Final AHPC Post - The Shelf Soup Post

 Last weekend of the Challenge and time to clear off anything on the workbench that is close to done. It's kinda like shelf soup or leftover day, a mix of everything.

First up a trip of nominally 28mm Wizkids monsters for my Beowulf RPG.  These have been sitting around finished or nearly so in some cases since January, but weren't as satisfactory as some of my other beowulf baddies.  We have a troll, an earth elemental and a Sea Hag,

I tried to get a different green effect on this troll from his skinnier compadre posted earlier. I'm not quite happy with the results but he's big green and ugly, and I'm pretty sure I've seen him pushing Chaos Space Marines around a 40K battlefield.  The earth elemental is a nice figure but I kinda whiffed on my attempted morph into a elemental from the sea bed for a Beowulf adventure.  I had ambitions of sculpting the base with modelling gel so that the broken rocks looked more wave like but in the end went for a paint conversion.  I gave him a green wash to represent marine growths and overdid the gloss medium applied over top.  The Se Hag came in the same pack as the Bheur Hag posted earlier.  Unlike her sister (which has a Disney villainous vibe) the Sea Hag lacks character and has more of a Zombie Luau dancer vibe. 

Next up a set of 28mm Bad Squiddo Women of WW2 ATA members with rifles, and an NCO from attached to a Highland regiment.  They are great figures, but not as colourful as the other packs in the Kickstarter I back (i.e Lumberjills and Pig ladies).  I am not sure of the uniform colours but am unlikely to ever field them on table and they look ok.

And finally a Wizkids 28mm well and Bad Suiddo Land Girls Rat catcher.  Yes she is proudly showing off her collection of dead rats which have been strung together and are draped over her shoulders.  I am not sure what to make of a woman who smiles so broadly while wearing a lei of dead rodents, but this sculpt is based on a period photo.  Lots of character but kind of disturbing, particularly as in the Miss Marple rural England universe she might be your Great Aunt Sally or Mrs Jones from down the lane.

So that's 7 regular 28mm figures (the 6 Bad Squiddo ladies and the Hag) for 35 points plus the well (5 points as being about the size of a 28mm figure or maybe 1-2 points as terrain.) and 2 two bigger figures.  My previous troll was counted as a 54mm figure so I suggest the same for these two.   The hag, troll and elemental would count towards the fantasy duel.

AHPC Painting Burgermeister and Pig Ladies

First up is a short hop from Coruscant to Vlogsphere.  One of the proposed themes for this planet is Bureaucracy and I present the Burgermeister Ruprecht Von Wichtiguerin, accompanied by his flunky nephew Ernst, the regrettable offspring of his unfortunate sister.  For his part Ernst knows that he should have done better than take the job from Uncle Ruprecht, but law and business are hard work.  Besides it's lazy work that keeps him in bier and Strudel and leaves him his evenings free to moon over the lovely Katja down at the Schnitzel Haus.

 Figures are 28mm from Wizkids and might actually find use in a Seven Years War tabletop.

Hear ye, hear ye to his excellency's decree.

There is quite nice detail on this figure, although the clothing looks way too late for the standard DnD campaign settings.  Ruprecht is looking exceedingly self important here.

My wash gave Ernst a pleasantly grubby face but I'll have to go back and revisit the lacework.

My next stop is Noel's comet, which requires a trip on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht.  I have a couple of Land Army Girls (or land women of a certain age) with piglets as long as Sarah doesn't mind the smell.  Figures are from the Bad Squiddo games Kickstarter that I backed a couple of years back.  Pig farming is not quite as glamorous a role as a lumber jill, but they are very nice figures.  I really cannot say enough about the Women of WW2 range, there was a lot of research, respect and love that went into these figures.

The drab and grubby clothing required fairly heavy handed shading which looks fine a a proper distance.  I did try to give Miss Piper (see below) a pair of shiny black Wellies. 

Miss Piper and her little swine Ray.  The sculpts have mangled to capture a certain pride of accomplishment in the faces.   

I have not named the other lady pig-wrangler on the grounds that the other women in the challenge live locally and therefore can easily track me down and hurt me.

Points wise the base is four 28mm foot figures for 20 points.  I am not sure how to score the pigs (are they animals or equipment?) and two of them would count as prone, but maybe 5 for the set of three.  Plus I am hoping for 20 points for Vlogsphere and the Star Yacht.

