Steve: Gaslands, KoW, Terrain (121 points)

Ever since Byron got me hooked on the table top visuals that 3D printing can bestow upon a Kings of War  table scape where upon the minis were shrunk to 10mm scale so more minis fit within the units bases, thereby making the battlefield appear more epic....I have continued to add more units to my Army and craft more terrain for the KPW 10mm battle field.

A unit of 10mm Trolls will now bolster my KoW army building options, and and a dollar store Halloween Skeleton-snake decoration converted into an "ancient bones within the hill" terrain piece will now provide an obstacle for unit movement and block line of sight  for some upcoming KoW battles

To further complement my "scrubland"  terrain for 10mm KoW battles, I also crafted and painted up a couple hills and some smaller clusters of trees.

If you were pondering over ideas about how to create some variety of scatter terrain with some low-profile base that were both cheap and not a collection of square corners.. I can suggest trying an idea I found when viewing war game hobby yootoob videos - use old CDs as bases for some of your custom terrain pieces.

Hills, Trees and old bones are rather Nature-ish. . so these pieces I think will enable me to check out a "Nature" book from the AHPC challenge library.

Shifting creative gears and jumping across genres......

Music is Art, Art is Music...the creative forces cannot be stopped, nor can they be 'shushed' into quiet submission by beleaguered AHPC  librarians. .. Thereby the risen dead Bone Heads band rocked out in the AHPC Library and grabbed me an "Art" book from the shelf  .  

The Bone Heads are 4 minis created by Ral Partha waaaay back in 1985 as part of their imports line..  These guys are from the same blister pack of  2 skeletons on guitar, 1 Skeleton drummer, and 1 skeleton dood strapped into the drum kit to hold all the drums together.

The Gaslands car is a converted toy matchbox car - a $2 child's toy reimagined via the power of DYI mini-craft--  with some parts from NorthstarFigures 'Implements of Carnage' bitz sprues and a healthy application of trash bashing with plastic I saved from the recycling bin and reworked with files, knives and glue...

Also painted up for this week is a smattering of scatter terrain - piles of oil barrels and car tires that can used to pretty-up a Gaslands table, and can also to suggest where car lanes exist before collisions and weapons fire alters the flow of game traffic.... and I suppose these barrels an tires could also lend well to other games where there was still shooty-shooty-bang-bang, but less vehicular explosions ..

Considering all the  Terrain I painted for this post simply as a pile of terrain stuff to store between days when the dice are not rolling,  and imagining  if converted it all into a liquid, this assortment of terrain could fill a 6x6x6 inch cube cup..  Hmm ..  not a brew I'd drink nor a cup shape I'd recommend as best design to avoid chin drenching spills...  so I will leave these terrain items intact and ready for game, and give into my feeling there are 20 points of terrain here.

121 Total Points

15 pts = x1    Gaslands Car, Vehicle 20mm
10 pts = x10  Trolls(KoW), Foot Figure, 10mm (10x1pt)
16 pts = x4   Undead Skeleton Metal Band, Foot Figure 20mm (4x4pts)
20 Pts = x1 cube, 6x6x6 inch of Terrain cube
Challenge Library 
20 pts = S3 "Art" (Undead Metal)
20 pts = S3 "Nature" (scrubland terrain)
20 pts= S4 "DII"  (MatchBox toy car converted to Gaslands battle car)

Steve: Grabbing 3 Challenge books and putting them on the book cart! (108 points)

 Heya there,   for my post this week I want to take a bite out of my painting backlog shaped by the  very kinds of themed painting challenges that first drew my attention to the AHPC.  Also I want to over come some slack in my points progress as end of the this year's AHPC draws near.  Thus my model count here is few, but each parcel of panting  does ding its own challenge point check box..

I delved into my blues, greens and brown colors to paint up a Troll (akin to the Trolls of children's stories such as The Three Billy Goats Gruff ) to serve as wandering monster in future games of Frost Grave, and to enable me to  pull a  "Children's Book" for Library Challenge.

The female Wizards apprentice I painted up for my FrostGrave Warband - will spin the wheels  of Lady Sarah’s Library Cart  to carry me to a new section in the Library.

