Crisis 2017, an Odyssey

Hoi,

Last Saturday me and the boy visited the Crisis convention in Antwerp, usually this would result in just one blogpost but this time I think I'll need 3 to relate what happened.

Why 3 posts? Well mainly due to two things: one is that usually I travel to Antwerp by car and this takes about 1,5 hours to get there from my home. This year however, mainly due to my own stubbornness, I had no car transport and Arthur and myself had to rely on public transport. Second I knew up front that Curt from the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, was going to the Crisis. This meant I just plainly HAD to go! Since there's no direct train going we had to switch trains at 3 station and the trip took just about 3 hours.
The trip took us from my hometown to Maastricht, to Liege, Louvois and finally Antwerp. 

 Upon arriving in Antwerp we had a lot of trouble getting to the Waagnatie building because due to all the roadworks the busses couldn't get there and so that took another hour. We started out at 07.00hrs and were inside the Crisis hall at 12.00hrs.

Arthur took all this like a real trooper, it did help that I'd had the foresight to download a Dutch children's movie (Mees Kees if you're interested) onto my tablet and the second half of the journey he got to watch that.

Strangely enough all bus-drivers in Antwerp kept insisting on Arthur being 5 years old (instead of the 6 he really is) so he didn't have to pay for his ticket... At the Antwerp station we accidentally met a nice Belgian man "Jeroen" who wanted to go to the Crisis too and helped us with the 1,5km walk from the last bus-stop to the event hall.

At the hall we met up with lot's of old friends and also some very interesting new ones. Right beside the Too Fat Lardie stand we bumped into Curt and Lord Roundwood and had a nice chat. We decided to catch Curt up later for a drink and chat some more after doing a round of the hall. Like last year, I had given Arthur my camera so he could photograph anything he liked. It's a way to keep him motivated and interested and besides my pictures usually are not that good so you'd better go to other blogs for a good photoreport. I'll post up Arthurs pics tomorrow. While taking pictures Rich from Too Fat Lardies came over to me, shook my hand and congratulated me on "getting em into the hobby so young!" wow!

Like the dumb-ass I am I forgot to take pictures of our meet-up with all our friends like Jan-Willem, Johan, Peter, Stefan, Adam, Curt and Dave D. But meeting up was an absolute pleasure at that.

I'll post a 3rd post regarding my loot in a few days so won't go into that here, but I did only buy what I really needed or liked and thus left the hall with money left over in my pocket. At 14.00hrs we met up with some friends and went to a nearby bar to get a drink, afterwards these splendid blokes walked us to a bus-stop found with the help of the bar's waitress  where we said goodbye. Only... due to the roadworks the bus couldn't get there. So after standing there for 10 minutes  we asked a passer-by, who told us to get a trolley-car some way away from the stop. After 30 minutes walking through the rain and with two of the trams driving away right in front of us, we got into one that took us to the station. From there on it all was easy to get home. While walking through the rain Arthur was sitting on my shoulders and the packs were filled with literally a KG of metal the lad casually remarked: "are you going to get that driver's license now dad?" cheeky as the remark was, he's right and so yes I'll probably make some more serious work of that.

As said I will post some more about this later on but I'd like to add one more thing to this report of our journey: it might seem I am complaining about everything but I am not! I had a total blast with my son and with some great guys and got some lovely figures to top it all, it was amazing!

Cheers Sander

P.S. see Curt's blog for his report.

Work In Progress...

Hoi,

Just a fast post to let you guys know what's going on and what's on the Workbench. For everyone not interested in my Hero Quest and GIJoe shenanigans, rest assured some Historical works are being prepared as well. These include a Napoleonic 1:72 vignette, some more Indian Mutiny and Norsemen (Viking) miniatures and a big effort to get some work done on a big Historical project during the AHPC coming up this winter.

As I am rambling anyway, two matters I'd like to put forward here.
1) I noticed a drop of two followers on the blog, nicely compensated by the joining of two new ones: welcome Brummie and Paul! Is this due to Blogger and Photobucket playing up? Or is it due to the content of my blog? I don't mind people un-following, but would like to know why.

2) Lately I enlisted in quite a few FB groups, mostly closed ones, and in one of them I stumbled into a quasi serious discussion with a gentleman about the usage of the words "figures" and "miniatures" a.k.a. "mini's". He was quite adamant we should be using the word "figures", the reason for it as far as I could discern was tradition.
At the moment I did not have a backed-up opinion but have put some thought towards it and
- I now think thus: to me a "figure" (derived from the French Figurine) is a showcase figure, mostly of larger scale, mainly for contests and glass cabinets to be admired by all, not just as hobbyists. I am unable to produce these up to a standard I'd actually like to show them to the public at large.
- Miniatures are, imho, the figures we use to game with. In grosso modo, these are less well painted then the showcase figure and as such miniatures of the units we want them to represent. You could say to me figures are more like art, while miniatures are more like a tool or so. And yes, that's grossly unfair to both of the sorts of figure and to the people who are capable of elevating miniatures to art. Oh and see what I did there? I used both terms for the same thing: this discussion is SILLY!

