From MartinC 15mm Thracians

Working from home is still hectic but I now have the next 4 Friday's off. Today I have been constructive. Finshed off some figures and fought a sol 15mm Kings of War Historcal battle with randomised deployment (which worked very well), which I was going to post but the lighting in my spare bedroom is shocking and the photos were terrible, even by my standards. Being KoW it was incredibly brutal and the Indians ran over Pontus. Will play a less randomised battle tomorrow and tweak some of the stats.
During the evenings I've working through my 15mm ancient purchases and have completed 5 more units light units

2 regiments of light cavalry

The figures are Forged in Battle and are lovely to paint, although I'm having paint brush issues. Ihave loads and they are mainly rubbish

2 regiments of archers, 1 of slingers and a general. 

I have 2 units of heavy cavalry to do and the Thracians I have are finished the ones I have. But I need 2 or 3 units of spearmen / Falxmen to complete the force. No plans for a massive Thracian army but they will act as an allied force for someone.

From StuartL - Normans and Japanese

Hi all,

When Challenge X finished and Curt suggested the Quarantine Challenge, I thought it was a great idea. If folks are going to be kept indoors all day, they can at least have fun painting. Here in Japan we don't have a quarantine yet. We probably should, but the government is really dragging it's heels. So far they have done nothing and it seems like they have already run out of ideas. Despite the virus arriving in Japan fairly early on, the rate of infection was really slow and people didn't seem to care that much about it. Even now, when the number of sick people seems to be going up every day, the trains are still packed and everyone dutifully goes off to work. At my place of work a guy showed up to work running a high fever, spent all day at the office and only went to see a doctor after he finished. Luckily he just had a bad cold, but everyone was very angry with him. When confronted about it by HR, he told them that he had a lot of work to do so couldn't take a day off, (Actually he could have, the company is pretty good about sick days), so he had decided to come to work and risk spreading a potentially deadly virus around the busiest department in the company. Great.

So, while I live in constant fear that I'm going to be infected by some workaholic with a report to finish, I am spending my free time getting some paint on some minis and trying to take my mind off the impending doom that awaits me when I go to work.

This group of 14 Normans for Saga comes from one of Wargames Foundry's sub-websites (Casting Room Miniatures I believe) and Conquest Games. Size wise, they go together fairly well. The plastic Conquest figures have longer spears cast in their hands while the Foundry minis have smaller, razor sharp, brass spears glued into their giant mitten-like paws. I undercoated these just before the QC was announced, but most of the work was done on them since last weekend.

My lead and plastic mountain is pretty large, and a fair part of it is minis for Bolt Action. With the QC I decided that I would try and reduce the pile a little, and even offered up a side duel for people to paint any minis from the era of the Bolt Action Rifle (roughly 1825-1955-ish). The duel is still open if anyone fancies joining in. Any scale, any minis, any nation, just so long as the period fits, you can score points (using the standard AHPC system). These 12 Japanese infantrymen are my first attempt to lower the unpainted count and score some points.

To accompany the rifle squad above, I have a light mortar team, an officer, a standard bearer and a flame thrower as well. All of the minis are from Warlord Games.

For my own records, that's 14 Norman and 17 Japanese 28mm figures at 5 points each for a total of 155 points. This represents about 1/4 of the minis I painted in Challenge X and I did all these within just one week.

For the Bolt-Action side duel, 17 Japanese figures gives me 85 points on the score board.

From Curt: Pak 40 Anti Tank Gun (25 Points)

We're almost a week into the Quarantine Challenge, with a very tidy 32 posts under our collective belt. Great work folks - well done!  The week coming to a close also means that my self-imposed deadline of submitting post each week is fast approaching.

So I was casting about my hobby room trying to figure out what to do next, when Nick came to the rescue by tweeting me, asking what was going on with my 20mm WWII Italian Theatre project. The quick response was 'well, nothing actually', but it did make me think and prompted me to uncover a few half-completed projects I had been working on; one of them being this German Pak 40 that has been sitting on my desk for the past year or so.

