Wednesday Workbench 29 December

 

Whilst I have been back home for a few days, I haven't done any painting. When I headed off for family Christmas, I had started on a Japanese tank. With the arrival of the extras I'd ordered from Warlord, there was now a second tank. I decided that when I got back home I would prep the second tank, prime it and then do the same camo steps as with the first one. Then I would do the remaining steps on both of them at the same time.

I've also prepped the Warlord figure additions:

They are going to be sending out the FOO pack and have told me to keep the Sniper & Flamethrower Teams pack that they'd sent by mistake.

Just before I left last week, my Eureka order arrived. I've started prepping them and should finish that tomorrow:

I should have all the prep and assembly done tomorrow, then I should be able to get priming done on Friday. After that, it will be back to painting the tanks.

Wednesday Workbench 22 December; Podcast; AHPC XII 1st Entry

 

Not much on the workbench right now - just one little tank that I've made a start on. If all goes well, I'll be finishing that next week once I get back home from Christmas with family.

I placed a couple of orders last week for the remaining bits I need for my WW2 Japanese. The first of those arrived today:

It was only after taking the photo that I spotted there had been a picking error - they'd sent me a Sniper & Flamethrower teams pack instead of a Forward Observer team. I've emailed them about that.

Podcast

We recorded another episode of the podcast two weeks ago and it was released last week, but I kept forgetting to post the link here. So here it is:

AHPC XII 1st Entry

Yesterday was day one of this year's Challenge and, as is my wont, I got a small entry submitted.

Three dogs painted as identically as possible, using photos sent by Curt to get the markings "right"(ish). These are one of his dogs, Oscar, whose brother Felix was painted by Curt last year. I've only claimed for two of them - the third will be included for scoring as part of another submission, but it made sense to paint them all at the same time.

Anyway, here's the link to the post: linky-link

Which just leaves me to wish you all a very merry Christmas!

Wednesday Workbench 15 December

 

As you can see, I'm currently in the middle of priming the rest of the figures that I've prepped. I've got about half of the Japanese left t prime black; I'll then do zenithal highlighting on the whole lot.

Barbarian artillery, cat merchants, some Japanese

More Japanese

The remaining Japanese

I also had some British Airborne prepped:

They've been primed, but I forgot to take photos of them before putting them in a drawer.

I should have everything done before the Challenge kicks off in the wee small hours of Tuesday morning (OK, 6am here in the UK).

Wednesday Workbench 08 December

 As you can see, I'm still in figure prep mode. I'm very nearly done - unless I decide to prep the figures from the Dangerous Dames Kickstarter. I probably will, as I don't have any pulp figures in my painting queue at the moment.

So, what's been prepped?

15mm Mongols and Georgians/Armenians:

28mm TAG WW2 Japanese:

A quick pic of all the Japanese:

28mm Feline Merchants from Bad Squiddo Games:

28mm Barbarian Artillery:

28mm Papuan Porters from Eureka:

I'll leave it at that so that I can publish this post while it is still Wednesday!

Paint Table Saturday 04 December

 

Figure prep is going well. In the photo above you can see the figures I've got done since Wednesday, and some that I'm still working on.

Eureka 28mm Japanese:

I just need one more riflemen from them to have a full Eureka squad. The chap on the hex base will be the platoon sergeant; the one on the square base will be the squad corporal. I do need to order a few more figures from Eureka anyway, so adding a single rifleman won't be an issue.

15mm Mongols and Georgians/Armenians:

The top 2 rows are a mix of "knights" to use as Georgian/Armenian heavy cavalry. the rest are Mongol medium cavalry as I need to beef up that part of my army.

TAG 28mm Japanese:

I've started the prep on these and should get them finished tomorrow if there is good daylight.

As the daylight wasn't very good yesterday, I did some priming instead:

That's the ancient Germans done. I've checked and I don't need to order any more as I have enough here to fill out my heavy infantry needs and add a few bases of medium infantry as well.

I ran out of the red-brown primer on the very last figure - I've placed an order for some more.

I also glued the Warlord 28mm Japanese onto bases:

That's it for today. Hopefully I should get all the figure prep done by Wednesday and the priming done by the weekend. For the 28mm Japanese, I'll need to add basing gunk before priming though - that's a job I can do on days when the light isn't good enough for prepping.

Wednesday Workbench 01 December

 

Figure prep continues, now that my boiler is repaired and there is some decent daylight (I find it easier to do figure prep in natural daylight than artificial). 

Ancient Germans:

I think I might need to order a couple more packs to replace the figures that suffered broken swords and spears during shipping and prep.

Some 28mm stuff:

The top row are Japanese infantry from Warlord Games; the rest are rioters/demonstrators from Offensive Miniatures.

I've still got all of these to prep:

Hopefully ~I'll get all of these prepped and primed before the Challenge starts. 

Wednesday Workbench 24 November

 Apologies for the lack of posts since Salute. I decided not to do a post of pics of the Salute games as I hadn't taken very many, they didn't cover that many games and other bloggers had done much more comprehensive posts.

As for WIP stuff, I'm slowly plugging away at figure prep ready for this winter's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge:

That's the Imperial Romans prepped and primed. I do need to touch up the primer, which I'll get done tomorrow.