Anyway, this week has been filled with knocking down the old garden sheds and getting rid of the debris they generated and some social stuff, but I did get the opportunity to prep some figures for painting.  I have done up a unit of GB plastic Vikings, some more IM figures and also some miniatures for HQ. The fun part of the Hero Quest project (or HQ for short)  is that it let's you go back to your old collection and re-use figures that have lain in a drawer for ages, unused and unwanted. I also obtained some great old figures I always liked but never had a use for some of these are pictured below for your perusal.

The first trio are some of my own collection's Pizarro's Lost Legion WFB Dogs of War. I sold some of them off a while ago and found these in a drawer and have decided to use them as mercenaries/ henchmen for my HQ heroes to hire.

Some Pink/ Blue horrors of the Warp, I have always liked the old-skool look and the fluff behind them and now will paint one of both colours for special scenario uses.

I want to change Kellar's Keep to an all-Orc quest and thus needed some Orc or Goblin stuff to replace the more vanilla HQ baddies. This Gobbo shaman and Squig Hopper are just the thing to spice things up.

My old Aenarion and some new Hasslefree miniatures are next. The Elf will be used as a Dark Elf character and the two ladies as female stand-ins for the Heroes. The Barbarian and Sorceress.

These heroes are the Zealot Miniatures renditions of the classic HQ, I like them.

The next trio is for the baddies again. An evil Chaos Sorcerer that can stand in for all the ones mentioned in the regular Quests (I hate it when the rules state: use the Chaos sorcerer for this role). And some of the Dark Elf female characters I intend to use to customize the Elf's Quest. 

I have managed to obtain some of the Warhammer Quest extension pack figures, to whit: the Chaos Warrior (seen below), the Elf Ranger in the last picture, some of the Witch elves, the Imperial Noble and Elf Wardancer. I am happy with these because not only are they lovely figures, they are also great to enhance the HQ experience.  The picture below also shows Krell, the Undead Chaos warrior, which I also wanted for some time, but since I never played an Undead army had no use for. Now he will be leading my undead HQ legions for the Witchking.

 Another character that I have wanted for a looooong time, ever since reading Gotrek and Felix novels really, is Grey Seer Thanquol. I finally managed to scrounge him from ebay along with some other Skaven specialists to spice up the custom Skaven quest I found on the net.

Last is the Elven WHQ Ranger and a Chaos Flesh-hound. The latter is needed wioth some beastmen (I will try to get those at Crisis) for a custom Beastmen Quest I found. See, you get to buy and paint all kinds of stuff you never had a use for and now can check whether you "can do them". It's kinda therapeutic I can tell you. 

A last remark concerning these is about the bases. It will have been noticed by some of you that there are some figures based on the new Renedra Frostgrave bases and these are mostly my HQ troops/ footsoldiers or generic figures, the characters and figures that have a real HQ connection are based on Zealot HQ bases.

In some time I will reveal more of my plans for the AHPC but the first major happening hobby-wise will be the Crisis Convention in Antwerp in two weeks. The boy and me will go there and hopefully meet up with some of you there!

Hero Quest Part VI

Hoi,

Some more baddies today! I love painting up the Hero Quest figures because even though they are very simple in detail they have loads of character. Continuing with the figures from the core set here are the Orcs and Fimir all done up.

Now a lot of characters need to be done...

Cheers Sander

Vipers

Hoi,

Today's update brings you some of the coolest army-builder troops in the private 80's Pulp project I have been able to obtain: some Vipers.

I really like the old-school look of these with the weapons as seen in the cartoons rather then the real life weapons used on most of the other figures.

Next up some more Hero Quest

Cheers Sander

Still here! Yo Joe!

Hoi,

As said earlier, it's a mad-house at work. The little hobby time I manage to find, I'd rather be painting than blogging so I have been lagging behind in that field. Now I have had had some time to take pictures and put up some posts. So let's see what has been done lately.

Here's another 80's Pulp Character in the form of Cover Girl.

Of course she needs her trusted Wolverine tracked missile launcher.

More 80's Pulp and Hero Quest figures will be up here soon, sorry for you Historical guys but at the moment I am mostly doing these because I can paint one figure on an evening.

Proof of life!?

Hoi,

Very much like Lord Awdry over at 28mm Victorian Warfare, I am finding myself incredibly busy with the start of the new school-year. While I have been painting some figures, a lot of time goes into other, work related, stuff.

Even so I managed to finished these Prussian Landwehr troops. They are white metal 20mm figures which are the stretchgoals of HäT industries second crowdfunder project. I was lucky to get a few early to put some paint on them. Great little sculpts and they paint up nicely.

From left to right they depict:

A surgeon, ADC, sapper and officer.


Cheers Sander

Hero Quest Part V

Hoi,

Meet Skulkar the evil sorcerer included in the starter box. He really reminds me of Skeletor from the he-Man/ Masters of the Universe franchise.

I really like him and the way I painted him is to represent Skeletor. Now I have also bought 2 of GW's Empire Battlewizard boxes because the boy likes to play a Fire/ Bright wizard and I want to create some more wizards as  special scenario characters. Next up is a re-basing of the Gargoyle. When I got it, the sword had broken as well as one of the wings. I re-attached them and cleaned up the seems. I also rebased it since I thought this base looked more impressive.

As you can plainly see, the Gargoyle is still only based not painted yet. This is mainly due to the fact that I do not know what scheme to choose. Some more research is clearly what's needed.

Cheers Sander