Anglo-Saxon Thegns with axes for SAGA (5th Entry, 6th AHPC)

Well this was my last post for this years Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I have the next (and last batch) of 8 Anglo-Saxons for SAGA on my workbench right now, but since I spontaneously started a new job the other week on Wednesday (I guess that is what you call it when the project a start in May and then ask you if you could start in three days time), I guess I did not have the time to finish them before the Challenge ended. Actually they are still on the workbench, with the tournament I want to sue them for taking place next Saturday! :-O But alas, my original goal had been 250 points and I have more than doubled that with a grand total of 570, so who cares!

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with axes

Anyway, this is another SAGA point of Thegns for my Anglo-Saxon army. Just like the last ones, these are pretty straight forward Gripping Beast plastics, with LBMS shield decals. The warrior with the blue shield is a slight conversion that I felt was required due to his un-combative pose, but that is it. Only the usual chainmail sculpted where the arms meet the torsos, painted, based and ready for combat.

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with axes

I have to say I like the GB plastics. Good detail for plastics and lots of character in the faces one can work with. So I was glad to have done a lot of them this Challenge.

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with axes

 Hope to be showing you the last 8 Warriors and an alternative Warlord before the weekend… keep your finders crossed!

 

Murillo Gladiator (Gambler theme rounds entry for the 6th AHPC)

I have to say, this theme round, as well as the theme for this year in general gave me huge headaches. So from the start it became clear, that this year I would enter my Curtgeld into the theme round. But what was it going to be. After long deliberation, I came up with this…

A Murillo Gladiator. IMHO a Gladiator is a gambler in many aspects. For one, you are gambling with your life the moment you enter the arena, for essentially you are dead and are fighting to get your life back. You are also taking a gamble, based on your class of Gladiator and the class you are facing, for some of those might leave you at a huge disadvantage. And I think this hold especially true for the auctorati, free (wo)men who chose to give up their freedom to live as Gladiators. Sure you were well cared for outside of the fights you had to perform, but was it worth risking your life?

Murmillo

And in a way, this mini was a personal gamble for me. A few years back I asked Curt “what will the theme be for the next installment?” Reason being simple… the last show I attended that year was a couple of weeks before the start of the Challenge and I wanted to go shopping there. So Curt said, “probably Gladiators, but I cannot guarantee.” In the end it turned out not be Gladiators, but I had bought this fine Murillo from Warlord Games. And I thought that after 2-3 year of spending his life on the lead mountain, he finally deserved his moment of glory in the Challenge. So here he is.

Murmillo

Paintjobwise, he is quite simple,but what was to be expected with a mini that is mostly skin and loincloth. I chose to do the manica and ocrea in steel rather than a bronze colour. I wanted him to be an old Centurio who had to leave the Legions at the end of his tour of duty, but who had whored and drunk up all his money and had chosen to become an auctorati. So he was making use of some of the equipment he had to buy for his army job, which would most likely be less ornamental and more functional.

Murmillo

 

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with spears for SAGA (4th Entry, 6th AHPC)

So this is it. The Challenge is drawing to an end and I am guessing, this will be my second to last entry (maybe even my last one… not sure how much progress I will make the next couple of days). Again some Anglo-Saxons for SAGA or to be more precise, one (SAGA) point of Thegns.

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with spears

These are pretty straight forward. Just plastic Thegns with spears, virtually straight out of the box. The only thing I had to do was sculpt a little chain mail around the shoulders, where the separate arms meet the torsos.

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with spears

The shields are transfers from LBMS and that is about all there is to say about them. Well not really, as there is an extra minis with a standard.

Anglo-Saxon Thegns with spears

Now in SAGA you have the option to swap one Heathguard or Warrior in a unit for a standard. I could go on forever how clever I am and that I wanted a standard to keep all my options open, but truth be told… I simply lost count while cleaning up these minis and did nine spearmen instead of eight.

Anglo-Saxon Thegn with standard

So I simply added a standard I had printed out for some Rohan cavalry for Lord of the Rings to his spear and that is it.

Anglo-Saxon Thegn with standard

So, now there is two more points of warriors left to do and I am good for the SAGA tournament next month!

 

 

Endoskeletons for Terminator Genesys (3rd Entry, 6th AHPC)

As I put it last week… Ei will be bäck. So here I am. Nothing special this week, actually very simple fare. 20 Endoskeletons for the Terminator Genesys game.

