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.  

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.

Painting challenge over

Another year, another painting challenge complete. A big thank you to Curt and all of the other participants for making it another great year, full of inspiration and encouragement!

This year I clocked in at 1521 points. this photo is missing 8 figures that I painted up for friend's Christmas presents... so imagine it a bit larger.

There are 8 40mm gladiators, 12 tentacles, 1 werewolf, 1 snow monster, 1 suit of power armour, 194 28mm standard, 10 wolves, 7 mounted figures of varying styles and 1 teeny tiny cuddly, but mental, Koala.

This is not only the largest number of figures I've ever painted in that timeframe, but it also saw parts of some projects not only started, but completed too.

This year I managed to:

- Start and complete a full War of the Roses Lion Rampant force
- Start and complete 2 Familia for Jugula
- Finish my ww2 Russian infantry
- Finish all of my Zombies for Zombicide
- Finish the skeletons I built two years ago!

I didn't manage to get around to some of the other projects I had lined up, sadly, but it is still mightily impressive. Now to start planning out next year's ;)

Zombie hordes keep on growin'

Over the weekend I posted a surprise update to the painting challenge. I thought I was done when I submitted the gladiators and instantly dreaded the 1500 point target I'd just set as the next goal. Turns out it wasn't that hard to beat after all. 1 early morning, 4 episodes of Arrow and a truck load of undercoated zombies. This first photo was what I submitted on Sunday. 65 zombies... that little lot is all of the zombies from the normal Zombicide Season 1 box, plus one spare berserk walker that I found on the painting table.

The next photo contains every zombie painted up for the challenge this year, which is a mere 92. Shame I didn't quite breach the 100. Still, it is an impressive feat.

To put it into perspective though, this is the entire horde. This is everything from the Season 2 kickstarter* and the standard Season 1 box. That totals to 78 normal walkers, 20 normal walkers, 21 toxic walkers, 32 normal runners, 10 toxic runners, 10 berserk runners, 16 fatties, 5 toxic fatties, 5 berserk fatties, 3 normal abominations, 2 toxic abominations and 2 berserk abominations. 204 zombies in total. Fear for your life if you ever see even a portion of that on the board in one go (unless you managed to herd them all into one square to firebomb)

* minus the zombie dogs, which I still need to partially resculpt to hide the gaping peg hole in their chests.

Yes, that is one lone full colour Abomination in there. I needed a flesh golem for Strange Aeons. I like the imposing look he has int he middle of that horde though, so I am tempted to go back and paint up the other abominations as full colour now, just to make them *really* stand out on the board and be terrifying.

The scary thing is I still have some unopened Walk of the Dead boxes to bulk up the Toxic and Berserk hordes a bit; plus we have season 3 landing soon. So that horde you see there is going to nearly double in size! I'd better get working on those survivors so there is someone to save the world.

Now to work out what colours to use for Skinners and Seekers so they remain B&W with one spot colour. I wasn't that keen on the preview of the VIP rules, so I suspect those will just become additional standard zombies in funny outfits.

Jugula... done!

Well, that is a nice feeling. Jugula is now the first game I've finished all the models for. What do you mean it isn't that big a deal with only 8?! Rude! :p

The two familia have been built with the same options to make it much easier to teach friends how to play. I tried to make sure that the matching pairs were in different poses so we didn't end up with look-a-likes

I can safely say I will not be expanding the familia in this scale. The models are ok, but I've seen more detail on 28mm figures. Still. It feels good to have it all painted.

Russian Reinforcements

Last year I managed to get some of my Russian forces painted up for Bolt Action. This year, I finally managed to finish off the remains of that box set. The troops that I finished last year were all very clean and fresh looking, with all of the uniforms being rather... uniform. You can see these on the WW2 projects page.

This time around I thought they needed to loo a bit more worn and random to show they have been fighting for a while. I may go back and tweak some of the other figures to try and provide a middle ground between them all. There is a good uniform resource on the Warlord forum for Russian colours that I just found. I should probably go back and add some of the markings to the uniforms and helmets too.

