Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge 2024 + Paint What you Got

This year I entered the AHPC XIV event. Never having entered anything like this I managed to do it twice without thinking. I joined Paint What You Got as well. I had followed both events in previous years and thought I could paint what I had - got lots of this. And also add some new materail via AHPC. The AHPC has about 80 odd entrants and is well established. I had not realised that AHPC includes challenges. Optional I hear you say! Except in my case the Library Challenge was so enticing my plans fell apart as I painted things and made models completely at odds with my wargames armies plan. In the end I managed some new units notably my Rebel Light Infantry for Schleswig Holstein. Meanwhile for Paint what you got I managed to get some of my German allies of the Rebels done. Although Prussia was dominant in its support for the rebels other German States sent contingents as the support was made official by the German Confederation. Thats it for now.

2023 themes

2023 proved to be very much a year for 1848 armies and especially Danes and Prussians. This meant my Italian Wars of Independence armies suffered as a result. Added to that I got distracted again by other subjects - notably sci fi where I don't normally dwell. Here is a selection of figures plus my TACFOS Sci Fi encounter as well as one of my grid wargame experiments - an 1848 scenario using the portable wargame rules by Bob Corderoy. The full stories can be found at my wordpress blog - the wargaming erratic

Current Plans

 Over on my main blog you can find a lot of material on the following themes

https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2019/12/16/welcome-to-my-blog/

Current themes

Anglo Saxons, Normans and Vikings - exploring shieldwall actions with different rulesets

Normans in the South - looking at the Norman forces in southern Italy and Sicily

The Wars of the Italian Unification 1820 to 1870 - rules and figures explored

I have another blog

This blog has gone silent because I have a new blog, the address of which is below.

There the story of my normans in the south project continues - use the blog feed on the site to discover lots of posts.

https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog

please try the link below or type the above address into your browser.

https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/

Do bases matter that much?

Do bases matter that much when it comes to miniatures used in wargaming? By current standards they clearly do with plenty of trade offerings available.

Also the preference for elements without individual figure removal also permits more imagination to be applied around a base. Perhaps the exception is skirmish gaming but even here you have the option of sabot bases providing the individual figure movement while retaining the convenience of the larger element base which can still be given varying levels of decoration.

My basing journey has been pretty basic. Back in the dim and distant past I painted desert or green paint onto cardboard bases. I still have them and they work. The figures are 25mm. They look a bit tired though.

I think this figure is a citadel adventurer from the 1970's.

Then I started a 15mm phase and actually paid for painting including basing. The quality was good but somehow they did not grow on me. They look accurate but......

I did some of my own and I was even less happy!

And then I caught the plastic fantastic bug and returned to simple painted bases for some 1/72 scale figures.

Zvezda Russian Dragoons

In the middle of this phase I moved into 28mm figures and thought they needed something extra. As it happened despite all the wealth of offerings and advice in all the various magazines and books I had collected, I stumbled across the humble warhammer guide in one of their rulebooks - maybe shieldwall - where they recommended simply gritting the bases and after basecoating drybrushing once. Somewhere I found a suggestion to use budgie grit. I tried it and painted it up except no dry brush but added some static grass and...... I was still underwhelmed. There is no pleasing some people.

I then had another surge of plain painted bases when I reworked more of my old 25mm metals.

You can see them next to the Zvezda Russians above - Minifigs French circa 1972? and Tradition Russians from the mid 1970's. The bases they replaced were dark green painted airfix box card - the figures have been transformed in my view.

And then I decided to do some mediterranean normans. Coincidentally I had watched both British cycling, Le Tour and La Vuelta races and the penny dropped. All my scenic basing had generally used dark brown earth (or grey brown for 15mm) colours - and I had not recognised why I liked the bright green bases beyond their simplicity. British cyclists rode through dark earth countryside with bright greens but La Vuelta cyclists went through fantastically bright coloured soils of many hues and even with brighter green shrubs and trees on top. (well except in the picos mountains in the north).

So I got my paints out and started experimenting - and so I have now found what I like. 

In my next post I will share the results.