AdamC: Curtgeld Xebec

 So when I heard our Curtgeld could be done as a gift to a fellow challenger I knew exactly who I wanted to do mine for. John Michael (JohnM) and I have been gaming buddies for years and I wanted to gift him something. Then I learned John would not take part in the challenge. So I contacted Curt and asked for permission gift my Curtgeld to John as a Challenger Emeritus.

John's interest in Black Seas was the deciding factor for me to invest when the game came out so a ship seemed the proper option. This is a Xebec 3d printed for me by another friend (Arofan) from a Henry Turner file.

John decided to do a Spanish Fleet so I have painted the Xebec to match. I may have been a little too cute with the Red and yellow sails. I cut the sails myself and used toothpicks for masts and spars.

Xebecs were swift ships middling size.  This one has a 20 gun broadside making it one of the larger examples. I've been using 6th rate stats (but without the carronade) but official Xebec stats are coming from Warlord games later this year so we'll see how they interpret them.

The Xebec is a little smaller than a frigate so let's say 15 points maybe another 2 points for rigging and another point for flags. Seem to recall Curtgeld gets additional points but I'll leave that to the Minions or Curt to handle.

From JohnM: Elven Hearthguard (40 Points)

 

Still plugging away at the painting. One of my goals during the challenge was to complete a Lords of the Wild warband using elves from my LOTR collection for SAGA AoM. Next up are 2 Hearthguard units. These were half painted by my son many years ago, they were airbrushed with Tamiya flat black and re-painted and based to match the the current war band. I thought about stripping the metal casts but decided against it, so they are a little less defined than the plastic sculpts which just had been previously primed. I am happy enough with them. I have 11 more figures to go but I somehow another think that this will not get done for the Challenge.

 

 

 

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Great work John on some classic figures! While SAGA's various iterations tend to leave me only with a headache, I can only assume it will be fun to play with such neat figures available.  These LOTR ones are just marvelous, and you have done some fine work here. And I always love a story where figures started elsewhere make it over the "painting finish line" - I find those figures always seem to provide the best "performance" on the table, like the dice somehow respond to them. 

GregB

From JohnM: Sainte-Mère-Église - 110 points

 

Yes, I know I promised no more terrain but this model has been an albatross around my neck throughout the AHPCX, without exaggeration there is probably over 300 hours of print time here with multiple failed pieces. This is a model from 3d-print-terrain, there are 14 pieces to print, the longest one clocking out at 38 hours alone. I had multiple problems throughout with both adhesion and extrusion problems. Anyway, I suspect most of you shall have no idea what I am talking about, so I shall stop. The fence come from the same set and I found the headstones on Thingiverse.

I needed a church, as I sold my massive Italeri hard plastic one, this is much nicer and of course Sainte-Mère-Èglise is one of the classic WWII Normandy set pieces. I based it on two old placemats and added a small cemetery as you can see.

 

 

 

I will treat it as 3 separate units in respect to bombardment for CoC, the two large roofs come off, and the centre tower comes off. Difficult to say whether the ground floor windows can be used as firing positions but there are 3 doors, one large and certainly the tower would be an excellent firing position. Funny how I think of terrain in game terms!

I am quite happy with it, the structure is 22x9x11" in total but a lot of empty space. Using a cubic calculator this is near on 2200 cubic inches, but I will remove a half so maybe 1100 cubic inches. this is where I get into trouble but I think a 6" cube is 216", so if I have it right maybe 5 cubes aka 100 points!

From DaveD.  Now thats an excellent piece John. i will meet you at 110 points ..  

From JohnM: Terrain for Epic (40 points)

Myself and Iannick are planning to have our first 30k Epic game in three weeks, I have never played before and I do not think that Iannick has played Epic Armageddon since he was a young lad.  We are planning to use 2000 +/- 100 point forces and are playing the NetEA rules with the Horus Heresy lists. I am playing the Blood Angels and Iannick the Emperor's Children. I believe the plan is to play on a 4x4 terrain with no spaceship's, but everything else goes. I have my list together but keeping it a secret in order to confound Iannick. as we had no terrain, I have been keeping the CR10S busy. I already have a desert mat and some hills (from Rommel) as well as some 6 mm roads and rivers which will do, I really can not imagine the 30k world being a lush, verdant one, but of course I really have no idea as I know nothing about this world! I am looking forward to getting my force on the table though and the rules themselves do not look too complicated.

