AHPC The Snowlord's Treasury

For the treasury I've got three pieces from a Terrain Crate pack of various treasures.  I picked them up at my FLGS for this room.  I've done a few bits from Terrain Crate and like what I've seen, they are cheap, effective , cleanly cast and paint up nicely. 

I tried a cobblestone effect under the crown's plinth.  Not over thrilled with it, I should have glued on card or pdf bits before mounting the plinth.

The ubiquitous pile of chests and scrolls.  Lots of uses here for my Italian Wars, El Cid and SYW projects.

The sword in the stone.  Not sure that I can find uses for this or the crown.  I did enjoy  playing with textures on them.

I estimate these bits as 1/4 of a terrain cube so 5 points plus 20 for the room gives me 25 for this post and I'm lined up for the Lair of the Spider.

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Any Cap'n worth his salt starts drooling at the sight of piles of treasure! I likes the pile of chests and scrolls in particular :-)

Cap'n Wednesday

AHPC Another ATA Flyer for the Sorceress (25 points)

I need to make my way from the Hall of heroes to the Snowlord's Treasury.  I will enlist the aid of the local Sorceress and this ATA pilot from Bad Squiddo Games.

 I had previously posted the other ATA pilot.  This lady is less glamorous and looks equipped for a long flight, possibly a Trans-Atlantic one.  Another great figure, but differentiating the different earth tones was a challenge for me.  

Bags of character on these figures.  She like she's of a certain vintage and tough as nails.  I expect that she could drink Churchill's gallant few under the table.  The texture on her face looked a bit grainy in some shots.  I suspect that's down to my bad priming rather than casting issues and these packs were very nicely moulded and cast.

That's my first use of the Sorceress' services on the third level so I beehive that makes 25 points (5 for the figure plus 20 for the Sorceress).

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I love all the gear she is lugging - very thematic, and you've done a great job with the appropriately drab palette. Nice one Peter!

Cap'n Wednesday

AHPC Wrens

For the Hall of Heroes I'm going with this set of Signalling Wrens from Bad Squiddo.   I've been mining my pledge figures from Bad Squiddo's Women of WW2 Kickstarter for a lot of my posts this year, and this is one of my favourite packs from the lot.  There's a lot to love in this range and it's given me the push to do some reading into the role of women in WW2.   The Woman's Royal Navy Service (WRNS) did invaluable work in many roles nd they count as heroines in my book.

These figures are very nicely sculpted and lovely to paint, or they would be except for the need to add depth to all navy blue uniforms.  The Wrens are clearly using the signalling equipment here and not just posing with it like some 60s cheesecake calendar you see in your local garage.  There's  lass with semaphore flags, one with an aldiss lamp, one reading signals from another team with her telescope and two scribbling down notes.

A really good read on the WRNS can be found i the book below, which I picked up from my FLBS last year.  It's the story of how the RN used a home brew war-game to develop the ASW tactics that helped win the Battle of the Atlantic.  The WRNS payed a heavy role in developing the game and GMing it while officers from the Western Approaches command came in for training.  Good naval history, good wargaming history, good social history.  A win all around, 

Points wise there are 5 28mm figures plus 20 for the room for a total of 45 points.   These mark two milestones for me the ear.  First I should give me enough points to get over my 500 point target.  Secondly I think that 45 points is a seasonal best post for me this Challenge.  While Miles and MartinC have been gorging themselves on 200+ point displays of gluttony, I've been sedately grazing my way through the treats on the h'or d'oeuvres platters. 

Nice nautical ladies, Peter!

Tamsin

AHPC Graveyard Beach

Another post from the Winter.

It's getting to the last three weeks so I've got to get my skates laced up to make it to the Snowlord's altar in time.  Luckily I've managed to finish up anther bits and pieces to skate through some rooms on the third level.

First up is two Wizkids Zombies from my FLGS for Graveyard Beach.  I'll point out that I grew up in a town with a Hangman's Beach and misspent some of youth lounging on said beach.  I went with a monotone grey/brown effect on the zombies to represent sorta dead bodies that spent a long time in water and added some water effects to the bases to give the ideas of them shambling out of the shallows.

 

Two 28mm figures plus the room bonus gives me 30 points. I'm not sure if there is enough flesh come off of these guys to register on the Skull-o-meter(TM).

Well, if people will insist on burying the dead on sandy shorelines, this is exactly what you can expect!