Part of the lack of progress has been down to me having the expected sore shoulder and "feeling like crap" reaction to having my Covid booster last week and my annual 'flu jab yesterday. I'm also dealing with a gas boiler which keeps switching off - I've got an engineer booked for tomorrow, so hopefully the fault will be sorted and my flat will be warm again.

I got a parcel in the post today:

Or is that three parcels combined?

But you're not interested in white boxes, it's what's inside that you want to see:

It's the order I placed with The Assault Group about a month ago. There are seventeen packs of WW2 Japanese and a pack of dogs. They'll be joining the prepping & priming queue.

Salute 2020...errrmmm...2021 - The Loot

 Today was Salute 2020...according to all the merch. The reason for that being that the original April 2020 date being lost as a result of Covid lockdowns.

I arrived at the ExCel Centre just before 10am, but decided to finish the book chapter I was reading before going in. By that time the queue for Covid pass checks at the doors had completely gone. I think I got into the show itself about 10.20 and quickly realised that things were very different. It was still a large, stuffy hangar with crap lighting, but it was much less packed than normal. 

I heard from someone who'd spoken to the Warlords that there were only around 4,000 tickets sold, about half the normal attendance. Added to that were several wide open spaces where companies (some of them big names - 4Ground, Gripping Beast, Hasslefree) had pulled out and (as a rough guess) about 60% of the games had also not turned up. That did mean that it was slightly less warm and stuffy than normal, but the main benefit of less people and more open space was that the crowd noise was much lower than normal.

Of the games that were there, there weren't many that were particularly impressive to look at. There were also a few repeats from previous years.

I did get to have a chat with a few of the traders who I haven't seen since 2019. I'm hoping that they had good sales despite the reduced number of potential marks...errmmm...customers.

I did get to have a chat with various bloggers etc, including at the 2pm meet-up. Speaking of which, here's a photo of some of us (a few more turned up after the photo):

I'll add names at some point. For now, you'll just have to deal with the queasiness caused by the sight of Ray's bare legs!

As for my loot haul:

I didn't get everything that was on my list, but made up for it with a few non-list purchases. The bits I couldn't get at the show will get ordered online this week.

Offensive Miniatures

Three packs of rioters/demonstrators to annoy my Mega City One Judges.

Bad Squiddo Games

I had seen these in Annie's recent kickstarter, but as it was the only pack I was interested in I didn't back the campaign. Rather silly of me - I'd have saved myself a couple of quid I think.

Warlord Games

Out of six packs on my list, this was the only one they had with them.

Minibits

Debris of War

Who doesn't need more barrels and crates?

TT Combat

Yes, more shipping containers. And crates, And big generators. Sadly, most of the items on my list weren't available at the show.

Eureka Miniatures UK

My pre-order of some Papuan porters and Japanese infantry for my New Guinea project. 

"Hang on, what's that she's hiding underneath the bubble wrap?"

Nothing to see here, move along...

Donnington

Some Mongol medium cavalry, some Georgian heavy cavalry and some individual Romans to use as level 1 leaders for "Infamy, Infamy!".

And of course the Salute figure and die:

I'll probably hold off on posting my photos of the games until Monday.

Eve Of Salute Update

Well, it's Salute tomorrow and I will be heading to the ExCel centre for a spending spree. I probably won't be taking photos of all the games this time - I've learned my lessons from past years, but will inevitably end up with pics of most of them. My simple rule this year is that if they don't have a sign identifying who they are and what the game is then they won't get a photo; it's just too much hassle trying to work out who and what they are when there are so many games at the show.

I do have a small shopping list and a couple of pre-orders to collect.

However, the post title does mention update so I'd better get to that part. the eagle-eyed among you (who may also have realistic hair, posable hands and a big scar on one cheek) will have noticed that there hasn't been a "Paint Table Saturday" or "Wednesday Workbench" post since I finished the Koreans and Chinese last week. Basically, that's because there wasn't really anything to show you.

Mostly I have been prepping figures, part of my "getting ready for AHPC XII". A considerable time ago I bought a load of extra figures from Lancashire Games to boost my Early Imperial Romans and Germans up to full armies for ADLG. I've managed to get partway through prepping them this week and should have them fully prepped, onto painting sticks and primed by next weekend. There are also a few British airborne figures that need a bit of prep work - they will be for painting prior to the Challenge.

On top of that, I got the new batch of jungle scrub mix made.

Finished: 15mm Korean and Ming Chinese Additions

 

And they're done, at last! They took me a bit longer to complete than they should have, but at least they did get me back to painting figures after my sojourn making terrain.

Korean Armoured Infantry

Korean Heavy Spearmen

Korean Levy

Korean Light Cavalry

Unit 1

Unit 2

Here is a photo of a base from each "unit" with one from the first unit painted a few years ago:

As you can see, I've kept the same three main colours (blue, magenta, orange) for their clothing, but used for different parts.

Due to pack sizes, I have ended up with two spare figures:

I'll probably use those for a baggage camp base.

Ming Chinese Levy

All figures are 15mm from Old Glory 15s (purchased through Timecast).

I haven't decided what will be next up on the paint table. I'll have to have a rifle through the piles tomorrow.