the walls in white, added the blue colours for the shutters and doors and added some different shades of red, brown and grey to the bricks and tiles. All of this work was done using spare foam from some mini trays rather than a brush. By dabbing the paint on, parts of the original colour and the wash were left showing through. Using a square piece of foam, it was easy enough to control where the paint went on the walls and woodwork. For the bricks and tiles I used a torn up piece of foam for more irregular patches.

The vines going up the walls are simply a mix of flock, PVA glue and green paint, allowed to dry and then highlighted with a brighter green.

Due to the surface area to cover, it took a few hours work to get it all done, but it was surprisingly easy to do. Though I'm not an expert on architecture, I guess this building could be used for Napoleonic games right up to modern day scenarios, so I hope to get some use out of it. I have another one of these houses to assemble in the pile, so I may have to do that sometime soon.

For points scoring, the house is roughly 6" by 7" by 5.5", close enough to the standard painting challenge terrain 'cube' to add 20 points to my score, bringing me up to 799.5 points.

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 StuartL - British for Afghanistan

First of all, an apology, I have been a bit absent as of late and have missed my 1 post per week and failed to comment on people's posts for a while. My furlough came to an end last Wednesday, so I had to get everything ready for going back to work. On Thursday, I went to work for the day only to be emailed on my way home that I was being furloughed again. This has thrown my painting schedule all up in the air and I was a little lazy about getting back to the brushes straight away. So, my apologies for being tardy on this entry.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I posted some Afghan troops for the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War. Today I have some British to face them. The bulk of my troops are already done, these are the last batch for the British force. (I say last, but what I mean is last until I can get some more). All of these figures are by Artizan Designs.

 

First of all, a light artillery piece. This is an RML 2.5" Mountain Gun or a 'Screw Gun', so named because the barrel and breach were transported separately and screwed together when needed for battle.

This batch of twelve minis includes an officer, several sergeants, a bugler, a drummer and a standard bearer. I don't currently have a flag to use for this unit, hence the bare flag pole. I believe the Perry's plastic boxed set had the flag that I need, so I guess I'll have to order some more minis soon. The uniforms and yellow flashes on some of the helmets identify these fine fellows as belonging to the 67th regiment of foot.

Continuing with giving myself imaginary painting points, 15 infantry and 1 gun should net me 80 points (The gun is tiny so I'm only awarding myself 5 points for it). That brings me up to 759.5 points and puts my side duel total at 607.5

From StuartL - A Band of Brothers

Continuing with my efforts to get some older armies painted up, and projects done, I have spent the past week working on some American Airborne for the Overlord/Normandy campaign. I bought the majority of these figures 6 or 7 years ago I think. Since that time, they have largely been left untouched and stowed away in a box. Thanks to the quarantine challenge I have managed to get the bulk of my infantry done along with a couple of support weapons.

I still have a group of command figures, mortar teams and machine gun teams to do, but they will probably turn up around the end of the challenge as most of them still need cleaning up and assembling.

These minis took quite a while to paint as they are pretty busy in terms of webbing, camo and combat gear. That said, I am really happy with how they have turned out. Of course, now I'll need some Fallschirmjäger to oppose them and then some of the US Airborne in their later uniforms for Market Garden.

So that's 35 minis and a gun to add to my tally. My math puts that at 185 points, bringing my unofficial score up to 679.5 and my side duel total up to 527.5. This also puts me over my score for painted minis (not including the location bonuses) for the winter challenge, so I am very happy with my output thus far.

From StuartL - Ogres

Just a small post from me today. 

Back in the winter challenge I painted up a batch of GW Ogres (I refuse to call them by the stupid copyright proof name GW uses). As I still have more of these jolly, fat blokes in the pile I decided to grab a handful and get them tabletop ready. All of the skin was painted with GW contrast paint, which I still cannot seem to get the hang of. The rest of the figures were done with my usual base coat, wash, highlight style.

The Ogre minis are all based on only two bodies on the sprue, so they all have the same pose. However there are a large selection of arms, heads and assorted bits to add to the figures for decoration. My favourite is the slab of ribs hanging on a meat hook.

And here are the AHPC-X and AHQC minis all together.

I believe Ogres are usually scored as 40mm minis, so that should be 42 points for my non-official tally, bringing me up to 494.5

From StuartL - Redcoats for Afghanistan

Being interested in historical gaming and British history in particular, it should come as no surprise that I have a British army for the Napoleonic era and one for the Anglo-Zulu War. A while back, I decided to start another British force, but I was sick of painting red, so I had a look around for something else. The 2nd Anglo-Afghan War provided the setting and I eagerly planned out a force for The Men Who Would Be Kings, using British troops in khaki. No red for me, no sir.

However, local interest in the period was disappointingly non-existent, so I decided to pick up a force of Afghans as well. If I could do demo games then I could maybe entice others into playing. As I started this project quite some time ago, (i.e. before the Perry brothers announced they were doing a range), I went with Artizan Designs range of figures. As well as picking up a load of British troops and Afghan tribesmen, I added some Afghan regulars to my order as well. May as well break up the monotony of another game with British lines facing down charging hordes of tribal infantry.

As I haven't made a great deal of progress over the last few years, I decided to make good use of my time and get some work done on my two armies. Grabbing the Afghan regulars from the box and undercoating them, I proceeded to look up their uniforms on Google. As it turns out, the Afghan army went through a period of updating their equipment just before the outbreak of hostilities. To smarten up his troops, Sher Ali Khan had purchased a load of surplus uniforms and equipment. This army surplus had largely come from British stocks, so quite a few of his regular units looked remarkably similar to British troops, right down to their red uniforms. At this point I just sighed, it looked like I was going to be painting red again. (I could have painted them in khaki or some other colour I guess, but as I was using khaki for their British opponents, that might have been confusing on the tabletop).

The headgear and footwear of the troops marks them as being non-British infantry. Likewise their weapons were not up to the standard of the modern rifles being used by the imperial troops they faced.

The troops from Herat (below) wore a distinctive hat made of soft black felt. The flag was printed from home after I found a few images on the Lead Adventure Forum.

And here is a shot of both units along with some terrain.

24 infantry should add 120 points to my unofficial score, for a total of 452.5

@NoelW - Is our side duel still on? I haven't seen you mention it, though several of your entries would score points.

These figures are all from the period of 1878-1880, so fit in the bolt action rifle era. Assuming that the side duel is still running, they'll bring my total up to 342.5 points.

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/