From KerryT: The Viper of Milan -Italian wars -Milanese Heavy Infantry ( 122 points & 1 squirrel)

 Morning, afternoon & evening all

I hope this will not be my last post but it depends on what happens at work tomorrow.I hope to somehow sneak another one in. I made some unexpected progress on these yesterday when I had a gastro bug and so missed golf. I have another few figures painted but dare not press on painting late into the night to try and complete them as I risk I'll incurring the wrath of Mrs VB as today is our 40th wedding anniversary!

Either way I've had a great time and cannot thank you all enough for your support and encouragement. Extra special thanks to Curt for running this great show and allowing me to take part but also to Tamsin for moderating my efforts and those of my fellow Tuesday terrors. I cannot believe how quickly the time has gone

This is my last big effort - some Milanese heavy infantry from Perry Miniatures

Flags courtesy of Pete's flags 

I've has a go at hand painting a few shields

While these are not a patch on what Darrell (of this parish) produced on the Perry Website

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product/ea-32-italian-heavy-infantry/ I avoided the temptation to convert these into a Genoese uinit with the simpler shield design

 

Thanks to Dave D and mates who on the painting chat yesterday tolerated my swearing and suggested I use a fine pen rather than a brush. Good advice, I should also have taken notice of the advice to varnish them first before applying a wash😂

I managed to rescue them with multiple coats of white and ivory after a varnish but decided I would just add  a few vipers rather than use them all as the figures are using weapons two handed and I can't see how a shield would have been manageable as well! Well that's my excuse anyway!

So in summary

24 figures @ 5 points each = 120 points

1 Squirrel

Codpieces and Ostrich feathers 120 points

Many thanks

Best wishes to all

These figures and their shields look great. It looks like you were able to successfully rescue the shields and learn something in the process, have a couple of bonus points for making the extra effort and not giving up. Congratulations on your anniversary.

-StuartL

From RayR - Almansa 1707 - Amaca and Camara's Brigades 39 points

 Yep, its more 2mm figures

Its time for more Portuguese troops

This is the Portuguese Cavalry Brigade led by General Amaca

On the left we have 2 Squadrons of Villavicosa regt and on the right a lonely 1 squadron of regt Algarbo.

3 squadrons of Almansa

and 3 of the Moura regt.

Amaca's Brigade fought in the 1st line on the right flank under Das Minas.

I might as well sneak this small infantry brigade in as well on this post.

Camara's Brigade.

Here we have 3 Portuguese infantry regts, Novo de Almeida, Viana and Castro.

Camara's Brigade fought the Centre 1st line under General Erle.

Onto the points

9 bases @ 2.5 = 22.5

3 bases @5 =15

2 Brigadiers@ 1/2 point = 1

So altogther 38.5 points

Cracking work on these figures as always, Ray. As usual, I will round up half a point for the flags. Will we see any more of these tiny troops before the final bell rings?

-StuartL

From TeemuL: Soulraid [Director's Chair] (45 points)

"So now we are almost ready to start actually shooting the movie, if you only pass the Director's Chair Challenge, you shall direct our fantastic adventure and rest will be history. I really like the colours you have chosen for your final practice movie, but please hurry up and move on. Once the Challenge is passed, of course."

For my Director's Chair Challenge Curt asked me to choose something I have neglected for a while for a reason or another... It took a while to create a shortish list and finally Snowlord asked me to paint this Warhammer Underworlds warband, which has that cute crab - when this set was released roughly two years ago, I immediately bought it, even though I don't play Underworlds (Shadespire as it usually called) and my AoS gaming has been declining since the 2nd edition. But the Director's Chair Challenge asked me to paint them and now they are ready. On top you can see the leader of the band, don't ask me who they are, since I can't remember and I don't actually play the game.

Then here is a backup warrior or something like that. I painted all these minis mainly with Contrast paints and then drybrushed with some lighter colours to tie the colours together and create universal lightning. The bases are ready made, lots of small details, which I tried to pick up. And yes, there are lots of small details on the minis, too - too many in fact, I didn't bother to pick them up all. There are some, which I should have, like the details on the purple "loincloth" of the warrior above.