Tamsin

Yet More Allied Destroyers

 

Following on from previous posts I think I'm reaching the end of the destroyers in house.  These are 5 allied N class destroyers plus another radar blip dummy counter to represent an unknown sighting.  The models are all CinC, 5 are J/K/N class and the sixth is a spare "L" AA type.  CinC sells these in packs of 5, but there were only 4 in this particular configuration so spare one became a dummy counter.

Given the mess ups over the L/ M class, the next batch of Royal Navy destroyers went back to the successful J/ K class design.  They did manage to fix he one odd feature so that the rear "X" mount now was able to fire astern.   None of these ships served in the Royal Navy during WW2 although a couple did RN service after the war.  Five were manned by the RAN, two by the Dutch Navy and one by the exiled Polish Navy.

HMAS Napier, Nestor, Nizam and Norman split their service between the Med and the Indian Ocean before heading to the Far East in 1944.  I've tried my hand at period camo again, including a couple with a tan base which was effective against the North African coast. Nestor was sunk off Crete in 1942 and was the only RAN ship never to serve in Australian Waters.  HMAS Nizam was named for the Last Nizam of Hyderabad  who paid for her.  That's how you roll when you're the richest man in the world.  

ORP Piorun served both in the Atlantic and the Med.  She was one of the destroyers who engaged the Bismarck at night prior to the Bismarcks' final battle.  She is said to have sent the signal "I am a Pole" by signal lamp prior to engaging.

That is 6 hulls of 1/2400 scale ships for another 12 points, which also count in my Naval Side Duel.  There are more ships to come but I'll have to join Mr Peabody in the Wayback machine to go back a few centuries.

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The Cap'n likes these, oh yes he does! In fact, there is a local memorial service for NIZAM in a few weeks time which I am attending. In her spirit I grant a bonus points for each RAN vessel you have delivered here today - 16 points for you Peter!

Cap'n Wednesday

AHPC L Class Destroyers

Another four Royal Navy destroyers from my WW2 med theatre project, these representing the four L class destroyers armed with 4" AA guns as main armament.  All four ships served in the Med and were lost there between January and May 1942.  HMS Lance and HMS Lively were part of force K with HMS Aurora and HMS Penelope, which had some notable successes in its brief history.

The design history of the L/M class destroyers had a number of bumps that were unfortunately matched by my attempt to proceed models for the ships.  Fresh not the heels of the highly successful J/K class of destroyers, the naval design team decided to do what all designers do and improve a good thing by changing to a new main armament.  The new 4.7" gun fired a bigger shell, had some high angle capability and had an improved gun house.  But it never worked as an effective AA gun and and the director was overweight giving structural issues.  Simulatenoulsy the RN had an internal bun fight over the best light AA guns for destroyers, and the class was initially designed without any light AA while this was sorted out.  As a result four of the "L" class were given 8 4" AA guns in stead of the 6 4.7" of the other 12 L&M classes. 

HMSs Lively, Lance, Legion and Gurkha.  I need to redo the label on HMS Legion as it badly smudged.

So onto the model issues.  GHQ does not do either an L or M class destroyer but CinC does three different ones!  One is clearly an M class with the 4.7" mounts - these were big enough that the Italians thought the ships were cruisers on first meeting- but there are two labeled L class AA.  I ordered a pack of 5 based on what I could see on the website  and had these prepped and primed for the start of the challenge.  However, when I opened Mal Wright's excellent book on Naval Camouflage I noted that the rear guns mounts on the models didn't match the pictures in the book.  This likely wouldn't bother anyone else but having researched and ordered models to fit particular ships it bothered me.  So I went bak to the CinC webstore and ordered the other pack of L class AA destroyers which do look like the pictures i the book and those are what I've shown above.  I can't figure out what the other casting is supposed to represent but it sure as heck ain't an L class destroyer.  These casts became some of my greyscale unidentified sightings along with the extra correctly modelled L class, since CinC sells these in a pack of 5 and there were only 4 ships.

 

Challengers who paid attention while watching Sesame Street will note that Gurkha does not start with an L.  The ships was originally to be named HMS Larne but this was changed in honour of the tribal class destroyer lost in 1941.  The Gurkha regiments did a crowd fund to pay for the ship and command was given to the brother of an officer in the Gurkhas.

Excuse the ramblings, but to sum up that is 8 points for 4 hulls in 1/2400 which also count towards my Naval Side duel efforts.

AHPC Freccia Class Destroyers

AdamC noted that my shipyards seemed quiet of late, but there has been some work going on.  Here are four more WW2 destroyers in 1/2400 scale.  All  models are CinC.

