From RossM: 15mm Romano Brits and a 25mm Fantasy Dwarf (30 points)

 The last day of this year's AHPC is here and I have a final offering for you. As the title suggests it has two different themes in two different scales. 

Firstly, here are the Romano Brits from Forged in Battle miniatures and these are the start of an ADLG army for this period. 

A simple start with a command stand consisting of a general and Christian priest. Don't worry there is a Pagan stand planned for balance. 

Whilst there will be colour across the army I will be using a lot of muted colours for a Dark Age feel and the general's cloak will carry across some cavalry stands in the future. At my current pace of painting this may well be in next year's AHPC. 

Next up are the only light cavalry in the army, all two stands of them; unlike the hedge of spearmen that makes the army's backbone. 

The muted colours making another appearance here along with a simple hand painted shield design across the units. It's just enough to catch the eye on the table.  

Now the last figure from me for AHPC XV, a retro Citadel Dwarf from the haydays of the early 1980's. Still on his original pre-slotta base: 

This figure has been stripped down and painted for the last time, roughly forty years after first buying him in my FLGS (now long gone).

Opting for a simple colour scheme to let the armour do its job of impressing everyone around it. Not to mention the longsword.,, 

Started as a central figure for a regiment of Shieldbreakers in Kings of War that sadly has stalled for now. 

So, there ends AHPC for this year a few things moved on, a few things stalled and a few that just didn't start for varying. 

The points for these few figures tally as:

15mm cavalry x 5 @ 4 points each = 20

15mm infantry x 1 @ 2 points each = 2 

25mm infantry x 1 @ 5 points = 5 

Totalling 27 points. 

Looking forward to seeing the last entries over the next day or so and seeing you all again in the darker nights. 

A huge thank you to the Snowlord for organising this again and to everyone who helped as a minion and as a participant. A great body of work you have all contributed!

Cheers for now!

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Love the 15mm Dark Ages stuff Ross - its a great scale for getting a good feel of massed forces, and your muted colours give them an appropriately dreary pre-colourfast dye look to them :-) I hope we get to see more next Challenge.

The Dwarf is a true relic - great sculpt full of nostalgic goodness! What a cracking fellow to close out on.  Congratulations for completing your Challenge this year - go celebrate with a couple of bonus points for resurrecting a figure you've had for 40 years!

- Paul

BenF: 15mm Persian 'Apple Bearer' Royal Guard (53 pts)

 Well, this challenge has been a bit slow for me to start this year. Between a new role at work, the silly season, and arranging an upcoming game at CANCON as well as my 4 year old'd birthday, hobby time has been a little thin on the ground. 

I have, however, managed to kick start my painting with this base of Achaemenid Persian royal guard from Forged in Battle's excellent 'War and Empire' range. My last year's challenge focused almost exclusively on building up my Achaemenid army, and while they've won a surprising number of games during 2022, I did feel like I needed to add this iconic unit to round off the army. The royal guard fought at Gaugamela, and also are mentioned at Cunaxa. I gave the usual gaudy Persian pyjamas a bit of a semi-uniform look as I imagine befits the royal guard, and I also added a mounted general in suitably ornate dress haranguing them into action. They get the strange name from some unusual spears, which apparently had an apple sized counterweight at the non-pointy end. The shield decals from LBMS really make them. 

While I do have plans to revisit the Achaemenids at a later date to add a few more cavalry bases, (and maybe even expand the Skythian troops to a full army), the addition of the royal guard give me pretty much any option i'd ever need in a large game of Impetus 2 or Sword and Spear. And I think my 3/0 brushes need a bit of rest from painting fabric decorations. I'm also hoping that this exotic unit from faraway locales will bag me the 'World Cinema' bonus.

I'm also going to enter this as the start of my 'Squirrel' side duel. This challenge, I aim to finish up some bits and pieces of long term projects, including 6mm Napoleonics, 32mm Star Wars 3D Prints, some 20mm Ardennes Germans and Yanks, tiny little 2mm terrain pieces, perhaps a smattering of 15mm Andalusians and whatever else can distract me from the task at hand. 

