AHPC11: The Fee of Entry

 Something new in the AHPC since last year, is the fee of entry.  In this, you paint up one figure, and this has to be mailed to another participant that reaches the endgoal of the challenge.

As the model has to be submitted within the first month of the challenge, I always go at it as soon as possible, and so I duly did this year as well.

The model chosen as an entry fee is a Shrewzerker, produced by Oathmark in their lovely Burrows and Badgers range, and a game I'm keen on collecting and playing more in the future.

 

This fella really looks the business, wielding his huge axe while taunting the enemy barechested!

 

But what's more, as I didn't have one for myself either, I opted to paint not one, but two of this mighty warriors, one for the lucky winner, and one for my own collection.

And as such, we are off for another year of painting extravaganza during the next three months, with a goal of 1000 points to score and not that much paint time at all with Baby Thorin.  So carefull planning will be key, but at least the first 10 points are on the counter now!

Good luck to all the participants and may funtimes be had and lead mountains dwindle!

2.11.0.0

Burrows & Badgers: Salvor's Burrow

Finally I build and painted the first of my Sarissa Precision gorgeous terrain pieces, created especially for the Burrows and Badgers game by Oathsworn.

Now, me and Noshi have been a fan of the game since day 1, demoing it even at the last TSA Open Day that took place in 2018 (with a modified, aimed at kis, game), but due to circumstances it all fell quiet a bit in 2019.

Even though the first building where bought at the Crisis 2018 show, it took me until earlier this week to start assembling the first of two of thse small ones I have at current.

Now, I must say I did it a bit wrong with the diagonal supports, apparently you have to force then down a bit further but apparently to some Insta-friends that is a common thing with this building, the other ones in the range are far smoother they say.  Also thanks to the people of Sarissa immediatly responding to my Instagram post about how to best handle the MDF and cardboard combination, which was a first for me tbh.

The little building was then undercoated and painted in those acryllic paints from the Amsterdam range I have been hoarding the last weeks, before being smeared with PVA to flock the roof and front garden.

Some meadow flower tufts from the Army Painter range where attached around the door and front garden parts of the building, as well as the odd small one at the top to give it a bit of contrast in the flocking.

A lovely little building, this is something I`ll really look forward to put on the table, as I am starting to paint up my figures for the game again as well.  I guess the cute little animal toys baby Thorin is collecting are part of the "need" to paint little antromorphic beasties at the moment hehehe.

Now to start assembling one of the larger ones... and probably order the rest of the range of buildings as well ;-)

Hootington, Barn Owl for Burrows and Badgers

It has been a long time, honestly to long, since I threw myself on the excellent figures of Oathsworn's Burrows and Badgers range.

But with the recent release of their campaign expansion (mine is in the post as you read this), I started working on the figures again.

And let me tell you a little secret: Guardians of Ga'Hoole is my guilty pleasure, I think after the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Aliens, that is probably the movie I saw most in the past years.

You see, I have a thing for owls, and ever since the first Kickstarter that launched the game, I have had the Barn Owl in my first order.  It just took scandalously almost 1.5 years before I painted him.

I think though I got him a nice three layer colour scheme on both an earthy brown for the feathers on the outside, and a light grey for the inside.  The armour was done in a golden colour to add some variation in the scheme.

I love this model, and it is the one figure I won`t allow Noshi to claim to put in her warband when we play this again in the future...

Renee the baker

Finally I finished this soft plastic model, to serve as a standerby / objective in our games of Burrows and Badgers.

Which we really should dive into, but that is going to be something for after the move I guess.

The model, from a local supermarket chain 'farm animals' action last year, is a hinde who likes cooking and baking, but the models are 32mm in scale so make excellent additions for non-combatants on the tabletop.

Painted in the three layer style I prefer, to add some strong contrasts on the models as they aren`t that deeply detailed (albeit, for soft plastics, they aren`t bad at all), this is like the first non-Lord of the Rings model I painted in months.

Enjoy, and if you are Belgian, expect these sorts of soft figures to turn up for eurocents on fleamarkets this summer... I will definitly be on the lookout for them...

Nature Unveiling Herself

One of the pieces of terrain I had printed from a Yeggi file, the site where you get LOADS of freely available files of all sorts, was this large female statue.

Produced and uploaded by Scan The World, this is actually based on an existing artpiece.

‘La Nature Se Dévoliant Devant La Science’ - nature revealing herself before Science; a very fine multipatinated bronze figure with varied gilt highlights and green tinted Scarab Beatle by Louis-Ernest Barrias (1874 – 1905), cast by Susses Freres.

But it`s mostly a great piece of terrain as well, and I wanted this printed for use in both Burrows and Badgers on the one hand, and Lord of the Rings on the other.  I went to flocking a bit unto the statue itself, to make it look like one of the many slowly reclaimed by nature statues as so often seen in Middle Earth.

And here she is with a Rohan archer at her side to give an idea of the actual size of the model...

Hopefully you like her, and until the next one!

Our Burrows and Badgers demogame... thank you to everyone

And so it came to pass, past saturday at the TSA Battle Through the Ages openday Noshi and me presented the Burrows and Badgers game to the audience.

With a modified version of the "Mouse-hunt" scenario, starring another famous rodent, we took it to ourselves to get people to know this lovely game by Oathsworn Miniatures.

