Gruss vom Krampus

For the Myth round I chose to do Krampus. I was first introduced to this mythological creature by the TV Show Grimm. The thought of a monster that punishes children, as jolly St. Nick gives them presents, fascinated me.

I found some interesting information about Krampus on wikipedia and Krampus.com. I didn't look through the image search when painting the figure, but there are some pretty disturbing depictions.

What I neglected to mention as I rushed to get in my post, is that the figure is from Reaper and was sculpted by Jason Wiebe.

I'm not totally pleased with the photos, I wanted to soften the background by shooting in macro mode. It softened the focus on the base a little too much.

This was also my first use of snow flock. I mixed GW snow with glue and water to try and get a wet look. The lighting and the focus caused it to blow out pretty white.

I intend to use him for a Beastman unit one day. The running joke this year in the challenge is to call Curt the Snowlord, partly due to his 1812 retreat from Moscow project last year. So I thought that Krampus would bellow "Snow for the Snowlord!" I have a concept for a Chaos snowflake, but haven't executed it yet.

Another batch of 90's figures finished

I got the other 14 figures of that unit I started for the new year.

Although it looked bleak, I made the deadline and submitted them to Curt where you can read about them here.

It was a little touch and go as I managed to hurt my thumb Thursday night, but I was able to do the finishing touches without too much pain since I now had a bunch of free time after skipping my workout.

First time using tufts, they are GW Middenland. On a side note, I took my son into the local GW store. His reaction? Whoa, cool! He already has his eye on a box of Chaos Terminators to battle the Blood Angels inside a Space Hulk.

Sorry, back on track. Black and Red was the main theme. I started doing more grey because I got bored. A few splashes of color and lots of Bronze. I don't like to have too much silver metallic and the bronze and copper always feels more scavenged to me. The shields were a bit of a cluster, I painted them separate and then realized too late the fit was off. I also broke the middle one in half, it doesn't seem to be noticeable in the photo. 20 year old plastic shields can be quite brittle.

Here's the whole unit all together.

Perhaps some Zombies up next. Cheers.

Vassal, VSQL and The Guards Counter Attack

Well I got the first Squad Leader Scenario set up.

For some reason the picture I saved from Vassal is showing a lot of extra white space around the game board. Next time I'll crop the image better or play around with it some before I upload it.

You can download the Vassal Squad Leader Module here, they just came out with a new version on Jan 1st.

I had a minor freak out when I opened my Squad Leader and Cross of Iron Boxes and couldn't find the game boards. Further delving in the games closet found that I had stuffed the boards in my ASL boxes, Yanks and Beyond Valor. I'm not sure at present where my ASL rules binders are.

The biggest impetus to getting a game in is that I have no recollection of the rules. Once that is done we shall see. I've also done some quick math and it looks like one could play this scenario on a roughly 5ft by 3.5ft table if the hexes are 4" across. My impulse 1/72  order came in and I have some PSC Germans and Russians whom could be pressed into service shortly.

One thing I still need to sort out for SLiM is if the boxes I have will be enough, and how to differentiate between light, medium and heavy machine guns.

That is a subject for another post I think.

Cheers.

In memory of John Hill

As I am sure many of you already know, John Hill passed away on January 12th.

He may have been best known for authoring Squad Leader and Johnny Reb. I have to say that, although I played quite a bit of Squad Leader as a teen and twenty something, I never paid attention to who the game designers were of the various games I played. Reading through Mr. Hill's titles is like reading through a history of Wargaming in the US.

Through my interest in ACW history and gaming, which has suffered greatly from my short attention span, I was made aware of this tribute issue of "Charge!" magazine. It's free, by the way.

I had already decided that I wanted to push Squad Leader, and Squad Leader in Miniature (SLiM) to the head of the gaming queue. After skimming the tribute issue I also ordered Across a Deadly Field and received it the next day.

So far it looks pretty good. Impressive photos and illustrations that one comes to expect from Osprey. Another feature of these rules is that they try to give you tables for scales from 6mm - 28mm and ways to play with either rectangular or square based troops, taking two or three bases as a regiment.

Anyway, I hope that you will find the tribute magazine interesting and perhaps rekindle your interest in one of Mr. Hill's classic games, or even try out his latest.

I'll have more about the painting challenge, and maybe my review of 2014 and plans for 2015, coming up.

Conan Kickstarter

So I saw this Kickstarter mentioned on Plastic Legions the other day and I could not resist signing up for it. It has already smashed through two or three Stretch goals since Tuesday and it seems like it is worth it for the figures alone. Fingers crossed.

I also got an email from the Dungeon Saga Kickstarter by Mantic. They have set up a pledge manager and will be inviting me to get onto it sometime this week. I am a relative newbie to Kickstarter, Conan will only be my 4th, and the first time I have been involved in a project complex enough to need a pledge manager. I suppose it's nice to be able to add stuff on if you passed on it the first go round, but it seems a little overly complex. We shall see.

I realized on Tuesday as well that I could catch up to my target by painting 171 points worth of stuff. Of course since then I've been distracted, so we shall see how that goes. I really need to focus today to have a chance of getting something submitted.

We'll see if a kid sick at home and volunteering will allow me the time I need.

Last week's Challenge output

After all that whining my Goblins did make it up on the Challenge. Maybe my son is right about whining getting results. ;)

First off, here are the goblins:

You can read some particulars here.

