Salute loot!

Back from our holiday in the UK. 6 days went past extremely fast with plenty of museums and sights seen and quite a bit of shopping done on the way as well! As we were travelling quite light with only a small suitcase and backpacks I was to keep away from plastic and limit myself to smaller items and stuff that couldn't easily be ordered to Finland.

To be honest not all is from Salute as I did visit Warhammer World on Friday and popped in at Orc's Nest. And while walking to the Imperial War Museum from the London Eye we happened to pass Dark Sphere which was having a Flames of War clearout with a 50% discount... Knowing me things went a bit south from there and now I have quite a bit of 15mm to paint... Still having sold some of the last old unloved projects off my miniatures amount has actually gone down this month even after these items have been acquired :)

Some miniatures from Crooked Dice. Mostly Danger 5 related with the starter box, some Nazi soldiers in both their human and reptile form and some dogs. And a freebie cameraman that they were giving out at Salute. The show is absolutely brilliant, and completely bizarre at the same time. Now I just need to start creating some suitable scenarios to play!

My trip to Warhammer World resulted in some Alpha Legion items being bought as well as the Bugman miniature sold only at the bar. At Salute I picked up an oldish Marco Colombo mini from one fellow to use in Frostgrave and bought the 30 years of Space Marines special miniature.

My main items on the shopping list were some extra heroes and monsters for Frostgrave. I ended up buying the spell deck and Lich Lord campaign books as well as the official treasure tokens. There's wildlife and some funky skeletons from Wargames Foundry, Demons and other monsters from Heresy Miniatures, Some Landsknecht style characters from Lead Adventure and a couple of Reaper Bones figures that I bought at Orc's Nest. Packing them proved rather annoying with most minis being packed singly or in pairs with the blisters half empty. Still we managed ;)

And then the Flames of War stuff is where things got out of hand. I'd preordered some Soviets to be picked up at Salute that I'd tried to get into Finland for months now. I got most of them, but still missing decals and 160mm mortars, but at least now I have the infantry so I can start slowly building the force. 

On the last day in London we walked past Dark Sphere and I had to take a look inside. And the first thing I notice is they are having a Flames of War clearout with 50% off... And what was supposed to be a quick look around ended up with my carrying away a lot of German troops. It's all clear savings in the long run! Or at least that's what I'm trying to convince myself.

And naturally the better half had her own hobby shopping as well with a reaper unicorn and Hamster Rambo from Magpie miniatures. And of course some more nail polish.

I'm off to Salute!

With the challenge over I've ran into somewhat of a hobby slump. Little painting has been achieved, though I've been building quite a few minis lately and at the moment my desk is flooded with stuff in dire need of paint!

Still I think I've found the perfect cure for my lack of painting mojo with a trip to London and Nottingham for a week or so to see the sights and most importantly visit Warhammer World and Salute! With the event seeing so much hype every year in the wargaming press and all the blogs around the world I figured it was finally the time to see it for myself!

And while I'm at it I figured I should finally fulfill a childhood dream of visiting Warhammer World as well. Can't remember when I heard about the place the first time, but I do remember drooling over some pics in White Dwarf in my youth. I don't play much GW games anymore, but I do love the backstories of both the Old World and 40k and have been reading the novels even after I stopped playing. I've been around Nottingham before, but for some reason never stopped by Warhammer World. So I guess it's finally time to to go check the place out as well!

With that said I'm going into radio silence for roughly a week. After that I really need to start catching up on my blog posts. There's a few battle reports from our Russia 1812 campaign that I somehow haven't gotten around to putting up. Plus I guess there will be quite a few pics from Salute as well :) 24Gb of camera memory will hopefully be enough...

Challenge recap and future plans

With about a week and a half gone since the end the dust is finally settling after a mad rush to the finish line. Not much has been happening on the hobby front as I've been away from home for the easter holidays and concentrated on other pastimes. Starting of slow with a Challenge recap seems in order.

