2021 Reflections

The Analogue Painting Challenge is always a highlight of the year

...made even better as a Dad and Lad event

Well this is the 13th Man Cave Year in Review! Aat the end of 2020 we were all looking forward to 2021 but then...  Well, everyone in my family is well so there is lots to be thankful for, and there were a bunch of other positives both professionally and personally this year.  Here are the Hobby highlights:

I finished my 3 year Warhammer Fantasy Beastman Army project and got them into action for Easter

I painted up this 8 x 4 Urban tile terrain system 

I ran a small 6 player Blood Bowl league, which was cool

Won back the coveted Shamrock Cup from Comrade James!

Disocverd 3d printing: This was my first terrain peice

Built an Enforcer gang for Necromunda

Painted a Caesarian Army for Infamy, entirely while in Quarantine

da Durty Duzen: my first ever Orks

Got my Renegade Astartes featured on Warhammer Twitch!

And to enable all that fun, I had my Man Cave pimped up from a dingy and functional garage into this gaming emporium! The whole family chipped in with the labour but it was my Dad who had the skills to make it happen. Thanks everyone!

Actually, added to the games of 40k, Space Hulk, Blood Red Skies, more Blood Bowl, and Kill Team, and 2021 was a pretty decent hobby year in toto

and 2022? I've broadly given up planning the year ahead. Not because of COVID or anything but because I am so distractible (and seemly getting worse).  I'm also going to be travelling a lot in the next 2 years so that will impact my output.  That said:

- AHPC Season 12

- DungeonBowl teams

- 28mm Silver Bayonet force (and bad guys_

- 15mm SF / Moongrunt project

- 40k Chaos Space Marines when the Codex comes out

 - I'm feeling the itch to start painting the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Chaos army I've been collecting figures for.

- and I'd love to get to that 28mm War of the Roses project one day

and regardless, as long as I get to spend some good gaming time with Reilly and the club lads it will be a successful year.

Separately, I squeaked in (just) on my annual Reading Challenge and next year will be my 10th consecutive. I think I am likely to go less in quantity but finally get stuck into the Expanse series - I've been promising myself for years!

Twitter continues to be my go-to Hobby social media platform. I've decided to persist with the blog anyway, mostly though monthly roundups and bigger AARs. That said, its more of a personal journal than anything these days.

Anyway, best wishes to all for 2022 and here';s to making lemonade from lemons, as they say!

SpaceX Dragon capsule for Moongrunt

Space X's Dragon system currently operates from Earth to Orbit with 7 pax payload. For my Moongrunt setting, I can imagine that some of these could be modified for lunar operations. Without the issue of escaping earth orbit, the weight saved can be utilised for additional payload (troops). Maybe two or three of these could be strapped into a lunar cycler from Earth orbit / Lagrange points and released in Lunar orbit for independent (but limited duration) ops.

But thats all rationalising and hand-wavium really,  I think they just look cool; a nice balance between Cold War utility and too much SF tech, and size wise it wont overly dominate the table. So this week I 3d printed one and am pretty happy with how its come out.

I will be using this as a USMC Lunar Landing Craft - Personnel

Just a small update, but it feels good to get this project going at last.

https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon/

AHPC XII: 28mm Lovecraftian Night Gaunts and Ghosts

AHPC 12 has kicked off and each Challenge I try to get an entry done in the first few days. While generally very simple offerings, they give me a sense of first steps taken, a journey begun.  Some lads here are into the Napoleonic Horror game Silver Bayonet - I think it's a salve for the thousands of Nappy troops that should be used more often, plus its just cool! Uncharacteristically, I'm not one of those with thousands of Nappy troops (in fact I don't have a single one) so I am focusing initially on the monsters.  

Here are a trio of Lovecraftian faceless horrors known as Night Gaunts to oppose our heroes. They have been patiently sitting in my pile of potential for some years, but I believe they were by a company called Hobby Products and are now OOP.  

And a trio of Ghosts - older GW Army of the Dead model from their metal Lord of the Rings range. Base coated in white, washed in Fluro Yellow (Vallejo 70730), washed in a GW Warpstone Green (diluted into an ink) and drybrushed again with Fluro Yello.

Thats 6 x 28mm figures to get me off the mark with 30pts, and 20 bonus points for the planet Istavaan V due to their horror/cultist/heretical nature.

Best wishes for a great AHPC everyone!

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2021/12/from-paul-og-28mm-lovecraftian-night.html

Merry Christmas

Its 40 years since Mad Max 2 (known in some parts of the world as "The Road Warrior") was released so this seemed very appropriate for this year's Man Cave Christmas message

I hope you all have a great one after what was a pretty crap COVID year.

Beast of Nurgle

Last year I painted up a Nurgle Team for Blood Bowl that Reilly gifted to me for father's day: https://tasmancave.blogspot.com/2020/12/ahpc-xi-nurgle-blood-bowl-team.html

...thanks to my third but mercifully shorter period of quarantine for this year, I've finally gotten to painting a Beast of Nurgle (or Rotspawn, as the position is now called) for the team. I wasn't a fan of the GW model so using our new 3d resin printer we made our own. Its quite large and would probably be better printed at 90%, but this guy is super imposing on the pitch :-)

This model is "The Maw" by creator Dark Gods. Priced at only a few dollars, the pre-supported stl is really great and I highly recommend it.  It also comes with a bunch of options so you could build a whole Fantasy unit with none of them the same: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-the-maw-dark-gods-166164

Painting wise this was a pretty quick and dirty project with lots of washes I started with a dark green base and added a white zenithal highlight. Flesh was as per my team using Celestra grey with Druchi Violet wash. Slaneshi Grey drybrush and then highlights with Ulthan Grey and Palid Wych Flesh. Mouth was a basecoated in Screamer Pink, highlighted in Emperor's Children, a patchy red wash and finally a gloss finish.