What I'll add is that I gave them a heavy black wash, which really helped me identify detail and seemed to greatly lessen the problem of little bits of white showing at color transition areas.

I'm only realizing in the last few days that their skin color may be too close to how I'm doing my orcs. I had meant for them to lighter in complexion. At least lighter than the orcs.

For the Victorian theme one could say I stretched things a tad.

Great Uncle Thulu comes to us from Westwind Productions Empire of the Dead range.

I spared you the extra shots showing the missing right collar. I had to fill a void and re-sculpt the right side of his face, but I didn't notice the collar was also missing until I had started painting him. I couldn't let it be, so I super glued a piece of paper to make a new collar. If you really want to see how it turned out you can read about it here.

In this last shot you can also see the beans as cobblestones I tried to make. Looks like he's standing on weird boulders.

In local wildlife news, my neighbor's dog was attacked by a coyote this morning just before the Sun rose. It jumped the wall into his back yard. We still have a fair amount of open desert around here, even though it's pretty suburban.

"Victorian" Round up on Analogue Hobbies

Hi All,

The "Victorian" theme round has been posted on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Bonus Theme Round blog. (Whew, try typing that 5 times fast.)

I can't say it enough,but there is really some fantastic work going on. If Alan (Dux Homunculorum) doesn't win for his Flashman Diorama, then there is no justice. NO JUSTICE I TELL YOU!

Although I did mine in one sitting, on the Saturday the entries were due, I feel my entry came out pretty well.The main thing I was disappointed in was the last layer on the "flesh" which obscured the other layers I'd built up. I'm most proud of overcoming the casting anomaly that let a big hole in the side of the miniatures face.

I hope you will all rush off and cast your votes for whom you feel is the most deserving.

I had hoped to also have another 6 miniatures submitted on the Friday, but I waited and waited and saw no sign of it coming up. Then I went back to the blog authoring page and saw that it had dated my draft 1/10/15.

MOTHER F@#$*%R

Apparently I was too close to the "day" turnover that blogger has. I've noticed that my blog starts a new day at 5PM my time. Coincidentally that seems to have been about the time that I was drafting my post on Friday. I'm just going to have to do a better job of completing my stuff and getting it in ahead of my day for publication. It just pisses me off that I wasn't paying enough attention to catch it on Friday.

I'll get it together for this up coming week.

Cheers.

Mounts & Riders Points, Chart updates and WFB Banner Links

Ok, so I'm still having trouble keeping my posts to one subject. I suppose that is a goal in progress.

Points for the Mounts & Riders Bonus round were awarded and, as predicted, I received 90 points for my efforts. I had no illusions about coming anywhere near the podium for this one. There was some fantastic work on display once again.

I've updated my challenge progress tally and am approaching my graph of average progress needed. I am, however, still behind by some 122 points of where I should be. I've also added a running total of the number of figures painted. It's 19 :(

I'm about to enter the six figures I got 80% done on Jan 2nd, but just couldn't push through to submit them. They're from a unit of 19 but I'll take some points instead of a big fat 0 like last week.

I now have about 32 hours to complete my "Victorian" themed entry. At least it's based and primed. :P

Lastly I've done some digging for banner templates and came up with some interesting links:

Making 40K Banners

From the Warp: Flesh Tearer banner bearer how to

Empire Banners

Have a good one.

Update and Glamor shots

Hi All,

Just a quick update as I muddle through all I have to do. I wanted to show you some better shots of the Mother Crushers and Mounts and Riders, now that I'm back home with my regular set up.

I need to tidy up the base edges with some black paint.

Looks like these guys should have been dusted off a little better. Too much static grass and flock randomly about.

I really need to do a blog overhaul and collect my thoughts about 2014 and what the future holds for 2015.

I'd also like to not miss my Friday submission this week, like I did last week.

More Splintered Light comparison shots

Happy New Year everyone. I had hoped to have a few more posts for you but the holiday travels left me tired and I just didn't have it in me.

One question that did come to me was a comparison of the Splintered Light 20mm figures with Zvezda English 100 Years War.

Fladnag, four English and the two SLM Bugbears

 In the above picture we have our friend Fladnag from the Caesar Adventurers set. The next four are the Zvezda 100 Years War English Infantry and then the SLM Bugbears. The Zvezda figures are a tad larger, but not horribly so. You may recall that I always thought the Bugbears should be bigger.

With SLM Lizard men

 The SLM Lizard men look small net to the Zvezda guys, maybe more like skinks in Warhammer.

Beastman and Minotaur.

 Again the SLM Beastmen are a little diminuative, but the Minotaur looks right.

SLM Goblins

 I'm not sure if this shot with the goblins are helpful, but I think they work.

With SLM Kobolds

 I really like these Kobold sculpts, a lot of character. Little and nasty looking.

Hill Giant from SLM 28mm Range.

 I got this 28mm Giant to use as a Troll for 1/72. I think he looks great but I will put him on a sheet metal base.

Caeser Goblins, SLM Goblins and Kobolds.

 Here's a comparison shot with the Caeser Goblins and the Splintered Light Goblins and Kobolds. A little smaller but you could put a layer of something between washer and integral base to match the thickness of the Caeser integral base. It doesn't really bother me.

Caesar Troll and SLM Hill Giant

I thought that this 28mm scale Hill Giant would make a good 1/72 Troll. I'll base him on my galvanized roofers tin, I think he'll look good.

Hope you found these comparison shots useful.