Overdue payments

It is coming to that point in the year when the Analogue Challenge starts up again (hopefully!), so some unfinished bits in the backlog are being finished to make way for new projects to be started. The most recent one of these is a German officer for Konflikt '47. This probably gives you a hint what is coming this year, other than all those space marines.

The Germans are not getting the clear bases as I've got some metal ones that I really can't be bothered to debase. This weekend is Reading's yearly gaming event, Warfare, so I get to stock up on flowers for basing.

With the run-up to AHPC, it was about time I actually sorted out a figure for Curt from last year's challenge. I'm really sorry that it has taken so long Curt, he will be going in the post shortly! He is one of the Kickstarter exclusive characters from Zombicide Black Plague that has a passing resemblance to some historical risk taker from Scotland who was played by someone very definitely not Scottish.  

Critter kingdom

I was looking through the massive backlog of draft posts to see what was in there and it seems I got half way through posting quite a few things from the painting challenge last year... so here they are as some filler ;)

These rats and bats are from Mantic's dungeon Saga. These are probably the nicest things to have come out of it, besides the furniture!

 

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Goliath from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the other monsters from the SoB boxes so far, the detail is soft and it needed a lot of filling and resculpting... but he looks pretty imposing now he's finished. That base he's on? That's 70mm... he's one biiiiig critter. Sven once again provides a scale reference.

Defensive Terrain

Defensive terrain was a very subjective and ever so vague title for a bonus round and caused some pondering. Inspired by the Epic Fail entry, I decided to keep this one fairly simple and add to the Old West project at the same time.

The cowboy is from Great Escape Games as part of their Dead Man's Hand range with a few pieces of terrain from various places.

From this angle it looks like a fairly big base for him, or a small diorama. Turn it around a bit and it starts to make more sense...

He pops off the base to be useful elsewhere, or allows someone else to take his place behind the barricade. I forgot to paint it up, but there is a second stack of grain bags on a base that fits into the gap so it can be used as pure terrain.

Forces of Nature strike back

With the thawing of Frostgrave, spring starts to return to the city surroundings and with it come the forces of nature. These druids use the power of life to try and restore balance to the city ruins and find news of their elders who were in the city prior to the fall.

These models are part of the Dungeon Saga campaign. The smaller model is the regular version of Groot Kapoka, a dryad shapeshifter who comes with one of the expansion sets (I forget which one). The larger figure is a Legendary, resin version of the character to use when he has levelled up a bit. Unfortunately one of the issues with DS is the odd scaling of the plastic characters that makes them really small compared to the monsters. The resin versions are larger and fit well with other fantasy ranges.

Epic... fail!

One of my aims for this year is to build up a small Old West project. With the kind present of some Black Scorpion models in the Secret Santa this year, the project had it's starting point, but the subject of one of the side-challenges this year gave me an interesting idea...

What could be more of an epic fail than a western gunfight with no survivors?

These six are all from Great Escape Games. Now I just need to find matching standing figures for them all, otherwise they are purely terrain or markers.

Lock up the church.. the Vikings are loose!

In the 2014 Secret Santa, some kind soul sent me a pile of Black Tree Design vikings so I could start a Saga force. Thank you so much, whoever you are! The models are really nicely done and scale well with the Gripping Beast plastics. I still find it weird that the GB metals are not the same size as their plastics...

This can be fielded as 4 points of vikings, if necessary, but I'd like to add another set of warriors (these are in the painting queue) and some levy.

The other thing to note is that unlike most of my models, I decided to actually put decorative basing on these guys as I really didn't want to spend weeks filing off the metal bases. The reason for the snow will become apparent later.

The warlord stand is three Gripping Beast plastics. You can't have your warlord going around unprotected now can you? The first bodyguard likes geometric, pacman style shapes for his design. The second bodyguard is obviously on some sort of mushrooms with the abstract design on his...

The main Heathguard unit is a mere 4 strong, but they look like the toughest of the tough. Worthy warriors to attend the Warlord.

We then have two more groups of Hearthguard that will go together into one larger group. They are here in multiple angles to show off their fancy shields. this group was bulked out with two plastic Gripping Beast models so that all of them, except Mad Karl and Slightly-less-mad Jorik, have chainmail. I think you can guess who Karl is...

These are accompanied by a group of 8 warriors. One of them is a bit camera shy as he wanted to show off his shield instead

I decided to use colour to signify the different groups. They might be family groups... they may just have a very picky boss who likes colour co-ordination... I'm not quite sure. When all 23 figures stand together, it makes a very satisfying sight

WW2 Heer infantry

These have been sat in the box of undercoated figures for the last two years, so it is a relief to have finally got them done. Each year I've been meaning to push them up to the top of the painting queue for the Analogue challenge, but each year I have something else to work on. Last saturday I was waiting for the varnish to dry on the vikings and was looking for something else to try and do for Tuesday's challenge entry. These guys were staring up at me with pitiful stares.

These are all Warlord figures and, with the exception of one figure, they are all the plastics from the old Bolt Action starter set. They aren't intended for use in Bolt Action, so the groupings below are all rough guesses. They will be used for things like 7TV, so the actual unit composition isn't relevant. This may change when the Bolt Action or Achtung! Cthulhu weird War rules come out, but for now... 

We have an officer with his two body guards. The one on the right is the only metal figure in the force. Somewhere there is a gestapo officer and a mad scientist from the same set.

