Ste's Challenge Smorgasboard!

I recently took part in the 6th Analogue hobbies Painting Challenge and in true challenge tradition I thought I'd post my entries on my own blog once they've featured on the main blog. So below is one of my two submissions. 

This is my first and possibly last entry in the challenge this year as it turns out I was completely unprepared for how busy I've been this summer (that's right all you northern hemisphere types, its summer here in NZ!). Here was I with lots of great aspirations to paint the heck out of my lead/plastic pile and join in the general insanity that is the challenge when lo and behold life decided to get stupidly busy. Work got mental, the in-laws came over from the UK for 3 months and an unrelated hobby took up a load of my time.

However I have still kept my painting eye in (so to speak) and have just not been able to find the time to blog about my acrylic/plastic/lead adventures (I know, shocking!)

So this model was planned to be my first entry (and also my Nostalgia theme round entry!).

A circa early 90's GW troll model that has lingered in my bist box for many years. This is nostalgic for me as I started out like many of you playing 3rd edition Warhammer and my Dwarves faced these comedic beauties many times.

So keeping in theme I also painted up a couple of GW Plaguebearers that I found in the same bits pile.

These are the old metal ones and until recently had no purpose other than to gather dust. Enter Frostgrave and suddenly the desire to play with silly fantasy models has been revived and I find a reason to paint some old models (thanks Joe McCullough!!!)

And finally another GW cast off, one of the early 2000's chaos warhounds, who sadly lost a hind leg in the aforementioned bits box however a little sculpting of fur and clawand hey presto my evil Frostgrave Summoner has a couple of demons and an ugly warhound to back him up!

Ok so I said finally however I mean't for the nostalgia theme round! My next entry was going to be for the L'amour round – three Orcs from Mantic's Dreadball.

“How the heck is that L'amour Ste” I hear you mumble in between trawling youtube for crazy cat videos. Well I'm slowly inducting my eldest biy (Noah age 6.5 years) into the wonderful world of wargaming and thought that Dreadball would be a good intro game. However Noah won't play the game unless the models are painted orange so I set to painting the weirdness that is Mantic's resin plastic hybrid thingy!

The things you do for LOVE (see what I did there?)

So on to my next planned entry (which seemed to take ages to pull together), Four of MoFo Mini's US Rangers Platoon HQ.

I loved painting these guys and they'll be deployed soon in support of these Radio Dishdash US Delta Team, possibly using Skirmish Sangin or Osprey Black Ops rules.

Whats better than than a good piece of hard terrain to take cover behind when the bullets start flying? How about a piece of armoured terrain that moves (my terrain bonus round entry).

This Humvee is a diecast repaint, sort of. I actually picked this up in one of NZ's chain discount stores and I'm surprised I haven't seen more of these online painted up for modern gaming. It came in the camo scheme however judicious application of various washes, highlights and drybrushes have brought it up to an acceptable standard.

And now my current project, a two section recce platoon of 15mm universal carriers by Battlefront.

 

I think I may be a sadist when it comes to Battlefront mini's as I loved painting these things in the same way I enjoy painting there jeeps. In Flames of War they have a low points value and very little impact but I love painting them so use them whenever I can. These boys are painted up in a basic desert scheme and will accompany my 4th Indian division at this years Panzerschreck where I expect to have my ass handed to me! However it is a team event so I can always blame buddy Ash!

So that was my challenge, I got nowhere near as much done as I'd like however I'll make sure that I tackle it properly next year. Now to play with my toys!

Wow, I’m a year older. Guess I’d better do a review!

As the title suggests I am a year older (and that means me and not the blog) so in the tried and tested tradition of most bloggers on an anniversary of some kind I thought I’d do a review of my efforts since my last birthday.

