From JohnB: Sinews of War 1/43? Corgi Cameo Trucks Requisitioned for the War Effort (60 points)

Well my planned entries are slipping behind - story of 2024/25 it seems. Anyway I got in my now usual toyshow trip for inspiration at Yuletide. Except it was not the big Doncaster show, as my lift was unavailable, instead we made it to York in January. And it seemed very slim pickings - all 1/72 plastic kit stuff was £10 or above (some of these kits are available on the high street for £6!!!!) - zero bargains. The railway bits and bobs also failed to move on my money. Then I found in quick succession three old style trucks and somehow paid £3 for the lot as I was inspired by a logistics moment.

They are Corgi Cameo range grain trucks and apparently scale at 1/43 - but you will know if wargamers are quirky on scale its no different in toy car land. So my minion will need to rule if its 28mm or 20mm or something else. I have opted for 20mm as I think they will work whereas the 28mm figures will look too big?

Compared to my Nexus Space Warriors these guys needed just a prime (white - so I could see the detail) black undercoat and then Vallejo MC096 Camoflage Olive Green. A dry brush of MC124 Iraqi Sand finished the bodies.

I made a timber load area base for the truck missing its grain load - just biro lined card overpainted with Citadel Nazreg Yellow Colour Contrast. The Grain sacks were painted in a Yellow Ochre and again overcoated with Nazreg Yellow.

In true logistics confusion the lorries are returning fully loaded - which way to the front lads? No Dante Comedy aspect this time and I am struggling with greed at the moment. Hey Ho. Points are 3x15pts for 20mm trucks = 45pts with 0 Comedy contribution.

I had hoped to dodge the scale bullet, but dam**, here comes John. Ah well. To get the awkward part out of the way first: if the cars are 1/43 scale, that would translate to approximately 40mm. Obviously, that's to big, considering the size of the figures next to them. Now it is difficult to judge from the photograph, which is very nice by the way, as the figures are on bases and the trucks are not, but I think they actually might work with 25mm figures. I found an online dealer stating that the Cameo vehicles varied between 1/45 and 1/76, and that they classify all as 1/60 for ease of storage.  That seems sensible, and 1/60 roughly translates to 25mm. Therefore, I will score them as 25mm vehicles, and 60 points it is. Then the fun part: I really like your idea of repurposing these trucks, and I think they came out very well. The timber load is a nice little detail, and the finished vehicles look very good. Well done, John!

Martijn

Friday Minion Has the Need for Speed

We're into the last 10 days of the Challenge now folks, so lets put our foot on the gas and career around LA in a bomb-carrying bus, or some nonsense like that. And who better to keep us company while we do than Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock..?

This Friday, as we charge at never-less-than-50mph to our final destination, we have posts from:

• DavidB, with some Necormunda and Imperial Guard who missed last week's cutoff
• Tamsin walking the 'Path of Infinite Sorrows'
• Hints of posts to come from the Snowlord himself, Caleb, John and more from Tamsin and DavidB 

Happy Friday!

Friday Minion's Spring is Starting to Spring

It's March, and around me, spring is starting to spring. And what's more of a spring movie than....

Yes folks, I just dropped Bambi into your blogrolls, sorrynotsorry

And asthe daffs starting to emerge and temperatures inch up from the very mild winter we've had here, it also means the final weeks of  Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XIII are upon us. May your brushes be swift as we grind inevitably towards to the finish line. 

This week, our Friday stalwarts are back:

• Tamsin with a vintage Hobgoblin, to tide us over while she works on her root vegetable spaceship for Turnip28. 
• Miles with a mixed bag to round out his Peleliu project, and falling deeper into the pico armour rabbit hole 
• I expect David will make an appearance with a few hundred GW minis later in the day

Happy friday, folks!

Its all Quiet for Friday Minion

Friday Minion, reporting for duty!

Friday Crew are either waiting for the big push, or went over the top last week, they've nothing for us yet in this week's queued up posts.

Hopefully we'll be able to send out a small trench raid overnight to find some Blog fodder for you all. I'll be here taking my Minion watch, and a little extra time to work on my own entries. 

Friday Minion, Back at the Wheel

You may not have noticed, with the Minion team being such a crack team of blogsnipers, but Friday Minion snuck off for a while. But now I'm back at the wheel and ready to make a mess.

And it turns out, all I needed to do to speed the brushes of Friday crew, was take my eye off them. Today, they have the following delights for us:

• A cornucopia of scifi, fantasty and histori-fantasy from DavidB
• The Imperial Japanese Navy sailing in to contest the Pacific courtesy of TomC, as well as some strange cat things
• ArturS with more delights from everyone's favourite Galaxy Far, Far Away...
• More Midianites, Napoleonics and men of Gondor by GrahameH (will he ever run out of these?)
• StevenS with some of Marvel's greatest heroes and villains. 

