Analogue Hobbies December Update

It's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge time!

I'll be doing monthly updates on this blog to keep overheads down.

Group shot

Curtgeld

FoW objective

Necromancer for Mordheim

Zombies also for Mordheim

Greyscale samurai

1 of 3 ghouls

Vermillion Mk1

1 of 6 vehicles for ACW2 project

COVID Cupdate 5

Quick post, another Lurking Panther, this time painted as a mutant mountain lion.

Goofiness notwithstanding, I'm actually quite happy with this one.

COVID cupdate 4

In all honesty, there were updates ready for last week, but due to a number of factors I didn't manage to get a blog post up.

Slugs!

So convincingly gross they icked out the the COVID cup whatsapp group! More nasties for fantasy and post apocalyptic adventurers.

Mortar!

This is my entry for the Rare bonus round. Now I can already hear what you're thinking. Sebastian, how is a metal Catachan Imperial Guard mortar from the early to mid nineties count as rare? There must by thousands of these bastards around. Oldhammer doesn't necessarily mean rare! And you'd be right. But this figure is perhaps the rarest figure of all. Each wargamer will only have one of these, and that is the first figure they ever had, and this is mine, the one that started it all, gifted to me on a birthday and - probably not starting but - crystalising the start of a life long love of wargaming.

In retrospect, I should have taken a picture of the "before" model, before I stripped it of all its glossy, thickly applied citadel paint glory and repainted in a more "realistic" style, but here we are.

This is because, this is also a Dynasty model!

***

As if the prominent winged skulls on the mortar and the flak jacket pauldrons weren't enough, the extremely large caliber of this mortar instantly marks it out as a 2N6 ultra-heavy infantry mortar, produced and used exclusively by the forces of "General" Zattomir, one of the pre-eminent warlords during the middle-Warlord era

The 2N6 traded range, portability and supportability for an extremely impactful kinetic effect, able to ruin emplacements and troop concentrations and was produced to pacify the Moscow metropolitan area and urban areas inn Eastern Europe, and in the run up to Zattomirs abandoned invasion of coastal China (abandoned due to his alignment with Gao).

In the swirling, chaotic fights that took place with Solarin motorised raiders on the central steps, however, it proved to be utterly worthless, and large stocks were captured (and converted into more generically useful materiel.

A number of examples still exist; 1 in the Imperial Arms Museum in Dhaka, 1 in the Martian Mons Collection (not currently on display) and at least 4 in the hands of private collectors.

COVID cup update 3

Nothing to report last week due to massive amounts of laziness probably, but hey, two entries this week!

First up, for the "scout" bonus round of our challenge group is a Lurking Panther from the Darwin's World post-apocalyptic campaign setting.

From the Terrors of the Twisted Earth:

"Descended from the mountain lions and puma of the old American wilderness, the lurking panther has had to evolve certain features to compete with the more dangerous predators of the Twisted Earth. The lurking panther’s long spindly neck allows it to observe its prey’s movements by placing the head high above, often among a tree’s branches or poking through thick underbrush or sand; in addition, its eyes sit on the end of pliable stalks, which further allow it to conceal its body behind cover and still observe unseen."
 
I'm aware that it looks more than a bit goofy but it's from the period in time when I was determined to have minis for all my RPG monsters, before the (Pathfinder) pawns bug bit, but I was damned if I wasn't going to complete such a simple paint job.

Second up there's the first of my dual-role miniature for a new project.

This is an a Iron Lords sniper from the (newly revived!) Anvil Miniatures range. I am rather fond of their definitely not Space Marines honest guv!" aesthetic, and as soon as I got into my local Kill Team scene I jumped at the excuse chance to buy some. Unfortunately, they had closed that production line and I had to supplement this last miniature with their no less excellent Afterlife line.

He will be pulling double duty as a soldier in the Dynasty setting - a long running sci-fi politics RPG run by a friend of mine. Think West Wing meets Babylon 5 (or The Thick of It meets Red Dwarf if you're feeling uncharitable).

To cut a long story short, my current characters dad came to power by consolidating the survivors of a post-apocalyptic high tech earth and somehow made the jump to God Space Emperor.

The period that I am calling the Warlord Era wasn't examined or simulated in any depth, beyond the outline our GM graciously gave me to kick start this project so I'm going to be working on my 28mm sci-fi minis with this setting in mind. There may be games.

***

Powered Battle Armour was used by all faction in the Warlord Era, but most extensively by Solarin and his lieutenants towards the end of the war after they had captured significant portions of the Earth's remaining industrial capacity.

The armour pictured here is a relatively advanced model of local produced armour, especially as the Warlord factions had little access to nanotubes from which to make the much more flexible combat suits used by the Juntas marines. Marks are hard to put on this era of suit production, as many secondary systems were a cottage industry and un-standardised compared to the main task of producing the main suit structure and systems. This is illustrated on this particular suit by the exposed filtration tube on the front left of suit.

This non-standard application may have been to do with where the suit was operating. Although we do not know where this photo was taken, the use of the urban camo cloak suggests an urban environment (Solarin forces rarely repainted powered battle armour as they had to be redeployed quickly). Additionally it seems strange that PBA units would be issued with sniper weapons given their relative utility as close assault troops. This all suggests that this particular unit was operating in an area hostile to unarmoured troops, perhaps an area of high CBRN contamination, uncontained industrial pollutants or even an area still heavily infected with JS1E1. There are at least 2 documented occasions where Solarin set up long endurance missions with PBA forces in infected environments, essentially operating freely along enemy lines while having a safe, uncontested area to retreat into.

COVID cup update 2

Alright, more painting done!

Not as much as I was expecting again, but I think being introduced to multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 might be bad for my productivity...

The latest British Flames of War book has allowed each platoon to take 2 PIATs, so I made a few more, and converted the now obsolete infantry spotters to PIATs as well.

Also 2 regular rifle teams to convert a newly obsolete Airlanding Assault Platoon into a regular Airlanding Platoon.
 

Giant leaches! Inspired by this scene, and once destined for Darwin's World or Pathfinder before I caught the Pawns bug.
 

The bear, again, destined for RPGs before I fell hard for Pawns.

COVID cup update 1

Updates!

Only three Chieftains, but a lot of prep work in the pipe.

AHPC Roundup - not dead, not infected!

First up, not dead!

Second up, just completed the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge for the second time, and have had an ongoing, unadulterated excuse to clear as much of the lead pile as possible, in the form of Covid-19.

AHPC X output - once again a bonus points heavy strategy prevailed

It looks like the Bristol wargaming scene is taking some inspiration from the Challenge - no points, no rewards however - and is planning to share it's endevours via WhatsApp - to keep admin low. I will be reporting my progress on this blog every Sunday.

So to the various bots that regularly trawl this blog for content, and the maybe one follower who checks in for nostalgia's sake, hello again, goodbye for now, and stay safe out there!