SteveA: Trench Crusade Hell Knights

Fresh from the Trenches of the Crusade and the Court Of the Seven Headed Serpent I bring you HELL KNIGHTS!

I had a painting plan.... I had mapped out what minis to paint every week to progress thru the AHPC Devine Comedy themes and I had a hand full of minis in stuck on dowels being painted for that plan.... but then after a few recent inspiring chats with ByronM and our friend Mike, and after  the STLs from the minis from the Trench Crusade Kickstarter became available (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1405364378/trench-crusade),  well dang nabbit I went and done shot myself with the Squirrel Gun point blank to my paint brushes!   These minis presented here are less than a week off ByronM's  3d printer and fell into me grubby mitts just last Thursday, all while I have my modest pile of unpainted grey lead and plastic that have been 'round 30 years  still awaiting a loving lick o' paint...

I don't think I am using Speed Paints and the slap-chop technique to their intended efficient use, as I started with the foolish assumption that I could bang out these with a quick layer or two of slap-chopped speed paint action, then return to my original paint plan for this week... but after the first layers of Army Painter Speed Paint (Enchanted Steel, Slaughter Red, Bony Matter, Hoplite Gold)  my old 'Eavy Metal inspired painting habits kicked in as hard as an alcoholic falling off the wagon into a beer-fest where beer cures cancer and multiple layers of dry brushing, regular paint detailing and speed paints used as washes ensued for a few many more hours than I can in good conscious call a 'quick paint' ( and yes... I also confess to 2nd degree aggravated use of  GM's Agrax Earth shade and Nuln oil) .  I chased a moderately rusted look, and desaturated colors aimed to reflect these Hell Knights do not return to base for an armor polish and a shower, but they ain't falling apart from ill repair  any time soon.

Rust and weathering, many are the techniques and tools and products to make a mini look abused or ancient, and it seems many are the rusty lessons I must learn to well serve many of the minis in my queue.  Happily I found that a dry brush of Vallejo 'Orange Fire' game color dry brush over a metallic based pre-treated with a layer or two of speed paint browns provides me a satisfying rusty orange that I can confidently use to succeed the role of my ancient pot of old 90's Citadel Orange Ink in my rusty endeavors. 

Trench Crusade, another game for more minis and a deepening of the back log of grey to slay, a happy problem to have!

Total 21 Points

x3 40mm Foot Figure, Trench Crusade Hell Knights (3x7pts) 

From SteveA:Frostgrave 28mm

 For the theme of Greed I dug into my pile of grey and dusty minis to find what I could paint up to hint at a moment from a story telling of those who crave the gleam of gold, those who Greedily  hoard treasure and those who wish to permanently borrow that same hoard.

A mini of a Beholder looming over a couple treasure chests sparked my inspiration for the theme of Greed, and 4 gold chest objective markers and a couple of loot topped tables I felt would help support convey the sense of "mine all mine" to go along with the beholder's Mohahaha face, as it encountered the two wandering adventures who had been vacuuming up loose loot and gear on their way down into the dungeon depths.

I used a combination of Army Painter speed paints and regular paints for these minis. I am a pleased with how the Army Painter's 'Blood Red' speed paint over a grey/white dry brush quickly established satisfactory slap-chopped  red flesh tones for the beholder flesh.  I find the Army Painter 'Hardened Leather'  speed paint also serves well for dark wood tones, perhaps more so than for leather.  After stocking up on more Army Painter speed paints this year, I now find myself using their 'Pallid Bone', 'Sand Golem' or 'Boney Matter' where in past I would have typically relied on GW's Agrax Earth shade for liquid talent.

The Beholder is a 3D print ByronM provided, yet again a case of me having a few too many spare moments on a game night to poke thru his works in progress and backlog of minis on deck, resulting in me asking him "how much $ to print me a copy of this mini you have here".  While FrostGrave does not actually have a Beholder with the game's Bestiary,  I think as a "Major Demon" old one and ten-eyes here is fit for purpose.

The other minis are from the mists of time when Mordheim was new and in its prime.  The chests of gold if I recall correctly are from a sprue of Mordhiem minis, the tables are from a blister pack of scatter terrain impulsively bought from my favorite 90's local hobbyshop.   

The two loot laden 'Men At Arms' I will use for Frostgrave, are conversions I crafted about 20 years ago -  both to use when playing Mordhiem, and also for use in a Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play campaign I was game mastering back then  (where I wanted some minis that could somewhat represent the loot laden players). The loot and gear on these minis was a combination of some crude green stuff sculpting and a raid on my bits box.

Total 40 Points

x1 Beholder (28mm Artillery) = 10 pts

x2 Man At Arms ( 28mm Foot Figure)  = (2x5) =10 Pts

x2 Tables scatter terrain, x4 Gold Chest Markers = 0pts

ByronM - Warhammer 40k Armigers and Trench Crusade

 Today I have a fully 3d printed submission for your enjoyment, all happening in Grim Dark Universes.  