Terminators

All in all these were a very simple paint job. I airbrushed a coat of Chrome paint on and a airbrush blue wash over the weapons, for a very light OSL effect. Red eyes, light grey teeth a satin varnish and they were done.

Terminators

I kept the bases very simple and bare to depict a ground with nuclear fall-out and no feels and whistles.

Terminators (heavy and support)

As I said very simple. Cleaning them up, basing them and preparing them, took longer than painting. Why repairing them, you ask? Well some genius decided to do the heavy and support Endos (the picture above) in metal. The models for Terminator are 28mm. Since the Ednos would have to fit inside the human skin (if used as infiltrators) they are essentially very slim skeletons. with the plastic minis that is fine… they are a bit thicker and robust, but the metal ones are not. One broke off at the ankles during painting, with another the arm broke in half. The legs and arms are so thin, that I could not pin them, even with a .1mm wire. So I had to glue the wires to the outside. I guess the game would have been better served in 32mm. I hope they survive a couple of games!

Terminators (crawlers)

 

SAGA Anglo-Saxon mounted Heathguards (2nd Entry, 6th AHPC)

So this is last weekends output, some mounted Anglo-Saxon Heathguards for SAGA.
Now in general Heathguards seem to be a rare sight in an Anglo-Saxon war band in SAGA due to the fact, that Anglo-Saxons benefit most from large units (10+). Given that you can only purchase 4 Heathguards for a SAGA point, the does not seem like a natural choice and to be frank… I am not sure if I am making a clever choice here. On the other hand, I feel that many scenarios do require the extra speed mounted troops provide, so I am willing to take that gamble.

2 points of Anglo-Saxon Heathguards

But maybe that gamble will pay off. If I amalgamate these two SAGA points into one unit it will be 8 men strong. With the right dice played on the right ability, this unit will count as 2-4 men stronger. But obviously that will leave me low on SAGA dice… ahh lets just see!

Anglo-Saxon mounted Heathguards

Anyway, on to what is important for the Challenge… the minis. Mounted Anglo-Saxons are not the easiest models to find, so I decided to take another route here. As some might know, I am simultaneously building a Norman army for SAGA and for those I had bought two boxes of plastic mounted Normans from Conquest Games. Actually more than I will need, so I decided to convert eight of them to Anglo-Saxons.

Anglo-Saxon mounted Heathguards
[rear view]

Now their equipment is a little different, since in SAGA the Anglo-Saxons are based on the late 9th to early 10th century, while the Normans are based on the middle 11th century. So I took the heads as well as sword / axe hands from the Gripping Beast Saxon Thegns box set and fitted those to the Conquest models. The hands were easy enough to do, but the heads required some work, due to the fact, that the Conquest models have the necks attached to the heads, while the Gripping Beast ones have the necks as part of the body. So that required some sculpting of chainmail around the necks. Which was half as bad, since the Conquest minis are all sculpted with their swords in their scabbards, so I had to remove the hilts and re-sculpt those sections anyway. Plus I love sculpting chainmail!

Anglo-Saxon mounted Heathguards

Otherwise I went for the round shields that came with the Norman cavalry. Tear shaped shields simply felt wrong for early Anglo-Saxons and that leaves me with tear shaped only shields on my Normans later on. So this was a win – win scenario for me there.

Anglo-Saxon mounted Heathguards
[rear view]

Painting wise I went a slightly new route here. I have always felt, that horses were a huge time drain to paint. So some time last year I decided to do the at least the base coat with my airbrush and these were actually the first mounted troops I did since then. And I think this was a good decision. In the past it took me about 10 minutes to base coat a single horse, now it was 10 for the whole group (including cleaning the airbrush afterwards). So I think this will become my new weapon of choice for horses.

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

All the rest was fairly standard straight forward painting. Not much to say there. Out of the eight shields, six are free-hand painted, with the two hanging by the horses sides sporting decals from LBMS. I really enjoyed painting these, especially trying to match their designs to those from LBMS, since all the other troops will have decals on their shields and I did not want them to stand out.

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

But my favorite is the one below, due to the fact that it is a simple wooden shield with the design painted on the bare wood. That gave me a canvas to paint both the bare wood and a design, which was great fun.

