Challenge Day 11 - Rebs Day 1

I've had a busy few hours so far today, doing the non-uniformisation of the 6mm confederate infantry. Three different browns (Brown Sand, Beige Brown and a mix of English Uniform/Beige Brown) and two different greys (Neutral Grey, mix of Sky Grey with a dash of Field Blue) used on the rank and file, Dark Bluegrey on some of the officers and finally a few rankers in Sky Blue trousers "seceded" from Union casualties.

Working with one colour at a time, I resorted to the trusty method of rolling dice to randomise the mix - for each group of 24 (or 16 for the final skirmishers) how many jackets and trousers in each colour and then which figures would get them.

I think it's provided a good mix:

Some close ups of one stick to show the colour mix a bit better:

Tonight I'll be painting the strip bases with Burnt Umber; a tedious task, but the sooner I get it out of the way, the better.

Tomorrow morning I'll be doing the musket stocks and barrels, then in the evening I'll do faces, hands and hair. If I get time, I'll do the hats as well although it is New Years Eve so I might not.

That just leaves the fiddly bits - belts, straps, bread bags, water bottles, blanket rolls and drums - to paint.

These are going to be my one and only points bomb of this Challenge.

I also need to finish off my entry for the Nostalgia theme round as that has to go in this weekend.

Challenge Day 10

No fancy subtitle today.

I have painted two character figures and submitted them. Hopefully they'll be posted in a few hours time.

Tomorrow I'm going to be starting on the 6mm Rebs. Well, the non-Zouave infantry at least. They are out on the table, ready for me to crack on with them. I've also just sorted out the various paints I'll need. There are quite a few as these should be much less uniform than the Blue-Bellies I was painting last year. To get a good mix, I'll be doing this stage in one go

This morning I popped to the Royal Mail sorting office to collect a parcel which I missed on Christmas Eve. It was a couple more nail polish racks for organising my paints. The 5-tier rack is for my Vallejo airbrush paints (as you can see, I've already put them in); the 3-tier one will be for current project paints.

I'm sure I'll get a little bit bored while I'm painting the little grey blobs, but I do have another character figure primed that can be painted up as a mental break. I'll just need to sort out the basing for the figure before doing the painting - I'll do that tonight when I finish this post.

Challenge Day 9 - Just A WIP

Just a teaser pic of my current WIP. Rather than working on any normal submissions, I've spent the day working on my nostalgia round entry. I've now got all the figures for it painted; just the base scene to complete now (and I've got that part done).

Tomorrow I'll be working on some character figures - if I'm good, I might even finish them and get them submitted..

Anyway, that's more than enough blather for a filler post.

Challenge Day 8 - I'm Back!

Well, that was a refreshing break away from the Smoke. Since my departure, my third Challenge entry got posted - another six citizens of Salutesville.

I've decided that I won't do separate posts here for the rest of my entries; no point repeating myself. I'll just post a group pic and the link. the figures are 28mm from Blue Moon.

I did have fun painting these, particularly the two young ladies about town. I need to find a poodle for the one in red, following Curt's comments.

So, now that I'm back home what are my plans? Well, all being well, this evening I will start work on a couple of character figures. I will probably only get the basing texture added and maybe re-prime them.

tomorrow I want to do some work on my Nostalgia round entry. You won't see any WIP pics of it as I need to keep it under wraps for now.

Challenge Day 5 - Merry Christmas

Sorry for not posting yesterday - I must have been shattered when I got home as my planned 1 hour nap turned into 3 hours of log sawing. Then I needed to cook and eat dinner and have a bath before I could even think of picking up the paint brushes.

I did finish the remaining six civvies for Salutesville, but it did mean a very late finish with all the varnishing steps, taking pics and submitting the blog post. Hopefully Curt will post them later today.

I had some goodies in the post this morning:

A ghoul regiment from Mantic Games. I'm a little bit embarassed about this. You see, When I ordered these a couple of weeks ago, the only email I got was the confirmation from Paypal; nothing from Mantic Games. So, yesterday I'd used the contact form to check in for an update on delivery.

These are, of course, for my Mexicagrave project - got to have plenty of undead to populate the ruins. I've also ordered a box of Wargames Factory plastic skellies from Wayland Games, but they still haven't come into their warehouse for dispatch. There's not great rush on those though.


I a few hours time I'll be heading out of London to spend Christmas with my family in Sussex. I won't be back until Sunday, so this is my last post for a few days. When I get back I will be working on my entry for the Nostalgia bonus theme round and perhaps on a couple of character figures.

