From BurkhardS - More Anglo-Saxons for SAGA (40 Points)

Well this is going to be my last post for this Challenge. I have the next (and last batch) of 8 Anglo-Saxons for SAGA on my workbench right now, but since I spontaneously started a new job this wednesday (I guess that is what you call it when the project a start in May and then ask you if you could start in three days time), I guess I will not have the time to finish them before the Challenge ends. But alas, my original goal had been 250 points and I have now more than doubled that, so who cares!

Anyway, this is another SAGA point of Thegns for my Anglo-Saxon army. Just like the last ones, these are pretty straight forward Gripping Beast plastics, with LBMS shield decals. The warrior with the blue shield is a slight conversion that I felt was required due to his un-combative pose, but that is it. Only the usual chainmail sculpted where the arms meet the torsos, painted, based and ready for combat.

I have to say I like the GB plastics. Good detail for plastics and lots of character in the faces one can work with. So I was glad to have done a lot of them this Challenge.

Before I leave, I have to say that I am really glad Curt talked me into taking part. I did more than I had expected and it was a great motivator to get things painted. Without it, I think I would have painted other stuff so far this year and probably would not have had the Anglo-Saxon war band ready for the small tournament here in Germany next month. In that sense, I am really looking forward to the 7th installment and hope to see you all next year. I would be happy, to see some of you on my blog from time to time. Until then... thank you all for your nice comments during this Challenge and godspeed to those who will still find the time to finish moreover the next couple of days!

A very fitting wrap-up Burkhard. (I particularly like the warrior who is resting his axe on his shoulder.) I'm delighted you agreed to join us again this year, especially since it motivated you to get this excellent Anglo-Saxon warband completed. Good luck in your upcoming tournament and I look forward to seeing you with us again for the next edition of the Challenge.

From BurkhardS - Anglo-Saxon Thegns with Spears (47 Points)

So this is it. The Challenge is drawing to an end and I am guessing, this will be my second to last entry (maybe even my last one... not sure how much progress I will make the next couple of days). Again some Anglo-Saxons for SAGA or to be more precise, one (SAGA) point of Thegns.

These are pretty straight forward. Just plastic Thegns with spears, virtually straight out of the box. The only thing I had to do was sculpt a little chainmail around the shoulders, where the separate arms meet the torsos.

The shields are transfers from LBMS and that is about all there is to say about them. Well not really, as there is an extra mini with a standard.

Now in SAGA you have the option to swap one Heathguard or Warrior in a unit for a standard. I could go on forever how clever I am and that I wanted a standard to keep all my options open, but truth be told... I simply lost count while cleaning up these minis and did nine spearmen instead of eight.

So I simply added a standard I had printed out for some Rohan cavalry for Lord of the Rings to his spear and that is it. 

Now with nine 28mm minis this entry is worth 45 points, which leaves me just 2 points shy of my revised target of 500. But since I will also have my Curtgeld  in this weekend's theme round, I can virtually claim the new target squashed.

Before I leave you, I would like to say thank you to Greg, who was the Minion on duty for Fridays. Although i only became active this last month, it has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you for all the work and effort you made and the time you sacrificed. I really appreciated that!

Great job Burkhard - lovely to see more fellows for SAGA. As always, your painting skill really shines through, and I have a healthy respect for any hobbyist who sees sculpting anything in terms of "the only thing I had to do was sculpt a little chainmail around the shoulders."  You green-stuff guys make me jealous with all of the things you can "just" do.  I have to say the shield transfers look impressive too, and I know how finickity that process can be, so on top of the great painting, some excellent all-around hobby skill on display here.

So I have good news Burkhard - that is 45 points base, but I score you an extra one for the banner, and an extra point for "the only thing you had to do" with the sculpting, to get you to 47 points for this submission, which should mean you have nailed your target! Future points are all gravy now - and I encourage you to chase them down.  