Anglo-Saxon Thegn

And here are a few more close-ups of the other riders:

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

There is also something else that was a first for me with these minis. In the past I always used varnish from the can to seal my minis. As we all know, that creates a “no spraying time” when it is cold and/or humid outside. Something that kept me from a posting before last week and that is simply annoying.

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

I have also been suffering from another problem for a little over a year now. I have always used an industrial varnish that produced a perfect flat result. But some time in 2014 they must have changed the formula, which always resulted in a satin finish. This would go flat after 6-12 month, but it was still highly annoying. So I got myself a 0.4mm needle for my airbrush which allows me to use varnish in it. She these are actually the first troops to be varnished using an airbrush. Really happy with that, especially since it will allow me to varnish regardless of temperature and humidity.

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

All in all, I am really really happy with these riders. I feel plastic wargaming minis can be hit an miss. Some are marvelous, others can be awful. When I took these out of the box, I felt they were somewhere in between, but once assembled and painted, I can only say that they are lovely. Especially the horses, even though the animals require some filling where the body meets the neck. In that sense, I am really looking forward to painting the Normans later on!

Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman

I also painted a bunch of Sci-Fi minis, but the bases bases on them are still giving me some troubles, so I am not sure, if I will be able to get those in before the Friday deadline for the AHPC (which I did not).

If not… Ei will be bäck! (Sorry for that one, but maybe this will give you an idea, of what is to come. 😉 )

 

 

Warzone Resurrection, Imperial Young Guards / Life Dragoons (1.3rd Entry, 6th AHPC)

And last are some minis for Warzone, to complement my already large Imperial force. In this case some Life Dragoons from the Young Guards Regiment. Since these are the Imperial Serenity (= the head of state) and Imperial is based on modern-day Britain, I felt I should rather go with a classic paint job (both in a historic British sense as well as in the sense that they are depicted this way in all the classic artwork). So it was scarlet jackets and dark blue trousers with red piping.

Young Guards – Life Dragoons

I have to say… this is where the problems began. They are always depicted with black armour and berets, so I kept those. The big problem was, that this made a large area of the minis rather dark and the colors did not really contrast each other. About the only part of the minis to provide some contrast was the gas masks, but they looked rather strange with their large napkin like collars.

Young Guards – Life Dragoons

And it continued with the rest of their equipment. Begin a guard unit that is always depicted in their colorful uniforms even if in the field, I felt that their belts, pouches, webbing and so on should not be green. Them wearing backpacks in white did not seem right either, so I went with a light grey. Which while keeping with the theme, did not really improve the contrast either.

Young Guards – Life Dragoons

But the minis were plagued with other problems from the beginning. They are made from resin and when I bought those three packs the resin with the weapon sprue on all three packs was extremely soft. I contacted the manufacturer and got replacement sprue without any argument. But unfortunately those replacement sprue were suffering from lots of flash. So there was lots of work to put into these in the first place. Another problem is the weapons in the set. Two in five men may be armed with either an automatic shotgun, a mortar and / or a sniper rifle. The set only comes with an optional mortar and sniper rifle and both for the kneeling mini. So some conversion work was required anyway. To men were converted to shotguns (from another set) and one of the standing guys became a loader for a mortar as well. Since I did not like the pose of the trooper spreading his arms out, I converted one of those to a firing pose. And while I was on it, most minis also received bi-pods, optics and laser designators to make them look better geared out.

All in all not the most fun unit to paint and with those many details hidden on the figures it took a good while. 😦 Anyway… here are some close-ups of the minis I like best:

Young Guard – Life Dragoon

Young Guard – Life Dragoon

Young Guard – Life Dragoon

 

SAGA Anglo-Saxons (1.2nd Entry, 6th AHPC)

Having rekindled my interest for SAGA last year with my participation in the Grand Melee I feel it is time to add some more factions to my collections. One of those are the Anglo-Saxons. I always liked the way the looked on the paper and their large units in SAGa make them look appealing on the tabletop as well. At least I hope so, since this is only the first (SAGA) point and the Warlord I have painted.

Anglo-Saxon Fyrd

Up first are the Fyrd (Anglo-Saxon Levies). 12 men in all for one point. I usually do not like Levies in SAGA, but I find the Fyrd quite interesting. For one if they are armed with close combat weapons they have the same armour as the Warriors. Second, while most factions have problems activating their Levies, the Anglo-Saxons have some abilities that allow them to activate units based on size, making a large unit of Levies all the ore interesting.