All that leaves me to do is with each and every one of you a very merry Christmas and may you receive lots of nice shinies as presents!

Challenge Day 3 - To Be Frank...

Yup, time to post my first entry here as it's been up on the Challenge blog for at least 24 hours.

My opening entry was this 28mm figure from Hasslefree, based on a character from a certain British television series.

Frank is a hopeless case - a drunk, druggie, petty thief and all that, but he is one of life's philosophers and loyal to his family and friends.

Some more pics:

Anyway, this opening salvo put me on the board with a whopping 5 points. Just 995 to reach my target!

My second entry has been posted here - they take me 30 points nearer to my target. If I keep going at this rate, I'll soon find myself raising my target - better slow down girl!

This evening I've continued with the rest of the civvies. I've got 4 almost completed, leaving the final touches on them and the other two to paint fully tomorrow if I want them in before I leave London.

WIP pic:

Toodle-pip!

Challenge Day Two

I've had a fairly productive day off work. I started off by spray-priming the Koreans, with one interruption to clean the airbrush when the nozzle got blocked. After that I varnished the figure I submitted yesterday, which can be seen here - my first entry earning me a humungous 5 points!

After a light lunch, I then made a start on painting a bunch of civvies for Salutesville. I'd done the base, first highlight and wash on the flesh for all twelve when I realised that I was unlikely to get them all done in one session. So I decided to split them into two groups and worked on one set with the aim of getting them finished and submitted tonight. Here's a WIP shot:

I was successful and have just submitted the first group of six. That should earn me a handy 30 points.

I'm back at work the next two days, then on Thursday I'll be heading out of London. If I'm lucky, the second set will be finished before I leave.

And So It Begins

After months of anticipation and trepidation, the 6th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge kicked off at 6am GMT this morning. Naturally, I wasn't up at that silly hour and didn't start my campaign until about 11am.

My grand plan was to get a figure painted and submitted today. So, naturally instead of setting to with that I instead decided to paint the grey uniform basecoat on my 6mm Confederate infantry. As you can see from the following pics (taken when I was about two thirds of the way through) there are a few of these...

Of course, then I decided to add the grey ballast to the bases of my Koreans. Previously I've used superglue to fix the ballast but I decided to try Copydex instead this time. It was so much easier and much less hazardous. Once that glue had dried I gave them a coat of 50% PVA to help seal the ballast before painting. Tomorrow I've booked the day off work (I had a day left that I had to take before Christmas) so I'll be getting out the airbrush and priming them.

After taking a bit of a break, I finally got around to painting my figure for submission today. I was trying a new technique to me and it worked very nicely but was a lot of effort - I don't think I'll be doing many more like that. Anyway, I got the figure finished and my first entry has been submitted - I'm just waiting for the Snowlord to adjudicate and post it.

By the way, I haven't mentioned it on the blog before, but I'm going to be helping out Curt with the adjudicating this year - I'll be looking after all the participants who have been assigned Tuesday as their usual submission day.

12 Hours To Go

Actually, by the time I finish writing this post it will be closer to 9 hours, but I doubt I'll be up that early to crack on with painting figures when the Challenge officially begins. After all it'll be Sunday and I'll fancy a lie-in.

So, what's been going on since my last post?

I didn't make it to the club for the WWI aviation game on Monday as I was feeling absolutely whacked. I did make it to the club on Thursday for a game of ADLG with Howard though - my Swiss against his Lancastrians. I made a rubbish deployment and then compounded it with crap decisions during the game. It was very close though, but I lost in the final turn. Here are a couple of pics:

My orders from Tiny Tin Troops and Warbases arrived on Thursday and were waiting for me when I got home from the club.

I did mention that the Warbases order included some animals - a grizzly bear, a pair of red deer and a quartet of wolves. I'll be prepping them shortly.

Later tonight I'll be gluing the Koreans onto their bases and possibly adding the ballast to them for texture as with my previous efforts. I'll definitely be gluing the cavalry riders onto their horses. Hopefully that will leave them ready for priming tomorrow.

As for my painting plans for tomorrow, I'm in a bit of a toss-up between basecoating the 6mm Rebs with a uniform grey (my plan is that later I'll go over that with other greys and browns on random figures to give a mixed "campaign" look) or doing a couple of individual character figures. I guess you'll have to wait and see.

One Week To Go - Gulp!

Just under actually. Double gulp!