I jumped off  of Lady Sarah’s Library  Cart to meet the Maritime challenge with a Star-Spawn of Cthulhu mini that Wizkids Games put out for Pathfinder a few years back.  According to the pathfinderwiki.com, the smallest Star-Spawn stands nearly 30 feet in height, (cited from "Wake of the Watcher," a Pathfinder RPG adventure) Thus, I am assuming this elder thing bursting up from deep waters can be scored as a 54 mm mini and also ding me a check box for the Maritime Library challenge   ( or if not the Maritime Challenge, then I submit this old one mini for consideration under the Romance Novel challenge... after all who  among us does not  harbor a mad dark love within their spoiled hearts for the remorseless cosmic might of Cthulhu and his spawn)

The tank may at first seem a little out of place between an aegis of cosmic horror and a couple figures for frozen fantasy, but for me to meet the challenge for Local History, this Sherman Tank M4 model  (2002, ArmourFast, 1/72 plastic kit,  No 99001)  is very similar to the Sherman M4 Tank War Memorial  that still stands proudly in my old  childhood neighborhood.

I aim to be somewhat brief and concise with my posts, so rather than recount the Local Tank War Memorial's history, I will instead provide link to a site describing the real M4 Tank of my childhood memories.

The Sherman Tank Memorial: https://www.rclwinnipeg100.ca/2010/03/06/80/

Thus with a load of  3 Library Challenge books pulled from shelves and placed upon the Lady Sarah’s Library  Cart, I believe I have made some overdue progress to paint me up some challenge points.

 5 pts  x1 Troll Foot Figure 28mm

20 pts Challenge Library: Children's Books

 5 pts x1 Wizard Apprentice (Female) Foot Figure 28mm

20 pts Lady Sarah’s Book Cart

10 pts x1 Star Born Foot Figure 54mm

20 pts Challenge Library: Maritime

 8 pts x1 Sherman M4  Tank 1/72 Scale, (score as Vehicle 15mm) 

20 pts Challenge Library: Local History

Total = 108 points

Steve - 28mm Fantasy Wizard with Warband henchmen for Frostgrave

 This year I am aiming to paint up minis for games I am playing or am aiming to play.  Among the minis and games in my To Do pile is Frostgrave.    This here is about half of the minis I want to eventually paint up for options to build and grow my first Frostgrave Warband. 

I have fully embraced the notion that official Frostgrave miniatures are not required.  Thus the Wizard to lead my Warband is a recent 3d print found on Thingiverse and for the rest of  I dug deep into the pile of unpainted minis I assembled many years ago from the old GW Mordheim and Fantasy Battle kits.

Also for this year, I wanted to venture into painting some minis and terrain for  playing games in cold settings, as I never tried painting anything wintery before.  To make these mini bases frosty for Frostgrave, I painted white the classic basing mix of glue and sand.  Based upon a tip I learned when watching the mini painting hobby folks on the yootoobs, I also washed the white sandy  bases in an approximately  1-4 ratio of azure blue paint mixed with water to help imbue the white snow with an impression of  icy cold.   Then to break up the blue hue I also dabbed on a few spots of snow flock  that I picked up as an impulse buy from my local hobby shop. 

Since most of these pointy weapon wielders could find a home in games played within rather mundane world settings, I'll leverage the old grey beardy guy wearing a tall blue pointy hat who is holding a zippity-zappity staff to pull a challenging book from the Fantasy section of the  library.

28mm figures 

 5 pts - Wizard(Foot Figure)        
20 pts - Thugs with Clubs (Foot Figure) [4x5pts]
25 pts -  Man At Arms with Sword and buckler (Foot Figure) [5x5pts]
 5pts -   Templar with Halberd (Foot Figure) 
 5pts -  Infantryman with 2h Sword (Foot Figure)
20 pts - Challenge Library = "Fantasy"
Total 80 points

Steve: Cowboys at Church

  I have here a fist full of western gunslingers (mostly 3D prints from 3dbreed's  'Join or Die wanted collection'  along with a couple model finds from Thingaverse)  as well as a MDF model church from NorthernLightsTerrain which I had converted a bit by cladding it in stir-stick 'lumber' and cardboard 'shingles'. 

What I have painted up here are New Acquisitions because these are among the very newest additions to my pile of unpainted shame  potential....... representing a rare occurrence where my models are fully painted before receiving a layer of dust while awaiting the touch of a brush.  I'm happy to say it was only a mere few weeks between a conversation with ByronM about Western themed minis and games sparked getting these printed-up shortly before start of this year's challenge and posting them painted here now.

