KenR : 1/700 WW2 Liberty Ship (40 points)

 

It's been a very slow start for me this year and in an attempt to get things going I've changed tack, and done something Naval to get things moving. I started a 1/700 Project towards the back end of last year and I have a few ships built and primed ready for this challenge, so here is the first one.

The model is a 1/700 scale Liberty Ship called John W Brown from Trumpeter. If you look very closely you will see some 1/700 sailors on the deck which are from a company called Eduard. The actual ship still survives today as a museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Liberty ships were mass produced in the US to a British design during WW2 and 2,710 were built and certainly had a major part to play in keeping the West supplied during the conflict.

The crew in this shot are the closest I could get 1/700 figures to YMCA 😉

Points wise I'm not sure looking back no one has done a WW2 ship in this scale before. To give an idea of size the base is 22cm x 6cm. Time wise it took me a whole day which is about the time it would take me to do 6 to 8 28mm so I'm guessing 30 to 40 points, don't for get the 10 1/700 figures 😆 I've got a few of these I hope to do during the Challenge and I'm already working on Bismark and a British Destroyer.

I'm currently working on a unit of 28mm French Chasseur a Pied which I hope to have done soon.

Today on Jeopardy the answer is KenR.  The question of course is Who in their right mind tries to game with 1/700 scale WW2 ships?  And I speak as someone who has run a ship for ship refight of the Run to the South at Jutland and someone who set out to paint up every Allied destroyer that served in the Med in 1941.  If you are not aware, Yarkshire Ken here has been collecting fleets in this scale and does  games with them (see his blog and other social media channels for more evidence).

Sanity questions aside, your work here is stunning and really belongs in a Museum not a war-game table.  The bashing weathering and crew (again are you nuts???) are things to behold. 

 But seriously where are you planning to play these games On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at?

From RossM: 6mm Greek Bolt Throwers 8 pts

They say that at a beginning is a delicate time, well as this is my first post for AHPC XII it is indeed that. The pictures below are of 6mm Greek Bolt Throwers from Baccus Miniatures and are not the 15mm EIR Legionnaires originally planned for this post

It always amazes me how much detail that 6mm figure producers can show in their product and these are no exception. The actual bolt throwers are two part kits easily assembled and I even managed not to glue myself to them - it's happened before on bigger kits to be fair. 

On the tabletop these may seen as hard hitters however in terms of points for the challenge they are the first step of many. What is important is that they are that first step allowing more to follow. 

Based on 40mm squares for DBA and ADLG these will be a part of the ongoing Macedonian and Punic Wars project that has been bubbling under for several years now. 

As my first entry these 6mm warmachines and crew will net 8 points (1.6% of my challenge total). 

Looking forward to picking up some pace now on the painting front and working on both those pesky EIR Legions and some 28mm Wars of the Roses Men at Arms for future entries. 

Cheers for now, Ross

Ross Varus where are my Legions?!?!  Please excuse the Brian Blessed moment.

Lovely little bolt shooters Ross, they turned out very well and you've based them nicely.  They should do good service clearing Scythians from river banks, as Anti-Elephant weapons and skewering Cataphracts.  There seem to be a lot of varied Ancient and Dark Age Late Antiquity/Early Medieval projects on the hoof this year which is always great to see.  

I heart you on the fiddly little bits and gluing fingers together challenges.

From Matt T - New army for a new challenge - [ 60 points ]

Right then, I'm blaming my brother for me starting this new army. I've got an idea for a new pair of matched armies he said. Mongol vs Khwarazmian Empire. 

Now I had no idea who the Khwarazmian Empire were. Turns out they were a Turko-Persian Sunni Empire that got rolled up by the Mongols in pretty quick time. However looking at the Basic Impetus army list they are quite an interesting army. The army is going to be all cavalry which I don't have, colourful, as well as an option to take an elephant. Sounds great, I'm all in. Hopefully at some point my brother will get Mongols on the table.

Wikipedia link for the Khwarazmian Empire

The first units I have painted are a couple of bases of Turkoman light cavalry. Figures are from Gripping Beasts Armies of Islam range. In the army list they are quality light cavalry so I have opted to put three figures on each base.

