From JohnE - Scout Troopers on Speeder Bikes [Sci-Fi] (50 Points)

Hi all. Honored to be back for my second AHPC. Thanks to Curt for bringing me aboard for my second venture, and to Phil for working whatever magic he will have to do to finalize these posts. Also cheers to all the other participants and minions.

I'm starting this challenge with my first ever Star Wars figures. My family pleasantly surprised me at Christmas by gifting me a Legion starter set, so I feel obligated to at least try to finish the included miniatures. Applying the "rule of cool" I started with these speeder bikes. I'm glad I did, because I'm hoping that the rest of the box set won't be as frustrating.

Anyway, here's my Sci-Fi themed entry. Nothing special here - just acrylics with some washes and a weathering pencil.

 

Points Summary:

2 x 35mm mounted figure @ 10 points = 20 points 15 pints = 30 points

Sci-Fi (Green Pass) bonus = 20 points

Total = 40 points 50 points

Minion Phil: Welcome back to the Challenge John! Totally stoked to see the delights you've brought us this week, a top notch variety of stuff off your workbench. As you know, you faintly shamed me painting these up within a month of getting the Legion core set, while mine have sat sadly in great plastic in a box for four years or so. But it gave me a good incentive to get mine done too.

I love the classics take you have on these, and your dedication to getting just the right shade of brown on the bikes to be film accurate. The subtle weathering came out great. Love them, so what's next from that core set? 

I like your backdrop too, your photos came out great.

From Tom C: US Airborne [High Adventure] (44 points)

Hello again, and a belated happy new year, if I painted faster then it would be more socially acceptable! Many of you have been a lot quicker with your output and it's great to see, thanks everyone.

What should be a simple entry in theory today, when I thought of what fit the bill for daring and risk-taking, who better than the American Airborne? Although, there is a fantastic quotation about a potential recruit listening to the recruiting officer talk of jumping out of aircraft with understandable scepticism until he heard there was hazard pay, so adventure might perhaps be put to one side... either way, no further introduction needed from me for these, I'm sure lots of us have seen Band of Brothers!

So, here we have about half the minimum size of a unit of US paratroopers which can be fielded in Flames of War, all 15mm Battlefront plastics from the Hit the Beach starter. I paired them with the plastic urban bases which Battlefront also do, thinking of Normandy towns and villages and when I have the full platoon together I'll integrate them properly. I've not painted any of the Flames of War teams before and I'm sure I'm not the first to scratch my head over the best way to do this but I thought I'd rather paint them separately, blu-tac-ing them onto Vallejo bottles. Now I'm here though I think I need to go back for extra groundwork, perhaps something I should have foreseen!

I also need to go back and do the base rims... I only did the individual paras!

The sculpts themselves have highs and lows, I think the actual machinery of producing them has, amongst other things, left the machine gunners looking like Quasimodo in French Foreign Legion service (a film I would watch). When it all works though, there are some great face expressions and details in there. I am quizzical however as to why only one of the mortar team is covering his ears, the other two are waiting quite patiently and so might find themselves joined by another metal sculpt I have to hand instead.

Quasimodo ringing a different tune now.

For the actual painting, I opted for the Normandy uniform as I felt it offered a little more flexibility. Battlefront's own Colours of War guide reckoned Olive Drab for this, surely a typo as they also reckoned this for the helmets. I used a mix of Green Grey and Khaki as recommended by a different Battlefront guide which seemed more appropriate, with Green Grey for the webbing. With hindsight, the Market Garden M1943 uniform would probably make for a better paint scheme, offering a bit more contrast with the accoutrements. It took a reasonable amount of time with the Nuln Oil lining the boundaries to try and improve the definition, hindsight would probably also have me doing this right after the zenithal prime: I liked the brighter colours and ease of coverage but the shading was a lot and I honestly feel like more work would be worth the investment but tempus fugit! 

The mortar team had their brickwork rendered,
the bazooka boys have to make do with my freehand.

In terms of scoring, we're in 15mm, with 11 upright/kneeling infantry (22 points) and 2 prone legionnaires (2 points) and the shoehorn hopefully strikes to lever high-altitude parajumping into enemy territory into High Adventure for another 20 points. 