For me the challenge really is a great opportunity to get stuff done as the friendly competition and peer pressure really helps with cranking out minis at a good pace. It's fun to see everyone's entries and to be honest it's probably the only time I actually set any painting goals every year. Having a certain pace that I need to follow really does help in getting things done.

This year I got around to 1096 points so fairly safely over my 1000 point goal. And all that without taking part in any bonus rounds. If you don't count the bonus points from there I think this is my personal best in points over the four editions of the Painting Challenge that I've taken part in. I had a bit of a slow start with the holidays interfering, but managed to pick up pace after that. I final rush in the end put me over the target with a few days to spare still! Pretty decent effort after all.

The numbers this year were the following:

• 28mm infantry: 51
• 28mm guns: 2
• 15mm infantry: 162
• 15mm guns: 3
• 15mm cavalry: 9
• 15mm vehicles: 10
• 6mm infantry: 95
• 6mm vehicles. 9

With this done it's back to the paint desk then. I'm not sure what I'm going to be painting next. The Saxons are definitely on the table and with the last game in our Russia 1812 campaign next weekend I'm thinking there will be a sudden motivational boost to paint even more of them. A couple of random US vehicles for Flames of War still need some paint and then it's probably time for a new FoW army as I've been playing the yanks for quite a few years already and have figures available for most Company types. Something totally different is needed and I've been thinking about Soviet heavy tanks. I actually have had some stuff on order for two months now, but knowing Battlefront it might be a year before I receive anything. 

There'll also be action on my preferred scale of 28mm as well with a Frostgrave campaign starting at our club and a renaissance themed force being put together for that. 28mm Napoleonics have been on hold for a few years now as everyone else has abandoned them at my club, but I'd really love to paint some of them as well. And I guess I really need to start painting some 40k stuff as well. I've been kitbashing 40k minis for a few years now just for fun, but haven't really painted any. Might be the time to get some done for usage in skirmish games.

And with the summer closing in the arrival of Dropfleet Commander miniatures is getting closer. The original planned date was June, but as it is a Kickstarter project I'm a bit pessimistic about the schedule. Still the shots until now have looked amazing and the gameplay seems pretty solid, so I'm pretty psyched about that as well. I have a couple of starter fleets coming in and will try to get them done as soon as they arrive.

Painting Challenge entries 14-16: Teddy Bear Romans, Saxons and Commandos

Phew! It's been another hectic three months with the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge going on. The last week saw me rushing to finish all projects that were still underway.

The first to finish was my Curtgeld entry. Being a product development engineer I did what I do best and that is copy others and improve :) No time for ingenuity with managerial pressures on your back and a need to get things done! So I went ahead and copied our challenge overlord Curt's first entry of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I'd actually been struggling to think about what kind of a risk taker I should do, but when I saw the Teddy Bear Romans sculpted by Mike Broadbent I knew that was the thing to do. With them being manufactured by Eureka it was simple enough to add a few to my Saxon reinforcement order.

Next up were yet more Saxons with two more battalions from Regiment von Steindel. With these done I have all the line infantry finished from the first Division and about a third of all the infantry done. As Fighting 15s still hasn't got new moulds for light infantry and grenadiers I'll have to stick to painting line infantry for a while still. Slightly annoyingly the distribution of poses in my last batch was horrible with over 80% consisting of only two poses, and only a couple of examples of one of them. I threw in a mounted officer and a casualty to account for the issue, but I have a feeling in the future I need to start doing some conversions as well. Even with an even distribution of poses there's still only 4 different ones so probably some minor conversions to French figures are in place.

And lastly my Secret Santa gift from the exchange organized by Ian of The Blog With No Name fame and his wife Catherine. I received a blister with a Warlord Games Commando Mortar team. A bit underwhelming as I don't really have any Commandos and it came in an amazon package, but nevertheless it's fun to receive unexpected hobby gifts! These were really a breeze to paint as there's basically just two main colours covering most of the minis. So base shades and a few highlights later they are ready for battle. I've given them to a clubmate who has Commandos so they did find a good home quite fast!