Afropian Thoughts

Hello everyone,

As some may recall, I had the idea of starting up an imagi-nation a while back, and have since been rather stuck on finer details and OCD-isms. My main intent was to give some additional motivation to help me paint through my pile of miniature shame. While I had some great initial planning and outline, I nonetheless got stuck on setting details and some gaming processes.

At the same time, I have actually been slowly progressing through portions of the pile, so that is at least a partial win. I really like the background and setting creation, so I have had fun with that part, but again I got stuck on various facets and how to represent them in a campaign. While I have had the game on pause for the past year, I do have some initial movements and engagements plotted out, but nonetheless I needed  some further inspiration. Luckily I stumbled upon the Lead Adventurer Forum and a thread dedicated to post-WW2 imaginations. Now, I admit I am late to the thread and some of the blogs referenced are no longer current or accessible, but I did find some excellent imagination elements to help me move along.

I had been stuck on physical setting and actually struggling with how to place Afropia within the physical world…my initial take was to be loose with it and just let it happen, but along the way I started to fret that small detail. I saw some excellent inspiration from the movies, Moody’s Adventures imagi-nation is incorporating the Republic of  Zubrowka from the Hotel Grand Budapest). From his work, I actually found an excellent reference and partial solution to some of my hurdles.

Thanks to Moody, I discovered a great imagi-nation generating-system by Ivan Sorensen titled Not Just a Brush War. I gotta say, I think it will help with some of the campaign mechanics…and now I just need to make a damned map…and get more painting done…and not fret the physical and imagined worlds. Just an item or two.

With that update, have a great weekend folk. Happy Spring.

Painting Update - Cabal & Hydra Reinforcements

Howdy folks,

I hope your winter is going well. I think we may be on the backside of the cold weather here...we did have some fairly cold temperatures in the last month but we did have some above freezing temps in the last few days.

Carrying on with my Marvel Crisis Protocol progress, I just finished up the Arnim Zola and Baron Von Strucker pack. The size of Zola is pretty impressive and the torso of the model presents its own challenge, given it is a clear piece so you can see the face of the robotic beast. I did have a Sorastro painting guide to help me out, but this time I also didn't overly stress on OCD-isms that have plagued me in the past...maybe I'm getting more confident with results, who knows.

The models themselves were really great to paint. Strucker is pretty straight forward and there seems to be a variety of characters in the Marvel world that rock the green jumpsuits with style...so I had plenty of appropriate shades to choose from. The main challenge with Strucker was painting the hydra chest symbol on his jumpsuit - for that I had to pull out the magnifying goggles.

Probably the biggest difference that I did this time came to the bases. Each character has some degree of debris that they are standing on and just having them straight up on the base didn't look right. There really wasn't much transition and the debris looked out of place. This time I took out some of my Citadel texture paints (choosing Astrogranite Debris) and build up some transition around the debris feature. I did this for each model. Painting up Zola also gave me the chance to use Citadel contrast paint on his legs to show some NMM technique - I'm really happy with the results.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

The big man and the Hydra man...

The Arnim Zola fashion shoot - a few angles to see how the big man turned out. He painted up really quickly and the debris was a fairly quick wash and dry brush using VJ Dark Sea Blue and then SC75 Caribbean Blue.

The main Hydra man...I took some similar inspiration for the debris, using the blues on the few bricks that were part of Struckers base. I also added a few chunks of rock and smaller stone to build up along with the Astrogranite Debris.

Inspired by my Asgardian group shot, I thought I would get Red Skull and the Baron for a Cabal affiliated group - of course only realizing now that Crossbones was there in spirit only.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       4, +2

Terrain        1

  

Bought        0

Progress   +4

Painting Update - More Asgardians

Howdy everyone,

First painting post of the new year and brings me to the last Asgardian figures that I had waiting to be painted from Marvel Crisis Protocol. I recently finished Skurge and Heimdall in December and I have just finished up Thor and Valkyrie. I was lucky enough to have another excellent Sorastro video to refer to for painting Thor. For Valkyrie, I referred to some google search images and the box art that Atomic Mass Games had drawn up for this expansion.

The most consistent thing that I can say about these Asgardian's is that they have certainly pushed my comfort zone with non metal metallic techniques. Thanos was very challenging for me, but almost each Asgardian is sporting some sort of armour or weapon that screams NMM, and these two were no different. Thor also added an additional opportunity and challenge with object source lighting depending on how one wanted to go with the hammer. 