AHPC Coruscant Good vs Evil Encounters

Second post for me today (ok, actually the second this week on this blog) and I will be hopping from Perelandra to Coruscant with my take on good and evil RPG encounters.

Wizkids Bhuer Hag on the left and Stag on the right.

On an earlier post, my stag got some positive comments.  I obviously liked the sculpt so much I bought two of them, so I went with a white stag on the second.  

I am not as thrilled by my results as with stag #1, but it'll do.  In my experience white animals are actually various shades of off-white which is the effect that I went for.

The White Stag has a place deep in Celtic Mythology and appears in any number of stories, including Arthurian legends, Harry Potter and Call the Midwife!  In my Beowulf RPG campaign he might be a Noble Beast that can provide assistance to my heroes if they prove worthy.

I won't be accepting any treats from this old dear!  She's got a lovely Disney villainness  vibe to her.

I'll share my best hag related story, which actually came from real life.  While visiting my dad, he and my step mum took me to Chichester Theatre with their octogenarian friends to see a production of MacBeth.  It turned out to star Patrick Stewart, who none of my elders had heard of!  It was in the round and we were in the front row at stage level six feet from the action.

A set of 5 Oathmark Revenants, not nearly as nicely done as Millsy's

My adventurers had an epic graveyard fight with a super-revenant plus two regular ones.   Two of the party were saved from death by followers (a nifty Beowulf second chance mechanism) and the other two were almost in the boat.  

I really like the ancient Celtic vibe to these sculpts, they fit into my Beowulf setting as tomb guardians and the like very nicely.

Finally a set of 4 Wizkids woodland critters that have been cluttering my work bench.  I don't like the  regular timber wolves nearly as much as the Winter Wolf I painted earlier, and was disappointed that they are in the same pose.

However, the fox has a good sculpting pose to him/her.  reminds me of my favourite book from childhood, Harlequin the Fox.

Challenge veterans might remember that there was a badger themed location a couple of years ago.

Points wise there are a total of 11 figures of various sizes (the hag and stag are quite large) but all in 28mm scale.  For simplicity I'd suggest averaging them all out to 5 points a head for 55 base points.  If the Snowboard approves, the Coruscant bonus brings this up to 75 points total.

I think that the hag, white stag and 5 revenants could all count towards the Fantasy Side Duel lost cause.

AHPC Forest and Swamp Fauna

 After an unexpected two weeks of painting at the start of the Challenge due to canceled travel plans, I promptly lost two weeks after coming down with COVID.  I am just getting back at the paint brushes now and banged to finish off some bits and bobs that were 95% finished three weeks ago.  I have a bunch of 28mm critters from Wizkids aimed mainly at TTG based on my Beowulf RPG campaign.

A Troll, a bear, a stag and two boars walk into a clearing.

First up is the Troll.  Like my goblins, I left his basework rocky and without greenery so that he could operate underground.

He really should see a Dermatologist about those warts.

 For variety, I used some autumn foliage as well as green to represent the fact that some bushes aren't as healthy and turn colour earlier than others.  I'm not sure I am sold on it.

One of my players decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with a sleeping bear in a barrow so he could get the treasure.  Results were predictable.

Boars are a pretty iconic Dark Age challenge, and are tasty eating too.  

There's some pretty good detail on these Wizkids sculpts and I am quite pleased with how the Stag turned out.

I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole checking colouration on Red Deer.

l have been quite pleased with the Wizkids sculpts, good detail and many of them paint up nicely.  The regular forest fauna will do double duty on TTG RPGs and for historical games.  I like to use animals as dummy markers.  "Captain those suspected French dragoons turned out to be a deer and a couple of boars".  Points wise it's always a bit of a challenge with non-human figures.  I'd suggest treating the Troll as a 54mm foot figure (he is about that tall) and the others as 28mm foot figures, but will accept the Snowlord's judgement.  No location points on this lot as I've completely lost the plot on that front and don't want to do a Ray fitting a round peg in a square hole.  The Troll would count towards the Fantasy duel. 

AHPC XII: Little Red Riding Hood for Perelandra

 This post went Live on the Challenge Blog on January 16th, so my time references are a bit off.  The got the test on the 10th, and result on the 11th.

I have a small post for this week as I've been down with COVID.  I woke up Monday feeling absolutely wretched and got my self off to the drive thru testing centre and got my positive result Tuesday evening.  I've been a much bigger than normal waste of space since then but had these minis pretty much done before hand.