First up we have my first group of Warhammer 40k Armigers, in for form of a cadre of 3 Armiger Helverins. I have wanted to do a new Warhammer army for a long time, specifically an Imperial Knight army as they have such a low model count, however the models are all the typical insane GW pricing.  However, I recently found some great 3d files for Armigers, so I could print my own rather than dealing the GW.  So, Away we go!!!  Expect more to follow.

I could not decide on a colour scheme for these, but found some colours a while ago from Scale75 that I fell in love with the shades and bought them with no real idea what I would ever use them for.  I randomly saw them when trying to figure out colours for these and decided now is the time, so from darkest to lightest I used Scale75 Anthracite Gray, Abyssal Blue, Caspian Blue (the main colour showing) and Bearing Blue.  All were airbrushed on after painting the chassis and seran(cling) wrapping the chassis to protect the paint job while allowing me to airbrush the carapace.

Once painted, I really wasn't sure what to do to base them, and then again stumbled across a set of wrecked concrete foundation pillars from Epic Basing and thought they would look good on the bases so printed up a bunch of them and away I went.  I think they add a bunch to the base and are something different.

Next up is the first part of a new project from a new game, Trench Crusade.  The art and lore of the game is brilliant and very Grim Dark (go figure since a lot of the crew is made up of ex-GW employees), but I am not really sure about the rules, seems a bit too simplistic.  However, a bunch of friends want to play, and since I subject them to random weirdness that may not be their cup-o-tea but they humour me, I figured I should humour them as well.  If anyone wants to checkout the rules, they are available here for free: Trench Crusade.

This post has the first 2 models that I 3D printed and started painting, only to find out that I am not likely to actually use them in my list, but oh well, they look cool!  I selected the Iron Sultanate as I felt like doing some Persian models and these are all based on Persian lore with the Jannisaries coming in a later entry.  These two though are the Assassin and the Bronze Bull.

The Bronze Bull is absolutely massive being based on a 50mm round and standing over 100mm tall and 150mm wide.  Being such a big chunky boy I am counting the Bronze Bull as my Gluttony model because at this size I am sure he eats a literal ton!

Since the world of Trench Crusade is an extremely grim dark war torn setting, I wanted to keep with a very dark look as well.  So the whole force is going to be painted in mainly bronzes and reds that are muted / muddied down for lower contrasts.

Here is an image to show just how big all of these models are, as the marine is a standard 40k marine on a 25mm base, the bull on a 50mm and the Armiger on a 100mm base.

ByronM - Burrows & Badgers

 Today's second entry is one that I have been looking forward to for a while.  I happened across this game last year and picked up a bunch of the figures as the game looked like fun and the miniatures even more so!  I mean, which of us didn't grow up reading Wind in the Willows, watching Disney's Robin Hood, or watching way too many Saturday morning cartoons with anthropomorphic animals in them?  Seeing these bits of memory from childhood turned into a wargame fills me with memories and was way too much fun to pass up.

I wanted to paint them up as soon as I got them, but set them aside for the challenge and for new glasses so that I could attempt to do justice to them.  Having got my new glasses mid-December, and having booked holidays from late December through mid January, the time was right to spend way too much time painting these lovely little miniatures, so without further ado here is the first batch of my Burrows & Badgers collection.

This is the first of the base warband sets, which includes Shrew-zerker, a mouse nun, a squirrel archer, a rabbit archer, a barn swallow scout, and an otter pirate as the leader.  Quite an interesting mix of characters which will form the core of my rogue force.

I painted all of these miniatures as one offs, meaning by them selves and not in bulk with others.  This allowed me to focus on each one and give it its own character and look.  As an added bonus because I had such an interest in these figures I spend a bunch of time on each one (thanks to having the last few weeks off since the challenge started) and as a result I am actually really happy with them all, which for me is not very common as I am often my harshest critic.  I am super thrilled with the look of all of these figures and am only disappointed that I can not get around to the terrain that I printed up to go with them while the challenge is on, due to Curt dropping terrain from the challenge this year :-(  Oh well, I will get it done once the challenge is over.

This is the second of the base warband sets which includes 2 mouse (mice?) knights, a squirrel caster, a serpent caster, a weasel archer, and a rabbit knight.  These will form the core of my Royalist faction.

To not bore anyone with pictures of each figure separately, here are just a few of the ones that I really like how they came out.  First is the squirrel witch, and I think her red brown colouration really looks good against her green forest cloak.

Next up is the ferret crossbowman, which reminds me of the archers in the Disney Robin Hood cartoon. I know they were not ferrets in there, I think they were wolves or something, but it still makes me think of the show and I think he would fit right in there.