It has been a pleasure working on the Friday submissions Burkhard, thanks very much!

From BurkhardS, SAGA Anglo-Saxon Heathguards (88 points)

So this is last weekends output, some mounted Anglo-Saxon Heathguards for SAGA.

Now in general Heathguards seem to be a rare sight in an Anglo-Saxon war band in SAGA due to the fact that Anglo-Saxons benefit most from large units (10+). Given that you can only purchase 4 Heathguards for a SAGA point, that does not seem like a natural choice and to be frank... I am not sure if I am making a clever choice here. On the other hand, I feel that many scenarios do require the extra speed mounted troops provide, so I am willing to take that gamble.

But maybe that gamble will pay off. If I amalgamate these two SAGA points into one unit it will be 8 men strong. With the right dice played on the right ability, this unit will count as 2-4 men stronger. But obviously that will leave me low on SAGA dice... ahh lets just see!

Anyway, on to what is important for the Challenge... the minis. Mounted Anglo-Saxons are not the easiest models to find, so I decided to take another route here. As some might know, I am simultaneously building a Norman army for SAGA and for those I had bought two boxes of plastic mounted Normans from Conquest Games. Actually more than I will need, so I decided to convert eight of them to Anglo-Saxons. 

Now their equipment is a little different, since in SAGA the Anglo-Saxons are based on the late 9th to early 10th century, while the Normans are based on the middle 11th century. So I took the heads as well as sword / axe hands from the Gripping Beast Saxon Thegns box set and fitted those to the Conquest models. The hands were easy enough to do, but the heads required some work, due to the fact, that the Conquest models have the necks attached to the heads, while the Gripping Beast ones have the necks as part of the body. So that required some sculpting of chainmail around the necks. Which was half as bad, since the Conquest minis are all sculpted with their swords in their scabbards, so I had to remove the hilts and re-sculpt those sections anyway. Plus I love sculpting chainmail!

Otherwise I went for the round shields that came with the Norman cavalry. Tear shaped shields simply felt wrong for early Anglo-Saxons and that leaves me with tear shaped only shields on my Normans later on. So this was a win - win scenario for me there.

Painting wise I went a slightly new route here. I have always felt, that horses were a huge time drain to paint. So some time last year I decided to do the at least the base coat with my airbrush and these were actually the first mounted troops I did since then. And I think this was a good decision. In the past it took me about 10 minutes to base coat a single horse, now it was 10 for the whole group (including cleaning the airbrush afterwards). So I think this will become my new weapon of choice for horses.

All the rest was fairly standard straight forward painting. Not much to say there. Out of the eight shields, six are free-hand painted, with the two hanging by the horses sides sporting decals from LBMS. I really enjoyed painting these, especially trying to match their designs to those from LBMS, since all the other troops will have decals on their shields and I did not want them to stand out. 

But my favorite is the one below, due to the fact that it is a simple wooden shield with the design painted on the bare wood. That gave me a canvas to paint both the bare wood and a design, which was great fun.

And here are a few more close-ups of the other riders:

There is also something else that was a first for me with these minis. In the past I always used varnish from the can to seal my minis. As we all know, that creates a "no spraying time" when it is cold and/or humid outside. Something that kept me from a posting before last week and that is simply annoying.

I have also been suffering from another problem for a little over a year now. I have always used an industrial varnish that produced a perfect flat result. But some time in 2014 they must have changed the formula, which always resulted in a satin finish. This would go flat after 6-12 month, but it was still highly annoying. So I got myself a 0.4mm needle for my airbrush which allows me to use varnish in it. She these are actually the first troops to be varnished using an airbrush. Really happy with that, especially since it will allow me to varnish regardless of temperature and humidity.

All in all, I am really really happy with these riders. I feel plastic wargaming minis can be hit an miss. Some are marvelous, others can be awful. When I took these out of the box, I felt they were somewhere in between, but once assembled and painted, I can only say that they are lovely. Especially the horses, even though the animals require some filling where the body meets the neck. In that sense, I am really looking forward to painting the Normans later on!

