ByronM - AOS Ogor Mawtribe Gluttons

 

Over the last few years a friend of mine has been de-cluttering since he moved way out in the middle of nowhere and that has been an amazing windfall for my pile of shame.  I think I just finished getting the last of his vast collection this fall, and it spanned over 30 tote boxes of stuff!  Most of it GW stuff!  He only gets to play games when visiting me, so it's now all here to be worked on and played with. Oh, and it has caused lots of in house fighting as my sons Riley and Quinn try to claim various parts of the collection for their own.

Anyway, part of that collect was a huge pile of Warhammer Fantasy era Ogres, or Ogors as they now call them so that the GW legal department can ensure that the IP they stole from past companies and authors can now not be re-stolen from them. Man do I hate modern day GW...

 Both of my sons have been bugging me to play Age of Sigmar with them, and while I consider the rules complete SH*T it is a chance to play games with them, sooooo....  I went looking for bits to make as small an army as possible so that I don't have to paint a whole ton of stuff for a game I don't really care about, and I decided on the Ogres, er I mean: Ogors.  The whole 2000 point army will consist of just 24 models, so that's a bonus!

This week I focused on getting the first of two units in the army together (yeah, really just two units and then a bunch on monsters and characters.... what a dumb game), a reinforced unit of 12 Ogor Mawtribe Gluttons.  Most of these were already assembled and primed, some even had some colour on them here and there (that I just painted over!) so while there are some mould lines still on them, I was not about to go and clean them up and re-prime them so they got left as they were.  Do you start to understand my level of caring for this project? :-D. 

These models have been painted to simply be done and table ready, they are nothing special, and are pretty rough.  I think they look good enough to be on a table at a store event though, so stopped at that.  I will probably put more effort into the characters and monsters, but the base infantry can suck it! 

I tried to have several different shades of flesh on them so that they do not all look the same, I also did them with various different colours of pants and boots since I really doubt the Ogors have an army tailor and uniform standard.  

For basing I am going for a dry fall / early winter Steppe look with scrub and sand base, and then patches of snow.  However, despite having at least 3 different types of snow flock, I can not find ANY of them (we moved 2 years ago and I do not believe I have used them since and they are probably still buried in my storage trailer someplace) so I had to drop the snow part of the base until I can either find my snow flock or much more likely order in some more.  I will make sure I post an updated picture when I do get the bases fully done with other Ogors in the near future.

ByronM - Burrows & Badgers - Stoats (Weasels)

For my first entry of this years challenge I painted up three more models for my Burrows & Badgers collection of figures.  These are three Stoats to add as mercenaries to any force I would like, and I affectionately refer to them as Larry, Darryl and Darrel.

 

 

I try to get something painted on day-one of each challenge every year, and usually succeed.  I see that Quinn (my son) beat me to the punch this year by getting up super early before work to paint something.  I had to be a bit slower this year as these are the first models I have painted since June when I suffered a pretty bad concussion and have not really been able to focus much since then. It's been slowly getting better recently, but it still took pretty much all day in small breaks going back and forth to them to get them done, and some of the brush work is a little rough, but hey at least they are done and table ready! 

 

 

These are official figures from Oathsworn Miniatures for their awesome game called Burrows & Badgers which I raved about last year.  Since they they have released a second edition and the game has gotten even better!  For anyone who has not tried this game yet, I can not recommend it enough.  Sure, it borrows pretty much all it's rules from other rule sets and there is little "original" about the game, but it just works!  This is the game I describe to everyone as "being better than it has any right to be".  It borrows the best parts of Mordheim, Infinity, LoTR, and so many more games, it really is brilliant, and the figures are top notch as well! 

As with the figures I painted last year, I am trying to go for a low detail, high contrast, cartoon type look with them.  I am not trying to do too much detail work on them, I just want them to stand out and look good at table top distance.  That said I am pretty happy with how these turned out, especially since I have not touched a brush in 6 months. 

 

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 - 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.

ByronM -WW2 German Infantry Squad + Shrewzerker

 Now that the Christmas Craziness and Family BS is over with, it's time to get down to what really matters, Wargames, Miniatures, and Painting!!!

First up today is a unit that I first primed up probably 3 or 4 years ago for a challenge and they have sat primed black hiding in shame in the back of the closet since then.  They are the germans that came with the second edition of Bolt action, that I have always meant to get around to, but never have.  There are more coming as I think there were 30ish in the box, so expect another few units over the coming days/weeks.  Since these have sat primed and waiting for so long I am counting them towards the First Circle of hell, Limbo for a bonus 20 points.

They are painted mainly in German field grey, with grey pants and an almost black helmet.  They are a pretty basic paint job, but it works at a distance.  I also decided to base them with small yellow flowers as seen in the Sound of Music, so that at some point I can maybe put on a game where the Germans chase down the incepted and ear piercingly annoying Van Trapp family and silence them once and for all.  They will of course keep Julie Andrews alive, but the rest of the family must be silenced!

Next up is my first test model for a project I am really looking forward to this year, Burrows & Badgers.  I love anthropomorphic animals so when I saw this game for the first time a few years back I needed to get it, but then got sidetracked on other projects so never got around to it.  This year that changes!  I have about 20 models for this game to get painted and have several more in progress on the paint table already.

Points wise this should be 75 points (11 28mm figures x 5 = 55 points, + 20 bonus points for Limbo)

ByronM - Turnip28 - Snob of the Radish's

 For my first entry of the year I decided to quickly finish up the leader for my Turnip28 force.  I painted up the rest of the force for last years challenge, but then left this guy sitting primed for a whole year as I wasn't sure I really liked the model, but it was what I had found for a mounted snob for T28.

A year later, I am still not sure I like him, and will probably replace him at some point, so I just slapped on some quick and dirty colours to have him playable.

The figure is super strange as it is a camel for a Napoleonic setting, which strikes me wrong, and then the poor animal is half given over to the root and badly infected.  His head has been mainly replaced by a festering root vegetable that I have painted as a turnip, his mane has been replaced with leaves, his tail is partially turned to roots as well, and the mighty snob riding on him is bringing more vegetables along with him on his pack. 

Overall just a very rough piece to get something done quickly, and get back to painting as I have not touched a brush since the last challenge ended.  At least I have gotten some new glasses and they seem to be doing the job, so I should be able to do some decent painting this year once I get back into the groove (so please don't judge me too poorly on this slapped together paint job!).  Plus I had to get first blood in before my son does (he joined the challenge for the first time this year - QuinnM), as he had to work today, so I had time to get an entry in before he did.

 

Painting Challenge 15 starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow the 15th annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge starts, and I am once again signed up.  For more info check it out here: Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Rules.

This post is just to serve as a kind of list of what to expect, and to serve as a guide to keep me on track, for what I aim to get done this challenge.  Hopefully I don't squirrel too much and get at least 1/2 of this list done:

• Kingdom Death Models (ideally: Stone Eaters, Crimson Croc, The King, and Atlas)
• 40k Knight Army
• Burrows & Badgers (at least both core boxes, hopefully some extras)
• Hagglethorne Hollow terrain
• Napoleonic Unit
• Wild West - Miners and Civilians
• Bloodbowl Team
• Trench Crusade - Iron Sultanate
• Bolt Action Germans

I am sure more will pop up, but if I get at least 1/2 of those done, it should be a good challenge!

Make sure you follow along, here or over on the challenge page.

Byron

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