Technically, this one is supposed to be a sparrow, but while looking up picture of birds to go from for colours I saw a picture of a barn swallow and liked the blue and tan colouration so decided to go with that instead.  In person the blue really pops and makes the model stand out.

I still have about a dozen more models to paint up for this game, but will probably do them piece meal over the challenge, but I promise to put them all together for one big group shot at the end.  At some point I will need to go back and add some more basing elements to the rouge faction models as I 3d printed the ferns and plants for the loyalist models a while back and have since misplaced the files for them, so could not print up more.  That will be rectified shortly.

Overall there are 12 models here, but the shrew-zerker was submitted earlier in another post so only 11 count towards my points here, so 55 points (unless some of the bigger ones class as a different scale as they are quite big on 40mm bases).

ByronM - Germans & Jellyfish??

 For my 1st post of the day I submit for your amazement and wonder Germans & Jellyfish.  I know, they make a very strange combination post, but that is part of the fun with the challenge coming up with some strange bedfellows.

The Jellyfish warriors are part of a project that has sat in limbo for years, a Wrath of Kings force or sea warriors.  These Jellyfish come from an undersea kingdom that has all sorts of sea creatures anthropomorphized into humanoid type warriors.  If I get around to them later in the challenge you may see shark, fish, whale, and crab people from this faction, but no promises as they are pretty far down the queue.  I had to get these warriors done though as I did the unit leader a few years ago for a theme entry and he has sat without his squad in my case since then.

These were a lot of fun to paint, as they are a very different colour and shape than most models.  However it showed me very quickly how my painting has dropped off after 2 years of not painting much, as try as I might I could not get them to the same painting quality of the captain that I painted a few years ago.  They are still ok, but not the same.

Next up are 20 more germans from my old second edition Bolt Action set, which I must have bought an extra box of since looking at the core box set it said it only came with 10 and a half-track, but I still have 10 more after this to paint up, so not sure how or why I ended up with 40, but it's all good.

These were done quick and fast to just get them on the table after all these years hiding in a box, so nothing fancy.  10 more to go and then I will need to find some civilian models to make up the Van Trapp family so they can hunt them down across the fields :-)

DRAFT Steve: KoW 10mm Heavy Calvary, Wizard's Tower on a Hill, Old Ral Partha & GW Minis, FrostGrave

 Hello again Analog Painters!  I have been painting since first day of challenge, but this here is my first post.  I am keen to visit upon many of this year's Themes as I endeavor to paint up forces of  playable armies/gangs/regiments or whatever name may be applied to a group of miniatures depending on the table top rule uses,  cults/troops/pods/flocks/herds/gaggles etc...

LIMBO:  This year's first theme is cause for some joy as I have many partly painted minis for which in years past I have had inspiration only to start and now for small few some of those neglected mini-souls, this challenge has given me an inspiration to complete! 

These models for my 10mm Kings Of War table have ignominiously drifted in partly painted Limbo since last year's AHPC.  When playing Kings of War with ByronM we used 10mm models on the same regiment base sizes as for the 28mm KOW game, with the intent of having more minis displayed on each base to make the battle field appear more well attended with larger forces.  By using 10mm in place of 28mm we forward the rule of cool without negatively impacting the rules of the game.

The Heavy Cavalry are 3d prints available from Forest Dragon (https://forestdragon.gumroad.com/)

The Wizards Tower atop the outcropping is 3d resin print, not sure from where the print file was from.  To the recollection of my Limbo fogged mind, a couple years back I saw ByronM had printed one of these Towers for himself, I thought it was cool and he was good enough to print another for me for a modest reallocation of coins from my pockets to his. 

The hill beneath the tower I built from 2 layers of 3' foam scrap I found in the back of my Dad's garage, which I sculpted (hacked up?) with a foam cutter, and thereupon glued a variety of small stones and sand acquired from my backyard in preparation for painting.  

Also emerging from the misty haze of Limbo is another hangover from my last year AHPC  incompletes,  a couple of Games Workshop Ghouls hailing from the 1990s.  These 2 minis are among a couple dozen or so old GW minis that I have stripped and repainted, only to re-strip and re-paint again so often, that now I had to either paint them with their final layer of paint or stuff a dollar bill in their waist band if I wanted to have them stripped again. 

So I decided they could now best find a path to a final lasting paint job by joining my growing menagerie of  baddies that could potentially wander upon a FrostGrave game table. 

Since I have yet to build up a sufficient mass of wintery ruins and environs to host a properly appointed FrostGrave game, I also painted up a couple of my first proof of concept winter scatter terrain pieces that had also suffered some incomplete experimental pigmentation last year.

 

Departing Limbo.... and hailing to Sarah The Succubus  to bus me past the Theme for NSFW minis and deliver me unto the Theme of Gluttony, with a 'bus ticket I purchased by this Cultist Executioner Lady.

