Challenge Memories Part 5

 Hoi,

More Cybertronians today with some of my favourite Autobots as well as one of my Challenge favourites the Ankh, Gods of Egypt game figures.

As the Galaxy Quadrant had a planet "Cybertron" I just had to paint some more autobots and here they are:

 

LINK

Martijn asked me to paint the miniatures of the Ankh game by CMON games and these are brilliant. They took me forevere due to the huge amount of details and outlandish colourschemes, but they were a true painters dream to do!

LINK

See you next week! 

Cheers Sander

 

 

 

 

Challenge Memories Part 2

 Hoi,

 

More Challenge posts for you to peruse! The first post for today is one in which Battletech features heavily. I have always loved this game and it is still gowing from strength to strenght with all the new stuff Catalyst Game Lab is churning out these days. As I also like the old 80's Cartoons I grew up on a lot, I jumped at the chance to paint some Transformers looking mechs ;-)

LINK

Next up is another Blood Bowl team, this is an old skool Ork team I painted up for my co-worker Menno who wanted them done in fresh and clean colours so: ERE WE GO! ERE WE GO!

LINK

Both these entries were listed in the CHallenge subsegment called the Galaxy Quadrant and while I had intended to go to all locations, a house renovation that went along earlier than planned threw a spanner in the works and I had to cease painting for 2,5 weeks!

Oh well, more to come next week!

Oops I did it again...

Hoi,

Perhaps you remember me telling you way back I had joined a Kickstarter. It was for the Battletech computer game and was a mixed succes. I entered at the lowest entry level that gave you the game as well as some perks. In the end I ended up with a nice soundtrack, some digital art and fiction and a game that didn't run properly on my notebook, big bummer.

Now Catalyst games is doing a miniature themed Kickstarter and after much deliberation I decided to enter that too. At a higher pledge level this time and boy has it taken off. I really think I get a lot of nice free goodies this time!

Go ahead and have a look:

The Clan Invasion

More news later!

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!

AHPC 1st Bonus round: Armour

Hoi,

As the title states, the first bonusround for the Challenge is up and everyone can get to voting again. So if you have some spare time, drop in and give (me) a vote ;-)

LINK

Cheers Sander

P.S. Funnily enough this is the 500th post of this blog, go figure...

Kickstarter?

Hoi,

Yup I have finally caved in and joined a Kickstarter project. The strangest part, perhaps is, that it's not a miniature Kickstarter. No I joined the Harebrained Schemes "Battletech Kickstarter"

For about pretty much 15 years I have only played ONE computer game ever and that has been Mechwarrior 4 and it's extension MW 4 Vengeance. On my newest Laptop this game does not run, the MTX torrent didn't run either so I was terribly distraught. But here come the guys from HS to the rescue. They are developing a turn based single player version of the game which is a skirmish game at base but has now reached strechgoals for a single player Merc campaign to be added as well. For me (not having a credit card) it is great to be able to back this project through Paypall and so I did almost without a thought. Since I do not play PC games (or any digital games at all, they take away time from painting mini's and gaming on the tabletop) I am a bit afraid I will have trouble getting the hang of gameplay and also that my present laptop will not be good enough to run the game when it arrives, would just be my luck. But I guess we will have to take that hurdle if and how it turns up.

I am hoping this PC game will be a compromise between Mechwarrior and CBT itself and it sure looks like it.

So remember: "Mechwarriors do it in the cockpit!"

Cheers Sander

watching:

Unseen?

Hoi,

Long time no update! Yes well, as said many times before: real life has a nasty habit of catching up with us poor mortals. My Dad has had a stroke not 3 weeks ago and that really has hit home over here. So while I did finish some small hobby projects in the meanwhile I did not feel like posting them over here. Let's say I have not been in the right frame of mind for a while now and having Dad come home from revalidation therapy yesterday and the School Holidays a mere 3 days away, I now have found some new energy.

As a small starter this update will feature two items to whit: some Classic Battletech stuff and something even more Old School.

Recently I obtained  4 Unseen Inner Sphere mechs for CBT. The Archer and Rifleman are already in my possession and inducted in the Aragon Borderers, my favourite IS CBT unit, but these new additions will be painted as Draconis Combina Sword of Light mechs. This unit could do with some more heavy hitting fire-power anyway. The Stinger and Wasp will be added to the Aragon Borderers as part of the Light/ Medium lances. Their appearance really captures the early Battletech essence for me and I am truly delighted to own these now. The Spider is not an Unseen mech but I still like the model so I added it. I have to think to which unit it will be added.

Next up is something different altogether; a Flat White Metal figure. This one I obtained in Kulmbach (Bavaria) quite some time ago and painted up to resemble a Trumpeter from a British Royal Regiment. Purists or experts will surely be able to tell me if I made a mistake by doing so, but I like the result and so don't really care. Now this figure ended up as a good-bye present to a co-worker who will retire in a week or two from the school where I work.

Anyway, that's it for today. Some other posts are in the works so keep watching this space!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Wasting Light" by the Foo Fighters   

Battletroops, the story continues

Hoi,

A platoon of based and coated Battletroops Draconis Combine infantry, has stood on my desk for as long as I own them. By and by I apint a couple of them up so I can add them to the painted list. So here presented are two pairs of RPG gunners. I gather they will be aiming their Inferno missiles at any nearby mechs. Now stil about 10 more to go...

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Days go By" by The Offspring

Lest we forget...

Hoi,

In remembrance of those who have fallen for Freedom and the Future of our children...

