3rd Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

Well after having a lot of fun with this Challenge last year, I have joined in once again this year for Curt Campbell's Painting Challenge hosted at his excellent blog; Analogue Hobbies, which is actually a great blog title too in these days of electronic entertainment!

The underlying theme of this years event is the 47 Ronin, and it appears I have become one of these listed entities, presiding at an alphabetical rank of #39.

Curt's challenge has always been focused at the Historical spectrum of the wargames hobby, and I was unsure whether it would be worth entering, as I knew my personal model painting focus this year, from the time of the event, would be the 'The Hobbit' range of miniatures by GW.

There has been much web based angst at the prices of the newly released figures, but I have had to bite the bullet and press on...

Curt, has very graciously accepted The Hobbit / LotR figures into the Challenge, which is very sporting of him. So I may get a chance to score a few points after all :-)

I always viewed Tolkiens work as quasi-historial anyway; he did after all intend it as an 'alternative history' of the world.

As always I do not expect to win, as there are some phenominal painters in the Challenge, both in quality and output, but its nice to be involved and along for the ride :-)

I also have another slight problem - I have just embarked on building "Goblin Town" - a 4' x 4' terrain board full of rocky outcrops and levels, and a plethora of wooden platforms.

I know Curt doesn't include terrain in the Challenge and that is fair enough as it would be impossible to score fairly...

Now here's a thing! Curt's tweaked the points slightly this year to make painting larger models slightly better scoring, which suits me fine as I prefer the 28mm scale anyway. But, we have to set ourselves a Personal Challenge Par! In other words whats our personal target of the challenge...

Last year I managed a little over 600pts if I recall correctly. However last year I managed to do a whole pile of 15mm FoW stuff, which whilst it has its own challenges, I think can be painted faster than 28mm single models. Equating that 600pts to 28mm foot figures at 5pts per pop, thats about 120 figures!!! For me thats a lot! I think I typically average about 30 figures a month... so over 3 months of the Challenges thats 90 figures and a little more than 500 points...

As it happens I got home tonight and found the The Hobbit Ltd Ed Starter set waiting for me in the mail. Well thats going to be part 1 of my Personal Challenge Par. I'd like to think I can get that done which is about ~56 figures. Add to that the set of Trolls if I can source them and receive them and get them done in time before the challenge ends I'll be happy. Even if the trolls dont score me points, I dont mind but they are part  my Challenge to me! So thats my 'Par' at this point. And of course whatever new releases GW may do between now and March could well be factored in. So the not knowing , will be part of the excitement.

I may slot a few other bits and bobs in as time allows ;-)

So I am happy to contribute in my own small way to this Challenge and wish all the rest of my fellow 'Ronin', all the best in their endeavors!

Right, what am I doing sitting here,  in my best 'Saruman' accent; " We have work to do!"

15cm Nebelwerfer NW41 Platoon - FoW

Another addition to my growing Wehrmacht forces; a 15cm nebelwefer Rocket platoon.

This is another of my entries for the AHWPC.

So finally I have some artillery support for my troops.

One section of 3 launchers. Its a start, I could add another pack to make the platoon two sections of three launchers each.

Close up of launcher team

Command SMG team

Observer team

Dusky maiden

A return to my Legends of the High Seas era, with a painted civilian 'Strumpet' figure.

The model is a 28mm scale Reaper miniature, part of a set.

I have seen the model painted several times on various blogs and wargames websites featuring Pirate gaming.

She was painted as part of my entries in to the AHWPC.

I thought I would give the model a different twist, in part due to the outburst on the domestic front, my prior 'strumpet' caused (as seen above in blog header picture!)

As you can see from the side bar picture of 'Scott & Tracey', my wife is a 'dusky maiden', who took a little umbridge at me painting a blonde temptress. To be honest I had never thought twice about it - just liking the combination of colours I put together for the model...

So amends needed to be made to earn back some 'brownie points' on the home front...

Therefore thinking laterally about my main inspiration for 'piratey action', I contemplated a certain Jack Sparrow's , ahem Captain Jack Sparrow's, voyages...

So if Jack had been as far from the Caribbean as Singapore, he and other pirate and merchant captains could well have stopped off in the Indian subcontinent on the way past, and thus we have the sorry tale of Prashanthi Maduralawa, who fled from the arranged marriage that was lined up for her, and fell in love, and off to sea, with her bonnie sailor boy... but her sad tale continues as her beau loses his life in ship to ship action fighting off a pirate vessel, who take the crew prisoner, and poor Prashanthi ends up in Tortuga, having to resort to the oldest profession to make ends meet...

So a brown skinned beauty, with very OTT make up, but it had to be this gaudy to stand out against the dark skin, and to attract her clientele!

So there we have her, a nice change of pace from my recent WWII 15mm activities, and a worthy entry I hope for the AHWPC, special category of  "Sarah's choice". Sarah being Curt's wife, who is hosting the challenge.

German PaK40 7.5cm Anti-tank gun platoon - FoW

My latest submission to AHWPC, my German PaK40 7.5cm Anti-tank gun platoon, for Flames of War.

These 4 guns will hopefully spit death and destruction to the advancing allied armour. I will be able to field them alongside my regular Grenadier forces, Festungskompanie beach defenders and also my mobile Armoured Panzergrenadiers.