One of the tags for Perelandra is temptation and that's what the Big Bad Wolf offered Red traditionally.

My version is a little twisted as Red is another female goblin.  I am not sure i want to know what's in that satchel of goods that she has for Grandma.  She was originally going to feature a drab cloak like the rest of her goblin gang, but I was working on the Winter Wolf at the same time and had a "you know..." moment.

I think in this case that Red is mischievous enough that the danger from temptation might be for the wolf.  A milk bone and a belly rub might be the long slippery evolutionary slope downhill to a Pug that can't get up on the couch without help and gets dressed in a new costume very holiday.

Both figures are 28mm and from Wizkds. Curt has been scoring the goblins as 20mms for 4 points but I don't know how to score the Winter Wolf, who is one big puppy.  Perhaps as a  equivalent to a 28mm cavalryman?  The base points can be added to my FantasySide Duel score.

Finally I thought I'd share a bit of my family lore about protecting your daughters.  In the mid-1950s my grandfather was English Department Head at Dalhousie University with two daughters (my mum and aunt) at home and finishing degrees.  As Head he hosted visiting guest authors and poets, including the likes of Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen (who was just starting out).  The works of these two were considered so scandalous that the two daughters were banished from the house the night that Irving and Leonard came to dinner.   

AHPC XII: Ruins at Arda

The planet Arda carries a Fantasy theme, so I've gone with this Giant attacking a tower in 28mm.  Just for fun note that the top two levels of the tower are removable allowing me to do this.

In an homage to this classic DnD module...

Ok let's break down the components here.  

First up is the Giant, who is a Wizkids Stone Giant in 28mm scale.  I will note that the figure is about 90mm from sole of foot to top of head and that the tower he's standing next to is 6" high (152mm) for comparison.  I will leave scoring him up to the Snowlord.  In the Beowulf adventures Giants are more generic than straight DnD, but I tried to keep to the Stone Giant Theme.  It's a nice sculpt with facial features midway between an Easter Island Moai and Grace Jones.

Backside view as I am thinking that's the view my adventurers want to see!

Next up are the human foes who are from the Gipping Beast Arthurian (mostly) and other ranges.  I painted the fighters up to represent the Comitatus of a local Warlord, using the red tunics and shields with double headed dragons to provide a unit theme.
.  

I will come back and touch ups he shields but wanted to get these posted today.

The seventh figure is the Merlin figure who has a lot of the age old mystery to him. I love the metal bird on his staff, is it the Eagle of the Ninth?  Seven 28mm figures is 35 points.

These are good solid Beastie boy figures, lots of individual differences.  They can serve in Beowulf adventures as friends, foes or neutrals as required.  I my also do some Sub-Roman Britain skirmish games using Lion Rampant or Dux B.   

Finally we have the Ruins which I am revealing in full glory below.  This is a Sarissa Ruined City set consisting of 8 modular bases that can be rearranged as suits the scenario or decided in to smaller ruins.  I figure it can serve as a Roman ruin in Beowulf, or a generic ruin for other RPGs os Moonstone for later period historical games.  The total set covers an area 8" by 16", and is mostly 3" tall except for the tower which is 6' tall.  My math makes this exactly 2 cubes of terrain for 40 points.

Arrangement 1

Arrangment 2

Arrangement 3

Points wise I cout up

• 35 points for the humans
• 40 points for the 2 cubes of ruin
• ? points for the Giant
• 20 points for the Arda location
• Merlin and the Giant should count against the forlorn hope of the Challenge Duel

Having completed four planets on the Outer Ring, I am ready to explore the Middle Ring and all step on one of the Warp Maelstorms either side of Arda to see where I end up. 

Female Goblin

 This female goblin archer wishes to book a trip on the Star Yacht arriving at planet Arda.

This is another pointy eared goblin figure from Wizkids.  There are lots of little details packed into these little sculpts.  This figure was being photographed last week to go live when I realized that she had a mail shoulder cape and needed to go back to the work bench.  It turns out that my iPad camera has sharper eyes than I do. 

I kept with the same muted tones and stony basing as with the other goblins.  Challengers in the know might have figured out that Wizkids packs these figures two per blister and that there may be another female goblin looking for passage late on..

That's 4 points for the 20mm figure plus 20 bonus points for the Star Yacht.  The 4 base points counts towards the fantasy duel not that it's going to help against Curt's paint bombs.  My journey through the system looks like this so far.