Anglo-Saxon Fyrd

The minis are all plastic minis from Gripping Beasts Levy box, but I gave them all helmets from the Gripping Beast plastic Saxon set. This means they are not wearing any chain mail of other body armour, denoting their Levy status, but with their shields and helmets, they are better armoured than the average Levy in the game, underlining their better armour values. The shields are transfers from LBMS.

Anglo-Saxon Fyrd

Up next is the Warlord. The Warlord model himself is an Anglo-Danish Warlord from Stronghold Terrain, but I felt he would make a great Anglo-Saxon Warlord none the less. After all his clothing and armour are generic enough to let him pass as either.

Anglo-Saxon Warlord

Since SAGA allows / asks for a larger base for the Warlord, one can usually add some scenic elements. In this case I chose two more warriors. Both are from the Gripping Beast plastic Saxons set. Their shields received transfers from LBMS. Same goes for the large banner. The Dragon Banner came with the plastic set. I wanted it to look very colourful. Probably not right for the Anglo-Saxons, but I always liked them colourful.

Anglo-Saxon Warlord

The shield on the Warlords back was hand painted, since I felt that none of the transfers would fit it. The design is a bit simpler than what one would expect from a Warlord, but painting him up, he rather looked like a nitty-gritty kind of person, so not much decoration on his clothing and shield for me.

Anglo-Saxon Warlord
[Shield Detail]

To underline his nitty-gritty looks I made another addition. I can not be seen too well on these photos but his left foot is resting on the severed head of one of his enemies. And I wanted him to look like he had just chopped that one-off. So there is some blood and gore dripping from his axe. (I felt this did not show too well on the other photos so I put a piece of paper between the minis for this photo).

Anglo-Saxon Warlord

 

Star Wars, X-Wing repaints (1.1st Entry, 6th AHPC)

First of all let me say that I am sorry for me taking so long for my first (non theme round) post of the Challenge. When Curt asked if I wanted to take part this year, I already knew that I would be hard pressed between the day job, learning for university and this. Never did I know how hard.

X-Wing Millenium Falcon and a-Wings

While I was able to get some minis painted, (spray) varnishing them was another matter, with the weather here in Germany being either very cold or very humid. But I finally managed to get some varnish on these minis last week and thus do the bases so here is the first of a couple of entries, a few Star Wars X-Wing re-paints. To be honest, I have not played a single game of X-Wing in recent year and while I did play a couple of space combat games lately, we have rather taken a fancy to Armada. But since I had already repainted (to rather added to the paint job) of my other X-wing minis, I felt the remaining few should get that treatment as well. That left me with a couple of A-Wings and the Millennium Falcon. With the former I decided to change their colour from red to green. I never liked the fact the all Rebel fighters in the game had the same colour coding, so the only ones that still sport their red are the X-Wings. I the case I simply painted the red markings over and added some engine glow to them.

X-Wing Millenium Falcon and a-Wings

The other one is the Millennium Falcon. Now in this case I guess I got a pretty sloppy pre-painted model. Many of the panels that were painted in a darker grey or ochre were painted over the panels themselves and the black wash had been applied rather heavy. So I found a grey that matched the base tone and corrected those overpainted panels. I also dry brushed the whole model in this grey to lessen the looks of the black wash. Afterwards I set more panels apart in ochre and grey to give the Falcon a more motley look and added an engine glow. And that was it.

X-Wing Millenium Falcon and a-Wings

More to follow tomorrow.

 

WWII German Jagdtiger

Following up on yesterday’s post, here is my next (Theme Round) entry for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

This weekends topic was “Epic Fail” and it gave me some headaches at first. I could only count out a Leman Brother Bank, since we are not allowed terrain in this Challenge.

Then I thought about the Death Star, but my better half insisted we had no space for a PS 2014 from Ikea.

So it was back to the drawing board. But then I had an idea… World War II produced so my tanks, there must have been one that was an epic fail, at least in my eyes.

