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Dauntless December Challenge 2018

Azazel’s December challenge was a pretty open one. One of the Options were Heroes. I had a bit of a mooch about and decided it was about time to get things painted that have sat there for too long. I really do like his challenges as they give me focus and to try out new things. As an example, In November I painted cars and motorbikes for the Mechanical challenge, something I wouldn’t have even considered doing. I am already planning January’s challenge.

This was my December haul of painted minis for the challenge. I decided to remove the ghoul officer as most of him was painted in November.

My first to be painted was a free miniature from Alternative armies, the ghost bride came in an order of 15mm bits and bobs to finish off my HOTT Conquistador army.

Here she is on her own…

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/a-ghostly-bride/

Next up was Sir Willorcby a fine Orcish gentleman. He was another quick one to complete having very little in the way of tricky bits. To paint.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/sir-willorcby-all-finished/

Next up were the various rifleorcs, these had the base green already done, so I managed roughly one a night. These were replacements for my original set purchased when they first came out.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/captain-fredorcson/

Rogipoos trio came next, these are one of my favourite Flintloque sets. Jose and Nursey were done in a session and Rogipoos took a bit longer.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/17/nursey-ready-for-action/

Meriadoc Brandybuck was next… probably the faster mini I have ever painted. From bare metal to completed in just over the hour. The only mini not from Alternative Armies.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/meriadoc-brandybuck/

The next lot painted were my undead engineers, although not exactly heroic having no feelings to speak of I am going to count them as they will bravely dig ditches under the guns of the enemy….

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/undead-engineers-all-done/

My Final figure was my Ostarian Hussar Officer. I did a very easy conversion in that I made a roundel out of Greenstuff on his Shako. This was to differentiate him from the rank and file (which is what he is really).

I managed to squeeze him into the final day of December. Out of all of them I think he is the one I am happiest with. I really tried some blending on the colours and I feel I achieved the look I was after on the saddle blanket at the very least.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/phew-i-made-it/

I am going to go for some terrain for January’s challenge. I have forty gravestones to do something with. My intention is to do a small hill covered in graves as well as various bits of scatter terrain. When I get the 3D printer sorted I want to do a wall and iron fence around a smaller private cemetery.

I will see what else I can come up with too. I need to do terrain for my 6mm road wars as well as my 15mm French and Indian wars.

We shall see how far I get…. I am now off to paint a 3D printed cart.

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A Year’s Worth of Painting Stuff.

A fair few people have been sharing what they did over the past year so I thought I would have a look back through my blog posts to see what I had been up to.

The ran into three broad categories… 28mm Flintloque being the most numerous with well into the 120’s miniatures

Next were the 15mm French and Indian Wars and my HOTT army.

Bringing up the rear in scale were my 10mm Mongols and Amazons. I probably painted more of these figure wise than the other two.

I also painted up my 20mm Dark Future vehicles for Azazel’s Mechanical November Challenge. 28mm WW2 tanks and heavy weapons for a friend and bringing up the rear a Frostgrave Warband.

I knew I had painted a fair bit this year, but only when I went through the blog posts and media I actually realised how much I had done.

Now looking at my posts, I have been pretty well behaved figure purchase wise. I can’t remember when during the year I decided to try and paint what I already had, to be fair it was part way through and definitely not a New Year resolution.

So here is my purchase list…

November

Some 20mm operatives and drivers for my Dark Future Vehicles

October

bits and bobs to finish off my HOTT army and unfortunately a DBA Aztec army (I was overcome by a fit of Nostalgia!)

July

Some Ostarian cavalry for Flintloque from EBay. These worked out at around a pound per mounted figure instead of four so it was too good a chance to miss. One of them was the final figure painted in 2018. I still have six to paint.

April

Grapeshotte Schilling pack, this included 2 Artillery pieces with dog crew for Flintloque. As I already had some artillery I decided some rules would be useful (there are lots of other rules in their too) The Schilling pack was a good bargain. There was Free postage too!