Sorastro's Painting - Thor

I elected to follow Sorastro's video fairly closely to push myself to try these elements out...and I'm happy with the outcome (although my pics seemed to have blurred or muted the overall effect - another thing to learn more about I guess), and Valkyrie was a lot of fun as well as I went fairly free with the model, not stressing over any specific paint scheme or pattern. In the end, like I said, I followed the box art as I liked that look the most.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Thor and Valkyrie

...as I said, my camera seems to have muted the object source lighting affects of the hammer, I promise, they do look much better in person. I had actually done them with the intention of them popping on the right arm. They are fairly bright in some places.

I had some sort of reaction with my dullcote spray and it left this white film over sections of Thor's cape. I have since gone back and repainted these portions of the cape to cover up the film.

Trying to get the right NMM on her swords proved to be rather challenging and admittedly I think I may have 'whited out' the reflection along the main edge. The swords were rather difficult as there were multiple edges for highlights...took a few tries, in the end I stuck with the version I liked the most. But definitely more to learn for me.

The whole Asgardian crew...looking forward to getting all of them on the table at once.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       2

Terrain        1

  

Bought        0

Progress   +2

New Year, new Game[ing] Plan

Hello folks,

Yup, it is a little belated but here goes, Happy New Year to one and all, I hope that everyone is having a great start to the year. I’m guessing that most are managing some cold temps and pending snow storms. Good luck all around!

So as seems rather obligatory, January is the time to take stock and plan forward. 

My plan for the year started out fairly robust…suffered some impact from real life items and slightly derailed as the year went by and focus changed. Some of the derailment was certainly not unwelcome, and led me in a few different directions and towards some unanticipated gaming areas. So, here we go, the plan versus the result (in red)…and how the next year looks right now (in blue):

1. I want to get moving…somewhat slowly with Afropia. I have the bones of a mash up between Petoriastan and Aponwana. And it gives me the chance to try a few different game types, as well as some game mechanics that I’ve been checking out. So I am actually getting exciting with the idea…again. This has been a very slow burn. I have some initial milestones for the framework of a proper campaign, but I’m missing some strategic nuances and am trying to translate some concepts into game process. I toyed around with Chat to help me out or at least give me some initial thoughts. Much more to come, I did take time this past year to paint up some Petoriastan military circa 1940’s/1950’s using some Battlefront WW2 US boxes, they will let me bring in my US paras and I can square them off against some Soviet equipped Aponwana’s - inspired by post-WW2 Soviet foreign policies.

2. Stemming from my 15mm US Parachute Company painting…I want to get a similar number of German infantry on the table, mix of basing for FoW and FoF, so that I can run a game at CanGames this year. I think it will be a FoF game, with Market Garden as the inspiration. More to follow on that. So, this was 50%+ successful. I was able to paint up 2 understrength Grenadier platoons electing to base them for Force on Force instead of FoW. I was not able to get a table running at CanGames this year, real life got in the way, but was happy with the progress. I have a scenario in mind for when I revisit this and am thinking that it might be time to revisit Operation Market Garden and the Firestorm campaign. 

3. Recycle some of the ideas about Red/Northern Dawn and get some Cdn Abn painted, as well as the framework of some scenarios and some small town Alberta terrain done. I was not able to get any progress on this stream. But I have a scenario in mind potentially for CanGames that would let me get some of these models on the table and help me get back into Red Dawn and Team Yankee - so thinking of a platoon level scenario using FoF. I’m still thinking of some Northern Dawn terrain and campaign, so more to follow and hopefully progress with.

4. Misc…SW Legion of course, MCP as well…and whatever floats the ole boat. Of course, I think it’s time I did a big clean of the basement area and get an appreciation for what I actually have and thin some of the not so achievable. More to follow on that one, lol. Okay, so this was a bit of a general shotgun goal, touching a few elements. I did a big clean of my miniatures area, got rid of some excess build up, aligned what I kept to themes of interest and potential scenarios in mind. My storage is definitely in order. I got some Marvel games in this year, did not look at Star Wars at all, but managed to also get some Marvel characters painted up…I have a few more to get through before I finish all of the Marvel that I have. So they will be part of this years painting goals.

Part of the plan for the next year: I am working on getting the 02 Hundred start box finished, as well as make up some terrain that will work and allow me to get table or 2 for the game.

So, here is to the next year.

Take care folk.