Both she and her fellow cultist executioner recently escaped Limbo via the winding paths around the Wizard's Tower, to return to their service under their Gluttonous and Demonic master.

GLUTTONY: The chubby (and toothy) Daemon, Cultists and scatter terrain have languished in my pile of shame for about 30 years, used in many a Role Playing game with but a base coat of black but never until now painted to proxy and participate in a miniature table top battle. Thusly assembled for this challenge, I think these minis and terrain bits represent barrels of food being cracked open by cultists hoping to gain favor from a Gluttonous Deamon to whom they seek to provide a feast.

  

The barrels are wood cut items I unexpectedly found in a hardware store back in the 90s. While poking around the store isle for replacement door hinges and drawer handles, I unexpectedly stumbled upon an assortment of plain wooden Christmas village craft bits, the barrels seemed RPG mini compatible so I bought 10,  never found them again, wish I had picked up more.   The tables minis are from some interior RPG mini terrain blister pack I also picked-up in the 90s as an impulse buy from a local hobby shop that ceased to exist many years back.  

Daemon Ral Partha 1983,  Executioners Ral Partha 1994. 

The Dwarf is a GW  mini from the 90's that was part of an WFB cannon crew, which recall was given to me in the late 90s as within a box of mixed of unwanted miscellaneous minis from a friend who was moving in with a lady and had need to downsize his pile of shame. 

Total 142 pts

   Theme: Limbo  =  20 Pts

        10mm Mounted Calvary  (24x3pts) = 72pts

        28mm Ghouls (2x5pts) = 10pts

        10mm Terrain Wizard Tower (0 pts),  Winter Scatter Terrain x2 (0 pts)

  Theme Gluttony = 20 pts

     28mm Chubby Daemon  x1 = 5pts

     28mm Cultist Executioners  x2 = 10 pts

     28mm Dwarf x1 = 5pts

     28mm Scatter Terrain Barrels x10 and Tables x2   (0 pts)

ByronM - Maggotkin of Nurgle: Daemons, Warcry Warband

 For this entry I am submitting my pestilent Maggotkin of Nurgle: Daemons warband for the Games Workshop game of Warcry.  Warcry is never a game I really wanted to get into as it is really simplistic and doesn't have much tactical depth, however...  I ended up jumping in on it for two reasons.

First, both of my sons started playing it recently and kept bugging me to play it with them.  Since they have never before really shown interest in many miniature games, despite years of trying to get them to play, I figured I kind of had to jump in with them.  Secondly, I have lusted after the Nurgle Plague Drone models since they came out years ago, thinking they looked too cool and would be a challenge to paint.  

So with those two reasons I jumped all in and got some Plague Drones, and dug up a box of Plague Bearers from my endless pile of GW shame and got to work on my warband.   With my slightly evil and warped sense of humour, I affectionately refer to my warband as "The Vaccinated" as they have lovingly accepted every injection of filth that Grandfather Nurgle has offered.

These models were a lot of fun to paint, but a pain in the @$$ to photograph, and the pictures still didn't turn out well after almost a whole afternoon of trying to get good ones.  The issue is that they are missing so much of the glazes that show up in person.  They have multiple glazes of greens, oranges, blues, and purples in different shades that show up as rotted/bruised flesh, but no matter how many pictures in different lights I take, they just do not show up well.  So the images you see are all you get, as I gave up in frustration.  

The painting method was pretty simple, I primed brown, then zenithal highlighted bleached bone.  From there it was a matter of various Vallejo Xpress colours layering over the primer to build up greens and then reds around wounds, then blues, purples, oranges around the sours and various skin areas.  Once all that was done and dry I used dead flesh to highlight all the edges and the pustules.  It was a fairly easy process that looks great (to me at least) in person, but shit in these pictures, sorry guys.

For the weapons I used silver then build up layers of browns, reds and oranges for a super rusty and old look.  The banner was done as bronze and then a layer of verdigris was added to give it that old weathered look.  I might have to go add some more, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

The Plague drones were something I have wanted to do forever, hence the Lust points for them, but was never sure I could pull them off, and unfortunately I don't know if I really have.  They are certainly filthy and disgusting, but I am not sure I got the wings or carapace right, but not sure what else to do with either item, so am open to ideas from you guys.

Overall though, while there are parts of these models that I know others could do better, I am actually happy with them (which is very uncommon for me) and proud to show them off, although I wish they showed up here as they do in real life.  But I still think they look good and feel the plain grey base helps make the figures themselves pop a bit more, and the brightly coloured flowers help add a bit of an alien feel to them.

Lastly, if anyone out there wants to try Warcry, in a very NON-GW move, GW has all the rules and faction lists up online for free here: Warcrier.net.  Overall it's not a bad game, and I get the appeal of a lot of the rules and how it plays, it's just not my cup of tea, but for a chance to play with my boys, I had to paint up a force for it.