14 foot and 1 mounted 15mm figure should net me a grand total of 

14 x 15mm foot @ 2 points = 28 points

1 x 15mm mounted @ 4 points = 4 points

World Cinema (Green) bonus = 20 points

Total = 52 points

Next up i'm working on some teensy 6mm Napoleonic Russians.

Lovely stuff Ben, I had to check twice to make sure that these were 15s and not 28s.  The colour palette you've gone with really works and does give them a mostly uniform looks.  Also love the mounted officer.  Your transfers came out very well, I just don't have the skill or patience for that fiddliness in 28s let alone 15s.

Well done and looking forward to the defenders of Mother Russia against thee Corsican Tyrant.

From RossM: The First Post - Early Imperial Romans (52 points)

This is my first post for the AHPC XI and I don't really know where the time has gone. As the saying goes times flies when you are having fun and that's what this is all about; fun hobbies stuff.

This post has a mixture of supporting troop types for an ongoing project in 15mm: Early Imperial Romans. 

Unlike many projects this was initially down to luck. The luck being, getting a PSC Ultra Cast EIR box set off evil Bay at a very reasonable price. Then luck followed luck as a good number of Corvis Belle EIR figures came up on the same again at reasonable prices, allowing the force to be expanded to cover DBA and an ADLG army too, well nearly.

Making a conscious effort with this army to paint it by troop types starting with light infantry, in this case archers, slingers, javelin-men and a pair of scorpions to finish off the shooty death section. So without any more rambling on here are the finished figures:

Eight javelin armed skirmisher from the War and Empire range produced by Forged in Battle. Painted in drab colours to mark their status as lower classed troops. 

The bases are textured using Geek Gaming Scenics Base ready Patch Plains mixed then flocked with 2mm static grass to add colour and interest. This is a new process for 15mm figures and cuts out the need to glue sand, ink wash then dry brush the sand before flocking; its quicker and gives a good finish once over flocked. 

Next are eight slingers that are also from Forged in Battle. Both sets sit well beside the PSC 15mm figures if a little chunkier. 

The first of the PSC Ultra Cast figures with six skirmishing archers covering a scorpion and two crew. 

Once painted and at a distance there is no way of telling if these are metal or not. That is until they are picked up as there is practically no weight to them. That said the figures paint up well and provide a good basis for the core of an Early Imperial Roman army. It's a pity that the infantry and cavalry are only available in the boxed sets. 

Below is a group picture of the army so far with figures painted pre December 21st 2020 including two stands of three archers, three additional stands of skirmishing archers and a second scorpion. These are not included in the points total below.

Both the archers above and the scorpion below have been painted before the start date and are shown pre-black edge painting. 

So, there are a total of twenty four foot figures and 1 crewed weapon in 15mm giving a start to the points total of 52 or 8.67% of the target total of 600 points. Hope that this is correct and now it's time to start prepping the auxilia infantry with 38 figures waiting in the wings. 

Hope that you find these of interest and stay safe!

Cheers for now

From JonathanO: Hawkins' Hill - 15mm Classical Indian Bowmen (78 points)

I really struggled on the climb up Hawkins' Hill and my journey around Challenge Island has been less than rapid.  From the hill I could see an Ancient Indian Army starting to gather.  The first to appear was a unit of bowmen.

With the route down the hill and towards the Snow Lord's Peak now blocked, I decided to take the less traveled path towards O'Grady's Gulch.

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These are Forged In Battle 15mm miniatures.  I had over 100 infantry originally primed and ready for Challenge VII .  I managed to get this unit of 24 finished for 48 points plus the 30 bonus.  The rest are very close to completion, but may not quite make it for tomorrow's deadline.  However, I do hope to post another short report or two before the end of the Challenge tomorrow.

Classical Indians seem to have been a rather popular choice of army over the last few Challenges. You've done a great job on these archers.

TamsinP

From MartinN - More 15mm Caesarian Romans (30 points)

I'm still alive and slowly beavering away on my 15mm Late Republican/ Caesarian Roman project for Impetus. Not much progress was made but I felt a sign of life was due.