March

Bier and Bones Schilling pack … I wanted rules and race states for dwarves, dogs, ogres etc. The Schilling packs are really good value. It did mean I ended up with dwarves and ogres to paint but hey! I also added in a squad of Savant zombies and four more ogres and a new resin ogre Officer. A pile of various civilians also went into the order (again there was free postage).

That is pretty much the purchases this year – well at least the ones I can remember. I am not counting the GW magazine figures as I bought them for the paint! The kids got the minis to paint (except they didn’t) I got three of the first one. Three of the second (I got one for me and grabbed the other two for friends, who it turned out had already managed to get one) and then one of the third.

I am going to try and follow the same mantra this year as I have enough Forgotten Forces Friday to last at least 6 months. There is however a clause to this. There is one miniature in the Flintloque range that I intend to buy should I get the chance. Lady Anna, an Orc lady is no longer available. I managed to get Lord Orcingham in a pile of other miniatures a year ago, but so far Lady Anna has evaded me… oh yeah, while I remember when the Perry’s bring out their plastic Agincourt mounted knights at least two boxes of them!

Where to this year?

I intend to keep on painting as often as I can. I try to paint something every night, not to the finished stage, but to simply get some paint onto something. Azazel’s painting challenge has definitely helped me get stuff done.

Things to paint this year are>

28mm: Flintloque …. (shit loads), Agincourt plastics

15mm: Aztecs and my prize from the HOTT competition- 15mm Lizardmen

10mm: Elves, Mongols, Sudan War, Dinosaurs, various other bits and bobs

6mm: Road wars

Not to mention various things in various scales that I find in the various boxes.

The 3D printer will no doubt become a bit more of a thing, once I get the hang of it properly. The laptop containing the splicing software breaking hasn’t helped me get on much further.

More terrain will be made. I need stuff for 6mm, 10mm, 15mm and 28mm, so plenty of choice there!

We are going to get role playing again this month with more Shenanigans in Middle Earth to begin with and I hope to get back to the club more this year.

So not exactly a resolution, but something to aim for 😉

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Undead Engineers A bit More Progress

Painting miniatures until my youngest falls asleep!

Not that you can really tell!

So anyway 20 minutes to the 25th December (well in this house it is, and in others it has been and gone). I hope you all have/had a great Christmas and that Mr Beardy leaves presents rather than coal.

Tonight (when the internet is working) I have been listening to…

Not to mention…

As well as….(well it isn’t Christmas without it)

And Finally…

This final one reminds me of a freezing wet and Windy December evening near Durham Cathedral. The choir were practicing and singing this Christmas Hymn. It was one of the loveliest things I have heard. The lights were streaming through the stained glass windows. I just had to go in and listen…

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A Night Off

I painted sod all tonight… which remind me of a joke.

Lord Fartsagale dies without heirs, his last will and testament is read out and various parts of his estate are left to his loyal staff.

To Smithers, his loyal man servant of many years, a man who had seen his lordship through various ups and downs, he left Fartdale hall an old building with 15 bedrooms.

To his cook Mrs Higgins, a wonderful woman who kept his lordship well fed and watered, he left Widdle Hall a gran£ building with a great kitchen and 10 bedrooms.

To Grinton, his groom, a great man with horses who no doubt made his lordship a great sum of money through spotting great racehorses and training the same, he left Prior Hall, a spot with the gallop, the stables and 8 bedrooms

To Jones, his chauffeur, the man who dinged the Bentley, trashed the Rolls and lost the keys to the garage. He left Sod All…. one wonders how many bedrooms that had!

Sorry I will get my coat!

As I bought the 3D printer, today I made some STL file purchases from Fat Dragon. Tom was great and answered my various questions about what would be suitable for a newbie. He also advised me to wait until today as there would be a sale on. I took his advice and got some extras too. To be honest most of the stuff I got was free, my total spend came to $11.99. This was the purchased set.

I got this set as I thought it had a fair few useful bits and bobs to try out. The other things were a test cube to help with setting up the printer, the free dungeon sampler, and a crater. There was something else but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was???