I'm gradually getting my act together. This weekend I started by sorting my 15mm Koreans for the Righteous Army. I also sorted the cavalry figures and glued their horses onto painting sticks.

My plan for today was to glue the infantry figures onto bases ready for painting. However, at that point I discovered that I only had three bases of the right size in my stock. Eeek! I also discovered that I didn't have quite enough bases for the Seven Years War contingent. Double eeek! That set me off on a quick purchasing mission to Tiny Tin Troops. I also decided to place an order to Warbases for some 30mm circular bases for the Aztecs and *might* have ordered a few animals as well.

This evening I have been doing some paint-scheme testing for the Aztecs (well, their skin) and checking out different greys and browns for my 6mm Rebs. I'm happy with my choices for the latter but the Aztec skin still needs some work - I need to reduce the number of steps to something that will be manageable for painting batches of figures to a reasonable standard. This is where my last test ended up:

Getting my painting station organised is an ongoing job. This weekend I bought and assembled a bookcase to add some shelving on my desk:

Tomorrow night I'll be out at the club gaming. Gavin is putting on his WWI aviation game again - chocks away and tally ho!

Challenge Prep #1

With less than two weeks to go, I've actually started my prep-work for the Challenge. Last night I sorted the (thankfully already primed) 6mm Confederates, mainly to work out how many bases I'll need.

This evening I've made a start on basecoating those bases. I'm about two thirds of the way through that job so I should finish it before I go to bed.

I've also been placing orders for a few things and two of those orders have arrived. The first was for some paints I'll need - I won't bore you with photos of those.

The second arrived today - some 2mm Napoleonic infantry from Irregular.

These are for a mini-project that I'm keeping under my hat for now. You'll just have to wait until I post the finished entry...

I've got a couple more orders to place - some more Aztecs and some spare weapons, shields and back-banners from The Assault Group; probably some bases from Warbases; plus a suitable mini for my entry fee (I've got a vague idea of what I'm after, but it may be too expensive necessitating a re-think).

Anyway, that's enough blather for this post!

Two Weeks To Go

Entries to this year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge are now closed and I believe that 85 individuals will be sectioned alongside Curt in the madhouse for 3 months. We still have 2 weeks to put our affairs in order and say goodbye to our loved ones before the men in white coats (or black/blood red/purple hooded robes) drag us off to the asylum.

For me, those 2 weeks will mostly involve getting my painting station in order following my ceiling collapse. The past few weeks have seen me slowly filling boxes with books, files, CDs, DVDs and such-like from my living room until I ran out of space for storing them until I had enough to make it worthwhile hiring a man-with-a-van to shift them to a self-storage locker. I got that done this morning and then set about moving my painting desk and the bookcase I use for storing painting & modelling materials into my now-almost-empty spare room, along with my TV stand. Due to a lack of space, I will be sharing my painting space with my computer space.

My task for the next few evenings will be to get everything sorted, whilst also packing up some more stuff from my living room. I also need to order a few bits and bobs for use during the Challenge.


So, what are my plans? Well, first of all I have a couple of character figures to paint over the first couple of days before I head out of London for Christmas. Once they are done, I'll be working on my 6mm Confederates. Mostly because they are already primed, unlike the rest of the figures I'm planning to paint.

OK, so what are the other figures then?

All sorts. A lot of my lead/plastic/resin has gone into the storage locker, and there's some more still to take. That still leaves me plenty to knock out during the Challenge, especially as my target this year is just 1000 points.

1000 points?

Hey - I'm allowed to take it easy once in a while!

So, the other things (in no particular order)

1. Seven Years War 15mm Russians
2. 15mm Koreans - some more regulars, some irregular cavalry, some regular light horse and a good sized mob of Righteous Army.
3. 15mm NSL - a load more hover vehicles and some more Power Armour troopers.
4, 28mm Aztecs (plus some wildlife) for my Mexicagrave project
5. 28mm civvies, cops and gangsters plus boats for my Mob wars project.
6. 25mm figures for my Car Wars project
7. 15mm Crusties
8. A few odds and ends, including some early/mid 1980s Citadel fantasy figures I found while shifting bits today

I've actually got more figures available than I need for 1000 points, so some of the above might not get painted. We'll just have to wait and see. If things are going well, I might raise my target, but I don't plan to go to the same crazy levels as I did the last couple of years.

6th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Announced

Our favourite Canadian lunatic blogger, Curt, has just announced the 6th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which will run from 20 December 2015 to 20 March 2016. This year's theme* is "risk takers, daredevils and gamblers".