The sights are now set on Historical Drama...

...but when will the snail get there?

Minion Phil: Hey Tom, nice tidy work on these US paras for some high adventure! These Battlefront plastics came out great, our method seems very sound and has given a nice tidy result, even if it was a bit of a faff. I don't think I saw any quasimodo-like figures in there. 

I suppose an issue with those urban bases is how to hid the small base the model is mounted on, I wonder if a little dark wash would tone down that lighter grey to match the finish on the multi base? 

44 points for your tally!

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!

From GeoffreyT: Torch and Shield (22 points)

Hello Challengers,

Before now I have been unable to reveal these spectacular miniatures by Grimskald.  These have been under wraps; but can be revealed now as Grimskald are ready to launch their product on kickstarter.

These are multi-part 3D sculpts that I was given for play testing their inaugural game "Torch and Shield".   Unfortunately I got busy and didn't get to do any testing, but did review the rules.  It is a brutal dwarven dungeon quest, where the bespoke monsters are quite fearsome and if your torch goes out bad things happen in the dark.

You will see much better painted studio minis at Cancon this weekend, where Grimskald have a display.  My rough brushwork doesn't do justice to the quality of the sculpts.

I did however paint object source lighting (OSL), which is in keeping with the game theme.  This was tricky because I would like to do the shadow side in black, but then the characters without torches would have to be entirely black, or have OSL from an object point not on their own model.  Thinking how to do the latter made my brain collapse in a gibbering heap.  So I did the clothes, floor and armour darker than I normally would so they looked kinda in the dark.  Probably could have done them a few shades darker again I think.

Did I mention I did object source lighting ? 

Points: only 20 points I'm afraid.  

There are 10 miniatures here, but six I painted before the challenge for my play test warband, I painted the leftover four guys for the challenge.

So 4 x 28mm figures = 20 points.

GT

From TeemuL: Yeah, OSL from different base will melt any brain, I think... You say there are better looking dwarfs somewhere, but I haven't seen them, so these are the best! :) I like OSL, it is tricky, I have tried it with couple of times with varied results. Four minis, but your third post of the day should see you climb the roster quite nicely, especially after I gave you two extra points for the great OSL - I'd say it at least as time consuming than hand painting shields...

From Curt: Adventurers for Mork Borg/Forbidden Psalm (45 Points)

Hi there!

I apologize in advance for monopolizing the blog with my submissions these past few days - I have a bunch of stuff that I was working on over the holiday break, but didn't get around to posting while I was minioniong, so I'm shamelessly taking advantage of the Snowlord's prerogative of being able to post on any day. 

In addition to all things root vegetable and vehicular, I've also been bitten by the Mork Borg / Forbidden Psalm bug, and so have here five hapless and homely mooks to fit that setting.

For those not in the know, Mork Borg is a Swedish designed RPG set in a comically grim, circling-the-drain, Scandinavian death metal world (in fact, there is a mechanic in the rules to count down the game sessions to its doomsday). The small format hardcover is a real treat, whose cutting edge design and layout has allowed it to scoop up eight Ennies this past year.

The Mork Borg mechanics are VERY minimalistic (only 4 stat lines for characters, and probably less than 10 pages of core rules) and as such are a doodle to get into. Character generation only takes a few minutes (which is a good as they usually get chopped up and/or eaten in fairly short order), and if you're too lazy to put in the time, you can simply use their online character generator (aptly titled, 'ScumBirther') to do the heavy lifting for you. At its core, Mork Borg is an open system, where the GM and players are encouraged to fill in the narrative with their own creativity.

Another great aspect to the rules is that their licensing is very permissive. The creators actively encourage adaptations and spin-offs of their core system. This generous licensing approach has created several creative spinoffs already, including 'Cy-Borg' (cyberpunk), 'The Last War' (Great War horror) and 'Forbidden Psalm' (Mork Borg tactical).  

Both 'The Last War' and 'Forbidden Psalm' are not true RPGs, but rather figure-based wargame-adventure systems similar to 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' and the ever-popular 'Frostgrave'. These Mork Borg spinoffs are great rules for a light, but frenetic night of gaming (and a low figure-count of only 5 in a party/faction). I've been running an online Mork Borg RPG campaign for some out-of-town friends, and hope to get some Forbidden Psalm games in with our local group soon. With this in mind, here is a faction for FS - five misbegotten adventurers, all destined, I'm sure, to come to a quick, nasty and sticky end. 

