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!

Steve - Lady of Deathly Shadows & a Gnoll

  Heya  tiny totem painters,

This week, from the array of partly painted minis strewn across my hobby desk, these few finally received their last dabs of long due paint. 

I think I picked up this lead mini (who I choose to call the  Lady of Deathly Shadows), a log time ago with a notion of using her as a proxy model for a Necromancer in an Undead Warhammer Fantasy Battle Army.  No idea the manufacture, but I recall this mini was sold to me in a little plastic bag stapled to a simple card board backing, which I had found hanging off one of the pegs at the back bottom corner of the miniatures wall at my favorite old hobby store.

I had several failed paint jobs attempted on this mini, bad color schemes and poor observance of paint lines resulted in this mini spending a few nights in a jar full of oven cleaner to strip away failure and make way for a new paint attempt.

Now at long at last, years later, in the AHPC 'Black and White' studio a silent short film was shot to tell the tale about how she escaped the clutching darkness deep within the old pile of abandoned minis. the color scheme she needed to find freedom was a scheme without true color.

Where one finds a path out of darkness, (or an old unpainted mini pile) others may follow, so it was  this Gnoll escaped the old mini pile and moved beyond the years of wearing only a black and white zenithal base coat to become  table top ready.

I think I bought the Gnoll for a D&D Monster Character campaign, which I think may have lasted two rough and bumpy game sessions at most, back when in my old game circle the DM's hat was getting passed around and there was a lot of home brew that went down like bad brew before a worthy story teller became the new king behind the DM's screen to reign over a long running campaign that has brew without the p-eew.

Lurking around these two mini  are three bits of Grave stone scatter terrain, each originally an extra scenery item that had been packed along with some manner of mystery brand undead mini.  These three grave markers served in many a game with no more than a blast of black spray paint, and on a whim of fancy are now painted to better serve on table top games in future.  

28mm figures,

Lady Of Deathly Shadows (Foot Figure)                            = 5pts 
Green Studio Pass 'Black & White'                                   = 20pts
Gnoll (Foot Figure)                                                            = 5 pts
Gravestones (Scatter Terrain) [~ 1/8 of a 6" square cube] =  2pts 
Total = 32 Points

Steve - KoW proxies and another Skeleton Cav

 I knocked the dust off a couple old partly painted projects that have been in my "get back to this soon" pile for over a decade, and completed some recently printed minis I had started to paint a few months before the challenge.  

Following up from 2 undead skeleton Cavalry in my previous post, this week I completed an old GW Skeleton Box set Skeleton Cavalry conversion I had created a long while back by using green stuff to Zombify the skeletal horse model.

   Back when I had briefly played an Undead army  for Warhammer fantasy battle, I had notions that the Skeleton rider on the Zombie horse was the leader of my undead cavalry unit, whom all the other skellies on boney steads followed.  This model had been partly painted for over 2 decades before the remaining painting efforts were completed this week 

For Kings of War games I play with Byron we use 10mm minis fixed atop the same sized regiment bases as used for the proper 28mm  KoW  ( to give a stronger impression that our battles are well attended)

For my KoW force, I had dug into an old box of miscellaneous minis to find a 54mm Demon to use as a proxy for a large monster unit.   This demon model and been partly painted and stripped of paint several times since the 90s, before I had started a new paint job on it last year but not finished until this week.

Also, in summer of 2022 I had applied a sparse few dabs of paint atop a base coat for some 10mm Despoiler Charioteers and Ogres minis,  (3d printed designs by Forest Dragon)  and this week they received their overdue finish. 

This Week's Total                                                      61 points

 x1 Skeleton Calvary  (Mounted Figure, 28mm)     = 10 points

 x1 Deamon                (Foot Figure, 28mm)            = 10 points

x11 Despoiler Ogers  (Foot Figure, 10mm)           = 11 Points

 x5 Despolier Chariot (Mounted Figure, 10mm)    = 10 Points

Studio: Under Construction                                     = 20 Points

Steve "Late Risen Undead" [High Adventure] (100 points)

Back in the early 90s to me were halcyon times when I had long hair atop my head and many pots of fresh Citadel paints at the ready - all things minis were awesome, the dice were six sided devils with whom I liked to share a few beers as we played a few haphazard table top battles with our friends while the metal music played... My back-log of unpainted minis was growing but manageable, and there seemed no reason to slow the accumulation of wargames I was getting into.  My Games Workshop fan boy fever dreams of many fully painted armies seemed both reasonable and inevitable, glorious. 

Well, with the discovery that reality was a poor friend to unchecked hobby ambitions, it came to pass that my back-log of unpainted minis grew faster than I laid paint from brush to models.  Then after a short few years of my enraptured submersion below war gaming waters, the stuff of life banished all of my miniaturing hobbies into a few crammed boxes that were hauled through a couple moves and left to languish in the darkest closet corners for over two decades.  

In those boxes of unpainted model shame and unspent paints, were unfinished soldiers for my mostly completed  "Undead Army", a mix of official Games Workshop undead and proxy miniatures that seemed fit for purpose at a lower price point for purchase, for playing games of Warhammer Fantasy Battle that made sense at the time. 

Now here I am in present day,  after a couple years of slowly resuming some of what is best in life, that being the painting minis and playing table top battles with friends!   At last, the call from the things dwelling in the closet were  not from bothersome haunting ghosts and gremlins, but rather from my brush, paint and minis of old!  My hair may have fallen from scalp to chin, and lost all color in the descent, but to battle I am called!  I must slay the grey!   Big thanks from me to ByronM and a couple others for relighting the creative fires whereupon I layer paint upon models for purpose of waging war and skirmish games upon dice battered and beer splattered table tops. ( and also there is a big thanks from the ghosts and gremlins in my closet, they are using the recently freed up closet space from my moved hobby supplies to set up a modest Karaoke stage for themselves.)

I am now rearmed with many new pots of paints, with paint brands new to me; Vallego and Army Painter as well as a few pots of what GW has to offer now..  and also surprisingly my old Citadel Colour pots of "Snot Green" and "Putrid Green" survived decades where my many other pots of citadel colours (and Ral Partha) paints had perished. These two old Citadel paints together are both fortuitous and relevant to this post.... as these old green pigments are present in my pictures for this post. 

Back in the day when I was painting my Warhammer Fantasy Army of "Undead", I was naturally inspired by what I saw in White Dwarf Magazine and 'Evy Metal painting.. which to me meant all bases were treated with sand and white glue and painted with a foundation of Green Snot, dry brushed with Green Putrescence then given a wash with whatever the painting gawds saw fit to have mixed upon my pallet that day

I had the old models, I had the old paint, I had a new challenge...

So for these new reborn undead, once lost to long years to the purgatory unpainted grey, they arise painted at last,  their moldering feet atop the same sandy green bases as their fellow undead in an army last painted many years ago... better late than never I suppose..

... and as these undead clamber and shuffle their return to the High Adventure of fantasy themed table top battles,  so do I also return in earnest to the hobbies of mini painting and rolling war dice with the first points scored next to my handle-name.

28mm Undead figures x 11 + Challenge   =   Total  100 points

Zombies (Foot Figure) 8x5pts                                        = 40pts
Skeleton Calvary (Mounted) 2x10pts                            = 20pts
Undead Dragon (Score as Mounted Figure Vehicle)    = 20pts
1st Green Studio Pass: 'High Adventure'                     = 20pts

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.