6 x 28mm mounted figures @10pts each = 60 points

Smallish start but I'm off and running.

Family members, taking blame for everything since the dawn of time.  Great start Matt and welcome to this year's Challenge.  I think the biggest problem with this army is remembering how to spell Khwarazmian!  I had a pleasant diversion down the Wiki-history rabbit hole following your link.  I had met the Khwarazmians as the folks who captured Jerusalem, caused the VII Crusade and obliterated the Franks at La Forbie.  Turns out that was just the rump of the horde, who went west and turn mercenary after being flattened by the Mongols.

Anyway enough blather, these horse archers are really spiffy.  I escpecalliy like tail end Mustafa firing the Parthian shot.  Nice crisp bright colours and well posed and based figures.  Looking forward to more of these.   I am an ancient gamer too but I've not tried Impetus yet.  We've used Hail Caesar in the past but more recently have gone with To The Strongest which work well and give a good fast game.  

From PaulSS: Under Construction - WWII US Infantry for O Group (122pts)

 

When O Group came out  I was very interested in playing, but none of my 28mm collections would work without a serious expansion of forces. 

Over the past couple of years I've been playing Seven Days to the River Rhine using 1/144 scale and have built up quite a collection with lots of terrain, so, when I saw that Victrix had released a load of WWII stuff in this scale I decided to do O Group with these as I already had plenty of suitable terrain.

My first foray into this "Under Construction" project is a set of six patrol markets that are used in O Group and an infantry company comprising a HQ and 9 sections of infantry.

Here are a few close ups of the troops posed in front of some Battlescale buildings I painted last year.

In O Group the scale appears to be about 1:2 so my infantry sections are four figures on a 30mm round base.

One pack of the Victrix US infantry provides enough figures to deploy a battalion of infantry with several support options. I've ordered some guns and tanks from Pendraken to add some heavier support to the force.

For the patrol markers I used a pair of figures on a 20mm base

I've also picked up a pack of the German infantry and the plan is to have enough painted for a game by the end of the challenge.

51 12mm infantry with the location bonus should be 122 points and another Squirrel point.

Squirrel Duel Tally: 3 (40K Kroot, Gaslands, WW2 US)

Some very fine painting on these small scale WW2 figures Paul.   You have created some nice little vignettes and they fut well with those luuuuvly buildings from last year.

 The 12mm scale is a new one to me although I had some Western Desert stuff in 10mm and found that it gave a good balance of detail and price.  Will the Pendraken stuff fit ok, I thought their work was all 10mm?

Sylvain has been threatening us with O Group so I'm looking forward to giving them a go and interested on hearing how other's game go.  I am really hoping that you get your two forces to a point that you can given us an AAR before the Solstice.

From Edward G - My first post, two 28mm chaps gone a Viking in Black and White [30pts]

 Hello all!! 

I'm very very happy to be back for my third challenge, it's such a wonderfully inspiring event every year :) This year is certainly the most challenging for me to date. Long gone are the dreams of beating my +1000pts total from challenge 10. This year not only do we have the doggo to keep me busy, on the 3rd November our little family welcomed our son, Frederick Peter, into the world. And while he's wonderful in every little way, he does keep us busy and target reduces hobby time :D

To kick off this year, I had planned to start the tour of the great film lot in Under Construction, but with a personal deadline of this Monday looming, I realised the minis would themselves still be under construction. So I dived into the lead pile, looking for some pre-primed minis that could be painted up in a couple of hours. With luck, I found these two chap. Both are Reaper mini metals from a long long paused Saga project. I decided that as these chaps were from the venerable depths of my lead pile (deeper than the 10yr country+house move re-boxing strata!) that these two should most certainly appear in black and white!

Without further ado, I present this years retro smash hit...(with a poster made by AI image generators, amazing, but also honestly rather scary that machines can do this. Soon they will be painting our minis for us!) 

Staring Olaf Olafson

And Ulric Ulricson

With amazing scenes and captivating dialogue such as:

Olaf: "Ulric, why is your left-hand axe bent?"
Ulric: "Why isn't your left-hand axe bent?! It is all the rage down in Oslo don't you know."