I'm not sure with what system these models will first give cause for me to roll some dice in a old west style  shooty-shooty-bang-bang skirmish game.  So in addition to these being among the quickest turnaround between acquired to painted in my collection, they are also the first set of models I completed painting before ever putting them into the field of play.

I learned a bit in this painting effort to push a the edges of my comfort zone, as this was the first time I used a variety of  Army Painter speed paints on models I finished, getting used to how each speed paint provided coverage and color, while also spending some time mixing speed paints for different shades of blues, browns and reds used here.  I don't think I figured out yet  how to best get speed from these speed paints, but they did boost my rate of progress to be a tick quicker than that of a tortoise on a tea break.  Also, this is first time I painted with white on modules and terrain to any significant degree of satisfaction where I decided it was good enough to game with and time to move on to the next  in my pile of unpainted.

I started this painting effort on the first day of this year]s challenge, working them as a batch of somewhat related color schemes.  I'd like to say a combination of xmas holiday and familiy events kept me away from my paints to delay readiness for my first post until now,  but I confess it was more due me getting back into the painting groove, trying out new "speed" paints and more than a few rounds of paint correction due to  color experiments gone awry (and due to accidental pigment applications to unintended targets arising from unfortunate incidents of suboptimal brush control).  So now with my painting digits recalibrated, paint pots relocated, and ocular orbs re-sighted I aim to pick up the pace to stay on my total challenge points target, and prepare more models for future game tables.

Steve - Thorsday Ragnarok with Dirk The Daring, and some dead guys (45points)

 Original post on AHPC 2023 March 16

For my final post in this year's AHPC challenge,  my first foray into joining all ye fine painter people participating in the AHPC has seen me stare into the abys that is my piles of long undone miniature shame  and raise my paint brushes high to slay some old grey.

 I may not have reached my lofty painting points ambitions, but even in falling short on points I am riding high on the satisfaction from adding some new minis to my display shelves, with my old painting passions rekindled and ablaze anew from this year's challenge.

 

The final feature I shot at AHPC studios is a 1980s style flick,  a miniature interpretation of the original 1983 Dragon's Lair Video (laserdisc) game.  ( Available now on Steam)

 

Some of you may recall Dirk The Daring, and some of you may have also disappeared more than a many few quarters into Dragon's Lair at the Arcade  to see Dirk battle foes, dodge traps, slay the  Dragon and rescue Princess Daphne.

Sometime last year I was watching one of the YooToob videos by the 'Miniature Hobbyist' and I learned this model was available as a 3D print from Thingiverse  (Search Thingiverse for 'Dirk The Daring'), and  I felt the ghosts of nostalgia call to me, so I called ByronM to hit him up for a print job.

At about 6.5 inches and without a supporting game rule set, I suppose Dirk is more a display model than a mini, but Dirk will be homed in my miniatures display cabinet because painting Dirk gave me a new appreciation for how many layers of paint an action figure sized model needs to obtain solid color, and for how easily on a larger model errant brush tips accidently add unwanted color  driving a surprising amount of repaints and corrective touch-ups.

During the challenge many a model in my old stables received a new dab of paint or two on the long path to done but far from complete, a few had a paint job go sideways, while others just fell short of moving out of the in progress pile to the display shelf.

What last crossed the finish line for this challenge is these 3  Undead Warhammer Fantasy battle minis out of my long queue of paint overdue.

The Tomb King is cast from the GW variety of 1990s pewter, and the  Zombie may be old enough to be from when GW still cast with lead.  The skeleton was build from the first GW Fantasy battle Skeleton horde box. 

I will wrap up my final post this challenge with a nod to the comments TeemuL provided me on my first post  -  (noting how my old  green Citadel paints  dated back to when the minis in White Dwarf  often featured green trim bases),  so rather than sticking to my black trim base scheme, my oldest GW Zombie mini now done gets an olde tyme citadel snot green edged base.

28mm undead Foot Figure x3

    Tomb King           5 pts 

    Skeleton Solider   5 pts

    Zombie                 5 pts 

Dirk The Daring,  

- display model 6.5 inches high (score as 54mm Foot Figure) 10 pts 

- AHPC Studio 1980s   20 pts

Total 45 pts

I enjoyed seeing everyone's contributions to this year's challenge!

Thanks!

Legions of Steel meets BattleTech (Steve)

 It seems I got lost for a couple weeks in one of the Janitor closets at the AHPC studios.  Any rumors about me spending an inordinate amount of time aggressively disagreeing with a closet door regarding the directionality of push verses pull are (aside from the parts that are woefully true) categorically false...

