From DavidL - More East Africans--and Some Mini-Samurai! (258 Points)

My WWII East Africa project rolls on.

I finished up my Allied contingent with a third squad of Punjabis and a 3-inch mortar team (all Perry)...

...and a rag-tag squad of French Foreign Legion from Perry, representing the 13e Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère, suitable for use as allies or in small-scale skirmish scenarios.

But what I was most excited about was finally getting to lay my brush down on my Italian tank forces. Behold the mighty horde! (Play this tune in the background to add to the sense of awe.)

Who doesn't love tankettes? They're just so damn ridiculous. I don't expect them to last very long on the table, but they'll look comically wonderful while they're there.

Clockwise from the top left: Warlord, Shapeways, Empress

The Warlord tank crew add both a sense of scale and provide a bit of a story of a tank squadron that has lost its way.

Model by Blitzkrieg Miniatures; commander by Warlord

The tankettes also provide my M13/39 with a real sense of scale, making it seem like quite the behemoth.

The M11/39s in East Africa went straight to the front and so retained their European camo/paint scheme.

And no early-war Italian force would be complete without a menacing Lanciafiamme flame tank...

Model by Warlord

Also on deck this week is the beginning of my 6mm Sengoku-era samurai project. I was inspired to give historical 6mm a try after admiring the superb Baccus sculpts on display in previous Challenges, and I chose "warring states" period samurai after the release earlier this year of the excellent (if grievously typo-ridden) Banzai! rules from 2D6 Wargames.

I'm modeling my forces around the great sequence of battles at Kawanakajima, fought between the consummate warlords Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin.

I'm starting with ashigaru pike levy, primarily, as those will comprise the bulk of both armies. I was pleased with how quickly they paint up, although I was disappointed that Baccus doesn't offer the option to order these guys without pikes. I'd much rather have them carrying bits of broom bristle rather than the impossible-to-straighten and oh-so-bendable cast metal pikes. Ah well.

Takemata and Yasuda clans, plus dispatch riders.

Here's the command stand for the Takeda army; I'm waiting on delivery of some transfers before I tackle Uesugi.

Behind the command stand: Takeda's "Red Guard" and the Obu clan.

I did a bit of micro-conversion work on Shingen's helmet, as he wore a distinctive white fur crest. I also did my best to paint the centipede on his personal standard (uma-jurushi). I know from my days of painting Epic 40K that at this scale it's as much about the impression of something as it is about trying to get it "perfect."

And that's it for this week! Next time: hopefully loads more 6mm samurai and maybe some Malifaux too...

ByronM: Wow, what a way to end to day, a surprise points bomb!  Truly remarkable stuff here David, both in quantity and quality!

The Punjabi troops are really well done with a very used dusty look and feel to me.  They look like they belong in the fight, and the same applies to the French.  You colour and contrast on them is great.  I also really like the Italian tanks, they look stunning, like most Italian made things.  The only problem is that again, like most Italian made things they will likely have more quirks that good features and only start on the odd days of even months (I have an Italian motorcycle, I love them and hate them)!  Who wants to place bets that they die before firing any shot in their first game?  

Lastly the samurai are amazing for 6mm, especially the little command stand you did up for them. Top notch stuff!  

With that, we end another Wednesday, and David earns a massive 258 points!

From ScottM - Germans & Frostgrave (100 points)

My contribution for this week is a small medley of assorted figures. Continuing with my early-war Germans, is a set of German Engineers. These figures are from Black Tree Design.

Next is a pair of German flamethrower troops, also from Black Tree Design.

And lastly is a 75mm light artillery piece. This set is from Warlord Games.

I've started using weathering powders to make my vehicles/guns look weathered and/or well-travelled and I really think it helps especially when it comes to weathering wheels.

The next group of figures will be used in my local Frostgrave campaign. First group is a Celt Packmaster and hounds from Warlord Games.

And lastly is a Wraith King from Reaper Miniatures.

ByronM: Nice work Scott the Germans look really good and I like the weathering on them, it is subtle but effective.  I am with you on the powders, they make it much easier to get a weathered but not covered look than going so with paint.  The frostgrave figures look good as well, I like the work on the wraith's cloak and sword of flames.