What a way to welcome the weekend!

Friday Minion, Out in the Cold

 Friday Minion checking in again. It's been a mild winter so far, but suddenly took a turn for the cold this week. Admittedly, not this cold:

What goodies do we have from our beloved Friday crew this week? Well of course we have Tamsin representing with two more submissions. DavidB  has made his excuses already. I think Mr JohnE is cooking something up, and hopefully a few more to come during the day. 

Friday Minion, On a Roll

We're five weeks into the Challenge and I finally feel like I'm on a roll like a clearly fake boulder in pursuit of a cheeky archaeologist thieving git. Hopefully I'll have an entry in this week, then two more to follow after that. 

And what about the Friday crew? So far, it's looking a bit thin, but we have:

• The infamous, industrious, indefatigable TamsinP going back to her roots with 15mm Roman auxiliaries for Art de la Guerre.

Looks like that's it so far, until more of the Friday turn up with some treasure for us.

Friday Minion, in the rain

 

So, I clearly shouldn't have teased the Friday crew about their lack of posts, because week three of Minion duties and they've assigned me many, replicants to hunt blogposts to handle. Yes Tamsin, you called it, the Friday crew would rise to my gentle baiting. And of course it's the week of The Cull. 

So what will Friday bring? Delights to rival LA in the far future of 2019, for sure:

• TomC brings us some 15mm US paratroopers, fighting in urban terrain
• JohnE enters the challenge with four (!) posts cavorting through AHPC Studios 
• Miles makes it ashore with his 2023 "big project" in the Pacific
• Tamsin reappears this week with some Pulpy goodness
• GrahameH with a mountain of stuff, I'm not sure I have enough fingers to count them all. But they do look lovely and I'll try my best.

Lets get cracking!

Friday Crew, On a Rampage

They were warned to up their paint production...

Points targets are doomed... 

And on Friday 13th, will Jason Voorhees paint something a color other than red?

Welcome back to the second in our regular Friday programs, tonight it would be only appropriate to screen the slasher classic, Friday the 13th.

Joining us for this trashy 80's cinema are four rampaging paint-slingers: 

• TamsinS with a fine bust from Tamsin (stop sniggering at the back, you filthy lot) as well as some workhorse German armour
• ScottM with a delightful monochrome robot
• ArthurS with some devious droids from a galaxy far far away
• DavidB with a WHOLE VINTAGE ELDAR ARMY. Nice!

That's right, Friday crew have upped their post-rate by a whole 33%! Keep it up!

From Caleb: Barons War Outlaws Under Construction (80 points)

Hey folks,

At last its my first post for the challenge! I decided I would kick things off with some low hanging fruit by finishing up some medieval figures for the Under Construction studio. I've been bounce back and forth for quite a bit trying to setting in what greens to use, and in the end went with a mix of what all I tested. The result feels both realistic and campy at the same time which is a sweet spot for me. 

Here are a few close ups as well!

    Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

All figures are footsore, and I really like the game I painted on "The Poacher"

Hope everyone has a good weekend, Cheers!

Minion Phil - Hey Caleb, welcome to the Challenge and happy new year! Delighted that another from the Lard America crew has joined in on the challenge, I know I go on about a bit. You have some great projects lined up for the winter. Lovely work on these Paul Hicks-sculpted outlaws, your green and brown tones are just the right amount of irregular, while still looking coherent on the tabletop. The pheasants on the poacher mini are a nice touch, and just the right green :-)

If possible, it would be good to get some more light facing the minis for the photos, they look a bit toplit and you may be losing some of the splendor of the paintjob in the shadows. 

12 lovely 28mm miniatures and a location bonus is a tidy 80 points to start your tally. 

From Curt: Two Units of Fodder for Turnip28 (120 points)

Hi All!

I'm back to my Turnip28 project, carrying on from the 'Snobs' to the next formation type: two units of rank-and-file troops, or in T28 parlance: 'The Fodder'. 

In the game, Fodder come in groups of 12 figures, and while they're pretty lousy on the whole, they do benefit from being able to put out a decent curtain of (inaccurate) fire, and can soak up a lot of punishment. Just like what you'd expect from a troop type sporting such a dubious nom de guerre.

The figures are 3d prints from Knucklebone Miniatures. These are fantastic one-piece models which I highly recommend - I printed a duplicate set in a mirror image in order to provide some variation within the units. I also added some chopped-up tufts, coming out of collars and cuffs, along with a few clusters of mushrooms for colour. 

I really like how characterful these figures are, so wonderfully miserable and downtrodden. When grouped together they give a wonderful impression of a shambling mob of dolorous mooks, sadly trudging to their inescapable doom. 

