Back with a tribute!

Hoi,

Okay so I did not expect to be AWFK for such a long time. The flu came back with a vengeance and afterwards the public exams had to be corrected, which is mostly done now. When the correction work was done I managed to paint up some colonial figures in 28mm, just because I wanted to. I also ended up doing some Victorians and both these will feature in a later blogpost.

For today we will have to suffice with just one figure, Sir H. Paget-Flashman, Hector of Afghanistan and Hero of Balaclava and so on and so on. He is from this series LINK and I have pretty much all those figures of him and his ladies. But... they are far too large for the present 28mm standard and ugly in detail too, so I have already obtained the Flashman figure from WI and will invest in the Studio Miniatures version anytime soonish too!

So why did I get paint on this one? Well I have been re-reading the Flashman Papers recently and that got the juices flowing. It also got me going on yet another new project for Sharpe Practice, more about this in a later blog post as well!

Some of you might have noticed that I have named this post "A tribute" and yes I would like to dedicate this figure as a tribute to someone who has been and still is, a big influence on my current hobby-stuff, i.e. Lord M. Awdry himself! Michael has been the very spitting image of the British gentleman and provided me with advise, help and guidance where needed and shares my sarcastic and whimsical sense of humour. So I had a tremendous heap of fun painting this figure and it got me into a new and thrilling adventure. Therefore it will sit in my showcase to inspire me as a silent tribute to the inspirational Lord Awdry!

Cheers Sander

AHPC: The Aftermath...

Hoi,

Pfew! Hanging on with my fingernails and shear perseverance, I managed to finish the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and gain my points target of 1500 points. It was my 3rd Challenge and even though I now can say I know the drill it is still exciting to the last. If you have never participated in an event like this you cannot understand the chemistry that exists between the Challengers, their Minions and the Snowlord out of the High North beyond the Wall. The effect of 3 months of painting comradeship within the points-system used to calculate your targets, is quite profound in that I am still counting up Challenge points when  looking at figures on my desk.

In the end, I managed to reach the 16th place, quite good if you look at the veterans firmly and immovably entrenched in the top 10. Anyway, even after Challenge's end when the list is fixed, I look at it half expecting to see my name move down the list and I can't stand the timer showing all zero's to indicate the event is over. Yeah I have a big Challenge-lag, but, and this is VERY important: no painters-block. Last Challenge left me completely empty, not so this year, I want to paint but am tired from other stuff so am now up to very little actual painting, if I wasn't tired I'd be painting believe you me!

On to the Highlights. Basically there are 3 and in no particular order, these are the Side Duel I held with Iannick, 

my participation in the Curtgeld with Stefan and Lord Awdry 

and me ending up in 3rd place in the West Theme Round.

As far as personal goals go, I did not do so bad either. I have managed to gain the 1500 points I had set myself at the start. Now I have been moaning about this high and low, but at one stage, I really was convinced I was going to end below the 1000 points and that I did not want to do. The second most important goal of the Challenge is to get paint on your miniatures, I was not going to fail in this regard. With superhuman effort, a lot of goading from Phil my pet Minion (or is it the other way round?) and support from the other Challengers I got busy and it paid off. 
So I finished in the top 20, also a personal target I want to keep aspiring to each Challenge, I ended up 3rd in the East Theme round and runner up about two times in other Theme rounds. Yeah I am pretty happy all round. 

Without doubt the biggest model I have painted this far must be my TTCombat coaster, a ship model that I really like and looks amazing in the showcase. I stupidly forgot to include it in the picture above, how dumb is that!?

The majority of the figures I have painted in this Challenge are either Dark Age figures or part of my 80's Pulp Project with some sundry others thrown in for good measure. This has left me with a small pile of unpainted figures. These are 20 odd Vikings, 4 Crooked Dice female martial artists, 6 Battlemechs, 4 80's Pulp vehicles and the 15mm Crimean War Brits. The latter did not get painted because they are not based yet and I did not want to loose time on basing them rather then painting more stuff already based. 