Nick the Pick

Witnail the Flail

Gavin the Glaive

Wesley the Weaver

and, Ishmael the Pickerel 

Knucklebones Miniatures has done a terrific job in capturing the oddball, comical and weirdly grotesque nature of the Mork Borg universe. In the setting, the 'heroes' are typically homely (if not hideous), but in an interesting way, and it gets even 'better' when you come across the baddies. Hopefully I'll have more Mork Borginess over the coming months.

Sorry for the rambling post! Hats off to those who persevered to the end. :)

Five adventurers for 25 points, plus another 20 for the Fantasy Set. 

- Curt

From TeemuL: As a Challenge Veteran, this post probably doesn't even make the Top 10 list of rambling posts, so it was easy to read. Partly because the game system sounds interesting, I guess I need to do some further investigation, simple rulesystems have their place and small figure count, too. The miniatures themselves are tried and tested Snowlord style, lots of colours, very smooth, but lots of contrast. It was a joy to have the master producer join our Thor's Day team.

From AndrewB: Titleless Horror (Black and white)(60pts)

Another week that was slow on the basing front!   For whatever reason, basing has always been something I don’t enjoy, so there’s another dozen or so 28mm figures and a raft of 15mm that need bases before entering, but I’ve cobbled together two speeders for my off-brand Star Wars drawing from the very best that small-town America has to offer!  

First, my entry for black and white(some shiny gray-scale in there too), a speeder for Darth Brooks’ ace pilot buddy, Day’el ‘The Intimidator’.  

I’m godawful at free hand work, and my 3D printer still needs some fine-tuning before it’s up to full potential, but it’s certainly a good piece to get banged around a table, accumulating more and more character as we go   The highlights turned out kind of ‘meh’, but maybe that’s just the rattle can paint of a galaxy far, far from the big city   

As Day’el has the good speeder, and can get Darth around wherever he needs to go, Darth’s speeder has seen better days, and Day’el’s fixer upper is currently out back of Darth’s place, just a couple trips to the parts store away from a new coat of paint.  She’s seen better days, but the ladies down at the Department of Speeder Vehicles will be handing over a new set of plates by this time next year! Everyone has that old white vehicle in their past, sometimes it just stays in the yard a while.  Here’s Darth’s- 

Little bit of galactic Bondo, that body work’s all done!  

Overall, I’m having a great time with the Star Wars project, and I can’t wait to show you all some of the figures I’ve found!  More are coming soon!

For this week, we’ll go with two 28mm vehicles, and the challenge room for a total of 60pts. This should also round out all of the green level rooms, and I’m ready to blast through the blue!  I’ll get the map up, it’s saved on my computer right now   

From TeemuL: Creative approach for Black and White, but definitely something from the silver screen, so I'll let you pass. Even though you didn't have your name on the post title. And you didn't have the title either. Or the map. What am I doing, why I'm passing this by, help me! Black is usually much more difficult to paint interesting and we can clearly see it here. The black ship is black, but old white vehicle is much more interesting with all the shades and different textures. Always nice to see some Star Wars material.

From SteveA: KoW proxies and another Skeleton Cav (Under Construction) (61 Points)

This week I knocked the dust off a couple old partly painted projects that have been in my "get back to this soon" pile for over a decade, and completed some recently printed minis I had started to paint a few months before the challenge.  So I am moving to the Under Construction studio this week to ding a few extra challenge points.

Following up from 2 undead skeleton Cavalry in my previous post, this week I completed an old GW Skeleton Box set Skeleton Cavalry conversion I had created a long while back by using green stuff to Zombify the skeletal horse model.

