From TomC: Back in Blue [Limbo] (220 points)

Hello everybody, belated Happy New Year, very glad to see a lot of great progress so far from fellow contestants, hopefully Santa has been good to you all over the year end! 

As always, thanks to Curt for organising the Challenge, to the Minion team for volunteering and to Tamsin for her helpful instructions (errors in following which being entirely my own fault!).

These will be a familiar sight by now for many challengers - Warlord Games’s Epic American Civil War infantry, certainly it seems I’m not the only one putting paint to these this year! These are from the free sprue attached to Wargames Illustrated a while ago, plenty enough to have kept me going!

I started these before AHPC XIII, for which my first entry was the commander and artillery piece, which also come on the frame. Seems fitting to open another Challenge with the rest! Having given these infantry a once-round of blue, I put them on hold for the duration of the challenge… and then the subsequent two years… still, not the worst offenders in my pile of potential!

I painted these the old-fashioned way and, for my sins, without any metallic paints, so I really didn’t do myself any favours in the planning phase! This was compounded by issues with the recommended paints, Night Blue (glossy, which I realise now I cannot bear!) and Andrea Blue (suspiciously thin), which led to me to redo the blues with various Citadel offerings.

Not content with the problems I’d caused for myself, I continued by being unable to find the paper banners which came with the magazine at the critical juncture. Doubtless, these will resurface at an inopportune moment, but for the meantime I did my best to freehand the stripes on Old Glory and cobble something together for the regimental banner. This was a combination of Games Workshop decals I took apart, reassembled and painted over. I appreciate that whilst this has some of the right elements (eagle, shield, NFL logo), it does perhaps look a little modern… at least there’s something on the flag!

I did some minor work on these before assembly, there are only a couple of variations of ‘strips’ provided by Warlord, so there is a risk of repeating stands quite quickly. I delayed this by cutting some of the strips in half to mix them up, if I recall correctly, there are a couple of points where this can be done with a minimum of grief, and I do think it helps break up the repeated sculpts. Probably not possible with the Epic Waterloo collection alas!

In terms of scoring, there are 100 wee lads in the unit, at 2 points a head being the going rate for Warlord’s ‘Epic scale’ infantry. The commander and gun above are just included for completeness, so 200 points for the submission, with an additional 20 for the ‘Limbo’ bonus category that these sadly neglected Federals hopefully merit! All in, should be 220 points?

As a final note, my laptop has failed and so I have resorted to the mobile for this post - apologies for any issues with it as a consequence!

TeemuL: Yes, Warlord's Epic scale indeed is 15mm or two points a head, so you got yourself a nice haul of points here. You have now accomplished your target of 250 points in just two entries and in less than a month. But don't worry, me, myself and the whole Tuesday crew encourages and expects you to continue painting until end of March.

The models themselves look nice, you have found a nice blue in the end. I hope you find your flags, too. Your cutting the strips and reorganising the troops a bit gives quite natural look on the force. I have to remember that when I make some experiments with that scale and the freebie sprues from WI magazine myself. :) Compiling a post using mobile phone is very painful, I feel you. I forgive you for not adding any labels and added couple of suitable by myself. Feel free to edit, if needed.

From PaulSS: Cold War BAOR supports [Limbo] (40 points)

 

Just like my last post this entry contains figures that were primed ready for painting in Challenge XIV but have remained in the box untouched, so I think are worthy of having been in Limbo.

Seven Days to the River Rhine has also had some of my gaming attention this past year so it was a chance to add these Pendraken Models to the BAOR forces.

A FV432M for indirect fire support and a trio of Milan teams.

Nine figures, three crew-served weapons and a vehicle in 10mm should score me 24 points, plus the 20 point bonus for the location.

TeemuL: Paul's second post today looks great, of course the infantry is very hard to see, when they are hugging the ground, as they should. And I'll count them as prone figures, too, so snipping couple of points away. But they are fitting for Limbo, of course, and I'm happy that after waiting for a year you have decided to paint them, since they look great, as I said. I think from 3 feet the excellent basing materials will make it realistically difficult for the opponent to see what they are actually facing at. :)

Let's see if we get any other entries today...