Third member is a warrior, too. More close combat oriented than the previous, may be a minor hero or a champion. I like the blade of this one, wet blended with Contrasts. As you can see, I used quite a lot of colours with all of these, but they still manage to look a bit unified. I restricted my palet, no greens at all. Sometimes I like to challenge myself like this and it keeps the colour count low.

The fourth one is some kind of battle fish, I think. A bit exotic one, I think it lives in the deep and dark waters, and has that small light source to lure victims. How this one fares in battle against creatures in Mortal Realms, I don't know - probably as good as a horse, so elite. Some wetblending here too.

And then the star of the show, the crab! I thought I could paint it better, but this is how it turned out. There are different reds, but they do not show up very well - not in the camera and not in live, either.

I made an attempt to create natural colour shift on the crab, but it is barely visible, because the transition is pretty much underneath. Here you can see some it, but it doesn't look that good.

That is 5 28mm minis, all from Games Workshop for 25 points and 20 points for the Challenge location. If that qualifies, I try to conquer two more studios before the Challenge ends.

Marvellous work, Teemu. The models all look very bright and vibrant. I know the crab is supposed to be the star mini of that set, but personally I like what you have done with the fish. The black transition on the fins makes it look more lifelike. I'm not entirely sure how much use a fish will be in a dungeon, but it does look pretty ferocious. 

-StuartL

From PaulO'G: The Final Turnips (35 points)

Obviously I need to close out AHPC13 not with some Turnip related goodness. TBH additional travel recently saw me run out of time to do these overblown root-vegetable bangers the full justice (and extra crew) they deserve BUT they do add to our Turnip side challenge.

Master Gunner Molar oversees his Battery

Anyway, presenting two Rocket batteries for my Turnip army; one printed and the other other scratch built based on a completely impractical hitching post arrangement, and both protected from enemy musketry and giant crabs by gabions.

Squelchy rings his triangle to warn everyone that the Rockets are firing

The big hand painted banner is once again of the champaign foil design, naturally!

I couldn't resist a little homage to this classic!

Point wise: 2 x 28mm crewed weapons, 2 x 28mm crew figs and 8 gabions (for which I would like to claim half a point each) for a total of 20+10+4 = 34 points

Thats it for me for AHPC 13 - thanks everyone, its been a (mostly turnip filled) blast!

Awesome work on these turnip related tactical terrors, I am sure whoever (or whatever) is on the receiving end of these literally won't know what hit them. And there is a bonus point in it for the flag too.

-StuartL

Admin Post - Blogger's Spam Filter Goes Berserk

 

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the final day of the Challenge. This is just a quick admin post to make you aware of something that is going on behind the scenes.

Some of you may have noticed that comments you have left have been disappearing and then reappearing. Up until a few days ago it wasn't anything too major - a couple of comments a day were getting caught up by Blogger's spam filter.

At the start of the week, I noticed that there was a marked daily increase in the size of the spam folder, but didn't see any recent spam. Looking through the folder, I discovered that more than the usual number of genuine comments had been mistaken as spam.

On Wednesday it started to go really berserk, and I must have recovered about 100 mis-categorised comments. If I thought that was bad, Thursday was nuts - Blogger marked 449 comments as spam - 18 were actually spam, the other 431 were genuine comments. Friday was a bit calmer, with just 154 comments marked (14 actual spam, 140 genuine comments).

If I thought Thursday was nuts, I really wasn't prepared for yesterday:

• 831 comments marked as spam
  
  
• 11 were actual spam
  
  
• 820 were genuine comments (which I recovered)

My guess is that someone has tweaked the filter to catch more spam, but didn't think to check if it was catching genuine comments by mistake. Imagine the scene:

SWAT team commander: "Ladies and gentlemen of the press - our operation successfully killed all 11 gunmen."

All the reporters: "That may well be true, but you also killed 820 innocent bystanders. Would you care to comment on that?"

