RayR - AHPC XIII - Hobby Desk and Painting Plans

 

Looks like I'm a winner already? I can claim the "Most Messy Painting Desk in the Challenge"

I did plan a clean up, but couldn't be arsed in the end. I'll only make more mess anyway.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Ray and this will be my 12th Challenge. I like you guys look forward to the Challenge each year and have been busy cleaning and undercoating figures for a while now.

I will of course be painting up figures for Donnybrook, which as you all well know I'm quite partial to.

There'll be figures for Vienna 1683 and a smattering of other stuff to. The Haitian Revolution will again make a appearance. Not that I really need anymore Donnybrook or Haitian Revolution figures???

But I shall be starting a new period and scale, shock horror???

It's all Reject Richard's fault, he's painted up some great figures for the French Wars of Religion in 2mm. So he made me buy some, I was going to get armies for one of the larger Nine Years Wars battles like Neerwinden or Steenkirque, but instead chose to go for a battle during the War of the Spanish Succession. Postie the Evil Warlord of Posties Rejects already has figures for the Battle of Blenheim, so I chose another theatre. Spain.

More specifically the Battle of Almansa 1707

For the Allies the British, Dutch and Portuguese there are 42 infantry regiments and 55 Cavalry squadrons. For the French and Spanish there are 52 Infantry regts and 76 squadron of cavalry. So I'm gonna be a busy boy!!!

The figures were calling to me in my sleep "Paint me, paint me", so I had a little practice as to how to paint them up, coached by Reject Richard. 

Here we have 2 regt of Dutch Infantry Torsay and Kepplefox, each regt has 240 figures!!!

And here we have 2 squadrons of the Portuguese Cavalry regt Naronja, each has 24 figures.

I've not yet decided how I'm going to decorate the bases, so I need to play around a little more.

These troops of course will not count as points in the Challenge, but I will post them up, with the other regts in their brigades.

Why 2mm you ask?

Well that's an easy question to answer.

Big Battles

I could never to Almansa in any other scale, if I did it would be scaled down so much, it would have nothing in common with the actual battle. Using 2mm, I could comfortably play the whole battle on a 8 foot board, 6 foot if you squash it up.

Cost (very important)

In 6mm a 240 man regt would cost you approx £20

In 15mm a 240 man regt would cost approx £135

in 25mm it would coast a staggering £443

In 2mm it costs 99p!

Yep 99p and that's with a few stands left over for the next regt as well!!!

Some gamers say, you might as well use counters? But that's what any figure you buy is, they'e all just counters.

Now I must admit, they are bloody small and are a bit of a bugger to see, so get yourself a pair of these badboys!

You too can look as cool as me?

Challenge XIII - {Insert Witty Title Here} - From StuartL

Hello all,

So, here we are at the cusp of another AHPC madhouse, and I for one am nowhere near as prepared as I should be. But, before we get into that, introductions are in order.

My name is Stuart and I have been gaming since the early 90's I guess. However, my first foray into wargames happened in the previous decade. When I used to visit my grandparents' house, I would often pass the time playing with my uncle's old airfix toys and 1/72 soldiers (nearly all were unpainted). He and I would line the men up and then take turns firing matchsticks at them from a spring loaded cannon. It wasn't the most well balanced ruleset, but it was fun. My first real exposure to wargaming came via everyone's favourite evil wargaming corporation, Games Workshop. I got Heroquest as a birthday present, followed by Space Crusade for Christmas. After that it was on to Space Hulk and Space Marine (the precursor to epic). At various times I think I played most of GW's games during secondary school and university. 

Originally I am from Stockton-on-Tees in the North East of England, but in 2004, for a variety of reasons, I packed my bags and shipped off for Japan. My initial plan was to work as an English teacher for between 6 months and 1 year and then head back home to find a new job. All of my hobby stuff was left with my parents for my eventual return. However, I found that teaching English was a lot of fun and my 1 year plan quickly extended. Needing something to do in my free time, I found a local store that had a tiny selection of GW minis and picked up a box of Orcs, some tools and some paint. This led me to find my local gaming group, where I became an active member and to me requesting that my family start shipping stuff out to me. 

Fast forward to today, where I am still living in Japan, working as a teacher and am still in the same hobby group. I have been less active over the past few years as the group tends to play 9th edition 40K, whereas I'd much rather be playing anything else. I have a huge collection of minis for Bolt Action, Saga, Black Powder and more besides. I do like 40K, but the current rules feel bland and pointless to me. The newly released Horus Heresy rules are much more to my liking.

My initial plan for this challenge was to stay totally focussed on getting 2 or 3 armies completely finished. That lasted for about 20 seconds. I will still try to do the bulk of work on those armies, but I'm expecting to embrace my inner Squirrel and see what I have in my eclectic collection. I started building and assembling models for the challenge in early October, but due to real life issues taking up a good chunk of November, a lot of things got pushed back to December. 'Not to worry', I thought, 'December is always quiet at work'. Not this year. My boss decided that instead I should be as busy as possible in the run up to Christmas. Luckily, all is not lost. I still have a ton of minis built and primed from Challenges XI and XII in my stash. Speaking of.....

Unlike some of the challengers who live in vast sprawling mansions with enough room for a gigantic hobby space, I'm limited to a 6' by 9' room where all of my stuff must stay. Should anything stray from the room, my better half will immediately throw it into the trash.

My work area is pretty small. I don't have room for a monitor or a PC, just a small music player. Over the course of the last challenge, this tiny work bench hosted nearly 300 minis, so it seems to get the job done. On the back wall you can see a memo reminding me to do the chores and other tasks before I get too lost in painting. 

The main part of my stash is kept on a set of metal shelving racks. While I do try to sort stuff out every now and again, I am rapidly running out of flat surfaces on which to stack things. Included in that lot are numerous army cases, bits boxes and a full 6' by 4' WW2 Normandy beach board that I have only used twice in the eight years since I built it.

And this is my gaming table. It is made from the same metal racking as the shelves and is currently home to about 20 KR multicases and numerous boxes of plastic, metal and MDF. In the background you can see yet more shelves containing rulebooks, terrain supplies and yet more plastic. As you can see from the foreground, I am in the process of priming stuff, building things and it is all a colossal mess. That said, it is usually much, much worse. 

Having seen some of the neat, organised hobby spaces from other challengers, I am reminded of a quote. "If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning." Guess which category I am in. 

Oh yeah, I'll be minioning for the first time this challenge, if you are unlucky enough to be in my care, I apologise in advance.

See you all at the starting post!