Painting Challenge doldrums and Elder Sign.

For those who have been keeping an eye on the myriad of activity over at the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, you may have noticed I am languishing near the bottom of the pack (as I anticipated), without a submission to my name, as yet...

I am steadily plodding away, and have got the 36 goblins from the The Hobbit starter set, about 75% done. I have also got the Goblin King, Scribe and the two goblin captains assembled and base painted.

 And the throne... that was quite a mission as the back of the sculpt is hollow and undetailed which I didn't like, so had to pack it with foam and filler then clad it in bark chip to texture it as rock. No small task...

 But its progressing steadily...

And Sunday night saw the Bowman family head back to the cinema to see the movie again, just to top up the motivation ;-) . I have to say, we saw the 3D version again , as that's all that was available locally at the time we could go, and as much as I love the movie, I think I prefer the 2D version, as there's less blurring, and a clearer image throughout.

The weather hasn't helped either, were finally getting some consistent summer days and its darn hard to stay inside and paint while the weather is glorious. But I did get a little hobby time in over the weekend, and enjoyed sitting out in the sun, under the patio table's umbrella, sipping a chilled beer, or three... while I sat and snipped, trimmed and assembled my 15mm PSC half-tracks (again!) this time though for the command vehicle upgrades, using the PSC upgrade kit.

I made three half tracks with the addition of the  optional PaK36 AT gun mounted up front, instead of the forward firing MG.

This leaves two more to do and I have a choice of stummels, 8cm mortars or flame throwers... I can't decide which to pick! I could add the stummels or mortars to my existing 2 of each, bumping up the platoon size of each to 4 vehicles, or I could add the flame throwers for something a bit different.

Anyone with any experience of using half track flame throwers please shout up!

While I deliberated over that, I started making the 15mm PSC Tiger I kits I got, and got the first 'big cat' assembled. Three more to go...

I picked the 'Mid period' model as my Wehrmacht forces are themed Mid-War eastern front onwards, and I just don't like the look of the Late period's wheels... so I figured if I need to use these guys in Late-War, we'll they'll just have seen a lot of action and be darn experienced to boot! ;-)

Also, last night we had a spot of board-gaming, when mate Jon came round with his Elder Sign game by FantasyFlightGames.

Elder Sign is a Cthulhu-lite themed game, which is both card and dice played.

It is a co-opertative style game, where the players are working together to beat the game, and stop an Eldritch Horror being released into the world.

A lot of fun, which my 9rd old son also got to grips with very quickly and was rapt!

We played several games over the course of an evening, interspersed with a game of Munchkin too.

Great stuff. I do enjoy a good 'board-game' in the right company every now and then, time allowed,  and I can control the guilt at not picking up the paint brushes!

AHWPC - Stowage! Its a dirty word!

Work continues on the horde of halftracks...

stowage!

I finished painting all the little bits of stowage from the sprues I had clipped out en-masse earlier. Over 140 of the little buggers... I tell you if I see another frickin jerry can I'll...@#$$%^&! Sorry please excuse the outburst!

Well I have just finished gluing them all into place, in a varied arrangement so hopefully no two halftracks will be identical. After that I've gloss varnished the areas where the decals will go; the black crosses and Vehicle ID numbers as per the GPG HQ in earlier post.

So hopefully they will be completely finished this weekend.

After that I am about 50% finished doing the HMG platoon, so progress is starting to be made.

After that, I have options of the PaK40 platoon, 8cm mortar platoon, 10.5cm howitzer platoon, or 15cm nebelwerfer platoon...

I know I started off the Typhoons earlier, but my recent gaming in FoW has all been Germans, so I am looking to expand their options on the battlefield. That, and my two regular opponents and I are looking to start the two Axis of Attack campaigns from the D-Day supplement book; Cutting the Cotentin, starting off with Utah beach landings, so Germans against the US, and Breville Gap starting off with Sword beach landing, so Germans vs Brits.

Looks like its going to be an interesting and busy year of FoW gaming :-)

AHWPC update 9/1/12

Well, I have managed slow but steady progress since my last update; I have painted and added the front Machine-gunner and rear passenger fired AA MG to each half track.

Look at little closer and you will now see their numbers have grown to 23. I have got the 3 Command halftracks done to the same standard now, the only difference being the command halftracks have their stowage done, but are absent the front machine-gunner!

They are starting to look useable now, and as such have had a couple of outings for me to try them out.

The first was against Mike, fielding my commando force in Hold the Line. I think its fair to say I overwhelmed his forces. Mike held on till his Shermans turned up from reserve hoping they would turn the tide, but once they got involved in a fire fight with my Panzer IVs, they quickly left the field... So things seemed to go well.

Next game was against Paul and his Brit paras, in a Breakthrough. Things seemed to go OK to start with, and luck certainly seemed on my side for first half of game, but from the half way point things quickly started to fall apart as I made poor tactical decisions at the same time the balance of luck shifted. I could have hung on perhaps and kept contesting the objective until my last PzGr platoon arrived, but by then I had grown somewhat demoralised and it was getting late too, so I capitulated that game.

But I learnt and awful lot more that game! :-)

I didnt take any in game pics as I didnt want to steal Curts thunder when I finally get these ready to deploy.

So a couple of games in the week too was very enjoyable, but dented my painting time severely!

After that saturday morning I had to work then saturday arvo I had a 'forest' of logs to cut up with chainsaw for fire wood so that just about buggered me for the rest of the day. Then sunday was my daughters 6th birthday, so again not much painting over the weekend.

But I am now pressing on with painting the passenger teams - 4 figures for each half track, and going to add the stowage.

Here's the 4 panzergrenadier team members for each halftrack. The only thing that puzzles me slightly is the guy with his head turned to one side is holding a U-shaped tube of something across his knees, and I can't figure out what its meant to be, to enable me to paint it the correct colour! Anybody any ideas, answers on a postcard to... (comments below would be great!)

The last days of Maelstroms January sale are running out so I grabbed a set of PSC Panthers on pre-order, and a few Total Battle Miniatures buildings.

Looking forward to more FoW soon! :-)

Quick post update - I've realised while trimming out the figures from the other sprues tonight, that the guy looking sideways is holding an MP40 submachinegun. But the barrel is so fine in the plastic, I've knocked it off while trimming and not realised... oh well, he's now holding a 'utility piece of iron'...