They may be fielded as a platoon of 3 or 4 guns depending on the options taken. If taken as a platoon of 3 guns then the 4th spare gun team can be added to the 15cm Nebelwerfer platoon that I have just completed.

I painted the poles on the sides of the gun trails in a striped fashion, after perusing many images on the internet. However it appears that these striped poles may only have been used by artillery gun teams to aid their range surveying, and thus not by anti-tank gun teams.

The poles may just have been used to clean the barrel of the anti-tank gun... but then why would they need three poles? There are clearly three poles, two on one side and one on the other. Wouldn't one pole be enough? Oh well, I'll see what sort of comments this post generates, and if it seems indeed that these should not be striped, I'll paint them over.

Pressing on now with 8cm Mortar platoon.

German HMG (MG42) platoon - FoW

Another entry finished for the the Painting Challenge; my German HMG platoon.

This comprises four MG42 teams and an SMG platoon command team

Painting Challenge

They will be useful for my Grenadier Company, and FestungsKompanie, and also Panzergrenadiers.

The recent V3 rule updates have made such platoon more useful now - when gone to ground they get a 3+ infantry save, rather than their more normal 5+ gun team save. And they can keep spitting out a healthy amount of lead when they are pinned...

I look forward to mowing Tommy and Yanks on the Normandy beaches!

Or hordes of Ivan, on the eastern front.

After my usual paintjob, I embellished the base with Silflor buffalo clumps, and static grass.

Now I must press on with final varnish of the PaK40 platoon...

Gepanzerte Panzergrenadier Halftracks - 15mm Plastic Soldier Company

I finally managed to finish my plethora of Halftracks, SdKfz 251/1 Aus D, for my Gepanzerte Panzergrenadiers for my Flames of War German force.

Sd Kfz 251 D

These were painted up as part of my entries into AHWPC.

They are 15mm scale plastic kits from The Plastic Soldier Company. They scale up very well with the halftracks from Battlefront, with little noticeable difference between them. The only difference being the crews and mounted MGs, which are both 'heroic' scale from BF, compared to the slender PSC ones...

They get a total of 7 crew and passenger figures for each vehicle and enough stowage options to keep you amused!

I painted them up in my 'usual' fashion, in this case - first sprayed up BFs late German armour spray 'middlestone'. Once that was dry I hand painted on the camo patterns, with a varied array of stripes and spots, using Vallejo Luftwaffe green and GW dark skin.

I then gave the whole vehicle a shading wash of a 50/50 mix of vallejo black / dark brown washes. Once this was dry the whole vehicle was given a drybrush of Foundry 30b - a dark yellow-like colour.

The tracks were quite laborious and I wonder if the effort was worth it as all you can really see is the finally heavy 'mud' dry brush... but any way these were painted GW dark skin, then dry brushed a 50/50 mix of gunmetal and dark grey. Then washed as above, and drybrushed 'mud' with vallejo camo brown.

I painted the crews and passengers seperately and added them to the half tracks as they were done. The crews first as these had to be glued into place before the 'top section' of the halftrack was glued down into place.

Next all the stowage was painted and glued on in a varied pattern so hopefully no two half tracks are the same.

Last of all, decals were added from DOMs. Polyurethane gloss varnish was used as a base for the decal. Then decal added, and left to dry. Then a wash of decal-softener was added and again left to dry. Next another layer of gloss varnish was painted over to seal the decal in place. Finally a layer of vallejo acrylic matt varnish was painted over to dull down the gloss finish.

I have done three combat platoons of 4 vehicles each; 111 to 114, 121 to 124, and 131 to 134. Next was the heavy platoon which will carry the MG42 teams, 141 to 143. Next up was the PaK40 platoon, 211 to 214, and finally a single command vehicle 221 which will be in command of a infantry gun platoon or mortar platoon...

So thats them all done now. I can look forward to officially including them in some future FoW battle reports.

So now I can press on with more reinforcements for my Germans, I have just about finished the HMG platoon, and have made a start on the PaK40 platoon.

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'...

AHWPC update 2nd Jan

More work done on my Half-tracks:

Well, here they are. 20 PSC Half tracks pretty much done, I recently managed the following: (thanks to a turn to rainy weather here and having a couple of days off over the New Year break.)

• First up I drybrushed the HTs with 'dark yellow' in this case Foundry 30B. I find this nicely blends down the camo pattern.
• Then I panted in the tyres and internal seat backs in black
• Then I weathered the tracks and the wheels drybrushing a mid brown (vallejo german camo brown)
• I then painted up the 40 crew figures ( 2 for each HT), though I think this was one of those 'devotion to duty moments' - I fully painted them, even though once they are glued into position, and the top of the halftrack is glued into position, you'll only see their backs!

I did a bit of a google search on interior of the HT, and found this image:

...thanks to: http://www.sdkfz251.com/ - very useful site, and showed the side seats backs are a black vinyl or leather looking material, I would have left them yellow had I not seen this image...

So as they stand now they are 'done' and useable for gaming, but I still want to do the stowage, passenger crew figures, and add decals - I am just about to place an order for DOMs decals with Maelstromgames - so until they arrive, the HTs can't be fully finished...

But not too worry - doing the stowage and crews/passengers will take a little while and I still have to finish off the GzPzHQ three HTs and command stands and 'Shreks.