Basically all these figures were already part of my lead pile, the only figures I bought during the Challenge are some 28mm Dutch troops for WW2. What's this? I hear you cry, you have always said you'd not start gaming WW2! Yes that is very true and at the moment I am still not doing that! That said... my interest in WW2 has always been either professional (as a teacher) or concerning regional happenings. Personal stories of people I know, mostly my family are what interest me most about the war. Don't get me wrong I love reading books on several different theatres of the War and watching movies about them, but do not feel like playing them out on the board. However, I am within spitting distance of some of the heroic last stands of the Dutch forces during May 1940... Anyway, whether I am going to actually use them in wargames or just for educational purposes in my classroom I am not sure yet, we will see in time. 

So that's pretty much my Challenge for 2017, if Curt's still running it next year, I will most definitely be joining in and probably with a little unexpected twist at that.
This leaves me with saying a great big thank you to all of the Challengers, Minions and of course the Snowlord and Lady Sarah for making this Feast of Figures possible for yet another year!

The Russian Bear

Hoi,

Well my next Challenge instalment is up. I have finally completed my 15mm Russian Army for the Crimean War. You can find the post HERE.

Now I have changed my Challenge philosophy several times already but I guess it comes down to this:
I am doing 4 "projects" for the challenge first up is the Napoleonic Project, I have base-coated several Napoleonic units amongst which are two regiments of Cacadores (part of the Khaki basecoated stuff) a regiment of Portuguese Line infantry, some Württemberg light infantry, a battalion of Prussian Landwehr/ reserve infantry, Bavarian artillery and some command figures.
The second bigger project is my WW1 Project, all based in Khaki as well of course. These include AHL Late War artillery, some Early War ANZACS, a Mark IV and some Late War Highlanders.
Both these projects I am going to complete in total before posting any pics in the Challenge blog or here.

The remaining projects are my 28mm Vikings and some "miscellaneous" figures, these I will be posting as part of the Challenge on my regular posting day (Friday) when ready.

So there we have it!

Cheers Sander

The Reason Why...

Hoi,

This post is all about putting ghosts to rest. There are quite a lot of historic periods in which I have an avid interest but do not represent in miniature. The best examples are Ancients, WW2, Medieval Times and modern times. A "smaller" period of interest has always been the Crimean War. While the Painting Challenge was well under way, I watched "The charge of the light brigade" on DVD again and was caught up in the butterfly effect to paint up some Crimean figures. There are no decent 1:72 figures for this conflict available here, so I decided to do a vignette of 28mm Warlord figures to get it out of my system.

These turned out quite nice and for a while it was indeed out of my system and I could concentrate on different stuff. Then after the Challenge I suffered from painters-block and trying to get rid of it brought me to the Challenge FB page. When I mentioned I was having lost my mojo, one of the enlightened soul over there suggested I'd start a totally new project. So that is how I went on-line and ended up with two 15 mm Crimean War armies.

Here are the first pictures of this new project. I have started with the Russians and have finished two of the Cavalry units and a Command stand. In the end I would like to enlarge the units to possible 4 stands but let's just get these all painted up.

The Command stand:

Light Cavalry or possibly Dragoons ( I really have no clue but I like them).

The Lancers

A group shot

The miniatures are from Irregular Miniatures, their service is great, fast replies to enquiries and even faster delivery. The mini's are pretty good castings with some crisp details and very little in the way of flash.

Now I do have a question for any of you who might have experience with 15mm Black Powder armies: I want to create infantry units of approximately 18 figures, but have no idea how to base them. What size of base and how many figures on each?

Now usually I end the posts here with a "listening to..." I'll do that today as well but with a warning for the virtuous, sensitive ones amongst you, lately I have been into traditionals like the Drunken  Sailor and the Wild Rover, you know what I mean. This led my around the various Youtube channels. There I found this song by the Dreadnoughts:

By linking through I found a version by the Poxy Boggards which I liked as well:

These chaps also did a nice version of the "Mingulay Boat Song" I had to look up where Migulay is...

And now is the moment you lads and lasses who do not like the saucy or racy stuff, should NOTpress play because this song most definitely contains very explicit lyrics indeed. Now no grumbling please because I did warn you! I nearly died of laughing and think the likes of Fran and Ray will love it as well.

Cheers Sander