From MilesR: Post #1 French Foreign Legion in 15mm (84 Points)

 

Its a bit of a slow start for me this challenge and it's one where I'm focused on clearing out stuff from the lead pile (which is rather large).  First up are 42 15mm French Foreign Legion troops fro the 1960's

I actually forgot who the manufacture is - they could be AB or Eureka and I bought them maybe 4-5 years ago.

One of my friends at the wargaming club is doing an "AK-47" Republic project and these lads will see table top service there in his make believe African Nation.

The group has some heavy weapons in the form of a machine Gun, Bazooka and mortar but since these are super simple no points for them.

I used army painter SpeedPaint 2.0 for thses and I'm still trying to figure out if I like it or not.

Anyway, I'm finally on the board with 84 points!

***

SPECIAL EDITION - Hello everyone - Wednesday Minion GregB here with a Thursday appearance! Thursday Minion Teemu has kindly allowed me to drop this in today, as it was intended to be Miles' opening post for his AHPC XV run, but ended up delayed due to a misunderstanding on my part. Thanks Teemu, and apologies to Miles!

Very nice Miles, and I have to admit I experience an extra layer of intrigue around "AK-47 Republic". These are the Peter Pig rules, correct? They seem so...well, kind of mysterious, kind of understated. I think this is a system that divides the table into squares/sections in some way? They seem to have a whole suite of rules for different eras, but I confess they are a mystery to me and have not tried them. 

So with all of that in mind, I will be keen to hear your thoughts on "AK-47 Republic". I'm sure the imaginary regime involved with these French Foreign Legion soldiers will be completely upstanding and face no complications at all...

84 points for you - and apologies for the delay!! Great opener Miles! We'll get you back to standard Wednesday timing next week!

GregB

From DaveD: Ardennes project [Limbo] (76 points)

Cough, splutter, wheeze, rasp - that damn Lurgy has me by the throat at the moment. My first post of the New Year sees a revisit to the 15mm Ardennes 44 project. I have been acquiring things for a few years to create a winter themed table. While of course it hadn’t snowed at the start of Battle of the Bulge it wasn’t long in coming. So what the hell, let’s jump right in creating a whole load of new terrain and figures - storage wars can be dealt with later - I hope.

What better to start the Germans figures off for this than Skorzeny’s Kommandos kitted out in captured American kit and sowing confusion and panic on the roads, or maybe sneaking off to kidnap Ike .

2 sets of Jeep /crew stands with signposts and a separate foot figure stand - which way to Bastogne?

Next up a wrecked up Sherman 

While rooting around in the stash for these I also found Oddball from Kelly’s Heroes - issued as Eightball by Battlefront as a limited edition tournament marker. Well he might just be in search of a bank over winter so that’s along too .

A longer gun, large speaker and a mad Canadian going Woof - what’s not to like. 

So here they all are :-

In addition I have something for the Limbo bonus round. Pre Covid I had sourced a second hand Faller church that I wanted to use for this project. It’s been picked up and put down many times over the years as it needed repairs and more of a paint job than I cared to do. That  has now been done while doing the rest of the buildings for this table over the last few days along with the winterising of it . 

I raised the height a little with 3mm base and 4mm foam board to make it look better optically.

Stained glass painted - daft but fun.

Lighting added too . Yes bonkers 

The 8x4 table is progressing nicely now. With the 9 buildings all being completed this week and winterised (I am sticking to my original winter paint/terrain plan regardless of points awarded), the roads and trees were done pre Xmas. I still have fences, hedges and a stream to complete and of course some troops. I will be looking  to repurpose some of the summer project excess in due course.

I did mention storage wars, and I have been working on that too. I had an empty 48L Really Useful Box that was pretty deep (around 300mm ) so I had the good guys at Pendraken make me up some stackable box inserts which the majority of my trees and small terrain will go under and stack and fill the box. I should get pretty much everything terrain wise in the one box I hope.