* apart from the final bonus theme round, all this means is that your entry fee figure needs to somehow fit the theme.

For those who aren't in the know, the Challenge is about encouraging people to use those cold, dark winter months (or long, hot summer months for those to the South of the Equator) to make big inroad into their lead/plastic/resin piles rather than about producing high quality painted miniatures (although some people do the latter and a few somehow manage to do both).

It's good fun and there is plenty of friendly rivalry and good-natured ribbing.

Those who have been following my blog for a while will know that I've taken part in the last three of these and placed quite highly in each. However, with all the disruption in my flat and for a few other reasons I won't be aiming for such a high output this year.

Anyway, the link to the announcement post is here:  linkity-link


So, if you fancy joining in, pop over there and leave a comment.

Rules Review

I was contacted during the week by Jospeh McCollough from Osprey asking if I'd be willing to review some of their recent and upcoming rules releases. They thought my blog was a good site to do this because I have a lot of followers and a high hit count of the quality of my posts and my engaging writing style.

After a brief exchange of emails, he agreed to send me copies of Honours of War (the Seven Years War rules by Keith Flint) and Black Ops (special ops/espionage rules by Guy Bowers) to review. They arrived in the post on Saturday morning.

First Impressions

I've only had time to have a quick skim through both books so I can't say much at this point. As expected from Osprey, both books are well produced with nice colour pictures of figures on the tabletop and illustrations from appropriate Osprey books.

Honours of War

These certainly look interesting and I'll have to try a couple of games at the club. They look to be designed for fighting battles from brigade through to large battles.

Black Ops

I was originally thinking of using these for not-too-far-future special ops games, but on skim-reading them I had an epiphany - I could quite easily use them for gangster games without too much effort. I'll just need to assemble and paint up some furniture and cover terrain.

Sunday Update

Hi folks!

As you can imagine, I haven't been able to do any painting this week. Mostly my evenings have been filled with sorting out the chaos resulting from the ceiling collapse.

I did have a cunning plan for this autumn, now blown out of the water. I was going to clear all the junk out of my spare bedroom and get it refurbished as my hobby space (and possibly office). The latter part will now have to wait.

On Tuesday I got the junk removed. I then spent the rest of the day cleaning up the room and sorting the remaining items out. I also moved my television in there and bought a bean bag so that I can use it as a temporary living room. It's also where I'll be temporarily storing the contents of my lounge before I shift them to a self-storage facility. So far I have filled 13 archive boxes with books. I've got about another box worth to fill.

You might ask why it's taken me a week to fill 13 boxes with books. Surely it shouldn't take that long? Well, the reason it is taking so long is the need to dust them all individually before boxing them up. I have also boxed up my collection of DVDs, but need to do the same for my CD collection. And then the rest of the room contents.

Once I've transferred my books, DVDs and CDs to the self-storage facility (along with some of the bits I'd left in my spare room) I may have a rethink about how my rooms are used while my lounge is out of commission. I may switch my bedroom to the spare room and use my bedroom as the lounge/office/painting room as it has more space.


The roofing contractor will be coming on Tuesday to look at the roof to see where the leak came from that caused my ceiling to collapse. Once that is fixed, They'll arrange for the ceiling to be sorted (the buildings insurance will pay for that). As the whole room could do with a refurbishment (actually, my whole flat could do with it, but one step at a time) I will try to get it done as a single job.

Who knows - maybe it will even be done in time for this winter's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge?


Thanks for all your concern and best wishes in the comments you left on my post last Saturday!

Saturday Workbench

Well, it would have been if a household disaster hadn't struck. I'd just started doing the Klear coats on the armoured vehicles before doing washes when I heard what sounded like a drip at the other end of my living room. I went to investigate then heard the ceiling start to go and just managed to get out of the way.

So, I now have a 4 foot diameter hole in the ceiling and rubble and dust all over my lounge. And dust all over me as well - once Doctor Who is out of the way I'll be having a damn good shower to get myself cleaned up.

Tomorrow is going to be taken up with buying rubble sacks, clearing the rubble, hoovering up the dust and packing away anything that isn't needed.

Friday Update

Nothing to report on the painting front I'm afraid. Tomorrow will see me finishing the two armoured vehicles and  hopefully making good progress on the Hasslefree figures.

Monday night's game of Gruntz against Simon was a cracker of a scenario. Sadly, I forgot to pack my camera so you'll have to wait until Simon actually downloads the ones he took on his iPad. I think we made a good test of the playable limits of the rules points-wise.