The three ships with the candy stripe foredecks are Italian Freccia class destroyers.  There were four of this class and four more in the similar Folgore class plus modified ships sold for export to Greece and Turkey.  The Italian ships fought hard and all of them were lost during the war.  The stripes were for aircraft recognition, added after the Regia Aeronautica bombed the Regia Marina early in the war.

The final ship is another Paynes' Greyscale unidentified bogey for for of war purposes.  She is sold by CinC as a British L class destroyer (but isn't... that story with my next post).

That is 4 hulls at 2 points each for a grand total of 8 points.  These points count against my total in the Naval Side duel, but I'm long since left in the other's wake on that front.

AHPC Adventuress' Landing

Adventurer's Landing and the Blurb references boats but I'm pushing the boundaries on both fronts.  This is a Bad Squiddo figure of a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), female pilots who performed ferry duties bringing warbirds from factory to airfield, who's just come in for a landing.

AHPC Jacobite Cavalry in 10mm

Still going through my backlog of AHPC entries

 

The second post from me today and another unit from the Campaign in Ireland 1688-1691.  This is Sutherland's Regiment of Horse from the Jacobite side.  Jacobite Horse were aggressively handled and gave good account of themselves during this war.

These are Pendraken figures is 10mm and they are very nice indeed.  I love the movement in the poses, which are the sculpts as used in the Warfare 28mm range just downsized. I'm planning on using Beneath the Lily Banners from the League of Augsburg with these two bases representing a squadron sized unit.  In BLB it would be 2-3 28mm figures per base and I've gone with 5 10mm figures using the same bases.

Uniforms were less regimented in this early ear so both sides fielded foot and horse in both red and grey coats.  I've done the unit tables in a pale green for the Jacobite side which looks yellow in my light box. There was to be flag on the pole in the back rank, but that's lost in the pile of my basement carpet so a replacement will be added later.

I need to go over the officer's face with a drybrush as the wash took too heavily and he looks like a Nazgul!

I also need to work on my basing  at this smaller scale but overall I'm pleased with the results.

That's 20 cavalry in 10mm @ 2 points = 20 points for the unit.

Another Orky Dorky Tank

 

Another dorky dorky little tank courtesy of JeremyM and his 3D printer.  I've had fun painting these models up, they make a great break from my more regimented historical pieces.  A chance for the brain to go oh WTF what ever feel right.  

I used the same Maserati red livery as the previous model with heavy handed washes for weathering and plenty of steampunk bronze thrown about for good measure. I gave this tank a Flash Gordon/Duck Dodgers style ray gun and attempted to do the beam in cobalt blue along th barrel, but it wasn't a great success.

Plenty of detail here, but fortunately no one can play rivet counter with a fantasy tank.

After a number of years, I thought that I'd jump on the Skullz bandwagon (a sure sign that Skullz are in danger of becoming passe) and add a couple here.  I've free handed a Ramones pin head skull either side in memories of my youth.  In 1978 or 79 I friend and I had tickets to see the Ramones at the Hammersith Odeon, only to have the show canceled due to illness in the band.  This was perhaps the biggest disappointment of my teenage years that didn't involve girls.   

This gives me another bit of armour to clank across the battlefield before blowing up in a spectacular epic fail, another 20 points on the roster and an initial 2 pips on the Skullometer.

AHPC Miss Roundwoood and her Prize Laarden Hen at the Hatchery

For my hatchery post I present another of the Landgirls from Bad Squiddo's Women of WW2 range in 28mm.  This is Miss Roundwood and her prize larded hen.  Miss Roundwood is rather eccentric and has developed an interest in the Laarden breed of chickens having rescued a clutch of chicks with the help of a  family of Belgian refugees.  

The Laarden breed is related to the Braekel and noted for it's strong character.  Laarden fowl have played an unusually prominent role in the history of Laarden and its environs, especially during the Wars of the late 17th century.  The birds are nicknamed the De Vichet breed in "honour" of a certain historical character,

This is another great figure from Bad Squiddo, lots of character in both Miss Roundwood and the chicken.  They both seem inordinately round of themselves.  I am reminded of the old joke asking what's the difference between a proud hen and a lawyer.  Well the proud chicken clucks defiant and..

Veterans of previous Challenges will recall that Sydney Roundwood's Laarden vignettes often included local fowl, although strangely not yet this year.  Perhaps the war with France has isolated the town and restricted supplies to the point that anything edible has ended up in the stewpot.   I will say that I never though I'd be googling "Heritage Chickens Breeds of Flanders".

I believe that's 5 points for the figure and 20 for the Chamber please.