Yours Truly Sander

Battletroops

Hoi,

At the Impact convention last May I obtained two Scotia Grendel Nemesis Assault Bipeds for the total price of €5,- Yes that's right just 5 euro's. From the start I knew I was going to convert them into mechs for the Battletroops 25mm scale. When I actually got time to do this, the problem was which Battletech mech would come closest and ergo cost the least amount of converting. In the end I settled for the Raptor light mech. One of the Bipeds had bean painted partially already and I took this one to experiment with and this is what I managed to do to it.

And a picture with my latest regular CBT mech as a size reference.

If you were able to guess the origin of the parts used you're a toff ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels" the soundtrack

More Classic Battletech

Hoi,

Sometimes you get lucky in your E-bay purchases; I recently obtained an unseen Shadowhawk battlemech through E-bay. The mech missed some parts, most notably shoulder-mounted weapons and was hideously mutated by his previous owner. It had a WHFB longbow in it's left hand and the ppc had broken off. I removed he bow and replaced the ppc barrel and voila:

The original version with revised barrel and cleaned base:

My adapted version:

And with his friend the Razorback:

The paint-scheme is that of my Aragon Borders of course.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Roots bloody roots" by Sepultura

More Battletech!

Hoi,

One, if not the most, beloved of the Sci-Fi wargames I play, is Classic Battletech. This game not only has a decent ruleset, it has tons of background-material in the form of sourcebooks, Tech Read Outs and novels. Next to the regular CBT tabletopgame there's also a RPG and a 25/ 28 mm game called Battletroops. For this game these Draconis Combine forces are made. Now no longer in production I bought some DC and Steiner troops from Pijlie and have started painting them up in earnest. More updates will follow surely so watch this space.

Also Battletech related is this 'mech. It's an Unseen model as far as I know and sold to me as a Shadowhawk. But on the latter I'm not sure: is it a Griffin? The present production model doesn't look anything like this and all pictures I found of Unseen shadowhawks show a Rocket launcher on his right shoulder. Also as you can see, it was badly painted when arriving here from ebay. So I will re-paint it, probably in my Aragon Borderers scheme. The mechs laser weapon had broken off during transit and I replaced it with the muzzle of a 40K Imperial Guard lasgun. Why? well the original laser had a nozzle on it's end and just putting in a copper wire just did not look right therefore I fixed this solution.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "The Best of the Who" by The Who

Draconis Combine, battletroops

Hoi,

Another small update today. If you frequent Jan-Willem's blog, you will have seen his post regarding te selling of some old school Classic Battletech 28mm figures. These figures, in this scale, are called battletroops and JW (also known as Pijlie) had two large platoons. One DC and one Steiner platoon complete with support weapons. For more diversity in poses he had mixed the Steiner and Combine troops and painted them in about the right colours.

Being enough of a purist at heart, I've sorted them back out so they will be with their friends again. The Draconis Combine troops have been re-based (on lasered bases by Mark)  and have base-coated them. Last week I gave myself some time to do one testfigure. Having finished this I was amazed at how easy they paint up. When I have more time available, always the problem, I will finish the lot.

For now here are some pictures of the testfigure.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Alternative 4" by Anathema.

Army showcase: First Aragon Borderers

Hoi,

Some time ago I photographed most of my Battletech collection. Today's update brings you my Federated Commonwealth regiment of the First Aragon Borderers. In the Sourcebook Federated Suns they are described as a regular Battlemech regiment with an added battalion of armoured fighting vehicles rather then a full Regimental Combat Team, therefore I have added a fair amount of tanks and stuff.
The colour scheme came about as a combination of the Aragon's own blue scheme combined with the blue-line scheme from the computer game Mechwarrior 4 vengeance. I like it a LOT! This probably is my nicest looking CBT army to date, at least in my humble opinion. I like playing my Jade Falcons better still...

The whole army arrayed on parade:

Heavy and Assault lances plus the armoured cars, VTOL and hover-crafts:

Light or recon lance:

The armoured support:

As you can see the company is several 'Mechs short and these will be added when available. There are some very nice Unseen chassis in this lot and I am really happy with how they turned out!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Best of Kula Shaker" by Kula Shaker

Army showcase: 5th Sword of Light

Hoi,

In the continuing series of Army Showcases the next instalment for Classic Battletech my regiment from the Draconis Combine the 5th Sword of Light.

This regiment came about mainly because I had bought the new starter box for Battletech which included some crude plastic battlemechs. Among them was a Dragon; a classic Draconis Combine battlemech. So I knew I had to start a Draco regiment. The choosing of a colour-scheme was quite difficult since I had a red scheme in mind when thinking of the DC but it appeared that most DC regiments have white schemes for their troops... So upon doing some research I settled for the 5th Sword of Light. They were pretty mauled after the 4th Succession War and the ensuing Clan invasion, and so they were the right unit for me to start building it up again.

At present it is made up of a near full company of mechs, just missing one for the Assault Lance, but still lacking in armoured support. The source book for the DC mentions them without such auxiliaries, but I will add them anyway. The first of these is the swiftwind scout car added in this picture.

Light and medium Lances:

Heavy and Assault Lances:

The latest additions to this regiment are this Warhammer (left), Hunchback (right) and the scout car (front) which I like pretty much. They are all splendid metal models. The Warhammer is an Unseen model, the Hunchback is from the new clam shell package "Sword and Dragon" and the Swiftwind is just an old hand lying in my bits box.

That's all for today folks!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Ghostboy" by Gabriel Rios