From KenR: 28mm WWI Indian Mountain Gun (30 Points)

A short first entry to begin my second attempt at the AHPC, I thought getting a few points on the board "early doors" would get the painting mojo in top gear.

So I present for your delight and delectation a WWI Mountain Gun with four Indian Crew. These are made by Empress Miniatures in 28mm as part of their Jazz Age Imperialism range. There are some excellent figures in the range (including some gorgeous Highlanders coming soon) that help fill out a WWI range nicely.

I have gone for a basic basing style with no grass tufts as they are to fit into a larger pre existing collection which pre dates those lovely pre glued accessories.

The gun was specifically designed for use in mountainous terrain and broke down into lots of smaller individual pieces so they could be carried by mule. The Indian units brought them with them from the sub continent to Mesopotamia and I have pictures of them being used in Palestine in 1917.

The Empress model breaks down into a similar number of pieces which is wonderfully realistic but a right royal pain in the ........ sorry, challenge to put together.

One of my two main themes this year is my Mesopotamia collection and this is a nice little start to that. I am off to work tonight (Xmas Eve) so I will wish you all a Merry Xmas and I hope Santa brings that Lanchester Armoured Car you always wanted.

I make it 5 points each for the crew and 10 for the Art Piece, a nice little 30 points to get me up and running.

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Welcome back to the Challenge, Ken!

I love seeing figures for these 'along-the-margins-of-history' being done. I've covetously perused the Jazz Age of Imperialism range and completely whiffed on connecting them with WWI Mesopotamia - duh. Now the wheels are turning! The gun is excellent and I really like their regimental turbans and the blue-grey of their service shirts. 

Excellent work Ken!

From ValeryN: 15mm Vehicles for my Soviet Army (24 Points)

Greetings to all!

It's time for me to get involved in the event and start showing what I'm painting.

The first part of the miniatures presented today are two self-propelled guns - ZIS-30. They were produced at the artillery plant No. 92 in the second half of 1941 by the open installation of the ZiS-2 anti-tank gun on the T-20 Komsomolets artillery tractor. This was a very rare vehicle for the Soviet Army. They were made only 100 (compared with 35,000 T-34s!). 

Also, I painted two sapper trucks. This addition to my roster of the engineer-sapper battalion, which I painted during the last year's challenge

A few more photos of painted models:

This is a total of 24 points.

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First, welcome back to the Challenge, Valery!

The trucks are very good, and always useful on the tabletop, but that ZIS-30 is quite an interesting (if ungainly) looking vehicle.  As you point out, it was astonishingly rare in light of the typical Soviet production methods of this period. Something you don't normally see on a player's roster.

I like the weathered green that you've used for these models, it seems a little lighter than what you normally come across, I like how they 'pop' to the eye. Great work!

From NickJ: Skaven Warlord Checking In (7 Points)

Once Upon a Second Challenge...

Well here we are then at the beginning of my second Challenge and this time I've decided to paint a single figure to get me started and to remove that 0 points tally!

This year I shall mostly be painting GW Age of Sigmar which is different to last year in absolutely no way whatsoever. I like AoS :-)

Here then is my new Skaven Warlord with the first picture showing the complete figure and the others a little more close up!

"See that my little Rat? That's our target"

So that should be a nice 5 points for my first 28mm figure of this Challenge.

For those interested below are the units that I added to the army after the First Challenge completed:

Gore-Beast Chariot

Ghorgon

Beastlord

Bullgors

Warp-Lightning Cannon

Everyone have yourselves a very Merry Christmas and a Paint-Tastic New Year!

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Welcome back to the Challenge, Nick! Your Skaven warlord is brilliant. I really like what you've done with his banner and plague blade - great use of colour. I also like seeing the retrospective of what you've been up to since we last crossed paths. Again, very impressive work (that Warp-Lighting Cannon looks like it would wreck someone's day). 

He looks a bit bigger than an average 28mm figure, so I'm going to nudge it up a couple of points.

I look forward to seeing more Age of Sigmar goodness rolling off your paintdesk over the coming months!