A Warhound for scale, I am hoping it is right

Ruined buildings, some objective markers and game tokens, all done on the 3D printer.

Regimental HQ in bottom left. I will make an orbital blast marker later but only needed this one for our upcoming game.

Bit of a challenge to match colouring with mat but pretty good I believe.

Detail of markers and and objectives.

12 x 8 x 6"

A generous estimate of it size would be two 6" cubes, so maybe 40 points. Wish us luck in our game.



That's some great looking tiny terrain John!

TamsinP

From JohnM: Congo Figures (175 points)

 

One of the last piles of 28mm lead, I have are the figures I bought for the game Congo, which I have yet to play. I painted up the Explorers box in a previous AHPC, but still had the African Kingdoms box. I have a very small lead pile and to be honest all I think is left is some Perry Samurai figures.

Certainly I have some plastic and resin figures lying around from some games like Mansions of Madness, some Games Workshop figures and a few Carnival figures. So here I believe we have 35 figures, hopefully I will get to play the game soon.

King and Wardrums

Askaris

 

Married Warriors

 

Young Warriors

Scouts

 

Princess and Hostage

 

Hostage

 

Bearers

 

Fanatical Warriors

Witchdoctor

Warhorn

Prince

 

War Leader

Nice to get them done.

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By Paul:

Thats a great collection and no doubt! 

Congo is a fun game - I've only played it the once but I found it very thematic. I think that having a good pool of characters and figures to draw upon will really help the wonderful narrative aspects of the game, and this entry delivers that in spades!

The jungle drums tell me these are indeed worth 175 points - great job John!

From JohnM: Train Tracks (30 Points)

This is a quick submission that I have been working on for 2-3 weeks, I just finished it yesterday. I have a fairly major figure submission almost ready but it will be delayed for 1 week as I am going away. The hardest part for me in the challenge is getting the photos done so best to not waste time.

This is a bit of an unusual submission even for terrain, I do not remember anyone else submitting something similar. I need some train tracks for several Chain of Command games that are coming up and it has been something missing from my collection for awhile. I could have gone with 3D prints, as I have several STL files which look quite nice but it does take a lot of time to print something like this.

I was going to buy some real HO track but found some very cheap plastic tracks on Amazon and I got some rail bed from a Train Terrain company. The whole thing was less then $30 and I probably have another 8-12' of track materials still left but what I needed was a something to cross a 6' terrain table.

 

 

 

It was a bit more work than I thought it might be. The track was a little too wide for the bed but I plan to improve that when it is set up with clumping foliage. I used PVA to glue the track to the bed which is some sort of foam and then sprinkled the ballast on the wet bed, it was not really the best method but with some repairs I moved on. Once dry, I airbrushed the whole thing with black, followed by a green brown followed by a light brown. I then drybrushed the whole thing with a light sand colour. I then washed the rails with black followed by a drybrush of a dark metal. I then used a brown ink from Scale Colour to paint the wood, which really worked quite well. I finished off the tracks with a rust wash.

Now on to the calculations, I think it is 20 points for a 6" cube, which is I believe 216 cubic inches. so what do I have; well the track is 2" wide, 80" long and about 0.5" high. So using this nifty calculator, I found that I had 240 cubic inches. So maybe 30 points is reasonable. Oh, and I almost forgot it is modular.

 

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Some fine terrain work here John. As you base, the base looks a touch skinny here and there, but I'm certain clump foliage will tune all of that up, and the overall impression is excellent.  Railway tracks are excellent additions to a gaming table, and I've no doubt your approaching "Chain of Command" participants will benefit tremendously from your efforts.  Will you include some rolling stock as well? That can make for eve more fun...

30 points for you, sir! And we are all intrigued with the pending "faily major" submission....

Greg B