So simple math this week, as these should give me 80 points for eight 28mm mounted troops.

I also painted a bunch of Sci-Fi minis, but the bases bases on them are still giving me some troubles, so I am not sure, if I will be able to get those in before the Friday deadline. If not... Ei will be bäck! (Sorry for that one, but maybe this will give you an idea, of what is to come. ;-) )

Congratulations on finishing these fellows Burkhard - that is an awful lot of work you went through in terms of conversions and sculpting.  Well done!  The work on the shields is excellent, and your wooden shield in particular is very nice. I feel your pain on painting horses - a huge negative for me as well - but not enough to get me to touch an airbrush, so I salute your efforts in that regard.

You don't have to convince me of the more-hit-than-miss nature of plastic gaming figures, but you've got some excellent results here.  I think you deserve some extra points for the conversion and shield painting, so we'll make that 88 points for you.  Great job! We look forward to next week's entry...

From BurkhardS: X-Wings re-paints, SAGA Anglo-Saxons and Warzone Life Dragoons (160 Points)

First of all sorry for this being my first non-theme-round post of the Challenge and for it being such a long one. When Curt asked if I wanted to take part this year, I already knew that I would be hard pressed between the day job, learning for university and this. Never did I know how hard. 

While I was able to get some minis painted, (spray) varnishing them was another matter, with the weather here in Germany being either very cold or very humid. But I finally managed to get some varnish on these minis last week and thus do the bases so here are a couple of entries:

Star Wars X-Wing re-paints:

So up first are a couple of Star Wars X-Wing repaints. To be honest, I have not played a single game of X-Wing in recent year and while I did play a couple of space combat games lately, we have rather taken a fancy to Armada. But since I had already repainted (to rather added to the paint job) of my other X-wing minis, I felt the remaining few should get that treatment as well. That left me with a couple of A-Wings and the Millennium Falcon. With the former I decided to change their colour from red to green. I never liked the fact the all Rebel fighters in the game had the same colour coding, so the only ones that still sport their red are the X-Wings. I the case I simply painted the red markings over and added some engine glow to them.

The other one is the Millennium Falcon. Now in this case I guess I got a pretty sloppy pre-painted model. Many of the panels that were painted in a darker grey or ochre were painted over the panels themselves and the black wash had been applied rather heavy. So I found a grey that matched the base tone and corrected those overpainted panels. I also dry brushed the whole model in this grey to lessen the looks of the black wash. Afterwards I set more panels apart in ochre and grey to give the Falcon a more motley look and added an engine glow. And that was it.

SAGA: Anglo-Saxons

Having rekindled my interest for SAGA last year with my participation in the Grand Melee I feel it is time to add some more factions to my collections. One of those are the Anglo-Saxons. I always liked the way the looked on the paper and their large units in SAGa make them look appealing on the tabletop as well. At least I hope so, since this is only the first (SAGA) point and the Warlord I have painted.

Up first are the Fyrd (Anglo-Saxon Levies). 12 men in all for one point. I usually do not like Levies in SAGA, but I find the Fyrd quite interesting. For one if they are armed with close combat weapons they have the same armour as the Warriors. Second, while most factions have problems activating their Levies, the Anglo-Saxons have some abilities that allow them to activate units based on size, making a large unit of Levies all the ore interesting.

The minis are all plastic minis from Gripping Beasts Levy box, but I gave them all helmets from the Gripping Beast plastic Saxon set. This means they are not wearing any chainmail of other body armour, denoting their Levy status, but with their shields and helmets, they are better armoured than the average Levy in the game, underlining their better armour values. The shields are transfers from LBMS.

Up next is the Warlord. The Warlord model himself is an Anglo-Danish Warlord from Stronghold Terrain, but I felt he would make a great Anglo-Saxon Warlord none the less. After all his clothing and armour are generic enough to let him pass as either.

