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)

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

From ByronM: 15mm Striking Scorpions and Wizard's Tower

 

For today's post I have a few items, but first up are some more 15mm Warhammer 40k items.  These are some of the left over models from last years Eldar project.  These are 11 3d printed resin Striking Scorpions and a Wave Serpent for transport.

 

While normally only 10 models are in a squad I painted up both versions of the squad exarch (leader) so that I have options in game.  One version has twin swords and shuriken pistols and the other has a huge two handed chain sword.  I also have the Wave Serpent ready to transport them into battle at a moments notice. 

 

 

I tried to go with the original green and yellow paint scheme but I tried several times to get the swords and guns to look good in yellow and I eventually had to give up and go with black and silver for them.  I did leave some markings and the hair in yellow, although it just would not pop bright yellow no matter what I did, so not thrilled with them, but too frustrated to do any more.

Next up is a 3d printed tower that I printed at 10mm scale to use as terrain for my 10mm Kings of War project.  I tried to give it some character by painting the stones in various shades, and think it worked out well.  It should look good on a hill top in a game soon. As for size it is about 4" tall and has a base about 2" square.

KOW - 10mm Despoiler Lord on Wyvern & Arena Rex Khepros

Another addition to my growing 10mm Kings of War Varangur Warband, the leader 'King on Chimera'.  I am largely happy with how this mini turned out for the time invested.  I feel sculpt lends to giving the impression of a Warlord raised above his troops to surveying  the battle, shouting commands to his followers and ready to lunge into battle himself.

(Proxy mini, Emerald Dragon Despoiler Lord on Wyvern)

Here also is the second Aenra Rex mini I completed,  "Khepros" (Ludus Morituri)

Not totally thrilled with this one, made a call that it was good enough for table top battles, but further time and effort was better put towards getting other models done.

Did some learning  and several repaints with this model, representing my current efforts to blend flesh tones and use contract paint to get some depth of shadows on flesh.   I also tried to bend some color variation in to the reds, but I don't think my approach worked.   In future I am going to try to play more with light source when given reds some different tones.

The Area Rex models are good sculpts, however as I learn how to paint flesh and blend colors I think the 5 Gladiators I am painting up will suffer more wounds beneath my bush strokes than cuts from blades swung over sand. 

Steve KOW Despoiler Light Cavalry

 Despoiler Light Cavalry, Kings of War, ( Proxy minis for Varangur Horse Raiders)

24 Points = 12x(10mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 2 points)

20 Challenge Points,  R1 Istvaan V: Betrayal; Heretical/Heretics or Loyalty/Loyalists

149 Points = Current Shadow 2022 Paint challenge total for Steve

Steve, KoW, Despoiler Hell Hounds

 Despoiler Hell Hounds for Kings Of War, proxy for Cavalry Troop of  Vanagur Tundra Wolves.

I was going for a Khorne flesh hound vibe with the colors, I mucked about too long on these 20 little 10mm hell dogs trying to keep color separate between blacked spikes and red charred flesh..  not super thrilled with the how they turned out.  but feel like the paint job came to a point sufficient to serve in a painted table top war. Time to take the lessons learned and  put efforts to other models  

20 Points = 20x(10mm foot figure = 1 point) 

ByronM - 10mm Kings of War Zombie Horde and Heroes

This week saw the completion of a few pieces that have been in progress for a little while.  They may not look like a lot, but painting that many individuals and trying to keep randomness to the colour patterns was a pain in the backside...

 First up is my promised Horde of Zombies for my 10mm Kings of War Undead project.  These are all once again 3D printed from the excellent sculpts from Forest Dragon, and I wanted to have enough of them to actually look like a horde.  In 28mm scale KoW it would only be 40 zombies on a base to makeup the "horde", to me that is just not enough... So, here is my 136 zombie horde!!!  20 of them are 1/2 zombies though (the tops crawling along) so I will count them as 126 models for points purposes later.  I don't know about you, but to me this actually looks like a horde of zombies.

Painting these was a major pain, as there are only so many colours to use, and I wanted it to look random, and at a small scale subtle colour differences just do not show up.  So I stuck with brown, tan, red, blue, green, and purple and went to town on them.  It took far longer than I expected though as keeping it random looking took a lot of going back and forth between models and strips.

Next up is the Heroes of the Undead army, a vampire count on foot, a mounted female vampire count, and two necromancers. While I would not necessarily call a vampire a hero, they are hero choices in the army list, so even though they are evil, I am claiming them as heroes for the space map Glorantha space, which is my fourth space on the outer ring, so time to move into the middle ring.

I decided to base these heroes on 25mm round bases even though KOW wants them on 20mm squares.  I did this as the placement of heroes in KOW is not super fiddly (essentially if they are beside a unit they are involved in the combat with the unit) and this way they are easy to spot on the table and it makes the army usable in other games like Warmaster or any of the derivatives from it (Hail Ceasar, Pike and Shotte, Black Powder, etc) so that if we ever decide to mod any of those games to a fantasy block based setting we can.