2 LMGs

8 SMGs

3 riflemen

1 Sniper

and 1 Molotov wielding lunatic

Painting these guys has made me want to do some more ww2/www2 bits. I've now got to try and restrain my purchases until I've finished a few more bits in the backlog though. Looking at these and reading through lots of Bolt Action forums recently has made me also want to go back and rebase everything with scenics. I need to see what they look like when I get a table to play on first though.

Statue

One of the things I want to do after the Challenge is finished is to start making a terrain board so I actually have something to play on as well as providing a nice backdrop for photos. Ages ago I bought this model to paint up as a statue. I still need to make a plinth that it can stand on.

One thing I really want to add is a pigeon, but I can't find any 28mm ones. I've seen ducks, geese, swans and pheasants... but no pigeons. Maybe this is a use for the sculpting workshop? 

Season 2 zombies...

This little horde is the remainders of the Berzerk zombies (25), with two toxics that I'd found in the bottom of a box. These mark the end of all the Season 2 zombies. With Season 3 delivery looming, it's quite a relief to have this lot done, even if it did kill my drybrush. The poor thing is a tiny, worn down stump of a thing, useful only for weathering powders now.

Last night's entries (some Russians and these zombies) to the Painting Challenge saw me manage to breach the second points goal this year and exceed last year's total, so I'm now staring at a 1500 point goal. With under a month left on the painting challenge and various uncompleted projects still floating around, I can't decide which thing to work on next... finish the gladiators, finish the Not-Ogryns, start the second War of the Roses force for Lion Rampant, or start on the fantastic Vikings my mystery Secret Santa sent.

Alternatively... Not sure if you remember, but way back in the dim distant past, I traded my painted season 1 set with a friend when I decided to go from full colour zombies to this black and white version. This means I have another 65 zombies sat around waiting to be painted (if you don't count the extra boxes of Toxics and Berzerkers).

Challenging wolves

Over the last week there have been a few random items that don't really fit with any other projects at the moment, so here is one of them

 

These wolves are for a little art project that my wife is running. I can't for the life of me remember who made them, but they are not brilliant models (imo) as some of the casting lines were so heavy they distorted the faces into twisted parodies. Still... they look good as a pack and should be good in the project. Once one of them has been done, I'll post a picture.

This isn't Acacia Avenue, but...

Bananaman!

 When the zombie apocalypse hits, you need to be ready. You need to be armed and you need to be properly dressed in order to outrun the enemy (or at the very least, your friend… it depends how many zombies there are). The day things went to hell, Robbie was working at his local food shop, Morry and Sons, advertising their fresh fruit. He’d known for ages that the zip occasionally got stuck, but he’d been assured that it had been fixed. Turns out… not so fixed after all. Robbie is now stuck inside this damn suit and can’t get out. Not even if his life depends upon it, which it kinda does!

It is a fun model, though not the best painting I've ever done. I had to have two attempts at sending it to Curt... the first time I sent it I hated the photos, so had to have a go at adding some more detail tot he figure. Second time looks much better, but there are still problems with it, like the label on the banana looks a bit wonky in places. As far as you're concerned, it's just a cheap costume, so the printing is dodgy and I'm perfectly recreating the budget printing process where the shadows and highlights on the fake label don't line up properly ;)

Jugula time

Year before last I bought a preview copy of Gripping Beast's gladiatorial game, Jugula. It's a fun little system that uses 4 40mm models per side, so it sounded like an interesting change from 28mm that I'd normally paint.

Here are the first three for one of the Familia. The plan is to have the same 4 gladiators for each one in order to make teaching some friends the game much simpler. I've got plenty of spare weapons, so some more packs of bodies would allow for some of the other gladiator types later if I stick to this scale. 28mm would also work well for the game

These models are big and chunky, which makes them an interesting alternative to the usual 28mm gladiators available. Sadly I'm not all that enamored with the models... they feel like upsized 28mm sculpts, rather than something specifically made for this scale.

Spike

My favourite Buffy character was always Spike, the evil vampire. When Curt said he wanted an antihero for this year's challenge price, who could be better than the Big Bad turned good?

