News Crew and Minders for Judge Dredd plus (one day late!) 9th Blogiversary

 Go on, admit it. You missed me, didn't you?

It has been almost a whole month since I last posted. In my last post, I had just started work on this set of figures:

The next day I did do a little bit more work on them, but then hit a bit of a funk and only got back to them on Thursday. I finished painting them yesterday and did the varnishing today.

The News Crew:

I had started out giving the reporter an Asian skin tone but it wasn't working out right, so I went back and did an African skin tone. 

I'm not sure what happened with  the focus on a lot of these photos. They looked fine on my camera screen when I took them.

The Minders:

Alternatively, the girl could be a ganger; the guy could be a mob boss.

 

The Robot Butler/Maitre D:

This robot could be the crime-lord Nero Narcos' "man" servant.

The NeoSov Agent (or mob assassin):

The figures are all from Copplestone Castings.

9th Blogiversary

Yesterday was nine years from me beginning this blog. Last year I wrote a list of things that I planned for 2020 - let's see how I did...

1) Terrain - I need to get on with building my terrain collection. Mind you, that will have to wait until I have a little more space (I will be moving out of London this year). I'll be wanting terrain for New Guinea, Arnhem, Mega City One, Mexicagrave...

Despite not moving out of London yet (my house purchase is progressing - hopefully I'll be moving this month) I did do quite well on this. I made a bunch of rock formations for Strontium Dog, painted up a lot of terrain for Mega City One and a few hills and marshes for "Infamy, Infamy!".

2) No new armies, but I can add to existing forces (and paint/add to armies that have been bought but not painted)

I think I did rather well on this one (in comparison to previous years at any rate). The only new armies I bought were the Romans and Germans for "Infamy, infamy!". Mind you, i have since purchased some extra figures for both so that I can also use them for Art de la Guerre.

Oh, and I may have bought more figures for existing projects.

3) Have a bit of a clear out - there are some painted figures that I very much doubt will ever see the table and a huge pile which I doubt will ever be painted. Some may be donated to the club, others sold off at shows.

Didn't happen.

4) Finish off some of my incomplete projects - the Sarmatians, Buccaneers and Aztecs spring to mind)

I did manage to paint up a 28mm Wars of the Roses army for ADLG. Mind you, the less said about the older unfinished projects the better.

5) Get more games in - I haven't done much gaming in 2019. I might even try some solo gaming.

I did manage to get one game in. If Covid hadn't come along I might have got more games in.

6) Shows - Salute is a definite; other shows may depend on my move out of London.

Bloody Covid! No shows for 2020 and I doubt that there will be any in 2021. Maybe late in the year if the vaccines help bring down infection rates.

7) Painting - I do want to improve my painting skills this year by working on character figures and trying new techniques.

I did paint quite a few character figures during AHPC X and also for my Judge Dredd project and my skill levels have improved, but I didn't really get to try any new techniques.

I guess I should make some plans for 2021:

1) Paint up the rest of the figures (and terrain) for my "Infamy, Infamy!" project (including the extra Romans and Germans to expand the forces for ADLG).

2) Make and paint the rest of my terrain for Mega City One. Also to paint the extra figures and vehicles for that project.

3) Make up a load of jungle terrain for my WW2 New Guinea project (which will also be usable for the Mexicagrave project if I ever get back around to that).

4) I probably need to add a few more bases of medium cavalry to my Mongol army.

5) Complete my 15mm SYW Russian army by painting up the Observation Corps. OK, and maybe some more Cossacks, artillery and commanders.

6) Make up and paint some more terrain for my Arnhem project.

7) If I've finished the terrain for (3) and (6), begin work on the Japanese and German opposition forces.

8) See about finishing some of those old projects...

9) If any shows do go ahead in 2021 to get to some of them.

Check back this time next year to see how I did!

As mentioned above, I should be moving out of London this month (unless there are any more delays in the process). Once that happens, I will be busy for a month or two getting the new place set up (and selling my current flat), so there might not be much painting going on.

Paint Table Saturday 05 December

 

I've been taking things fairly slow and easy on the painting front this week. I have finished (bar the black-lining wash) painting one figure, and today have got the flesh done on the other five figures in this group:

In case you are wondering why two of the figures are on washers, it is because they kept popping off the bottle caps.

I should be able to get these finished tomorrow, assuming I don't get distracted.

Finished: It's A(n Urban) Jungle Out There - More Citi Def for Judge Dredd

 

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These took me a lot longer to get painted than I'd intended. That's largely because I didn't have "the feels" for them for some reason and allowed myself to get distracted by reading various things. However, a little bit here, a little bit there and they were done.

These figures are from the Copplestone "Near Future" range. Given their look, I think they must be from the Arnold Schwarzenegger block.

The chaps

The chapesses

Today I also got the individual Roman and ancient German figures primed:

I'll start painting them tomorrow.