Two warbands took the field against each other in an effort to either catch Pikachu, or if failing that, to rout the enemy warband.  Fought over a 24x24 tile, the scenery was largely made by Noshi, while the trees themselves where borrowed from the club stockpile.

Of course, I rummaged through my collection to get some additional "in character" items to decorate our table with, including my famous Pikachu hat.  Yes Ray or Fran, if you guys are reading this, it is still the same one from "that Salute", she's an evergreen x-D

The game was well liked by the people that gave it a go, and in the short and basic ruleversion I cobbled together for this saturday, we could give people the grabs of the concept, and how a basic game at it's barest works out. 

The game seemingly was liked by all, and I want to thank Michael Lovejoy for the support he gave us in setting this up and spreading the word of the game.  Here are some pictures of various participants enjoying the little gift for playing.

I hope to see Oathsworn at Crisis 2019, as it's a company I'd love to have present at our convention next year, and finally meet "the creators" in the flesh as such.

So moving on to the future, we will be expanding the warbands with more of the lovely figures to give more of a choice in warband models for events, and we are going to build a small Pokeball to act as a counter for when Pikachu get's caught and hauled around.  Because it is entirely possible Noshi and me will take this game "on the road" still one or two times to demo it at other events as well.  So now it's onwards to complete the range in my collection, as well as getting my aws (pun intended) on the Sarissa terrain pieces.

Finally, I have been reading some comments and received some priate messaging from people on how they found our game "the winner" of the event.  While this is greatly appreciated by both Noshi and me, it also needs to be noted that everyone present, being organisers, volunteers, game leaders, players and visitors are the real winners for the glory of the hobby.

And now to start working on a concept for a game idea I already have for next year...

Burrows and Badgers demo board: The Hamlet of Eksteren

Yes, we did it, our demo board for the 29th of september, during the TSA open door day Battling Through the Ages, has been finished.

Noshi and me put some serious hours in this board, in order to get it all finished for what will become our first "duo" demonstration game, and the scenario is a modified "Mouse-Hunt" one, with Gromley replaced by that infamous yellow rodent.

You know, attracting to kids and such...

The last thing we needed to do was settle on a name for the hamlet located on the board, and in the end I went for Eksteren.  This name came about two-fold.

In the first place, our club, and where the game will take place, is located in the Antwerp village of Ekeren, so that link is pretty obvious.  But I wanted it to have an animal refering name as well, so it became Ekster, a bird called a Magpie in english.  So that blended together gave the highly suitable name of Eksteren for the hamlet.

We also tried out the rules (I wrote a simplified playsheet with only the needed rules for this game) and then we gave the scenario a go, with the stats of Gromley all reduced one level due to the small sized warbands.

You can watch the testgame right here:

Well, off to the open day now, and let's hope this will be a success...

Cornelus the Crow

The third of the soft plastic figures finsihed, this is the newest resident for the hamlet we`re building for Burrows and Badgers.

Though paintwise, this was a bit of a boring model, being an all black bird...

The model did have it's small scarf and the huge yellow hat to contrast a bit, but generally speaking this wasn`t the most exciting one of the figures to paint up.  Never the less, this now puts us at 3 finished for the demo, so the village will be inhabited at least.

I`ll see if I have the spare time to do one or two more before the end of september...

Noshi's Bridge

The final piece of terrain for the demoboard has been completed, as Noshi rounded out the bridge that crosses the stream in the middle of the tile.

The model, which I had lying around for about 10 years, is a 2 piece block of resin, made by a french company called Gauthey Miniatures.

I found those long ago in Lille, France at a convention, and now she finally has gotten painted up.  She has some nice texture in the stones, and while the halves where a bit damaged due to lying loose in some bag for 5 years, it got solved nicely with some greenstuff and liquid putty.

To cover up the holes some more, Noshi added flock to the holes as well, to go with the grass on the interior of the bridge.

And that concludes all the "needed" terrain for the table, one of these days I`ll show the board we will be playing on... and reveal the name of the hamlet I came up with in the end.

Barloc Bigbelly, Marmot Mercenary

The fifth model of the Burrows and Badgers range I`ve finished, and the leader of my small band for the demo game the 29th.

While I still have to settle on the allegiances of the bands (okay, I know which two and where they start, just not who will become what), they probably become Rogues.

Even though for the small, non-campaign driven game we left the special faction bonusses out.

The model, while ingame hasn't decent stats at all, it was one of those figures I was immediatly drawn to.  And of course, as such I ordered him in my first batch of figures.

Equipped with a heap of rusty metal armour pieces and wielding a fearsome flail, he has the presence of a bully like enforcer to me to be honest instead of the cute rodent he is based on.

Now to finish his opposing leader and everything is set and done for the demo game!

Noshi's Grub Hut

Noshi finished her second building from Warbases.co.uk Dark Age line, the Grub Hut, this week.

A nice little house at 28mm scaling, the model only costs 4.50 GBP, with the current pound / euro cost even a real bargain.

The house was painted to look like it was made from large stones, and she did a great job on that one.  For the roof, sissal was used (a sort of very fine straw used in decorations and christmas trees) which was then darkened by using Strong Tone from the Army Painter range.

The door itself only received a thin single layer, to make sure the marking inside it remained presevered.

And with that, the second house of the hamlet (and as we play on a single tile at the demo, the last) has been finished, making all the material for the demo game on a scenery level now nearly completed.