After painting up Spike, I came up with another idea for the Culrtgeld... so Curt gets to choose between this one and my actual entry for the Antihero round. He can have both in exchange for an extra 50 points ;)

It's dead, but not quite

So, one of the updates this week was a batch of 16 skeletons of varying types for use in Warhammer Quest, Dungeon Saga and the various 7TV games. The first 13 are standard builds from the Vampire Count skeleton kit. They are very nice models, but rather bulky when compared to the other human models. There is no way one of these would fit inside the Empire state trooper models though.

The last three were built a couple of years back after a trip to GW HQ for a sculpting masterclass, but I never got around to painting them for one reason or another, so thanks to Curt for running the challenge to hep clear the backlog! The figures use parts from the Vampire skeleton kit, some Empire Greatsword bits and some greenstuff. These three will be higher level skeletons... be it sergeants, wights or something... else.

The Sculpting masterclass was run by some real legends... Aly Morrison, Trish Carden and Aragorn Marks. Aly and Trish are GW mainstays and should be familiar to many, Aragorn's name might not be so well known, but some of his models should be. Before joining GW he worked for Rackham, sculpting their Dirz line as well as freelancing for the likes of Sodapop and Privateer Press. It was a very entertaining day that taught us some useful skills. I really fail though as I've not really tried sculpting anything since. One day...

On the day we were given a built skeleton built in a similar manner to the ones I did above. We were then taught how to do cloth, fur, chainmail, scalemail and chains

The year before we'd done a masterclass with the 'Eavy Metal team. This is my model from that day. In both cases I can't bring myself to do anything else to the models for fear of messing them up. Plus they are good memories in their own right

Long lost update

Apart from yesterday's Conan excitement, things have been a bit quiet here recently as hitting the initial goal of 500 points in the painting challenge seems to have burned me out a little. I think it was about this time last year that I also lost momentum. Still, we have a painting day arranged on the 21st, so hopefully I can get a kick up the arse. The last thing painted was Tank Girl, Camp Koala and Booga for the Hot sub-challenge. These three were from the Frother's Charity Model thing in 2013. Very nice models, though sadly TG had a mold line running right around her that was hard to get rid of completely.

It was also about this time last year that the urge to build a gaming table of some sort started... sadly apathy and dis-organisation set in and I never did get around to starting it. That too has returned. It must be something about seeing all those painted figures together that sparks it. Hopefully I can overcome apathy this year and actually make some terrain.

The main stumbling block is working out the best way to do the base board. Modular, thick foam is one approach so I can carve in rivers, coast lines etc. This one is appealing, but does lead to storage issues as I don't have a dedicated gaming room like some lucky people. This raises issues with placing buildings on non-flat terrain.

Option 2 is a gaming mat of some sort. The plain green ones, like the old GW mat, don't appeal as they look a bit lifeless. I've seen a few really nice ones made from thick canvas and caulking/sand, but this leads to raised roads and rivers which, for some reason, grate with me slightly. Probably from working in GW years ago with the flat green square with the wandering rivers that never stayed in place.

What do you use and what do you prefer?

Myths and legends

One of the Analogue sub-challenges was entitled Myth. A lot of my other entries have been a bit unimpressive compared to all the others, so I decided to have a dig through the figure box and see what I had that wasn't a greek warrior. I'd almost given up hope until I came across the Forgeworld Skin Wolf that was only available at events a few years ago.

The myth of werewolves goes back to ancient greek literature and covers most cultures across the world, from American tribes to various Asian cultures where the wolf is replaced with tigers or leopards. The actual transformation process can be triggered by many things and can take many forms.

Some myths tell of the slow transformation of man to beast, with bones reforming and skin stretching... painful to be sure. But not as painful as the beast bloodily ripping itself from within the man, leaving ragged tatters of flesh clinging to his fur. You can see why TV programs shy away from this version of the transformation.

One thing I've decided to do, now that I've got my lightbox setup working more effectively, is to provide extra photos in my posts, so it's not just a repeat of the Challenge blog photos.

The police aren't very lucky at the moment. First they were taken by the weeping angels, now they are about to be savaged by the towering monster...