This is fitting as I had done up a trio of Canadian Shermans from the Three Rivers Tank Regiment a while ago and thought that they needed some opponents to give them a bit of pause. 

This is a plastic kit from PSC. They do a very nice job on the gun, with lots of nice extra bits, but I found the figures to be a bit soft in detail. No matter, as we all know, everything looks better with a lick of paint, right? 

I had some extra MDF wall bits left over from Byron's excellent Italian buildings he designed for me and so decided to have the gun nestled in a wrecked structure, waiting in ambush. This will provide a nice anti-tank option for German players in our ongoing Italian theatre games.

Okay, this should give me 25 points, with 10 points for the gun and 15 for the three gunners. This will put my running total at 45 points towards my 500 point target. Yikes, time to get a wiggle on!

-Curt

From ScottM: Speeder Bikes & French ATG

With the conclusion of the main paint challenge, I found my "to be painted" shelf still loaded with figs needing paint, so this challenge is a great opportunity to keep the ball rolling! First up is a pair of Star Wars Legion Imperial Speeder Bikes.

A pretty simple unit to paint up and a fair bit of character.

Next in a completely different theme is a World War 2 French 25mm anti tank gun. This simple metal figure is from Army Group North Miniatures.

I had started this figure back before the main paint challenge started, so it's sat on my paint table partially completed for a number of months.

I'm also going to be tracking how I do using points. So this would be 2 x 40mm cavalry (for the speeder bikes) and a 28mm crewed weapon = 40 points.

Stay well!

From TomM: Rebel Troopers

Part of a Skirmish force I`m building for once clublife picks up again after Covid-19, these 4 Rebel Troopers are the first models I painted for the game.

I got no idea how it plays or so, I just allowed myself to be sucked in and we'll see from there though.

But I made an army list and slowly my models are arriving by mail, so I might actually get gaming before summer brake as a result.  I picked the Rebel faction (as if these guys weren`t a dead giveaway) as such, and no light-sabre's in my list.

I also printed out a Cargo sled, which makes some good scenery for the game and a nice little vehicle to display the models on for now, alongside some crates I also printed up.

So, let's call this a decent start.  I`ll paint the rest of the boxed set in the future, but first my priorities now are all the models for all the forces in all the leagues I registred in for 2020...

AdamC: Tomb Stones

These are some lazer cut Tombstones from Things From the Basment.  They are freebees they threw in with all purchases at Huzzah!con last year.

I used some MDF bases with a little putty  sand and flock.

There is a nice mix of styles here  from simple rectangels to the celtic cross.

From MikeW: Elizabethans and Border Ruffians

First off, hope everyone and their families are doing OK in the present crisis, I work in IT infrastructure so have been really busy with working, looking to ensure that there is enough capacity to cope with the sudden huge leap in demand from people working from home.

Anyway, that's just an excuse for why its taken me time to completed my first post, which is a collection of Elizabethan & Border Riever figures by Wargames Foundry and Hoka Hey miniatures.

First to show and tell are a group of 6 x 28mm Garrison Archers, by Hoka Hey Miniatures. These painted up nicely and I have given them blue tabards edged in yellow to signify their garrison status.

Garrison Archers from Hoka Hey

Next on show are 8 x Wargames Foundry Swashbuckler Pikemen, in a mix of breastplate and leather jacks. These are some of my favourite figures done to date for this period, they come in a wide rage of dress and with separate weapons the pike can easily be substituted with a spear, bill or halibard to make even greater variety.

Wargames Foundry Pikemen

Third on the list was a second set of 2 x 28mm Hoka Hey figures, this time representing the Armstrong Family. Again these are very nice figures and I have based two of the figures that I took to be leaders on a 2 pence piece instead of the 1p sized bases I ]'m using for other ranks.

Armstrong men form Hoka Hey

Hoka Hey's Armstrong Leaders

Finally is the group group of figures from Hoka Hey, consisting of 6 x Calivar men, in a variety of stances. Like the Archers depicted earlier in this post the figures paint up nicely, though I did notice some need for filler where voids in the casting process elect gaps in the figure as supplied - but nothing to disastrous...

Calivar Men form Hoka Hey