In my humble opinion, this had always been the wrong type of tank for the time. It was very heavy and thus suffered from the same problems as its turreted brothers, the Königtiger. As such it took huge resources to build, was a nightmare to transport by train, had problems with terrain due to its high ground pressure and guzzled so much fuel, that the Germans did not have at that time. Even worse yet, most of them seem to have been used on the western front, were its 122mm gun was the overkill for any opponent, while on the eastern front where it might have been useful vs. the JS-2s and big ISUs there were hardly any.

Jagdtiger

But what really underlined its status as an epic fail was an incident that took place when a Jagdtiger from the 512. Panzerjägerabteilung (the unit depicted above) attack an allied column near Holzwickede in Germany, which incidentally was less than 10 kilometer from where I used to live until a few years ago. This Jagdtiger fired at a Sherman. By that time Germany had no smokeless ammo anymore and after the first shot, at maximum range, the whole tank was shrouded in smoke. Seeing this, the infantry accompanying the tank though that big beast had been taken out and ran. Without any support the Jagdtiger was forced to retreat as well. So in essence, the big tank, which should have instilled calm in its troops and could have taken out the enemy without them ever having a chance to fire back, had broken the units morale with a single shot. As such this was my epic fail.

Jagdtiger

Not much to say about the model here. It is a 1:48th scale Tamiya early model Jagdtiger straight out of the box.

Jagdtiger

Jagdtiger

Looking at period photos I found that most of them seem to have been painted in a simply soft edged three tone camo. So I went with a Dunkelgelb base with, red primer and green camo airbrushed on. Some chipped paint effects and washes & filters to enhance the worn look as well as the soft edged effect of the camo. Also added some rain marks to the superstructure to round off the slightly for look. (I do not like my tanks if they look like they have not been cared for for months.) Unfortunately I ran out of time, otherwise it would have received a slight coat of dust with the airbrush, but that will be easy enough to add in the future. While painting it, I remembered, why I usually hate to paint Königstiger or Jagdtiger. All those tow chains and spare tracks are a pain in the behind to paint.

Jagdtiger

Hope you like the final results.

Jagdtiger

Jagdtiger

Jagdtiger

 

Starting 2016 (and some Nostalgia)

First of all sorry for being a bit quiet lately. I guess I missed the customary New Years greetings and the look back at 2015. So far this year has been quite hectic and in parts not too pleasant (including someone thinking it was a good idea to park their car inside mine on a supermarket car park). Anyway, i will try my best to catch up a little, since I still managed to slap a little paint on some models.

Lets start with one of them. As I have done the last 3 years, i decided to participate in this years Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I only went for a minimal goal of 250 points (after all I have work and decided to go back to university so there is some learning to do as well). Even that seems like a big call right now, so i think I will have to participate in as many theme rounds as possible to go for the bonus points. The first of these was actually a little over two weeks ago and called “Nostalgia).

The nostalgia round gave me something to contemplate. After all I am mainly painting historical minis these days, so in a way, it is always a bit nostalgic. But in the end I decided that it would be nice to go back to the minis I started tabletop gaming with over a quarter of a century ago (I had painted scale models before, but that would have been too nostalgic for my taste and I did not have the time for something like that). So it had to be a Mech from Battletech. I quit playing and sold my collection (well over 500 Mechs plus tanks, infantry and so on) between 2000 and 2001, so I had nothing left to work with.

The first Battletech model I ever painted was a Locust, but looking on eBay, those were either incomplete or selling for hilarious prices. So I asked my friends, but the best someone had was an incomplete one as well. But the same person also had a Battlemaster, which was the second model I ever painted for Battletech.

Battlemaster

Back then I painted everything in the colors of my own private mercenary outfit, but I felt that I should do something different for that friend who kindly borrowed me this model. Since he had no clear preferences, I went for my favorite House, House Kurita. Namely the 9th Ghost Regiment.

Battlemaster

They paint their Mechs in a light grey / off white with darker accents. The left half of the Mech is decorated with a Cherry or Plum Tree in full bloom. I chose a cherry for this one. I had done something similar for another SciFi model in 2014 and liked the looks. Only let down for me was… that other model was mainly black and the tree would really pop. With the off-white it is not as visually impressive.

Battlemaster

The Kurita markings on the left shoulder and the Japanese symbol for “4”, denoting this one to be the 4th Mech in its Lance are freehand.

Battlemaster

So this is it. The next theme round is already up and I will try to post my entry later this week.