Pleased to have got the scoreboard moving as I have had the dread lurgy for nearly 3 weeks and it’s been a proper nasty bout which isn’t easing much - so I haven’t commented on posts much but I will try and catch up. Now to decide what’s next .

Scoring :-

4 x 15mm Vehicles = 32

6 x 15mm for figures = 12 

8 passengers - 8 

Bonus round Limbo  = 20 

Huzzah! Cough, splutter!

TeemuL: Winter forces seem to be a theme this year, which is very fitting for a winter challenge. Unfortunately lurgies and coughs seem to fit the winter, too. It seems to affect your math skills, too, but I'll correct it for you. :) And then give you couple of bonus points for stained glass and overall effect.

Nice powder snow on your Ardennes project and I envy your winter table and storage war solution. Especially the church look very frozen, a great effect.

From JamesM: Crimson Fists snipers and APC (46 points)

Hi folks,

This is my first post of the challenge, as the days have just been speeding past. 

In an ever-so-slight shift in direction, I've recently been working on filling out and updating a 40k Primaris Space Marine Crimson Fist army I picked up for a song a couple of years ago at a show in Newark. I believe it worked out as over £400 worth of okay painted minis for £50. These are mainly used to play 'One Page Rules'. 

Unfortunately, the paint jobs needed some work, and in true megalomaniac I also started expanding the collection. As such, I've some units to paint from scratch and some that need significant re-work. 

The before:

With our Xmas club game rapidly approaching, I updated (significantly) the paint scheme of an already painted Impulsor APC. This vehicle received some 3d printed upgrades, mainly in the form of an enclosed rear hull. The basing was redone to match my marines, decals added, etc. 

Hopefully, the difference is obvious!

As I knew some of the players for our Xmas game would be fielding tanks, some emergency anti-tank firepower was needed. So I painted up a squad of Primaris 'Eliminators'. These were 2nd hand models, re-based and painted. Effectively, all three are armed with 'las fusil' weapons, although the Sargeant model actually has a bolter converted by adding a 'silencer' (a bit of 3D printed pipework). 

In 40k terms, this is a 3 man squad mounted on 40mm bases. 

Forgive the amount of brown. My logic was that the camo cloaks should reflect the terrain. In this case, the rusty environs of the deep hive - I plan to use my existing Necromunda terrain. 

Now for the points. Measuring the standing figures, they are 1 or 2mm short of 40mm from base of feet to top of head. Much closer to 40mm than 28mm. So 3 x 40mm infantry (21 points) and one 40mm vehicle (25 points). Total of 46 points. 

TeemuL: The scale creep of GW is real, and it has been real for some time. I'm fine with that, but it makes the scoring in this Challenge a pain. :) I'm quite sure several Primaris marines have been scored as 28mm minis, even though they are significantly larger - I have painted some myself. But I'll score them as 40mm minis and keep the responsibilities. A few editions ago Space Marines were not supposed to be using any camo, just going forward with their striking colours, but this has changed, too. Your brown camo cloaks look great and fit the bases.

From SimonG: Some Heretics and a Hellion (45 points)

Wow, my third submission already and time is flying by (my target somehow appearing to move equally quickly in the opposite direction). Anyway this week I'm returning to my 15mm Cathar Crusade project with a stand of five mounted Cathar knights from Khurasan Miniatures.  

Obviously being supporters of the heretical Cathar's this contribution fulfils the requirements for the Sixth Circle of hell, the heretics. I will however require some transport to this location and have called upon the services of Malebranche to give us a lift!

Malebranche, or "Evil Claws" [1]

This is once again a Black Rose Wars Inferno supplement figure in appx. 28mm. He's a rather ancient Egyptian inspired devil and not a particularly well cast plastic figure with rather soft detail and some obvious mold lines that I should have removed. Anyway it was a good chance to experiment with a red wash on a corpse like skin to get the devil tone I wanted. I also enjoyed his colourful eyes and claws -- plus of course his bright necklace!