Since SAGA allows / asks for a larger base for the Warlord, one can usually add some scenic elements. In this case I chose two more warriors. Both are from the Gripping Beast plastic Saxons set. Their shields received transfers from LBMS. Same goes for the large banner. The Dragon Banner came with the plastic set. I wanted it to look very colourful. Probably not right for the Anglo-Saxons, but I always liked them colourful.

The shield on the Warlords back was hand painted, since I felt that none of the transfers would fit it. The design is a bit simpler than what one would expect from a Warlord, but painting him up, he rather looked like a nitty gritty kind of person, so not much decoration on his clothing and shield for me.

To underline his nitty gritty looks I made another addition. I can not be seen too well on these photos but his left foot is resting on the severed head of one of his enemies. And I wanted him to look like he had just chopped that one off. So there is some blood and gore dripping from his axe. (I felt this did not show too well on the other photos so I put a piece of paper between the minis for this photo).

Warzone Resurrection, Imperial Young Guards / Life Dragoons:

And last are some minis for Warzone, to complement my already large Imperial force. In this case some Life Dragoons from the Young Guards Regiment. Since these are the Imperial Serenty (= the head of state) and Imperial is based on modern day Britain, I felt I should rather go with a classic paint job (both in a historic British sense as well as in the sense that they are depicted this way in all the classic artwork). So it was scarlet jackets and dark blue trousers with red piping.  

I have to say... this is were the problems began. They are always depicted with black armour and berets, so I kept those. The big problem was, that this made a large area of the minis rather dark and the colors did not really contrast each other. About the only part of the minis to provide some contrast was the gas masks, but they looked rather strange with their large napkin like collars. 

And it continued with the rest of their equipment. Begin a guard unit that is always depicted in their colorful uniforms even if in the field, I felt that their belts, pouches, webbing and so on should not be green. Them wearing backpacks in white did not seem right either, so I went with a light grey. Which while keeping with the theme, did not really improve the contrast either.

But the minis were plagued with other problems from the beginning. They are made from resin and when I bought those three packs the resin with the weapon sprue on all three packs was extremely soft. I contacted the manufacturer and got replacement sprue without any argument. But unfortunately those replacement sprue were suffering from lots of flash. So there was lots of work to put into these in the first place. Another problem is the weapons in the set. Two in five men may be armed with either an automatic shotgun, a  mortar and / or a sniper rifle. The set only comes with an optional mortar and sniper rifle and both for the kneeling mini. So some conversion work was required anyway. To men were converted to shotguns (from another set) and one of the standing guys became a loader for a mortar as well. Since I did not like the pose of the trooper spreading his arms out, I converted one of those to a firing pose. And while I was on it, most minis also received bi-pods, optics and laser designators to make them look better geared out.

All in all not the most fun unit to paint and with those many details hidden on the figures it took a good while. :-( Anyway... here are some close-ups of the minis I like best:

The bill please...!

The good thing is, that these entries should finally give me a good boost here. 

I have judged the three Star wars X-Wing repaints at 3 points each (Size wise they seemed liked 15mm vehicles and I gave them half points for not being complete paint jobs, but just repaints). 15 Anglo-Saxons at 5 points each = 75 and 15 Young Guards / Life Dragoons at 5 points as well for another 75 points. So 159 in total. Which should also push me past my target of 250 points. 

With about a month to go, I think I will have to set my targets a little higher now and raise said target to 500. Lets see how that goes!

Hello Burkhard! Quite a diverse set of figures you have for us here to enjoy.  Great work all around.  While I have avoided, for some odd reason, the "X-wing" bug, you have done great work with your repaints.  The SAGA Saxons look excellent - wonderful job on the shield, by the way.  And these Warzone figures look wonderful too - I am unfamiliar with them, and judging by all the challenges you encountered, it sounds like they are not easy to love.  But your efforts have paid off - great work.  I'll nudge you up to 160 points for the shield work.  Great job, and glad to have you with us!