I did-up one unit with red facings as part of my 'Rutabaga Rifles', and another in yellow turnbacks for the 'Fighting Fennel Fusiliers'. I used an airbrush for laying down the base colours and then went in with a brush for some of the details.

I had a bit of fun doing up a rutabaga on one of the standards - not something I thought I'd be painting as a flag device, but when in the Turnip-World you do silly turnip things.

For their yellow opposition, instead of the usual banner, I gave them a spooky Mari Lywd as their standard. For the uninitiated (meaning me until I read up on it), the Mari Lywd was a Welsh wassailing custom, apparently to celebrate nature's growth and renewal. 

It entailed mounting a horses skull on pole, with the person holding it hidden under a sackcloth.  The Mari Lywd and its attendants would go around to local homes, singing and carousing to get free food and drinks. Yes, the Welsh are a wonderfully weird lot. Anyway, I thought it would make an interesting standard for a unit of creepy root vegetable infantry.

Byron was kind enough to make up some sabot bases for me that are similar in design to those I use for my Malta project. 

I had a bit of fun pimping them out with a dice socket (to track panic in the game), along with gratuitous blood spatters in the empty troop sockets to signify when the poor Fodder take a dirt nap. Fun!

These 24 infantry will give me 120 points for the roster, a few for the airbrush duel, and a nice escalatory bump in our Turnip28 clash of vegetables.

The vegetable patch to-date.

Thanks for dropping in folks and have a terrific weekend!

- Curt

Friday Minion - Aha, trudging in dolefully on the heels of the toffs and toadies, the fodder have arrived! Delightful, miserable, bonkers nonsense here Curt. I confess to liking the grimy, grim aesthetic of Turnip28 (I really should get back to my abortive attempts), but your jaunty twist has its appeal too. 

I love the Mari Lywd as standard, quite coincidentally, shortly before Christmas I spent an hour or so in a wikipedia rabbithole of Welsh and other bizarre festive traditions (looking at you, Finland), and recent attempts at Mari Lywd revival movements, despite seemingly noone knowing where or whence the tradition comes from, let alone why. 

120 points to the Snowlord! 

From MilesR: A Little Slow Off The Blocks This Year (575 Points)

 I had great plans for the first few weeks of Challenge XIII but fate had other ideas for me.  On the morning of Dec 19th, I was on a board call with a UK company when there was a knock at my door.  It was a Maryland State Trooper informing me my wife had been in an auto accident and that I needed to come with her.  My lovely yet fierce Dr wife was taken to the county ER after her car crashed while driving into work.  The car spun around, rolled and the air bags deployed.  More importantly, the car did it's job protecting her as the trooper thought it was going to be a much worse outcome when they first rolled up.  She did have a concussion, a back injury plus some cuts and bruises and stayed in the hospital for that night. I was told by the ward nurse she was a difficult patient as she wouldn't let the nurses work on her until they had seen to their other patients and she could treat herself.  All I can could say was "tell me about it".

Anyway I lost week or so of painting time doing the more important tasks of caring for my wife and handling the insurance and related matters.  We are now life long fans of German Engineering and Audi's in particular and my wife has a shiny new 2023 A8.  I doubt we'll buy any other brand of car going forward.

My nursing duties are now done, which is good because I look horrendous in those white nursing outfits - here's a picture of me in "action".  I know, I know it screams "care-giver".

Anyway, now that MB is doing better, I've managed to sneak in some painting time and have the following submissions for your perusal.  These will be organized as part of three green badged studio tours.

High Adventure:

For the High Adventure Studio I have this groups of 28 WW1 Anzacs from Brigade miniatures.  These are intended for one of my silly game concepts called "Anzacs and Aztecs" which involves some WW1 Anzacs getting lost on their way to Egypt and running into all sorts of trouble in the mystical jungles of central America.  The concept is a follow on from my previous convention games of "DAK and Dragons" and "SOCOM and Sorcery".  There will, of course, be dinosaurs involved and a large model of a Mayan Pyramid which you may see later in the challenge.  There may be some Germans from a U-boat involved too but those were done in during Challenge X

The figures are from Brigade games and where painted use Army Painter "Speed Paint" I liked using the product but did find the color palette a bit limited.  There were two test figures painted a slightly different shade prior to the start of the Challenge which I'll repaint at some point.  To be honest my first foray with speed paints were a pre-XIII disaster and I stripped these figures to redo them.  There is a large 25 pound cannon, a machine gun and nice grenade "tosser" - Since they're small I'll combine the machine gun and tosser into a single gun submission for points.  So thats 28 figures, 2 guns and 1 Studio for 180 points.

