Thing a Week 28

The French EW forces continue to take shape, here's my artillery group. All photos, no waiting.

Thing a Week 27

Turns out I'm better at identifying dog breeds than I thought.
This, I believe is an Irish Wolfhound.

It might be worth noting that some of these were sold to me as 30mm. I thought there wouldn't be much of difference but I was wrong. I had to clip bases back to the minimum to get these to fit on 25mm bases. Even so this one seemed rather oversized and *one google search later* bloody hell those things are big!

I'm well aware of the internet's penchant of paring particularly large animals with particularly small women, but even by those standards these dogs are massive. 

Speaking of massive dogs, the next breed is a Baskerville hound. That's a real thing right?

It was giant and ornery so it looked like it deserved to be a giant black predator hunting fictional detectives across the moors of Victorian England.

It's original colour scheme was so black that none of the highlighting showed up on the photo... or at distance for that matter... so I added some less subtle highlighting to compensate. I'm not entirely sure it's an improvement. Have I mentioned that I hate painting animals? Actually, any large smooth surface, flesh in particular.

I am, however, happy with the outcome on this wee guy.

I'm note sure what breed it is (but I'm sure you can enlighten me ad nauseum in the comments). It looks like some cross between a chihuahua and a miniature German Shepherd.

I've never tried blending, and I'm not sure if that's what I've done here, but I think I got the colours to blend really well.

Here's group shot of them all

Thing a Week 26

Hello everybody! With the holiday period now a sweet memory I have finally got round to some more painting: some rats!

These little fellas are going to be providing XP to level one adventurers in both post apocalyptic wastelands and tavern cellars. I've never really seen what threat rats pose to a humans* (other than via the medium of disease obvs) in fact, I think they're rather cute, but I get that they're a staple, and these guys can double up as dire rats or those brain rats from Planescape: Torment that gain access to more powerful spells the more of them there are.

Look at his widdle paws!

The figures aren't great, they have a prominent mold line bisecting some of them that gives some of them a weird "sideways Trump hair flick"** if viewed from one side.

He just wants to hug... your face off!

*But of course D&D is a system where - rules as written - the average housecat will, on average, win a fight with the average peasant...

**Insert your own political joke here

Thing a Week 25

Happy New Year all,

Here's my first paintjob for the year and first submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge ever: Ben Affleck in a Batman costume. I'm not even joking, the packaging repeatedly stated that this figure was Batman (Ben Affleck)

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

So in a fit of wild optimism I signed up for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I missed the boat last year but just about managed to catch one of the few open spots in time this year.

It may have been a slightly unwise choice as I'm also trying to complete my masters thesis by summer. I've signed up for what is effectively the lowest possible points option, but I'm already starting to feel stressed. On the other hand I really, really need to get stuck into the lead pile.

The challenge starts tomorrow and I'm not even done with the prep. In fact there are still bases for some of the models in the post.

Here's a sample of what we're working with

Also some gaming roundup

Our trial game of Necromunda (with zombies!) gets off to a good start as my gang are driven off on turn 2

TwiceLord Jadhak and co fight a sentient pinata from another dimension

Gaming Roundup

The whole damn army (minus newly supercilious command teams)

Plus the French

TwiceLord Jadhak and company take care of a rogue druid (while accidentally leaving a man to die)

A weird collection of ancient people gather for a scrap on a ping-pong table

 

The Welsh make things tasty after spending the entire game frustrating their opponents

A mammoth leads a hoard of barbarians against the wastes' favourite drinking establishment

 

But is more or less instantly killed by a floating octopus robot

 

Sinister gunmen await the horde

 

Crush your foes, drive them before you, and hear the bitching of their women :P

After action look at the control board for Urban Nightmare in Chipenham (the giant green blob in the lower is my massive troop buildup)

Jono's super huge Soviet tank spam rocks up to Tanksgiving

My force from round 1 of out de-escalation tournament.

Things get weird for the Desert Rats as Soviet armour dashes down the board to protect them from Axis aligned Hungarians

Operation Goulash - Offensive Bogs Down In Central Hungary

This'll probably be more of a photo dump than a play by play. In the end the game came down a single random objective card that could have gone either way. It was a very fraught game all in all.

2000pts of paras face off against 2000pts of combined Germans and Hungarians

17pdrs set up to control the high street

German artillery and mechanised prepare while Hungarian fascists advance.

75mm howitzers begin to take damage while the center reaches stalemate

...while the RAF bombs advancing infantry

Para MGs lay down a barrage of suppressing fire

A worrying amount of Hungarians pour through the back gardens of the town

Before being cut apart by re-positioning paras and machineguns

While the RAF strike again

Flanking assault paratroopers hole up in a two story house, to prevent the Hungarians getting easy victory points

The ballsy Hungarian infantry push is wiped out, quite literally, to a man.

The Hungarian assault pancakes begin the Axis counterattack.

British armour and paras return the favour

Axis artillery hits the 6pdrs holding the right flank

The British reserves advance cautiously

Assaults against the German infantry are costlier and hoped

The Hungarian reserves make their presence felt

Paras push on to the rear objective

While Hungarians arrive on the other flank in force.