Olaf: "oh, I don't have a left-hand axe"

DUMM DUMM DAAAAA!!!!

Back to real life, I hope that this year my photos are better than previous years. I am trialling a new system in the basement, which my wife describes as "Quite a set up", so I believe she approves. I might need another lamp for the opposite side, so I will see where in the house I can grab one for the next photo shoot! 

As for points, I hope my maths is correct in counting the following:

- 2 x 5pts for 28mm foot figures = 10pts

- Location bonus for Black and White = 20pts

Total = 30pts

All the best until next time!

Ed

Great to have you back posting this year Ed and congrats on the new arrival.  Wishing you lots of joy and sleep.

Fine work on these venerable Reaper metals they came out nicely in their greyscale.  While I know they were banged up to meet a deadline I can see these appearing as undead in a DnD or similar game.  Your photos came out well.  Good luck raiding the house to improve the lighting.  I find that if I filch something that my wife will notice, sometimes it prompts a trip to Gnome Depot to pick top something that she thinks will work way better for me (and sh'e normally right).

Monday Minion Hopes for the Best

 

How's your first week of 2023 gone?  Mine included driving 550 kms to purchase emergency Oboe supplies and a first day of lectures following a 4:30 am airport run.  Oh yes and one of my assigned classes is first year Calculus featuring 175 students that have only registered because they have to.

On the good news side we look to have a good line of posts in a variety of scales and themes.

• Ed makes his first appearance with some Norsemen.
• Paul brings us some SciFi supplies and the start of a new Project.
• Sylvain has a weekly offering of Desert War Micro-Armour.
• Matt educates us on some of Histories Also-Rans.
• Ken (of course) goes STUPID big.

From DallasE: 40K-Scale Reaver Battle Titan (Sci-Fi: 160 points)

OK, so I have to admit that I wanted to leave this as a points bomb for the end of the Challenge, but I've been convinced to post it up now, and honestly I'm so excited about it I think it would be hard to sit on the post anyway.

In any event, here it is - a 3D-printed 40K-scale Reaver Battle Titan. I've always wanted a Reaver in 40K-scale and now I have one!

Here is the story behind it. A couple months ago I was browsing Warhammer classifieds on kijiji (free ad website, like Craigslist) and stumbled on a guy who was advertising 3D-printed proxy Titans. I'm talking Warlords, Reavers, and Warhounds. Anyway we got together and I saw that the models were decent quality, so I got him to print me one along with some extra weapons (actually I got two, and you might see the other later in the Challenge...?) 

The model required assembly of course, but not nearly as much assembly as a resin one from Forgeworld. Still fiddly in places but I would compare it to the difficulty level of the new tiny Reaver Titans from the Adeptus Titanicus (2018) game. Of course I magnetized the weapons with 3/8" neodymium magnets, which mostly worked OK.

I painted the God-machine as Legio Krytos - a Titan legio affiliated with the Iron Warriors space marine legion, which swore its fealty to the Warmaster Horus in the Horus Heresy. Krytos was the legio in whose colours I painted my AT18 titans as well.

Colours used: Vallejo German Uniform, Rakarth Flesh basecoat with Pallid Wych Flesh on the off-white bits, Leadbelcher on the metal parts, Brass Scorpion for the brass trim, Steel Legion Drab highlighted with Rakarth for the scrolls, the whole washed with Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade. I added some light dirt streaks with my new AK "Streaking Dirt" pencil and sponge chips with German Camo Black Brown. Dust was drybrushed on the feet with Rakarth.

Part of the coolness of Titans (and other ridiculously large war machines) is that they are all individually named. I chose "Dark Apostle" as the name of this Reaver, and that translates into "Warhammer Latin" as "Apostolus Tenebris". At least that's my best guess, anyway. The Krytos insignia on the shield is from the AT18 Legio Krytos decal sheet.

The model is actually pretty nicely detailed. Assembly was straightforward - mostly using superglue but some of the structural elements were secured with JB Kwik-Weld two-part epoxy.

How about this detail on the pistons on the backs of the legs!

