Paint Table Saturday - AHPC X Is Upon Us

Well, in three weeks' time the tenth edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge will kick off and an intrepid band of 68 fools figure painters will retire to their workbenches, pick up their brushes, load their palettes, accidentally drink from their brush water mugs, and finally emerge at the end of March.

This year, in amongst working through my leadpile to get to my 1300 points target, I will be one of the Full Minions again. I've been assigned Friday as my duty day but this year it's "free fire" for submissions rather than victims entrants having assigned days.

Now, you might have spotted that my target of 1300 points is much lower than my typical output from previous Challenge editions, particularly last year when I achieved nearly 3500 points. That is because I will be largely focusing on character figures this year, rather than armies.

What do I have lined up for painting this time?

10mm Lizardmen - for James' charity project
15mm SYW Russians - there will be a small contingent of additions for this mega army
15mm SciFi - there may be some more Kra'Vak
28mm Pulp/Gangsters - I've got quite a few figures (including civvies) still left from last year
"28mm" Strontium Dog - some more figures for this project have come (or are coming) my way
28mm Barbarian Horde - a mixed foot and mounted warband for Dragon Rampant; lots of bare flesh, furs, leather and steel
28mm WW2 - there should be a small group of British Airborne hitting the ground
"28mm" Mega City One - errmm, yes, I did succumb and purchase the new Judge Dredd game from Warlord; my order arrived this afternoon:

I have opened up the packs and the figures are very nice indeed. Some of the packs are metal, but most are in Warlord's new resin. There may be some additional purchases made before (the two packs I didn't order) and during the Challenge (the second wave which will be released in January).

And now, the Workbench:

I've made progress but they aren't quite finished. That's mainly the result of my flat being horribly cold at the moment - my boiler broke down on Sunday night and the engineer who was meant to come on Thursday went to the wrong house and naffed off - I've got another booked to come tomorrow morning. However, I suspect that the pump he will need won't be on his van so it will be a few more days until I get central heating and hot water back.

Finished: 28mm WW2 British Paras Batch 4

Just a small batch this time, with some odds and ends that I bought in the past few weeks. It's not the final batch though - some figures I'd ordered in June from Black Tree Designs finally arrived on Saturday. I've also got the jeeps, trailer, motorbikes and handcarts to finish painting. And some Artizan vehicle passengers.

Foundry Paras in Berets

What's that on the kneeling chap's back?

A 2" mortar I added from a Warlord sprue!

Warlord PIAT and 2" Mortar Teams

I'm rethinking my earlier decision to sell off the Warlord paras I painted when testing out paint schemes. Although that will mean that I have more PIATs than most of the airborne battalions at Arnhem!


Crusader 6 Pounder

The gun seems to be the same one that Artizan sell, but the crew are different. If I keep the Warlord figures, this will take me up to three 6 pounders - I doubt that I'd ever get that many on the table, even in a game of "Big CoC". I now have visions of me ordering the Warlord 17 pounder and 75mm pack howitzer to add to the force, just in case...

I've also painted the crew figures for the Warlord jeeps and the motorbike riders:

You'll get a better shot once the jeeps, etc are painted (probably on Thursday).

Finished: 28mm WW2 British Paras Batch 3

And the third batch are finished, at last. This project is rapidly approaching its end (until I buy a load of armed jeeps for the Recce Troop...).

The figures are a mix of Artizan, Crusader and Foundry.


Senior Leaders

The chappie in the kilt is meant to represent either Captain James Ogilvie or Lieutenant David Strathern of the Glider Pilot Regiment, both of whom flew in wearing their kilts.

Junior Leaders

Supports and Specialists

The chap in the blue-grey trousers is to represent one of the RAF personnel who were on the ground and joined in the defence of Oosterbeek; the chap in the green beret is to represent one of the Dutch commandos who were attached to 1st Airborne to act as interpreters. There's also a chap with a Vickers K gun for the Recce Squadron contingent.

Sten Guns

The radio operator will be a forward observer.

Bren Guns

Rifles

While I had the airbrush station set up for the varnishing, I took the opportunity to prime a few bits and to put down the base colours on the jeeps, trailers etc:

That green might* look rather bright right now, but with some drybrushing, washes and a filter it will look right in the end (trust me - I've done it before!).

Tomorrow I will start painting the (for now) final foot figures for this project.

When they are finished I've got eight** vehicle crew figures to paint and then the vehicles, 3" mortar and 6 pounder.

* OK, it does
** I have another six crew figures but need to add weapons and packs to them.

Tuesday Update 19 November

As tomorrow will see a "Finished" post, I thought I'd do a quick workbench type post today.

This afternoon I finished painting the final batch of paras from the third board. Tomorrow I will be varnishing all three batches.

I also added basing gunk to a couple of new figures and to the rebased Vickers teams and 3" mortar chap. I'll paint the latter bases tomorrow. Thursday will see me priming the new figures and re-priming the 3" mortar - I had an accident while taking it off the old base and some paint got removed by superglue on my fingertips.

As I'll have the airbrush kit out, I might also do the base colours on the jeeps, trailers, carts and motorbikes that I primed a few weeks back.

Sunday Update 17 November

Progress on the paras has been slower than I'd hoped. I had a bad bout of insomnia on Wednesday night, and wasn't up to painting on Thursday and then on Friday my right (painting) hand was aching for some reason. However, I have managed to make up time over the weekend and got the second batch finished. I'll start on the third batch tomorrow - unless anything else goes wrong, I should have the whole board finished and varnished by Wednesday evening.

A slightly closer look at the second batch:

Once this board is finished it won't quite be the end of the paras - I have a few more figures and other bits still to paint.

Wednesday Workbench 13 November

As you can see, I've been making good progress with the third board of British paras - first batch done (apart from varnishing) and second batch started. I should finish the second batch on Friday leaving just one batch to do which (if all goes well) will be finished on Sunday. I can then varnish the whole lot on Monday.

Here's a slightly closer pic of the first batch:

Yes, I have painted tartan! It was actually less difficult than I'd expected, once I got past an initial mistake.

Once they are all done, I will switch to painting the lizardmen - they should be a quick paint job, but will act as a nice palate cleanser.

Finished: Some 15mm SYW Russian Bits plus an Update

I finally finished these this morning. Well, to be fair, all that needed doing was the flocking.


Crews and Gun

There is a good reason for their being two crews and just one gun - I already have eight crews and nine guns. After taking the photos, I decided to glue all the guns onto crew bases (I've left them loose up to now).


Limbers

Dismounted Dragoons

I'm not sure that I'll ever get to use these in a game, but as I had some spare musketeers and dragoons it was worth adding them to the collection.


This afternoon I began work on the next board of British paras:

I decided that for this batch I would grab out all the ones who would have the maroon berets (there is another chap in a beret, but that will be green to represent one of the Dutch Commandos who were attached as interpreters for Arnhem).

These should be a fairly quick paint, although one chap might slow the job down as I will have to paint the tartan of his kilt.