Wednesday Workbench 21 October

 I have slowed things down a little over the past few days, but have still got things done.

First of all, I have prepped a bunch of individual figures from Donnington to add as leaders and "extras" to my "Infamy, Infamy!" forces:

As well as the "leaders" I also have a Scorpion and crew for the Romans and a civilian and two pack horses to make up a "stewards" base for the Germans (stewards act as a rallying point for the cavalry and as a resupply point for javelin armed troops).

I've also started painting some Copplestone "Near Future" figures - these will be another Citi Def group for Mega City One:

At the moment I am just putting down the base/shade colours; I will do the highlighting once that is done.

AHPC X Day 82 - Twenty-Third Submission and Wednesday Workbench 11 March

Oh, poo! I just spotted that I'd saved this post to drafts rather than publishing it. Well, it's still Wednesday somewhere I guess.


My twenty-third submission got posted this afternoon. I'd finished painting them last night, leaving just the varnishing and tufting to do this morning. And here they are: [link]

On the workbench right now are some more pulp ladies:

I should be able to finish them tomorrow, leaving me free to start work on the last few Strontium Dog figures.

AHPC X Day 80 - Twenty-First Submission - Men in Floppy Hats

I suspected they wouldn't get posted until today and I was right - my twenty-first entry got published today: [link]

Ten each of King's Musketeers and Cardinal's Guard using 15mm figures from Blue Moon. All the figures were from the "Cardinal's Guard" packs (5 from the Mounted and Dismounted; 15 from the Dismounted. They only do one pack, Mounted and Dismounted, for the Musketeers which would leave the King's men somewhat outnumbered). I do have more figures to paint at some point for this project.

I completely finished the Mutant Army Generals today, including submitting the post which I expect will appear tomorrow. This evening I began work on this set of figures from Copplestone Castings:

These will probably take me a couple of days to finish as there are lots of details to paint and highlight.

AHPC X Day 35 - Eighth Submission

In between my minioning duties today I managed to make some time to varnish some figures, add tufts, take photos and draft my eighth and ninth submissions. The first of those got posted this evening: link

The other one should be posted tomorrow - I couldn't have them both go up today as they are island locations.

Tomorrow I'll be starting work on my next project - the remaining Strontium Dog figures.

Army Review : 28mm Mob Wars - Salutesville's Finest

I've decided to jump around a bit between periods to break things up a little, so today is the first of my Salutesville posts. Simply because I took pics of them first, I'll kick off with Salutesville's "Finest", the Police. It's also a good opportunity to show off some of the buildings and diecast vehicles in my Mob Wars collection.

"No, honestly - it's just molasses these days..."

Captain Campbell and his favourite toy (the gun, not the gunner!)

Murch Park Precinct

Dixon Dock Station

Blue Moon Street Station

Not diecasts - these are resin & metal from Blue Moon

As they fit in best with the cops, I've chosen to include the other representatives of the forces of Lora Norder in this post:

The G-Men

the Bulls - Salutesville City Penitentiary's correction officers

The figures are a mix of Pulp Figures (cops), Dixon (cops), Blue Moon (cops and G-Men) and Copplestone (the Bulls). The cops will be getting some reinforcements - I've got an armoured car and tank that need a little bit of finishing off, plus there's a harbour patrol launch for them to paint up at some point. There are two more police packs in the Pulp Figures range which I might buy at some point - I'm thinking of doing them as Court officers in grey to distinguish them.

The buildings are from Sarissa Precision apart from the courthouse which is from TT Combat.

AHPC6 Entries - Pulp Fiction

For the third installment of this thrilling series, we now move onto my Salutesville submissions.

There were three entries, two were my 2nd and 3rd entries, the third was my final submission. Bookends if you like.

Any good game set in the Prohibition era needs some collateral damage civilians to provide soft cover restrict line of sight, provide plot points or just be present as scenery. So, my first two submissions were some civvies from Blue Moon.

Tamsin Hams It Up

The Other Half of The (Non)Dirty Dozen

Cut That Bulls...

My closing submission, and the third of this theme, was this set of four officers from Salutseville City Penitentiary. The figures were cops from Cop-plestone (sorry, couldn't resist!) Castings. I had originally planned to add them to my Salutesville's Finest mob, but I realised that the uniform style was a bit different, so they wouldn't fit in.

That got me thinking about what I could use them as and potential scenarios, leading to me deciding to make them prison officers - after all with all the crime gangs and an aggressive police force, there are always going to be some hoodlums finding themselves in the clink. That left me deciding on what colour to paint the uniform. It couldn't be blue, so the most obvious choices were grey and green. I went for the latter and I'm glad I did. I may use grey uniforms for some other armed officers - court staff or perhaps county mounties/state troopers.

I've got another four of these round-up posts to do, so this series will probably take another week to show everything.