Here's a good view of the Melta-Cannon arm weapon. This is actually pretty heavy (it has separate barrels inside the shroud) and the magnets I used to secure it could stand to be a bit stronger (those are on order). 

I used some decals from the Imperial Knights sheet to detail the weapon.

Speaking of Knight decals, I'd wanted to use the Aquila decals from the sheet on the pauldrons, but they were way too small. So I had to freehand the aquila onto the pauldron. The small cogged skull is from the Knight decal sheet though.

The other weapon is a very awesome looking laser blaster. I painted this to match the laser blasters on my AT18 Reavers.

More decal detail on the laser blaster.

I just HAD to put a "VIN plate" on the Titan as well.

And no Reaver Titan is complete without a massive power fist!! It was a little trickier to fit this one - I had to cut apart a spare arm piece to make a magnetized extension for the fist.

It's a big fist!!

Penetrating stare from the Reaver head. Such a cool look, but sadly there is no internal detailing here.

Group shot with my old Armorcast Legio Metalica Reaver. The new 3D printed model absolutely dwarfs it. You can see the Princeps and Moderati on the buildings in front of it. The scale of this Titan is massive.

Here's where the scale really shows. At front left is an Iron Warriors standard bearer and at right is an AT18 Reaver. The 3D printed Reaver is a little over 16" tall.

I'm going to post this model in the Sci-Fi studio but as I don't think a modern 3D-printed Titan has ever been painted in the Challenge, I'm going to suggest a tally for the Titan and extra weapon of 200 points.

Dallas this is fantastic, a proper monster of a figure. I've checked the annals of the challenge and only 1 28mm Titan has been posted, that was slightly smaller (a mere 13.5 inches high) and that was awarded 100pts. With that in mind I've reduced the value a little to 140pts for the figure plus Sci Fi bonus.

Martin 

From StuartL - If I Could Turn Back Time - 1980's - 55 Points

My third and final post for this week is an epic of time travel and a lucky find in my bits box. 

When I was looking over the guidelines for this part of the studio I was absolutely stumped, I didn't get into the hobby until the 90's, and most of my collection comes from well after that. I went through all my boxes of stuff, or at least the ones I could reach and started searching. Eventually I found a model that I assume I picked up in a job lot on eBay or something as I have no recollection of buying it. It looked old, so I snapped off the base and sure enough the slotta-tab showed me that I had a mini to enter. 

And a close up:

I decided to go for some bright garish colours as that is what I recall about clothing from my childhood. A bright green uniform, a tasteless pink headband and bright blue stripes down the sides. I'm not sure what the model is supposed to be, maybe an early 40K Imperial Guardsman or something.

Thinking about the 80's and movies got me thinking about one of my all time favourite franchises, Terminator. While they only made the original 1984 movie and then the classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day, it is my dearest hope that we will one day get a third entry into this series.* Now, I don't have any actual Terminator minis, but I do have the next best thing, Necrons.

Either inspired by or ripped off from the Terminator movie, Necrons are one of the factions of Warhammer 40,000. Tough, armed with incredibly potent hi-tech weapons and almost impossible to put down, they are also really easy to paint.

The Necron range got a bit of an update when 40K's 9th edition dropped a few years back and this is one of the models from that update. I forget the exact name for it, but it is a lieutenant type leader for your infantry units. To help make him stand out, it got a bit more bling around its neck and forehead. There is also a skull peeking out from behind the grass at its feet. Speaking of Skullz, if memory serves Necron Noggins count towards the Skullz side duel, so I will be adding 7 to my tally today.
 

Scoring time.

7x 28mm minis @5 points = 35 Points

1980's @20 points = 20 Points

Total = 55 Points

My side duels:

Squirrels - 11

Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Dwarves, Fire Giants, WW2 Polish, Daemons, Viridians, Vasa, Junkers, Turnips, Necrons

Skullz - 8

Turnips - 60 Points

That's all from me for this week, but I'll be heading off in the Limo again to my next destination soon.

*I am aware that several other movies called Terminator were made, I just choose to ignore them as they are clearly trash.

Great work on digging the cool old figure out. Do like the terminator types, love a man with a big gun