First are a base of Germanic Skirmishers who will fight alongside my Romans as allies. As my mate ChrisS went for Germans as opponents for my Romans I decided it would only be logical for me to incorporate a few Germanic allies into my army. Probably from a tribe on loggerheads with Chris' band of unwashed barbarians. Nothing wrong with letting these uncivilised animals kill each other before sending in the legions to mop up afterwards, eh?

Miniatures are Forged in Battle again and I'm still impressed with the quality of their offerings. It wasn't till I was almost done with these when I realised I had painted their shields in the colours of my favourite football teams arch rivals. No harm though, this way it will only be easier to sacrifice them for the greater good I guess. Fortuna wills it.

The next base is of no real combat value in Impetus other than to be attached to another base in order to depict the unit to which the General is attached to. I would have loved to include a pair of Lictors (no, not the Tyranid ones from 40k) carrying their fasces to symbbolize the high ranking status of the general but unfortunately I wasn't able to track some down in 15mm. Well, at least not till the base was finished and I happened to stumble across *these*. Next time I'd say...

The General is supposed to depict Gaius Iulius Caesar, but in all honesty I don't see much of a resemblance here.

In order to not make it look silly when attaching the base to a unit of infantry I opted for a rather static pose with these miniatures.

So, that's it for today. All in all this entry should give me another whooping 30 points towards my goal but unfortunately not enough to catch up with ChrisS in our little side duel.

Stunning work Nick!

Same as last time, I initially looked at this entry without looking at the title and thought they were very fine 28s. But no, they're 15mm. Wow. Just wow.

I really like your German auxiliaries. They have that wild, untamed look, but yet the green of their shields ties them all together nicely. I also really like your Caesar command base.  I could immediately see the resemblance with his grey cropped hair and the regal purple of his armour. The decision to keep his base relatively static in pose is a good one, especially as he will be spending a lot of his time attached to infantry units.

Lovely work Nick!

From MartinN: 15mm Caesarian Roman Heavy Cavalry (32 Points)

Once again work got in the way of enjoyable and civilized pastime. Nonetheless I thought it appropriate to show a sign of life, no matter how small. Thus I present to you eight 15mm Caesarian Romans from Forged in Battle/ Westwind Miniatures. The miniatures are based for use as heavy cavalry in Impetus.

Except for some minor casting issues (the feet on some of the riders were not fully cast) these, once again were a blast to paint. I think I even enjoyed painting horses for the first time in my hobby career.

A few years back I started a Caesarian Roman project in 28mm, which, due to various reasons, never got off the ground. As mentioned in my last post I'm planning to go 15mm for some of my future projects, so I thought it might be the right time to revive this old favourite of mine only in a smaller scale. And no Curt, 20mm is no option ;-) While the AB figures are certainly nice, I simply can't get to grips with that particular scale painting wise. Don't want to rant again about the subject, but 20mm to me is quite a half-assed thing. Somewhere in between the pro's and con's of 28mm and 15mm. I'll stick with 20mm for my modern stuff, as decent Bundeswehr is hard to find in both the other scales, but nothing else... as of yet ;-)

As I want my force to be based on Legio X Equestris I went for a heavily stylized bull on the signum. Thinking about how unwilling I normally am to do free hands I'm actually quite chuffed with how it turned out. The shields only got a basic geometrical design copied from Heresy Brush's take on the very same figures (sorry can't find an image for illustration).

This should give me another 32 points to add to my total. This also helps me to cement (well, 'cement' might be a bit over enthusiastic) my lead in the 'Bavarian challenge' with 287 (Having already added the 20 points from the bonus round entry) straight points vs. ChristopherS's 244 points.

Wow, these are gorgeous Nick! When I first looked at the images I thought, 'Gee, he must be using giant bases for these 28s.' Then I read the post and was floored by the realization that they are 15s! 

Your work on the signum is excellent, both crisp and clear and the shields are wonderful as well. You have a lot of russets and reds going on in this group, and so the grey-blue of the horse harness really helps to define the individual figures. Top-shelf work here, Nick - well done!