(Lead) Mountain Musings - "2000 A.D.” January 2022

"The Galaxy's Greatest Comic!"

This month's struggle to lessen my somewhat sizeable backlog of lead, plastic and resin miniatures will continue to be strongly influenced by my ongoing participation in the Twelfth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (AHPC). But having had a brief discussion with Dave Stone over on his excellent “Wargames Terrain Workshop” website, I am also planning to pigment at least a handful of figures taken from the British Science Fiction comic book “2000 A.D.”, as part of his Paint What You’ve Got Challenge.

Initially, I did intend to simply finish off more of my Judge Dredd models from the long Out Of Production (OOP) range by “Mongoose Publishing”, for despite a couple of semi-successful attempts last year to get more of the miniatures finished, I have still only scratched the surface of that particular collection. However, having had a rummage through another box of long-forgotten models, I discovered several of the metal sculpts I bought from “Wargames Foundry” following the sudden announcement that they were discontinuing their officially licenced range in 2017.

"Wargames Foundry" WIPs - Mek Quake, Morrigun and Ro-Jaws

To be honest, despite Tim Prow and Shane Hoyle’s evident skills, I have never really been a particular fan of this range due to the large size of the figures – especially when compared to those produced by “Mongoose Publishing”, “Wizkids” and “Warlord Games”. Fortunately though, I don’t think this unpalatable ‘scale creep’ is quite so noticeable with some of the robots produced, and resultantly I have primed ABC Mek Quake, Morrigun and Ro-Jaws up with some “Vallejo” Grey Surface Primer in the hope that I’ll be able to freely mingle them amongst my existing 28mm Judge Dredd figures on the tabletop.

In addition, I thought the automatons would provide me with a good opportunity to test out some of my Metal N’ Alchemy metallic paints by “Scalecolor” – something I’ve been itching to do since I first applied some Cobalt Alchemy to my three Paladin Annihilators for Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika by “Privateer Press”. Of course, ever being an optimist I would like to successfully apply my brush to far more than just these three figures, and have subsequently set aside a number of other 2000 A.D. related sculpts aside produced by various manufacturers in the hope that I can get a few more finished.

"Games Workshop" WIPs - A Juggernaut of Khorne

Moving over to the AHPC, I have broken down the next four weeks into a quartet of painting blocks which should help me really focus upon getting plenty of miniatures submitted. Every seven days will see a different subject matter, and even scale, so as to help energise my painting mojo, and I have already made some considerable headway with several OOP Dwarf Blood Bowl models by “Games Workshop” as part of my opening task.

These diminutive football players should subsequently be accompanied by a consignment of 15mm Flames of War Germans by “Battlefront Miniatures”, plenty of 1:285 scale Mechs from Battletech by “Catalyst Game Labs” and even some 28mm English Civil War Royalists by “Warlord Games”. However, running alongside all these painting projects I seem aim to ‘pick away’ at a number of 6mm Epic models by “Games Workshop” I want to finish as part of Chaotic Khorne force…