SWAT team commander: "........"

Judging by the spam folder this morning, it looks like it isn't going to end any time soon...wish me luck!

Update #1 - having reviewed 33 messages earlier this morning (2 spam, 31 genuine) I've just checked and as of 1100 UTC there are 276 more to review.

Update #2 - I forgot to mention that whilst a lot of the comments being caught are "recent", the majority are much older. It seems to be short comments (one, two or three words) that it is incorrectly marking as "spam".

Update #3 - by the time I got to reviewing the "spam" comments, the number had gone up to 331. While I was reviewing them, it added another 33, taking the total for that batch to 364. Only two comments were actually spam, the other 362 were genuine comments and have been restored. However, just as I finished another 3 comments came into the folder - grrrrrrrrr!

Update #4 - it's not added any since about 6pm UTC. Today's total was 659 comments caught by the filter, 9 of which were spam, 650 of which were genuine comments.

From DallasE: Some Grubby Little Creeps (45 points)

Second-last Challenge entry for me this year, and this one was done on a bit of a whim - it's a set of five Rottlings from Antipodean manufacturer Wereweevil Miniatures.

Wereweevil, of course, is the maker of some really nice "modern Squats", some of which have found a place in my 40K Squat army. These models were bought from a UK vendor on an amazing sale to pad out the Squat order. Plus, they're pretty cool in their own right! 

The main colour on these is GW Deathworld Forest, a really great sickly green colour.

These guys will fit in quite nicely with my 40K Nurgle gang or even on their own in a FANTASY game, which is the studio I've abused visited for this post.

As for the scoring, I'll take 5 points each for these 28mm models, plus 20 for the studio bonus, total 45 points.

Next I'll take a trip over to the "Books" studio for my last Challenge post!

 ____________________________

A little measured abuse now and then is not entirely a bad thing. :)

Great work on these Rottlings, Dallas. Kinda hilarious looking, but I'm they'd be equally terrifying if encountered as greeters in a dark, dank dungeon. Well done. 

From PhilH: Way out west, writing the book on it (80 Points)

Western Studio

With an America-based project anchored in the mid 18th Century, when heading out west to settle and make one's fortune was more like 'west of the Appalachians'. These formidable mountains, stretching from Georgia to modern day Maine were a natural barrier between the British possessions along the coast. French claims to lands west of the Appalachians, and occupation of the 'forks of the Ohio' at Fort Duquesne in 1754 led to the French & Indian war.

Of course frontier lands held many perils to those scratching out a living there. So for the 'Western' studio, we have some poor souls whose living scratched out on the frontier came to a very unfortunate end. 

They are Sash & Saber 'civilian casualties' set. S&S aren’t as finely sculpted as the Brigade FIW range that form most of my collection, but they have a number of useful vignettes like this. 

Books Studio 

Sticking with the FIW project, the British Crown’s colonies need some specialised troops to defend the frontiers and take the fight to the dastardly French. Here is a group trained by the man himself, Robert Roger's infamous Rangers: yep, the man who wrote the book on frontier warfare: the 28 Rules of Ranging.

The rules were the result of Rogers' blend of Native American tactics and his own innovative combat techniques, ideas that were considered revolutionary by military standards of the time. Combined with intensive training and live fire exercises, these rules created a mobile, well trained force that was capable of living off the land around it in order to sustain itself for long periods of time.

These are 28mm Paul Hicks sculpts from Brigade Games range and form one Sharp Practice group and a leader on the larger base. The chap in the smock was painted before the Challenge.

Four prone miniatures on the vignette is 10 plus the Western studio is 30. 

Six Rangers for 30 plus the Books studio makes 50.

Totalling 80 Points and getting my fourth mark from the the blue security zone. And not quite done :-)

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A very sobering, but well-realised vignette, matched with a terrific squad of Rangers (Paul Hicks' stuff is so nice to work with). Wonderful brushwork, Phil. I look forward to your final gambit. :) 

- Curt