From BenitoM: First Volley - British Line Napoleonics (104 Points)

I started my Christmas break on Friday afternoon and displayed my painting table immediately after arriving home. My project for this Challenge runs around  Napoleonics both in 20 and 28mm.

I started with the 20mms and after a couple of intensive days I managed to paint a couple of British battalions for General d’Armee. We have agreed to use 4 bases per “standard” battalion at the club to play this rules.

The Old Gronards in the hobby will realize that these minis are old veteran Airfix. And indeed old they are: they belong to my collection built during the 70s and many have seen bloody battles in the main hall of my parents house, where my younger brother and I used to deploy our French and British armies and used marbles (or a 54mm plastic cowboy figure) as weapons to decide the battle.

Great memories that compensate the lack of detail they suffer, specially compared to other more modern plastic ranges by HaT, Revell or Italeri.

By the way the Rifles in the skirmish base are from Italeri and were acquired much later (actually in this century)

With this entry I score my first points: 26 minis x 4 = 104 points. This is also my opening move for the Black Powder Challenge (I’ll be contacting Millsy).

As today is 24th December, I also take advantage of the post to wish you a very Merry Christmas in the company of your family, relatives and loved ones

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Great work, Benito! I really like seeing these old school plastics getting some love and attention. Even though they are a little long in the tooth, some of the figures still possess a wonderful sense of animation (that loading figure is particularly excellent). I like the vibrant colours you've used for these chaps, especially the red. 

104 points to mark your debut on the roster - a superb opening gambit, Benito. Now, let's see some reinforcements to back up this lot. :)

From DaveD - The Sons of the Desert (10 Points)

Legionnaire Millsy turned to Legionnaire Docherty and said - "you know I really don't like these funny blue uniforms, I much prefer the red we used to wear - even if you were in charge... and what are we doing guarding this old ruin for?"

""Don' t start that again ....you know we got cashiered because of that incident at Gimp... you should have been more careful where you dug the latrines - and when Colonel Campbell and his wife fell  in them there was a real stink! . so that is why we ended up joining the French Foreign Legion   "

"These ruins are as old as the hills Millsy, there will be buried treasure. - but I don't expect them to  survive long with you and your shovel...- its another fine mess you got us into.. "

The figures are 28mm by Unfeasably Miniatures 

They are of course "Stan and Oli"

these guys will go toward a Death in the Dark Continent force.

Hi All , with Xmas fast approaching I though I best get a first entry on the roster. This years challenge will see a fair bit of variety along with more stuff for the Sudan, Brits, Egyptian and Sudaness - there will be camels aplenty as Sander and I have a little camel related "challenge!"

I have some 1980s 6mm to continue with as i have game coming up with fellow challengers Martin C and James M  Also last year Martin and I picked up Death in the Dark Continent and Congo , so there will a foray or two into that. I have some VBCW troops to do following a game with Martin and friends earlier in the year.

Artist: Various

Playlist: Spotify - Whiskey Time 

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Ahh, it's great to see our intrepid duo back again for another Challenge season. I was wondering why Docherty and Millsy were in Legion gettup, but I now understand in light of the smelly 'incident at Gimp'...

Lovely work, Dave - I really like the white kepis and the fully rigged pack on the one figure. And I must say that piece of terrain is cracking as well. Is that one of the pieces you picked up at CRISIS this year? All together, an excellent vignette and a terrific opening chapter for the continuing adventures of Docherty and Millsy. :)

10 point to you, Mr. D!

From Sander: First blood, some monsters to start with. (75 Points)

Hoi Everyone!

My Christmas vacation has started and now I finally have time to join the Challenge in  earnest. While the main focus of this year's Challenge will be my big 1:72 Salamanca Diorama, I have given myself time up to Old Year's Eve to do some 28mm figures I have lying around the workbench. I will try to do some of those in between the Salamanca figures as well just to keep from getting painter's block but I really hope to get into the Salamanca pile in a big way this Challenge.

Anyway for my first entry I have painted up some figures I am using in my Heroquest games at home and at the school HQ club. Last Friday I organised a big Christmas Quest using these for the guys and gals at school and it was a blast.

