Challenge progress and speed painted Greeks

I got the Ottoman's finished on the weekend and now waiting for them to go up on Curt's blog. Meanwhile I decided to do a check-up on my progress and I'm actually keeping quite well to the schedule to reach my target of 1200 points. I was a bit nervous about reaching the goal, but taking part in the Fortnight challenges helps thanks to the extra points :) Painting the rest of the Winter War Finns should help also as they are quite fast to do.

I also finally continued my Greek project by finishing minis that I had started last August. They had seriously gotten sidetracked by pretty much everything else so now that we have a Hail Caesar game coming up on Wednesday I promised to finish them up for that. Previously I had gotten the cloth and skin areas painted along with the shields. So after some frenzied painting and decaling on sunday I now have 30 more or less finished Hoplites to join their already finished brethren.They are still lacking Army Painter shade, but that's a quick job after the main painting rush. Painting all the leather, wood, hair and metal onto 30 guys at one go was a bit harsh, but I guess I've never gotten anything finished this fast. Shows in the quality as these are probably some of the worst I've painted since I got back into the hobby, but still good enough for gaming. But I guess I should put a bit less effort onto some of the mass armies anyways.

On the background the Yanks have gotten the first few layers of colour. Uniforms and skin are done and next up are all the horses and the equipment for the soldiers.

I'm not dead!

...I'm just really damn slow...

It's been a bit over a month since I finally got back home from Turkey and into hobby mode. On the painting side things have been quite quiet, but I've been able to get in quite a few games between all the afterworks, cottage trips and late summer weddings that I've been attending. Hail Caesar, Saga, Warhammer Fantasy, X-Wing and In Her Majestys name have all been on the menu.

In Her Majestys Name is proving to be quite a nice ruleset for a more casual story oriented game. We had a campaign game run through August to hunt for a legendary ruby. Of course my fellas from the Royal British Gentlemens Club had to make sure that the ruby wouldn't fall into the wrong hands, but would instead add even more prestige to the collections of the club. Too bad that I only got images from two of the games.

 

 

The Gentlemen teaching those uncivilized cowboys some manners.

We also played the Battle of Thermopylae using Hail Caesar rules. A very nice game, eventhough my newly painted Hoplites newer really even got into the fight thanks to abysmal command throws.

 A small group of Spartans with their helots holding the pass.

 Captain Ameri... Athens makes his appearance in the traitorous Hoplite regiment

 Greek reinforcements, which started making their way really slowly towards the battle. Apparently they weren't so keen on helping the Spartans.

I also got 4 games of Saga under my belt by taking part in a mini tournament at our gaming club. I won the practice game but lost every single game in the tournament so I think I can come to the conclusion that the game must be very bad :) I need to try some other faction as the Anglo-Saxons that I now used just weren't very resilient as most of the abilities relied on having large units and the loss of some guys really brings down their fighting value.

Now I'll really have to focus on writing stuff here and painting some minis. The hunting season isn't too helpful, but luckily I'm starting my master's thesis soon and that should maybe give me some time for painting as I can work from home and don't have to drive to the office everyday. And we are finally moving to a new apartment! Maybe now I can actually have a dedicated hobby space instead of just a tray that get's moved out of the way everytime the dinner table is used.