Now to be honest, I have used Fat Dragon for years, but only their card stuff. They set up a YouTube channel to support their products but also support 3D printing too. The printer I had been considering was recommended by them too, so all in I am a happy chap…apart from one thing. I am actually quite nervous about the whole thing. I think it is partly a cost thing, although cheap by 3D printer standards it still came in at just shy of £200, Christmas money and the sale of toys will cover the cost, but at the back of my mind is the worry that I won’t get on with it! Only time will tell I suppose. No doubt after building lots of Lego on Christmas Day I might actually get around to building my present 🤣

On a totally different note I was at a meeting today and in the room was a map if Shetland from 1744.

Now there are a few interesting things about this map. Firstly they don’t care about inland stuff, it is a map for seafarers…the various islands are all named, even the smaller ones. The proportions are way out, but fair play to them they did it by eye and line if sight etc. One of the other interesting things is the note on Fair Isle…Famous for the best hawks to be had anywhere. Interestingly enough, there are no hawks on Fair Isle any more! I love the fact that we were part of Orkneyshire!

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Forgotten Forces Friday

Well Friday is here again and there are more troops that haven’t seen the light of day for who knows how long…

These are some of my troops for my Lion Rampant army. I know the shield was pretty much gone by Agincourt but I reckon these chaps found some and put them to good use. These Perry boxes are really good value as there was enough in the box for a whole army (only some are shown here). I also ordered some French, these however never got finished…

My idea was to mix and match and get a bit of flexibility… sadly Perry’s plastics didn’t have the necessary plastic cavalry so I had to use 15th century mounted troops. The good news is that I recently heard that they are coming out sometime in the not too distant future.

Finally for tonight. My Bidowers for both Dragon and Lion Rampant.

I found these GW minis fitted quite nicely (a bit larger) with the historical troops.

Next week I will see what else I can find in the boxes in the cupboard….

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Dark Future… Mechanical November ‘18

Azazel does a great community challenge each month. The idea is to get people painting. November’s challenge was something mechanical. Not something I would normally bother with, but in all honesty,  as it was a challenge I decided to give it a go. I had a mooch about for anything mechanical. The options I found were:

6mm road wars vehicles

10mm Gatling gun and crew

15mm Flames of War Vehicles and tanks

20mm Dark Future Vehicles

I decided on the latter:

img_5709

They went from the bare plastic to something I am rather pleased with.

Rather than going for all four vehicles I decided to just do two cars and two bikes as well as drivers and a couple of operatives in their body armour to act as the dismounted drivers.

There were some issues with the builds and painting for that matter one regarding painting… I am rubbish at edge highlighting and then my original green on the renegade was too close to the khaki of the main body, it really got lost. this was solved by simply painting over it in a dark green.

For the look of the thing, all of the dashboards and engines were painted too. I don’t normally undercoat black, but it was what I had a rattle can of so I went with it.

img_5757

The build issues weren’t hard to overcome, it just meant a bit of thought had to go into things.

Firstly each car has 5 pre-drilled holes (actually 7 for the Interceptor) some of these should have been filled prior to painting, but I forgot.

I added various bits and bobs from either greenstuff or some extras from a world war 2 tank sprue in my bits box.

The drivers proved to be problematic in that they just fitted into the Marauder and just didn’t fit into the Interceptor, I didn’t actually realise this until I came to glue the body to the chassis. Much swearing ensued… at least I know for next time… no doubt I will forget and do exactly the same as this time!

There were a whole host of weapon sprues available but I kept it to two forward facing guns for the Marauder and then three for the Interceptor (one in a turret).

I was lucky to be given some spare waterslide transfers for the interceptor, one had hornet on it which is appropriate as I had decided to paint Yellow and Black onto the rear of the car. The Marauder transfer came from an ancient GW Brettonian sheet of shield designs.

So how do I feel it went…

I am pleased to get them to where they are, I probably (or definitely) spent more time on these than I would normally. I would like to think it was because I was wanting to try and improve and not because it was a ‘challenge’… I know I thinned the paint a lot more and put lots of layers on (something I wouldn’t normally do with vehicles). Adding all the extras is something new too. I deliberately went out and bought extra bits and bobs, jerry cans and oil drums etc, not to mention drivers and people on foot. Maybe I was enthused by how well I thought they were looking!