We will work out your upgraded points with the help of my more-spreadsheet qualified friends...congratulations on breaking through your initial target!

From BurkhardS: The last big rush (100 Points)

So this is it... this is going to be my last post for this Challenge. Before I get started, please let me thank you all for the nice comments you have left over the course of the Challenge. The past few weeks and months have been extremely hectic and downbeat (which also meant I hardly had any time to contribute to the other participants in the way I should have and for which I sincerely apologize) and those comments really lifted me up! Thank you all a million.

Also thanks a lot for all the votes on the theme rounds... I was quite surprised to make second spot twice and be a runner up a number of times!!!

Anyway... the last two weeks have only been the second time during this Challenge that I have been happy with my output. Probably had something to do with the weather getting better here in Germany. So in this spirit I decided to take some pictures outside (where actually about half the painting took place). So in the order that they were finished:

Modern Russian T-55

Now this was quite simple one. The model is a 1:48 die-cast (although it has a lot of plastic for that) from the James Bond collection (the one Pierce Brosnan drives through St. Petersburg). I have had that for ages, but never got around to work on it. Since I like my 2nd and 3rd Tier Russian tanks for Ultra Modern to look quite unspectacular, I decided to keep it in its original single colour green looks.  But I cleaned away the mould lines, painting imperfections and so on. The green was faded, skirts and mantlet painted in a different colour and minor details (like oil stains on the barrels) added. Last but not least it got a liberal coat of dirt and dust with an airbrush (which unfortunately blended too well with the fading :-( ).

Warzone: Resurrection, Kunshu Dragon Riders

Now I have painted a lot of Imperial for Warzone during this Challenge and before I tackled the last units, I needed a break from Imperial. Keeping with Warzone (partly because a mate of mine jumped in on our league but has no units painted yet) I chose a unit for Mishima, the Kunshu Dragon Riders. Looks wise they are one of the coolest units in the Mishima selection, but a bit too overpriced to play for my taste. (Or rather not as underpriced as the rest of Mishima.) 

Now what they are some Dragon like creatures found in the caves of Mercury. Domesticated (to a certain degree) they are ride into combat, usually by the heirs to noble houses of Mishima. Are a a very fast monster choice in the game, which can do lots of damage either at close range (combination of the riders SMG and the Dragons spewing flames) or close combat (combination of the riders Katana and the Dragons teeth and claws). 

To things that slightly bleeped me off about these models. For one, I had always had a vision of how I would paint them. Mostly like those flying creatures in Avatar. But once I took out my airbrush, I had to find, that the body and wing anatomy is too different for this to work, so I had to go for something less intricate. 

The other thing is in the background. The riders wear so called "Retainer" type armour, which is always a crimson red, whence the colour of the riders. Now this type of armour is also worn by the Crimson Devils, the most dishonored unit Mishima has in its inventory. I doubt that a noble in a culture based on medical Japan, would want to wear the same armour as a dishonored regular soldier. So I would have preferred, if they had gotten a different type of armour, where one could have gone wild with the colours. As a small personalization I gave the troopers white face masks and the squad leader a gold one. But anyway... here are the minis:

Warzone: Resurrection: Imperial Greyhound Tankettes

So after that small excursion to Mishima I returned to Imperial, namely two Greyhound tankettes. These are ridiculously small one man tanks, used either to fire poisonous gas in a flame thrower type attack (the version depicted here) or as a short range vehicular mortar. Personally I am not sure if I would have bought them, since a) I find the models a bit ugly and b) for slightly more points I can get a Hurricane Walker, which can do far more!

Otherwise, I went for the same camo I used on my Hurricanes, although it looks far less effective on these small models, and the same beat up and muddy look as the rest of the army. I also added WWI or WWII desert style red-white-red tank markings to the sides, but these are mostly covered up by the dirty and wear by now. 