   Back when I had briefly played an Undead army  for Warhammer fantasy battle, I had notions that the Skeleton rider on the Zombie horse was the leader of my undead cavalry unit, whom all the other skellies on boney steads followed.  This model had been partly painted for over 2 decades before the remaining painting efforts were completed this week 

For Kings of War games I play with ByronM we use 10mm minis fixed atop the same sized regiment bases as used for the proper 28mm  KoW  ( to give a stronger impression that our battles are well attended)

For my KoW force, I had dug into an old box of miscellaneous minis to find a 54mm Demon to use as a proxy for a large monster unit.   This demon model and been partly painted and stripped of paint several times since the 90s, before I had started a new paint job on it last year but not finished until this week.

Also, in summer of 2022 I had applied a sparse few dabs of paint atop a base coat for some 10mm Despoiler Charioteers and Ogres minis,  (3d printed designs by Forest Dragon)  and this week they received their overdue finish. 

This Week's Total                                                      61 points

 x1 Skeleton Calvary  (Mounted Figure, 28mm)     = 10 points

 x1 Deamon                (Foot Figure, 28mm)            = 10 points

x11 Despoiler Ogers  (Foot Figure, 10mm)           = 11 Points

 x5 Despolier Chariot (Mounted Figure, 10mm)    = 10 Points

Studio: Under Construction                                     = 20 Points

From TeemuL: I didn't realize before, but there are two 10mm KoW players in Team Thor's Day and they are playing against each other. I should have noted this earlier, but at least these two posts are published next to each other. The skeleton rider looks good, but the proxy monster is an ace, something for the lizards to chew! I scored the deamon as 54mm mini, so then he is worth 10 points and your calculations correct.

From ByronM - 10mm KOW Salamander Army part 2 (80 points)

After missing a week of painting and posting due to real life and work craziness I am back with some additional units for my Kings of War in 10mm project.  This time with lizards riding lizards!

Here are two units of Kaisenor Lancers, or in Warhammer Fantasy terms mounted Saurus Warriors.

I kept the riders with the same colour scheme as my infantry using 3 different shades of Scale75 instant paint for the skin.  For the mounts I used 2 different shades of green instant paint.  Overall I really like this paint (a lot more than the GW contrast paints) as it is almost a wash consistency instead of a thick paint like the contrast paints.  I find it way easier to work with and coats easily and consistently.

To separate the two units a bit I used different style banners between the units and yellow feathers on one and orange on the other. Nothing fancy for them, but they work at table top distance.

 

 

Each base has 20 mounted warriors for a total of 40 10mm cavalry figures at 2 points a piece for 80 points! 

From TeemuL: Nice to have you, Byron! Hopefully real life and work craziness is easing up and you can focus on this craziness called AHPC. Lovely cold blooded lizards, your math is correct. The bases look great, full and living.

From PeterD 28mm Attaccotti (67 points)

Hey look Curt I used the watered down white glue to stick down my scree before photos this time! 

This week I have a unit of 12 Attacotti fanatics as foes for my Late Romans in Britain.  The Attacotti are a shadowy Celtic people who were most likely based in the Western Isles of Scotland.  The historian Ammianus says that they took part in the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367 (along with Picts, Scots-Irish, Saxons, Franks and Roman deserters).  Later the Notitia Dignitatum lists Attacotti Auxilia Palatina units among both the Eastern and Western Empire armies and there is a funeral dedication in Illyricum to one of these Auxiliaria soldiers.  The writings of St Jerome mention Attacotti, who are at one point he describes as being cannibals. 

Tail end Diarmaid in the blue hood turned out to be a bit needy.  His shield arm kept requiring reglueing, including just before photo time.  

In war-gaming terms, the Attacotti are typically lumped in as an option for fanatical war bands in the Scots-Irish list. I've modelled them mainly using Gripping Beast plastic Picts with add ons from GB Irish and Victrix Late Romans sets.  Gripping Beast put out plastic box sets for Irish, Picts and Welsh which all have a common set of torsos with differing heads, weapons and shields.  For instance the Picts get Emperor Palpatine hoods, crossbows and oddly shaped shields.  The Irish get bare heads and round shields and I don't what the Leek lovers get as I haven't bought a box!  A couple of figures have wrap around cloaks from the Victrix Romans.  There are also two metal Gripping Beast figures, the horn blower and standard bearer.

I will add unit tables across the back of the bases shortly.  Still tinkering with font and colour options.

