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