The knights are really neat sculpts and paint up very well. The principal on this stand is Isoard de Die d'Aix-Artaud [2]. 

I rather liked how his hand painted/sketched (0.03mm black pen) heraldry came out. Less so my attempt at a sillitoe tartan (the blue and white one) -- quite effective on the pleats at the skirt level but a bit of a mess above!

My favourite when doing knights is always the horses, giving each one a distinct character and look, and of course those deep brown doey eyes!

So that's all for this week I'm afraid -- my pace is sorely lacking, far from getting quicker I seem to be taking more time with each figure every year! I will struggle on however and strive to achieve my target.

For this week my contribution is only 45 points -- five mounted 15mm at 4 points each plus the 20pt sixth circle bonus, then another 5 for one 28mm devil that I used to get me to the sixth circle. I may have to skip a week dealing with some family issues but hope to be back soon with some more Jewish Wars Romans with some fearsome war machines!

[1] The back drop for our little devil is Sandow Birk's illustrated Inferno, very apposite with fires where I used to live in LA. It's a re-intepretation of Dante in modern slang with illustrations that tip the hat at Doré but set in a mash up of the major cities of California -- really worth a look if you have the chance.

[2] Isoard de Die d’Aix-Artaud (c.1190-1243), Lord of Montmaur. Isoard was the son of Guillaume I d’Aix-Artaud de Die (c.1165-1230), who also fought in the campaign, and Raynaude d’Aix. Their holdings were in the County of Diois in Provence. Isoard was present at the siege of the Château de Beaucaire, a siege remarkable for the fact that Simon de Montfort was both besieged and besieger (some of his troops were in the castle under siege while he in turn gave siege to the besiegers!)

TeemuL: Excellent knights, Simon. I'm not sure if tartan and other complex designs in 15mm would be anything else than a mess, but you have proved it otherwise. Your horses look great, as well as their eyes. I personally struggle with horses, trying to close my eyes when deciding they are done... I'll score your devil as a cavalry model, because he is rather big and has wings etc. And he is pretty, too, in his own devilish way.

From MartinC: Anything can happen in the next half hour (222 points)

Another weird week of painting and gaming. First up the most important news. I played a wargame against my brother in law, also named Martin and a day younger than me. We played Saxons vs Vikings, using Kings of War (loads of dice). He loved it and we played 4 times. I walked him through the rules and the principles, and obviously tried to ensure he won. I one the 1st battle on a fluke, I needed a double 1 and then a 3 on 2D6 to survive my morale roll and got both. He won the 2nd one. For the 3rd game I played properly and beat him, explaining my tactics along the way. For the 4th game I set up and then got him to set up and explain his tactics,which were good. I played to his tactics and he slaughtered me. Playing him again today and have bought him some for his birthday, so saxons to paint in the next month.

Actual painting has taken place.

As a boy, and grown up, I loved Supermarionation, thunderbirds, captain scarlet, etc. My favourite was Stingray, so it was with great joy that I purchased an Aquaphibian Terrorfish submarine at Partizan

It's a 3D print and I love it

The original paint job is a bronze green colour but it was a bit boring so gave it a blue head. Not sure it worked

I have a couple of units of Egyptian style skeletons to paint. These are TT Combat 

Another unit to follow next week, may build up to an army eventually 

My Barbarossa forces continue but I'm out of bases and need to collect my next order

A truck

BT7s

T34's

T26's

Scores on the doors

Terrorfish - 28mm vehicle =20 

Skeletons  - 20 x28mm foot = 100

10mm tanks - 17x6 = 102

TeemuL: I barely know half the things you love and this submarine is a total mystery to me, but it is pretty. It looks like a decorative item instead of a piece of wargame, which should be taken as a compliment! The skeletons look dusty and worn as they should, but your 10mm vehicles are eye candy, too. All the details and highlights, well photographed, too.

And speaking of the mysteries, your title is a mystery, too. Is that a quote from a TV show or is it a hint towards your games with other Martin or something else? The public is nervously waiting for explanation - or at least me. :)