Overall this should count as 126 zombies and 4 characters and 20 bonus points for the planet Glorantha bonus, for a nice round 150 points.  Not a bad start to a Saturday.

ByronM - Kings of War Undead Army in 10mm - Part 1 (212 Points)

 

I used to love Warmaster and Fantasy Battle, but over time got tired of the look of Warmaster being 2 thin rows of models or removing individual models in Fantasy Battle. So, I went looking for something else and came across Kings of War.  Its an awesome simple and fast fantasy mass battle game that focuses more on units and positioning rather than individual heroes.  It's a fun game but at 28mm it just always looked wrong to me, as it is almost impossible to get the look of a mass battle game in 28mm on a 6x4 or even 8x4 table.  So, a couple friends and I decided, why not do it in 10mm, its cheap (as you can 3d print everything), super fast to paint (to a simple tabletop standard), and looks great ranked up!

I have to start by saying sorry for the image quality on these, I just for the life of me could not get good pictures of these. The camera just wouldn't focus correctly on them and kept washing out all the colours, and Photoshop decided to blow up on me as well, so until I sort that out I had no way to correct the colours or clean them up.

 

All of these models are from the excellent collection offered by Forest Dragon, and the detail is amazing! All the bases are from my company (Northern Lights Terrain) and are the standard Kings of War base sizes as if the units were standard 28mm scale.  I chose to do this as it allowed the game to play exactly the same as if it was being played with 28mm figures, and allowed a lot of space to pack on models to a base.

First up is the really cool looking Vampire Count on Undead Dragon.  He will obviously be my army commander.

 

 

 

Next up, a unit of Vampire Knights.  This is a hard hitting but small unit, only counting as a troop sized unit in KoW.  There are 40 heavily armoured Vampires packed onto that 100mm x 40mm base.

 

 

Next is a big regiment of Skeletons.  While I painted up a ton for the base (64 of them on there!), once I started ranking them up I realized I could have done another 20 or so to completely pack the base, but it still looks good with so many ranks and a bit of space at the front, so I left it.

 

Then come the wraiths, which I tried to paint up as eerie glowing green ghosts.  Not sure it worked, but I am OK with them as they offer a bit of a counter point to the purple I chose for the main colour of the rest of the army.  This is a regiment sized unit of them (100mm x 80mm) and has 60 of them on the base. 

 

As a side note, while printing 10mm strips is cheap and effective, re-basing them once done is NOT.  I learned that leason the hard way.  I had done a unit of these wraiths as a test unit over the summer for this project, and I had wanted to base everything green to blend with many of my play mats.  It looked horrible with green ghosts on a green base, so I figured no problem, pop them off and re-base to grey when I got to the army in the painting challenge... NOPE, every single strip broke when trying to get them off the old base (weapons broke, wraiths broke of the strip, and the strip broke in multiple places)... So had to print and paint all new models...   Oh well at least they paint fast.

Lastly, a unit of Black Coaches, which I based up on a 125mm x 100mm Cavalry Regiment size base and am using them as Revenant Cavalry since Black Coaches do not exist in KoW but I still wanted to use them.  Initially the horses were just painted as undead horses but the models lacked enough contrast, so I switched them over spectral horses to add some more colour.  I think it worked out ok.

As for points, these add up pretty damn fast, which I honestly didn't expect given how fast they paint up.  But there are 164 infantry models for 164 points, then the dragon and rider for 4, and 4 Black Coaches at 6 points each for a total of 24.

I am also claiming these as my entry for the Babylon 5 planet as "low budget fun" as doing an army this way is super cheap and a ton of fun to paint as it is so quick.  So that adds 20 more points to the total, for a grand total of 212 points!

Lastly, this is my second different theme, so my second point in the Squirrel side contest.

Steve 10mm KoW Varangur (Chaos) and Wolf

 For Nov 2021  I finished up 3 10mm Kings Of War Champions for the Varangur(Chaos) force I am building.

I also declared 'Done" on an old wolf mini I had pulled out of my stock of old minis last year to use as a practice piece for painting fur and glowing eyes.   I performed a few different passes of grey and black paints, dry brushing and washes before just being ok with last layer of paint being good enough for the shelf and looking furry... I also dabbled a bit with using Contrast Paint to create a quick a simple blue glow effect around the eyes - since I plan to use glowing eye effects with most the Darklands Atalantes models I have in the paint project hopper.

Its a novice quality effort here on the wolf, but a starting point I can improve upon with future paints jobs.

Of note: the lighter green in the 'magic energy' loop above the chaos sorcerer is from a pot of still good  over 25 year old citadel colour 'Putrid Green', that I washed with a modern GW contrast paint... so in the meta of my mind I see between these greens over a quarter century of GW paint ages.

Steve 10mm KoW Varangur (Chaos)

 For November I finished  painting up 3 units of King Of War 10mm miniatures from the  "Varangur" army list in  Kings of War Uncharted Empires: 1 Regiment Warband, 2 Regiments Bloodsworn.  

I am using the KoW Varangur army list to build a fighting force, but the minis sculpts and paint colors I am using is actually trying to replicate a  Games Workshop Fantasy Battle Chaos Army.  Therefore,  the look I was going for with these are: 1 Regiment Chaos Warriors and 2 Regiments Chaos knights.