Since the unit I play is loosely based on the Black Watch, they both got Scottish town names on the turrets. One is Peairt (Perth) to other Port Rìgh (Portree).

  WWII: Krupp Protze improvised AAA vehicle

And last, at least models wise, is a Krupp Protze. The model itself is a Tamiya 1:48th scale kit with a 2cm Flak by some after market company in the same scale (can not remember which one). Now I wanted this as a mid-war interim AAA solution. The Krupp Protze was mostly used early war. Some as a troop transport, some for supplies, but most to draw light 3,7cm PaK. Some units, especially on the Russian front, found that they needed something more flexible  and mounted their PaK on the rear flatbed. With time a lot of the Protzes were phased out and replaced by more effective trucks, but a few remained in service until destroyed. Now in the mid war period when the allies were more and more able to bring more planes to the sky mobile units needed more AAA units and looked at mounting light Flak on the backs of trucks. And this is what this model represents. So I placed boards (coffee stirrers) across the benches to create a flatbed and mounted the Flak on top. The truck retained is early war grey base coat and I applied a camo over this. Many units were delivered camouflage paste, which they stirred up by adding water to gasoline and applied this to the vehicles with everything at hand... at times just dappling rags on the vehicle. And this is the look I wanted to go for. With the Flak I wanted it to look like it had been delivered in Sandgelb from the factory with a green camo applied with an airbrush in the rear echelons workshop. All this to underline the rag-tag nature of this vehicles. Afterwards some weathering (including windscreen wiper marks) and it was done. I also wanted to add the crew, but the rest of the week will by so stuffed with work, I will not be able to paint, so the crew will have to be added post-Challenge.

Now if I am not mistaken and my math does not fail me, all these should be 100 points. With the 55 points still due from the last theme round, this should put me a mere 2 points over my 1000 points target. Not really proud of this, since I had hoped to actually raise my target during the Challenge, but it can not be helped!

My workspace

I am not sure who it was, but someone asked early on that we all show our workspaces, since this is going to be my last post I thought I should oblige.

As you can see this is all very basic. I have no dedicated working area, but rather work on the kitchen table. Since it is large enough, I can keep it on the table even when we are eating. It is all centred on a cutting mat with some foam on it (to allow me to handle the minis without scraping the paint off), two brushholders with my brushes, two pots of water, a bottle of acetone, a rag, some cutters and a pair of pliers. Oh and a simple Ikea desk lamp with a daylight bulb.

The idea behind this is simply. I love to paint outside, so I wanted something I can easily take out onto the balcony when the weather is fine and I can do this in less than a minute.

Now those with a keen eye will have spotted a paint cart to the left on the first photo. I DIY´ed that a couple of years ago to fit my needs. In the top is a removable tray which holds 35 film containers filled with sand. I use these to mount my minis on while painting to have a handle to hold them by. Underneath is my "kill-book" (a pun in reference to the books kept by snipers) which holds all my painting notes. Seven drawers underneath hold all my paints and other tools, except for my airbrush and airbrush paints. All in all it holds almost 300 bottles of paints, washes, filters and pigments, sculpting tools, cutters, pliers, wires and so on. And again... this can go outside in less than a minute.

So again... thank you all for your nice comments during the Challenge and most of all thanks to Curt for having me and for organizing this madness once more!

From Curt:

A great final entry Burkhard! Like you, I'm not too crazy on the design of those tankettes but you've done a great job on them. The flyers and the T80 are excellent (especially the hide on the flyers) but I have to say my favourite is the Protze AA portee. The camouflage and weathering are brilliant and I also appreciate the little additions like the unit designation and spades. Lovely work.

I really like your hobby setup, especially that amazing DIY hobby chest. Wonderful!

I think that with your theme entry you will hit your target so definitely no shame there. You've had a great year Burkhard and I'm delighted that you joined us for the wild gallop that is the Challenge. Until next time!