Historical Drama:

Next up are some some 10mm Byzantines left over from last years big project (Manzikert).  These are a mix of Magister Militum and Pendraken figures and represent the the last of the lot I had primed from Challenge XII.  Don't worry there a good number of bare metal Byzantines waiting in the wings - there are ALWAYS more Byzantines.

The lot include 8 medium infantry, 32 slingers and 24 Buccelari (my favorite).  That's a total of 108 points including the Historical drama studio bonus

World Cinema:

OK this one is a bit of a stretch but its an homage to those rather awful Hobbit movies and the Dwarven armies at the Battle of Five Armies - here is the start of my 10mm Dwarven army project, which starts with a core of 18, 8 figure infantry bases plus some Human allied light cavalry archers.  Don't worry, you'll see some Dwarves mounted on Rams (assuming I get my resin printer working again)

The figures are metal casting from Copplestone and may be some of the finest 10mm figures I've ever painted.

Opposing them are some test paints of some Copplestone Orc and Warg riders

I am still debating what is the right color for orc skin and tested a variety of tones on the 3 infantry stands.  I'm leaning towards green but that is not aligned with the Peter Jackson canon.  

Oh yes, the Orcs brought along some trolls which while 10mm figures are actually 28mm tall - they're big fella's

The studio tour consists of 9 28mm figures, 174 Infantry and 24 cavalry in glorious 10mm plus 1 room bonus which nets out to 287 points.

So that's it for my first submission - sorry to be a little late this year but it was unavoidable.  I'll help my minion, Phil, by providing a summary of all the scale to make it easier to put in that spreadsheet which surely was created by some lunatic.

28mm

37 Infantry

2 guns

10mm

214 Infantry

48 Cavalry

3 Studios Toured

I believe that sums to a nice total of 575 points

So what's next?  I think we'll be making a detour to the South Pacific for some really tiny miniatures and a  rather large terrain project.  

Minion Phil: Welcome back to your twelfth (?) Challenge Miles. I was sorry to hear about MB's awful accident before Christmas, but am very glad that she is on the mend and spared more of your tender care. 

I like how you say this is slow off the blocks, but two week's work is higher than many challengers' winter ambitions. I do not know how you manage it but your quantity has a hugely impressive quality of its own, let alone your tidy brushwork. 

Great to see you're back at the DAK and Dragons series, I thought we'd lost you to teeny tiny scales. Those Anzacs look great and a mayan temple is something to look forward to. I'm sure it'll be hugely impressive as always. Who doesn't like more Byzantines, and a visit to Tolkien's world. All in one post - marvellous! 

Well, as you've done all the hard maths for me, my role as data entry clerk is done. Onwards!

  

From StephenS: A long time ago [Under Construction] (97 points)

 G'day,

I hope everyone had a brilliant Christmas and New Year, mine was a blast and I'm feeling charged up for a top year. It is great to be back again for what is now, after counting on my fingers, my eighth Challenge.

My first post of the year, and my screen test for the mighty AHPC Studios, is a project that I started playing when it first came out in 2018 but over the last five years I've still only managed one test figure. It is great to watch the different ways the hobby changes by looking at what gets a lot of love on the blog each year, and this time around there seems to be a lot more Star Wars: Legion, so lets get to my adaptation.

First up I have the Emperor himself, flanked by his ever loyal Royal Guard. I find red the easiest colour to paint with, and I am happy with how these came out. For the Emperor, I used a few green and purple washes on the skin and face to represent his decay that, of course, are almost invisible in the photo. 

Finally, I have finished off the unit of Stormtroopers that I started so long ago. The final picture has the test model up front, not included in the points total. I followed a painting tutorial that promised I would be able to knock a unit of these out in an evening. That did not happen...

So, all up that should be:

11 x 40 mm figures and a location bonus for 97 points.

Finally, I have really enjoyed the glimpses into people's hobby spaces at the start of the challenge, and thought I would share mine. Back in 2015, I enjoyed a carefree hobby existence and had a whole room to fill with toys, paints and tables. My hobby space has shrunk in direct proportion to the number of children that have appeared, being moved to ever smaller rooms until we have arrived at our final destination. I wouldn't change it for the world!

May the force be with you!

Cheers,

Steve

A younger me in my first challenge - notice the access to sunlight and fresh air...

My current digs =)

Friday Minion Phil: Awesome start to the regular Friday Stephen, and welcome back, thanks for joining us for AHPCXIII. I particularly appreciated these as my first post to hand as I'm on a big Star Wars kick at the moment , having just finished watching Season 7 of the Clone Wars series (its so goooood). 

Your stormtroopers are delightful, really clean and effective white armour. Could you link/share hte method? I'm glad you pushed through and finished them off, however gruelling the method ended up being. I really like the colour that you used on the Royal guards, more menacing and less gaudy than many end up being. 

A solid opening volley at 97 points, bravo!