For 10mm scale I put in more time and paint layers than I should have.  Since these are still among my first forays into 10mm scale painting, I am also still learning how I can get the look I want from these miniatures while better planning the painting of color layers and performing more efficient painting stops than I had used for this month's effort.  (I kept on finding more detail I felt needed color separation or a mistake to repaint).   At last I just pulled the pin on these to get them submitted in time.  The next 10mm scale I do,   I expect to paint smarter and quicker.  

These minis are on the same 10mm KoW bases from Northern Lights Terrain as Byron used for his KoW wraiths.

ByronM - Kings of War Wraith Regiment

 This month I got a lot in progress, but not a lot done...  Hopefully that means more to show next month, but you never know.  My biggest issue currently is getting everything together and prepped for the annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which starts Dec 21st each year, and allows you to get models assembled, cleaned, and primed before it starts.  Having enough prepared before the challenge starts is a huge part of being able to complete a lot over the winter, so a lot of effort is going into that this year as I ran short of models last year.

Anyway, on with the show and tell for October!  This month I have a whole regiment of Wraiths for our Kings of War in 10mm project that a few of us are doing locally.  We are doing KoW in 10mm, but keeping all the 28mm base sizes so that the game plays no differently, and so that I can use the KoW bases I cut found here: Northern Lights Terrain KOW Bases.

These models are all 3d prints from the excellent range by Forest Dragon.  I can not recommend his stuff enough, it is amazing quality for 10mm models and prints without issues.  

I wanted these Wraiths to have an eerie green glow to them, and I think they came out ok, however I should have thought of the basing before painting these, as the green looses a ton against the green flock.  In retrospect I should have gone with a blue or black instead of green on the wraiths, or gone with brown or grey basing for this faction.  Oh, well, they are done and not much I can do about it now.

Steve - Old and New, Fallen Tower Terrain and 10mm Skeletons

 This Fallen Tower resin Terrain model piece sat in storage for over 20 years with only a hasty dry brush over a black base coat.   Now after a repaint, washes, dry brushing and some green, at long last this old model looks like what I had envisioned back when I bought this from Campaign Outfitters way back when I used to have hair on my head. 

Recently, this past weekend Byron gave me a couple ranks of 10mm Skeletons to try painting, to see if I would be interested in starting a 10mm fantasy army for games like a rejigged 10mm Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB).  

Dealers always give the first dose for free.....  

Looks like I am going to embark on a new 10mm addiction.  However, rather than more Skeletons in future I am feeling the small call of Chaos...

ByronM - MiniHammer / Mini Kings of War and Hagglethorn Hollow Wizards Tower

 It's been a while since my last post as it has been a while since I got anything painted (due to summer and being outside more) but with the end of the month looming it was time to get something finished.  This is a test piece for a project I have been thinking of for at least the last year or two (maybe more), that is doing Kings of War (or Warhammer Fantasy Battle) in a smaller scale to get the right look and feel of massed troop combat. 

Sorry for the slightly glossy nature of the building, I ran out of dullcote clear cote so had to use a satin until I get more dull and it shows a bit glossy on flat surfaces.  I will go over it again later to dull it down!

I wanted to do a smaller scale as I always hated WFB due to having to take models off, and like KOW because you don't have to, but felt both lack a little in the looks department as they are meant to represent mass combat but at 28mm scale you really do not get that look with 20 guys in a unit.  I always felt it would look better in a smaller scale.

This then is the first test unit for doing just that, taking KOW down to 10mm scale where I plan on using the same size bases as 28mm KOW but using smaller figures.  I am still working out if I want to actually use the same size bases and just scale down the terrain but still play on a 6x4 table or potentially going to 1/2 size bases and playing on a 3x2 table, but this will help give me an idea of how it will look.

The first army I am doing is the Undead, featuring skeletons, vampires, ghouls, ghosts, hounds, and more...  But I am likely to do a second army as well over the winter as I like having 2 factions for every game I play so that I can sucker in additional victims to my hobby teach friends how to play!

Another huge upside for going to a smaller figure size is painting time!  Painting even a 20 man unit is 28mm scale is at least a weeks work (probably a couple hours every night for a total of 12-30 hours total), where as I painted both the unit and the tower in less than 3 hours.  Painting small figures is more about the impression of the whole unit rather than each figure having to be well done.  In fact, these were printed yesterday during the day, then primed and painted last night!  Because, you know I don't have enough unpainted figures already, I have to print more...

Also both the unit and the terrain is 3d printed!  The figures are from The Forest Dragon and printed out amazingly well and once you own the files cost less than $0.50 per stand of 6 guys to print!  The building is a scaled down building from a kickstarter that I backed called Hagglethorn Hollow that had an amazing set of buildings meant to print at larger scale but that work amazing printed smaller.

Now to convince Mike and Steve and others to join in on the fun and get some additional armies done up locally!  I already have my friend Curt convinced to join in from Regina and you can follow his blog Analogue Hobbies for his posts there.