Most of my Scots-Irish have beigish tunics to represent plain wool, but I've painted my Attacotti in an indigo blue for easy identification (they're in blue they must be fanatics).  I've no historical basis for this, but the seam of historical ore that I am mining is pretty thin at best. This summer I read a novel by Adrian Goldsworthy (better know as a very good Roman historian) about the Usipi .  These were Germanic auxilaries in the Flavian era who revolted and turned cannibal and pirate in the Irish Sea.  Goldsmith has them wearing black, which I lightened to being an indigo.

There's some pretty good motion in some of the plastic figures and lots of head and arm combinations to add variety.

I had some fun trying out plaids and stripes on the cloaks and added freehand shields and a flag.  I am a little annoyed with myself on the flag as I had to a point that I was happy with it and decided to add a wash for texture.  Unfortunately I rushed the timing and the design bled a bit under the wash.

Seamus on the right has one of the Victrix cloaks round his torso, as does Feargal in the middle of the left base..

As Challenge veterans will remember (and Curt will remind them).I am firmly in the free hand shields over transfers camp.  Some folks seem to get truly wonderful results from transfers (BenF) but I can't put a sticky label on a freezer container or a name badge to save my life.  And a reply enjoy researching and painting the shields.  I timed myself this week and it took me 45 minutes to go from beige base coat and plain paper to 11 shields plus the flag, including some time searching Google images.  It is not a matter of a fine eye as my handwriting's unreadable and I can't draw worth beans.  Simple geometric designs and focusing on getting the overall feel right are way more important than precision.  In my younger days I would paint a variety of shield backgrounds for each unit, but I've long since changed to a uniform background so as to identify units with varied designs.

No theme points for me this time, but 12 28mm foot figures should be good for 60 points which also count for the Carausius Emperor of Britain Side duel.

From TeemuL: What a nice and colourful lot from you, Peter! And thanks for the brief history lesson, I would have said Attaccotti is some kind of Italian food, but I do make errors from time to time... I'm not doing an error for granting you some extra points for those hand painted shields and flag. I'm quite sure there are some beards and mustaches, too. Very nice, and the basing looks good, too.

From GeoffreyT: Star Trek Ships (Yellow Brick Road)(40 points)

Hello Again fellow Challengers,

From the casting couch I duck up north to follow the Yellow Brick Road.

What is more cinematic than Star Trek Space Ships? Nothing really. So they are the vehicle to get me onto the yellow brick road.

I'm not a trekky, so had to do quite a bit of research to find what these pieces are. They came in an ebay lot with traveller 15mm figures. They are quite venerable. This one is USS Excelsior by FASA Corporation (1983).  

The metal is quite soft and it has taken quite some battering on the underside, which fortunately is hidden from a normal tabletop view. I also have a USS Reliant, but there is extensive damage on the top side and I'm not quite sure how to rescue it yet. The lost Miki's Wiki states that the original FASA casts were a very soft metal, with later Citadel recasts being more rugged.

This red ship is a Kzinti Space Control Ship by Task Force games (1979).  According to the Star Trek lore, Kzinti are space cat-people in red space ships.  Sounds a bit like red dwarf.  I wonder if they have a sentient hologram too.

This ship came with the original special round base with a cross shaped cardboard insert, but I preferred to use a hexagonal base so it will work with Starmada or Full Thrust game systems.

I'm not quite sure what scale these are, but I'm guessing they are 10 points each maybe as these two are quite hefty, but fairly easy to paint.

2 x Starships = 20 points

1 x Yellow brick road bonus = 20 points

Total = 40 points and some skipping down the road.

The Yellow brick road leaves me at the door of the Swords and Sandals Studio; we will look inside next week.

GT

From TeemuL: The second post from Geoffrey throws us in to the space, Yellow Brick Road is an excellent way to the Final Frontier, and these ships are cinematic, no questions asked. I don't say I'm a trekkie (or trekker), but I have seen quite a lot of series and episodes and movies and in general I like them. You have done a nice job here, especially on the USS Excelsior, very authentic. Being a junior minion it is difficult for me to score these, since there's no scale or measurements, but assuming those bases are about 25mm, then they are probably quite close to 28mm cavalry models. So 10 points a piece it is!