Concurrently, our DungeonBowl set has arrived and we are getting set for even greater mayhem underground. I've started churning out some thematic bases on the resin printer too.

Ahhh, that new game box smell!

November Hobby Roundup

A busy month but other than the separate Shamrock Cup report there wasn't much on the Hobby front, having moved job/house once again and relocated the Man Cave back to Sydney.  Excitingly, both Reilly and I are signed up for the upcoming AHPC Season XII, which I always love.

Before I packed up the painting station I did manage to add a model to my Traitor Astartes squad. This time it was a fallen marine from the Lamenters Chapter, of Badab War fame. I did him as the Squad Leader Champion, armed with a lightning claw and plasma pistol.  Not wanting the yellow colours to be overly bright, I freely added chipping and streaking grime in a grimdark style, which helped the eye lens and plasma coils pop better. Plus blood splatters of course...

While the hand painted chapter symbol isn't as neat as I would have liked, I quite like the overall look of the model. Here is the traitor gang so far all together (posed on my recently built but not yet painted apartment block terrain)

We were also excited to see GW re-releasing Dungeonbowl so that will be under the tree for us this year, and the on-pitch mayhem will move underground. Reilly is also working on getting his new Khorne team ready for action.  With his new job he splashed out to get some star players as well, with his very first Forgeworld order - such a right of passage!

Finally, I have been musing about the future of this blog. I find it is mostly of use only to myself these days with scant reach out, and I wonder about the utility or relevance of continuing it into the future. Perhaps blogger has had its day and there is a better platform to use now? I do like Twitter for a quick Hobby fix but on the other hand it doesn't have the depth for AARs etc. Not sure- would welcome commentary on the topic and the utility of personal blogs in general. On one hand I suspect they may have had their day.

Shamrock Cup 2021

21 years ago, Comrade James and I started an Olympic Bloodbowl tradition (see here).  With 2021 being an COVID induced Olympic year, the Shamrock Cup was again up for contention. The recent lockdowns had delayed our chance to play so instead of the traditional best of 3 series, we rolled it up into our Round 5 grudgematch in our local Odin's Cup Season. My Capital Crusaders (Vampires) v James’s Vax Valley Horrors (Necromantic) winner take all!

The Teams shake out for the start of the match!

Tragically, the traditional 'chilli ball' has gone missing since the cup was last contested (I suspect dodgy Refs or a Skaven conspiracy) so the game was played with a disturbingly mundane and functional ball.

The First half saw me win the toss, receive, get a touchback and punch though with a bubble defence around the Vampire ball carrier. Despite James taking a Thrall off the pitch seriously injured in Turn 1, I had enough momentum to drive downfield, blitz off the marking players and score on Turn 3. Receiving for his drive, James had some unlucky dice and I was able to turn him over to score again at the end of the second half. Trouble for the Necro Team but with a whole half to go, anything could happen.

A quick TD saw the Vamps 1 nil up 

and then 2 nil up going into the second half

The Necro juggernought was out for blood as the second half started and thralls started leaving the pitch (2 in one turn) but the S4 Ag2+ Vamps and their hypnotic gaze are brutal players, and were lucky not to get more than stun when their fragile armour broke. After carting a Ghoul and the Werewolf off to the casualty box, the Vamps started to get the upper hand and the Thralls were being uncharacteristically resilient. After a series of ball bounces and deckings of carriers, James was unlucky to have his Ghoul trip over while sprinting down the sideline with the ball. I promptly surfed him into the crowd (Reilly will be proud) and ducked away to complete a Vamp passing action and go up 3 nil with just a few turns to go.

The Vamp ball carrier ran downfield, sprinted twice and completed a short pass in Sunny Weather

With the Ghouls and Werewolf off pitch, this was a tough spot for the Necro team

And Vamp 3 scored his first TD for the Season

And so the Vampires won the Shamrock Cup! As ever, James was a wonderful opponent and it was a very enjoyable game. I was really glad we could get our match in before I move interstate (again) in two weeks

And thus the Shamrock Cup Board of Honour records the following winners

                2000: Paul (Skaven)

                2004: James (Human)

                2008: cancelled due to excessive Warpstone consumption

                2012: Paul (Skaven)

                2016: James (Dark Elf)

                2020: delayed due to Nurgle's COVID-19 Rot

                2021: Paul (Vampire)

What a great ongoing bit of gaming fun - 2024 will see the next edition of this Grudgebowl classic!

Moongrunt Redux

I recently rediscovered GZG's Moongrunt 15mm SF range, some 5 years after my initial interest (when I showed remarkable and uncharacteristic restraint). The AppleTV series "For all Mankind" has some great inspiration for the genre, and there are some lovely models like these around the blogosphere too

From http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2017/09/moongrunt-us-mobile-infantry-platoon.html

Then there some ideas for using the Tomorrow's War rules here:

https://ambushedinthealley.blogspot.com/search/label/Moongrunt

and who doesn't want an old Soviet LK luna Lander?

My friend Peter printed this Lander for me - thanks mate!

And if you are anything like me, a nice map will get your juices flowing - here are some Cold War era ones in 150 and 350dpi res https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LMP/

So while I didn't end up buying figures last time...thanks quarantine hobby binging!

My starting US Forces

Moongrunt updates to follow! Thanks to club mate Peter for arranging the order, and to Jon at GZG for the stellar service (as always!)

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a35982314/could-astronauts-carry-m16s-on-the-moon-for-all-mankind-apple/