September 2012 - Septmeber 2013

Well it was quite a significant 12 months in terms of gaming and hobby related bumpf (Yorkshire slang for “stuff”). It was around this time last year that I finally made the decision to abandon GW products completely, my reasons being much the same as many other gamers, bloggers, housewives, employees etc:

• Price increases
• Rules changes
• Change from hobby to profit orientation

I could wax lyrical on the decision however suffice it to say that I have happily not looked back. I had already been playing WAB for a while and still do occasionally, that being the one rule set that still appeals. However I have since broadened my interests into more historical periods and much like most wargamers out there have been overwhelmed with the amount of good material being published, cast, moulded etc. That’s not to say that it wasn’t available previously however it would seem that to this humble bloggers view there has been a sea change in where the £/$/Y/E is being spent and thus a number of smaller companies (one man bands) are benefitting from this bounty.

So where did my hard earned get spent in the last twelve months? Well my list of hobby projects seems to have sky rocketed over this period, with slight deviation into the evil world of WHFB (argh!):

In Her Majestys Name - Ooh where to start. A nice cheap ruleset from Osprey, skirmish based so there’s minimal outlay and the rules writers are active on discussion forums. The epitomy of hobby based wargames in my view and spawned my desire to do a little fictional writing (see Inspector Johnsons Casebook here).

WAB/Clash of Empires - Still playing however not so much CoE as it feels a little like the poorer cousin to WAB. Unfortunately I have too many projects on the go at the moment (Saxons, Early Imperial Romans, Greeks).

Bolt Action - World War 2 skirmish games at their most “Hollywood”. I jumped in feet first on this one when the rules were released, managed to drag a big chunk of our gaming club along as well and will be assisting in a campaign day we’re running in December. The side benefit is it managed to revive my interest in WW2 gaming in general which resulted in :

Flames of War - My disillusionment with GW led me to trade in a big chunk of my rulebooks to Amazon (boo hiss I hear you cry). However I then spent my ill gotten gains on a US Airborne force with some online sellers and have been thoroughly enjoying this revival in a system that big chunks of the gaming populace seem to have abandoned (typical). In a similar vein this leads to:

Lord of the Rings - I know, I said I had abandoned GW. Well it would seem that not entirely although in my defence I would categorise this as New Line/Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings gaming as the imagery comes from the films hence my reason for collecting this. It was also done as a way to demonstrate that you can game fantasy settings on a budget, all my purchases have been from other gamers who need to clear their lead/plastic pile and I have made some mutually beneficial trades.

WFB - Warhammer Fantasy Battle (on a budget). I did this purely as a finger to the ridiculous pricing policy of GW and put together a 1500pts Daemon army for our club tournament. I did badly however won the best painted for my £11.09 army (for my see my article here)

Saga - Still trying to figure this one out however its fun, uses my existing figures and seems different enough for me not to get it confused with other systems.

English Civil War - I started this simply because I picked up a bunch of Warlord Games Parliamentary figures on the cheap. Luckily a fella at our club is a bit of a local ECW buff so ran a small campaign based on the local area using WAB ECW and Pike & Shotte. We’re still finishing this one off!

Naval WW2 - This is a bit of a solo effort by me and I still have no opponents. Not sure what rules I’ll use however I intend on setting up the Hunt for the Bismarck and picked up the Davco models from Skytrex at Triples earlier in the year.

So am I going to complete any of this? Well I am still plugging away at my LoTR models and have opponents at the club on a slow boil (metaphorically speaking). WW2 seems to be my focus at the moment with our upcoming Bolt Action campaign and Flames of War modelling (which I’m thoroughly enjoying). I should have a bit of a modelling update shortly and have been trying to sort out the terrain for a Normandy beach assault for the club so will share that once I figure out the beast way to layout 5 x 6’ boards on a limited budget.

Warhammer On A Budget - where I got the bugs!

After posting the pics of the last project I've been bombarded with requests for clarification on the actual toys I used.  So in true open source, free IP, no copyright and careing and sharing fashion here's a pic of the offending article sat on the shelf in Poundland.

Enjoy!