When I emerged from my accidental oubliette of sanitary supply storage, I found myself at the edge of the AHPC Sci-Fi studio lot. 

After a quick accounting about my piles of unpainted shame, I was presented with many a legion of unpainted 40k and Necromunda minis that could be fit to this studio's purpose,  all calling longingly  for the caresses from a paint laden brush.  However, when I thrust my hand deep into the pile of neglected and unloved lead, it was the Legions Of Steel that were found by my grasping palm.

I remember buying the Legions of Steel box game when it was released in 1992, thinking it would be a unique game that I could host for my gaming circle at the time. However, due to the gravitational forces of all things Games Workshop dominating the zeitgeist my 90s gaming group, after only a couple nights gaming the Legions of Steel fell off the play time radar. Then a few years later a busted game box after a house move saw to the departure of all the game pieces but the cool minis.  The Steel Nightmare minis I have were painted long ago, but these Commandos who opposed them have long awaited paint.

I decided to see if I could try to 'Speed Paint" these minis, priming them with a dark blue and then hit with  a white zenithal coat, followed up mostly with yellow/orange Army Painter speed paints.   But let us just say my planned efforts ended up as more a longish learning experience  with enough redo painting to leave the notion of speed behind, but which did give me a better understanding for how the resins in some speed paints behave (and reactivate!) 

 and also...

When I grabbed the Steel Legions Commandos from the the old pile of grey lead it seems there was some 90s mini magnetism at play, as my only old  Battle Tech 'Goliath' mini  came along for the ride to the AHPC sci fi  studios.

 Battle Tech was a hot game topic for a couple months in my old game group before Battle Tech (like many other 'new' games at the time)  simply could not over come the Games Workshop dominance for consuming player game time and mini money.  This old Ral Partha sculpt saw a few games (and few rounds of bad paint and paint stripping) but now this AHPC inspired  modern mix of paints, speed paints and dry brushing I think can at last take this old chunk of lead out of the pile of shame and onto the display shelf.

So for the AHPC studios this week  I laid paint upon some old minis to craft a 90's Sci Fi film, as a homage to the doomed diversions that were the games tried in yester year but denied the many more hours play time they deserved.

x9 28mm Foot Figures, Sci Fi        Total = 65 points

Legions of Steel Commandos ( 8x5pts) = 40pts
Battle Tech Goliath                                 =  5 pts
Green Studio Pass: 'Sci-Fi'                     = 20 pts 

Steve - 10mm characters and terrain for Kings of War

 This week I competed the last  of the minis I needed to have a fully painted 2000pt Despoiler force for Kings of War, with a few extra minis to have some options to change between games.  A magus conclave for ranged attacks, and a couple mounted commanders and a spell slinger I can attach to regiments.

I play a lightly bent version of KoW with 10 mm minis rather than 28 mm minis on base, and I use Depoilers as proxies for units from the rule book's Varangur army list. Same rules and points as the real KoW rules, but a different look on the game table.

For the Magus conclave, which serve as an artillery unit, I roughly applied a base layer of spackle in an effort to create the impression that the five mages were collectively summoning up a swirling mass of chaotic energy from which each turn one among them could channel a magically lobbed ranged attack.  (So I am hoping this pieces does not look like five guys in bath robs standing on a badly mowed lawn.)

I also completed the first of the 10mm terrain I am working on to enable me to host a KoW game upon a wargame table kitted out to look more like a combat among the ruins within the lost wooded scrub lands, rather than a battle upon the endless blasted barren plains (which is the kindest theme I can think of to describe the shameful horror of a naked game table top).

Both terrain pieces feature some spare bits and bobs ByronM gifted me, and both pieces  make use of old CDs for the base bottoms.  I reimagined a slightly miss-printed castle corner tower into a lone tower a top a jutting mound, and I fashioned some extras from a bag of tiny trees into a wooded hill.  

The tower is 6 inches high and a CD is 5 inches wide, so I am thinking the two terrain pieces combined neatly fill a 6x6 inch cube. 


10mm figures - proxies for Kings of War
Despoiler Lord On Steed (Mounted) 2x2pts = 4pts
Despoiler Mage (Foot Figure)    = 1 pt
Magus Conclave  (Foot Figure) 5x1pt = 5 pts 
Tower and wooded hill (Terrain) 6x6inch = 20pts
Total 30 points