Let's see what I cooked up shall we?

First up are some plastic Gnolls from North Star miniatures. While I like North Star mini's a lot, these were a bit of let down since I think they suffer from a lack of detail. They did account of themselves really well in battle with 3 attack and 3 defence dice each.

More North Star plastics next in the form of some cultists. Now I really do not like Chaos, but these were a blast to paint and I like the evil looking dark scheme I managed to come up with.

 

Moving on to metals and a different producer: Otherworld Miniatures. They make some really good Fantasy Dungeon figures. All the kids at the HQ club chose one out of their range and I bought some baddies for specific scenario's like the one played Friday. Here are a couple of Wraiths:

This Otherworld skeleton lord could be the Witchking from HQ lore or a generic Liche lord or even just a Wight.

Next up an Oldhammer Chaos Mage. I got this one off of Ebay and since you need a Chaos Sorcerer just about any other Quest, one can never have enough.

Finally we have come to the only human in the lot, the rest could all fall under the label of "monster" so appropriate for this Challenge. A plastic North Star Barbarian called Munzuk. A soloquest for the wizard played at the club resulted in one of the kids liberating Munzuk from some Ork stronghold. He is now the wizard's henchman. Therefore we needed a dedicated figure.

 

This leaves me with 15 figures of 28mm scale, resulting in 75 points if I am not mistaken.

 Artist: The Longest Johns

Album: Christmas at Sea

They're just downright awesome!

Cheers Sander

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Welcome back to the Challenge, Sander!

These monsters (and minion) are excellent and I think it's just terrific that you've organized a group of students from your school to play Heroquest with them. 

Though the gnolls, cultists and Oldenhammer chaos mage are very cool, I have to say that I my favorites are the Otherworld wraiths and the skeleton lord. Lovely work.

I'll keep your Tuesday Minion spot warm for you until you can take up the reigns on the 2nd (waves chair, cracks whip). :)

From Curt: Three Heroes from 'Mansions of Madness' (15 Points)

Just a small entry from me tonight. This time it's three investigator/heroes from 'Mansions of Madness'. 

The 2nd edition of Fantasy Flight Games' 'Mansions of Madness' has become a well-enjoyed staple within our group since it was released almost two years ago. The first edition used a One-Against-Many game mechanic, where one player played the nasties of the 'Mansion', while the rest of the players worked cooperatively to uncover the mysteries and survive. This mechanic has worked well with many other FFG games (Descent, Imperial Assault, etc.) but its implementation was flawed in MoM to the extent that whoever played the 'Mansion' could quite easily defeat the investigators in short order. 

The publishers, to their credit, rectified this with their 2nd edition by using an app to run the Mansion, thereby allowing the players to work together as a cohesive team. It's been a great success with our group, with us being able to enjoy not only all the old expansions, but the new content as well. I've even used it at work as a team building exercise (nothing like avoiding being eaten by a Shoggoth to bring a group of people together)!

The base game comes with a load of plastic miniatures to represent both the investigators and the various eldritch horrors they encounter. The minis are roughly 28mm in scale and for the most part are rendered quite well. My main criticism is with the quality of the plastic  itself, as the early releases were a somewhat soft, making them an absolute swine to remove mold lines and clean-up flash. Thankfully, the more recent models use a harder plastic which is much easier to work with.

Anyway, until now I've been using other miniatures from my collection to represent the heroes, but thought it'd be fun I'd try to get a bunch of the stock ones done-up during the Challenge. So, here are three heroes from the core set: Mandy Thompson, Ashcan Pete and Gloria Goldberg. 

Fairly basic paintjobs on the whole. I tried to keep the colours punchy and as close to the game art as possible. 

I trimmed away the original plastic bases and replaced them with clear acrylic ones as I like the look of them better, especially with tile-based games. After the hassle of cleaning the figures up they were actually quite fun to paint.

I'll see if I can get a few more done over the Challenge and perhaps I'll try to do-up one or two of the monsters as well. 

Thanks for dropping in folks. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas holiday break!

Curt