When I will get to paint the other two cars and bikes is anyone’s guess, but my mate and I both have the ‘Atomic Highway’ Roleplay game so maybe they will get painted up for that. Either that or get booted onto eBay to help fund the 3D printer pot.

My December’s challenge is going to be a pile of 28mm Heroes from my Flintloque stash.

I  started on the Ghoul officer, but have nearly finished him before December…

img_5904

Luckily I have plenty more to keep me going…. one day I might get to finish my Mongols.

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No Painting tonight…

Gale force 10 winds, torrential rain…. is causing the lights to act like a disco.

The kids are traumatised as their Minecraft world, they have spent weeks on has become corrupted as the PS4 flickered on and off.

I thought I would show some images of the ghoul forces… these were painted up for my friend for his birthday.

The squad in all of their glory, the faces aren’t visible on the colpack.

A close up of the colours…

The officer is wearing his elfskin coat otherwise his uniform would be green and red too.

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Oil Drums, Ghouls and Frogs

All in a night’s hobby time of an evening

First up the oil drums. These came from Elheim.

I was going for a rusted look, I think I managed it. These were undercoated gun metal then dragon red from Army Painter was added with a sponge. This was stippled over with Model Colour red leather. To be honest I am really pleased with how they came out especially as it is the first time I have done anything with a sponge.

Next up is my Ghoul Officer, his greatcoat is made from the flayed skins of the poor unfortunate’s that came across the path of his unit..The Kryptovski Death Guard, mortal troops in the service of the Dark Tzar.

Just visible beneath his coat is the dark green tunic with red collar. The black colpack and red plume will give him a bit of extra height. I haven’t decided on the colour of the fur, probably black or dark grey. I have a unit of ten of his minions to bring further terror to the nations of Urop.

And Finally frogs… the kids and I had a couple of games of Croa. A frog hopping game where there can only be one froggy queen in the pond. Ooooh it got brutal!

Frogs killing frogs, frogs being eaten by pike… good fun had all around.

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Graveyard Gamble

I am pretty new to this Kickstarter Malarkey,

so I was very pleased to see a parcel waiting for me on the kitchen table when I got in tonight.

What seems like an age ago I backed a Kickstarter by Hammerlot Games. They were producing some resin gravestones, and as I have a rather large undead force for the Witchlands I reckoned I would give it a shot.

This was my pledge… I reckoned 40 plus gravestones would be enough.

To be honest 10 would have been enough, but they were so lovely!

Hammerlot were wanting 1000 Euro’s they managed a whopping 14,000 plus, which is very impressive. As you can see from the above the delivery date was July, and I got them in November… am I bothered, not at all. The company were up front at all times and kept everyone up to date by regular updates and to be honest I think a little team of 4 people would be hard pressed to deal with such an increase in demand, they also moved production to a new location (see I said they kept us up to date).

I am really impressed with the quality.

These are the two sets of twenty gravestones…

Following are the stretch goals…

They really are awesome. A close up of the gravestones…

They are all different, no two are the same.

A close up of some of the others…

I really do like how the handles of the tools are made out of bone.

So was my Kickstarter gamble worth it, most definitely. I am looking forward to getting them painted and onto the table…

They will work well with my Witchland’s forces

A ghoul officer orders an undead engineer squad to lift up a tomb lid…I grabbed the unpainted lot as I couldn’t be bothered to dig out the painted mob…

This gives some idea of the painted types…

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/undead-forces/

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Further 5 Minute Makes

I managed another 5 minutes tonight.

A few more moulds

The Greenstuff oil cans worked reasonably well.

I was going to add them onto a base this evening, but to be honest I really couldn’t be arsed…I will hopefully get something done sometime soon.

Oh and while I remember, it isn’t always sunny on Shetland 😉

Tonight’s five minutes were brought to you by…

The more astute of you will realise that 5 minutes would just about get to the opening credits.

I painted two oil drums too….