Warhammer On A Budget Part 2

So after much tinkering, messing and gluing and the occasional splash of paint I have now completed my little Warhammer Fantasy army on a budget (barring two character models which my mate Chris is buying for the princely sum of £0.48p each from the museum giftshop).

I began this in part as a giant screw you to GW (which is kind of pointless as they couldn’t care less) but also to see if I could do it to any level of acceptable quality. I did preview these lovely little creepy crawlies at the club last week as they shall be my Daemons of Chaos army for the tournament this coming Sunday and I was a little shocked at the response:

“So guys what do you think” says I all innocent like

“What are they“ says one, “What do they represent” says another.

“Oh that’s a plague bearer unit, that’s a Beast of Nurgle and they’re Furies”

Choruses of “I’d think they were all swarms, I don’t get it” and “where’s the champion and standard bearer” and “you can’t tell what they are”, oh and this was the best “I wouldn’t play it because they aren’t WYSIWYG!”

So it would seem that there’s a lack of imagination at my club. I did explain that each unit would have a nice little label on the base identifying the unit choice, but that was ignored in favour of the general reply of “it’s not GW”.

Huh?

I really did think this hobby was about imagination however it would seem that there’s a group out there that don’t want to use it but would rather have the “official” imagination foisted on us by a corporate entity aimed at maximising profits for shareholders……….rant rant rant.

Sorry got sidetracked, so without further ado here’s the finished article

The full 1500 pts Daemons of Chaos

Plaguebearers

Ooh look - Standard!

Plaguebearers again

And another Standard!

Beasts of Nurgle

Fleshounds of Khorne

Second unit of Fleshounds

Furies of Nurgle

Nurglings

Sorry for the pics, took them on my phone.

And for reference here's the costs:

6 x pack of childrens toy insects  - £6

Sheet of 3mm balsa wood - £2.10

Mixed sand - Free

Twigs, moss and flock - Free

2 x Auto spray paint - £2

Uhu adhesive - £0.99p

Old GW paints that had dried up - As I was throwing them I’ll say free.

So that’s a grand total of £11.09

Warhammer on a budget.

Have you ever had the urge to do something just to see if it can be done.  Well thats the subject of this post and begins over two years ago when i decided to abandon Games Workshop following the release of Wargaming for Dummies... err I mean Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th Edition. Since the release of that weighty but vacant tome I've played Wfb 8th twice and purchased nothing other than a tin of chaos black spray and stocked up on Devlan Mud wash.

Anyway getting back to my original topic a friend of mine at my local gaming club runs a WFB tournament every year called the Pennine Pillage (it's based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, middle of the Pennines). It's a low points competition and is always good fun so I decided to enter this year however I thought I should do something a little weird.

So this was my self appointed challenge - at a time when a GW fantasy army costs as much as a medium sized nuclear reactor, how cheaply can I put together a 1500 pts army.  Now in previous editions this would have been a doddle - old hands at the game will surely remember the days of between 3 and 5 model armies (argh Tzeentch chariot mage craziness). But that's not for me, I wanted something that was fair and would be interesting to play with. So I could have cruised evilbay, Mantic or even the Bring And Buy at conventions and shows but I thought "no not hard enough".

So how did i overcome this mammoth task I hear you ask. Well first of all I picked a force,  namely daemons as I have the book and for reasons that shall shortly become obvious the models should be easy to source. Then the evil overlords of GW nastiness released a new edition if the army book. As I'm not willing to sell a kidney to by the darn thing I plugged for borrowing a copy of a mate whilst writing a list using Battlescribe (you gotta love it).

Then on to buying the minis.  Here's where it got  fun:

• Five packs of  kids toy insects - £5
• Balsa wood for the bases - £2.10
• Cheap auto spray - £1
• Sand for texturing - free (i nicked it from the the park)
• Paints - Old GW Paints that had dried out.
• Flock and base dressing - some leftovers from a terrain project (so kind of free).

So far so good. All I gotta do is convert it, paint it and label it so my opponents know what the heck each unit is. Below are a couple of pics of the task in progress, I'll post more as i get out completed.