 Next we have a medic, who would probably be shot by the allies if anyone spotted him with that pistol... but he needs to defend himself against the mythos beasts that he is likely to face in the future.

 Then we have a sniper team... not that headshots work on things without heads...

 Fire team 1 has 1 MG and 2 panzerfaust to add a bit of punch to the rifles

 Fire team 2 has 2 MGs and 1 panzerfaust instead. These are more fixed position troops.

In total this is 21 Heer to add to my small WW2 collection. This really needs some additions as they will be easily outclassed by the British Commando and Russian forces already sitting on my shelves

Nostalgia strikes

The Nostalgia bonus round was a tricky one to decide what to paint. I had a few different options available, but something for 7TV seemed the most appropriate as the whole thing is based upon Nostalgia. These guys are some generic mooks, the likes of which you'd see in a Bond film, or in an Avengers episode.

The models are some of their oldest, so also kinda fit from that perspective too. It isn’t clear from the photos, but they could do with a resculpt sometime soon as their feet are tiny and the hands quite big and lumpy… but they are perfect for the job. 

More monsters

This entry for the Analogue Challenge is a mixed bag of models. Some for Dungeon Saga/Frostgrave and some for Shadows of Brimstone.

First up we have the banshee from DS, which leaves one of the core set villains left to paint and 6 armoured undead. The banshee is quite a nice sculpt, with the exception of blobby hands and will see a lot of use in various games.

As a change, I decided to try some of the Dungeon Saga demons. These guys are the same size as the undead trolls and act as their equivalent in the demonic campaign. Again, very nice models to paint, though some of the seams are tricky to clean off as the plastic is slightly bendy. If the Kings of War ones are as nicely sculpted, they should be great models... not that I need any more of them. They will also be nice large size demons for Frostgrave. These guys suffered from a partial varnish fail. You can see the white marbling on the back of the middle demon; though in this case it adds to the texture rather than obscuring detail; so not so much a fail as an unexpected detailing!

Last and definitely least are two of the ghosts from Shadows of Brimstone. These figures are some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. The detail is shockingly soft, which makes them ugly lumps... so a quick ghost paintjob was done at the same time as the DS banshee to get them out of the way. Scale wise they are only useful in Shadows of Brimstone as they are 1/48 (ish), which makes them really tall when compared to any other Old West figures that I have, even Black Scorpion.

Because it was asked in the Challenge comments, here is the recipe for the ghosts:

1. White undercoat
2. HEAVY wash of GW's Coelia Greenshade. Add some black wash to the deepest, darkest areas if you want to get it really dark
3. Wipe of excess with fingertip
4. Lightly drybrush white. Make absolutely sure the wash is dry first, otherwise you get weird green marbling instead (which actually works sometimes)

As there is the Frostgrave side challenge currently running, it is about time that I started to put together some warbands as well as all the random monsters, so we will start with some necromancers.  On the right we have Mortibris, the necromancer from Dungeon Saga. As a model he's a bit bland and lacks a lot of crisp detail, so some exaggerated highlighting and shadows were needed in some places. Accompanying him is the necromancer from Zombicide: Black Plague (hereafter called Lord Black). Lord Black and his apprentice, Mortibris, will lead one of the Frostgrave warbands.

You can see from the scale here that Zombicide characters are a bit bigger than normal, but this is exaggerated by Mortibris, like all the heroes in DS, being tiny. Just wait until I get to the halfling character... he looks like a 15mm figure!

One of Mortibris' lead henchmen is this undead troll shaman. Model wise it has loads of detail that paints up really easily. I did, however, make the mistake of going for green robes along with the putrescent flesh colour, so it isn't as clear. I can't think of anything currently listed in Frostgrave for this one sadly.

Lastly we have some tormented spirits. I decided to do these as dark, glowing shapes rather than white ghosts to show their trapped, tormented and evil nature. These can be wraiths or spectres in Frostgrave.

The dead just keep on coming...

Following on from the skeletons and zombies earlier in the week, this time around we have some armoured warriors, some archers and the nastiest undead trolls. The Mantic undead trolls are massive beasts (those bases are 40mm) caught in a constant state of regeneration and death by necromantic magics. You don't want to mess with these... the level of detail on the models is fantastic. Much better than anything else I've seen Mantic do before.

The skeleton horde grows further with three swordsmen. The one good thing about the plastic is that a bit of hot water will allow for some tweaks to pose. For these three I just adjusted the arm position so they vary a bit.

Finally are three archers. Possibly my least favourite models in the Dungeon Saga undead range. Despite being reposed a few times, they keep on bending back into slightly wonky poses, but I suppose they are gangly skeletons... so it works. the Deadeye walkers from Zombicide: Black Plague will replace these ones eventually as they are much better archer undead.

No painting for a few days as we're off to do the Christmas rounds

Christmas Thanks

I hope everyone is enjoying their Santa Clause and Secret Santa presents this year. Thanks to Chris, Cath and Ian for arranging these Christmas goodies once again. It has been a pleasure participating.

Big thanks to the kind person to send me some Black Scorpion old west models. These will go perfectly with some of my planned entries into the painting challenge this year and will be jumping the queue. In fact, the undercoat is drying on them now.

Also a big thank you to whoever sent me this Wars of the Roses artillery piece, it is beautifully painted and will take pride of place in my little collection. So much so it has inspired me to finish off the perry plastics and increase the size of my force :)