The scenario was a bit involved. I started with an infantry platoon with some attached support elements (250 points) occupying a bridgehead position which they had to hold until a larger mechanised infantry platoon (350 points) arrived - from Turn 4 onwards I would dice for each vehicle in the platoon to see if it arrived on table (6 for turn 4, 5+ for turn 5, etc). Simon had 400 points of mixed infantry, light armour and VTOLs on table.

We did discover a couple of things:
1) Mortars are incredibly effective against infantry, especially when the target is in the open. They're not bad against vehicles either.
2) Vehicle specialists (in my case some hover Mobile Autonomous Weapons Platforms) are very good value

I managed to get lucky with the reinforcements - the first vehicle arrived on turn 4 and it was the missile armed APC. My big mistake was that I forgot to give it the Ack-Ack perk - stupid really, as I had enough spare points to add that. the other 3 APCs came on in Turn 5. I also did well with the activation cards for the troops disembarking from the vehicles so they were able to activate pretty much instantly. Which was handy as the three standard APCs were each carrying a squad and a missile specialist, the latter promptly doing some serious damage to Simon's VTOLs.

We only had time for another turn, but it was quite clear that my reinforcements were on course to destroy Simon's force. Just as well as my bridgehead platoon was very close to being wiped out when the mechanised infantry rode to the rescue.


Last night was something a bit different. I went out for a meal. Not just any meal though - this was a gaming/blogging related meal.

Miles visits London every few weeks for work. On this occasion he actually remembered to let us know in advance and we arranged to meet up for a meal, joined by Ray and Lee. As those two were travelling up from outside London, we went for somewhere near to where they'd be coming in - a Greek restaurant on Coptic Street.

As you can imagine we had a very pleasant evening - good food, good company and lots of chatter about gaming and painting projects.

It was a real pleasure to meet Miles at last and, no, the pleasure was nothing to do with him insisting on paying for the meal.

Edit:

I've snaffled the pics of Ray's and Miles' blogs:

From Miles:

Me. Ray, Lee

From Ray:

Lee, Miles, me

Sunday Update

You know the old chestnuts about plans? Well, my plan for this week went completely to pot. Last Saturday, whilst changing into my dossing-around-the-house clothes after doing some shopping, I felt a twinge in my upper back muscles. It wasn't too bad or I wouldn't have gone to SELWG the next day. On Monday at work, I had another twinge in the same spot, this time much worse.

As a result, I didn't manage to get any painting done during the week, so my 750-post prize draw is postponed again. I did manage to get a little bit of work done on the armoured vehicles last night. I just need to do a little bit of detailing (the lights), gloss coat them, do a wash, gloss coat again, satin coat, then gloss up a few bits and matt coat the tank tracks.

Luckily my back is OK now, so I should be able to get some hobby work done this week. Not tomorrow night though - Simon and I will be playing Gruntz.

SELWG - The Games

A bit of a photo-dump, but there should be pics of every game! Unfortunately, it seems that the floor plan in the show guide doesn't really match with the layout in reality, so some games I can't say who was running them,


Upstairs

Gravesend Gamers Guild:

 GLC Wargames - an ECW battle:

TWWS - I think this may have been an ECW game as well:

Shepway Wargamers - Heart of Darkness:

 Streatham & Tooting/Real Time Wargames - early Sudan:

Robert Dunlop & Sons - Great War Spearhead in 6mm:

Society of Ancients:

Downstairs

South London Warlords - Stingray! :

Une guerre civile très français (A Very French Civil War):

WW2 Pacific theatre - POW Rescue:

Watch out for the late night munchies!

Maidstone Wargames Society - James Bond-esque Alpine Skiing:

 Early C11th Skirmish:

The Crush The Kaiser chaps with their new Mexican Revolution rules "Hey Gringo!":

Napoleonic naval game in 10mm - the ships are MDF kits from Capitan and look great:

 First Crusade game:

Malifaux:

Saga:

 SEEMS - Battlefleet Gothic:

 Crawley Wargames - Stretcher Bearer:

Star Trek game:

Not sure who - 15mm Poor Bloody Infantry WW2 game:

ACW Ironclad game:

That fun little Agincourt game I took part in:

Near the end of the game I was in - I was out at this point

 

Simon Miller with an Athens v Sparta scrum using his "To The Strongest" rules:

Quatre Bras I think:
Edit: No it's not - it's Waterloo. I blame my overhearing one of them talking about the crossroads