From TeemuL: Some Chaos Warriors (20 points)

Messing around with Bonus rounds and losing the last weekend due the boardgame trip I have table full of half-painted miniatures. I had to prioritize for miniatures I need for gaming (today), so here are four Chaos Warriors for my Army of Black Fist. They are pretty old, but as they have round bases, they are going to fight in the Age of Sigmar. Three of them are old plastic Chaos Warriors from early 90s or so, fourth one is even older (I believe) Chaos Warrior from HeroQuest boxed game by MB.

I have a unit of ten on the painting table, but I just needed the command group for today's game, so I finished it. For some reason I also wanted to paint the odd HeroQuest mini as well. The Standard bearer is a minor conversion, tooth pick and a banner from the bitz box. Hornblower has a horn "sculpted" from green stuff. The leader is just a basic warrior with different paint job.

Icon Bearer

These will join the Chaos Lord Aquila, which I painted couple of weeks ago.

Next week there should be more miniatures, because the weekend is basically empty and I should have more time with the miniatures.

Horn Blower

Post Scriptum: Battle report from today, I was wiped out (again) and also lost the scenario (the one with the meteors). I didn't play well and I played against shooting elves so the loss was very acceptable.

Aspiring Champion

4 28mm miniatures for 20 points.

ByronM: Great to see some of these old figures still floating around out there, and I like the conversion work for the banner bearer and musician. The logo on the banner is really good too.   It's funny looking back at these old GW figs and seeing how far plastic models have come over the years.  While I like these old models for nostalgia value, and sure many models now are way overdone with too much going on with them, I don't believe anyone puts our anything as truly 2 dimensional as these anymore, which is a very nice change.

From IannickM : Halfling's Final Countdown? (25 Points)

Not very original, am I?

Yes, five more Halflings this week. I'm just amazed I managed to keep my pledge of five per week, really! And for this week we have a pretty bizarre and heteroclite bunch of little men, with a Digger, a Potion Maker, a Linksman, a Thief and a Warrior Princess (!). Some of these are definitely on the silly side of things, but it's what makes this range's charm. 

From left to right : Potion Maker, Digger, Warrior Princess, Linksman and (80s) Thief

I'm quite pleased with the way the Warrior-Princess came out, as I didn't want to go with a boring metal or gold plated "armour". She reminds me of the Princess in one of the Super Mario NES game., I even resisted the urge of painting her pink! I do love her gigantic sword. Make fun of her incredibly impractical armour at your own risk, fellas!

Notice the Linksman's golf bag filled with weapons! 

And then we have the Thief, dressed as a 80s hair band member for some reason, complete with the haircut, the tight pants, the headband and the short coat with glitter and epaulets! When I saw it, I figured I just had to paint it as the Europe band singer, complete with white jacket, pink pants and blonde hair! Those were the days, am I right?!

Makes for a lousy thief's attire if you ask me, maybe he can bling his victims' attention away from his pick pocketing? 

Anyways, silly and fun bunch, silly post, good fun to help survive a sad freezy rainy February Wednesday here in Montreal (I hate freezing rain, I despise it. It's my weather nemesis). I'm up to 20 Halflings done, and my goal was 25, so I might just skip a week next week. Are we reaching Halfling's Final Countdown? Maybe, or maybe not. (Mostly I just had to plug a Europe reference in there).

(And another 25 pts)

ByronM: Another great entry of little people Iannick.  These have quickly become a fan favourite on Wednesdays with your great palette choice on cool and quirky figures.  Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see what oddities come next.

From JohnM: Curtgeld - Voltaire (25 Points)

I can not take any credit for the choice of this entry as my payment of the Curtgeld, I will leave that to AdamC. From what I understand, Curt requested that the entrants in this year's challenge team up for this submission. Adam had two figures on hand and asked which one I wanted to paint and of course I picked Voltaire (I will let Adam present his choice).

Voltaire was of course a famous writer from the 16th century during the French Enlightenment. He was famous for his criticism of religion and intolerance, as well as the French establishment. I would think that this easily categorizes him as a risk taker. I would believe also that he would have a lot to criticize today!

One of my favourite scenes in Sharp is when our hero quotes Voltaire to Colonel Dubreton: Dieu n'est pas pour les grand battalions, mais pour se qui teront meilleur.

Anyway that is all for this week, I believe it is 20 points. Adam is planning to base this figure with his, so it remains unbased. I realize that there is a risk taker bonus round in the last week of the challenge but I really would have difficulty claiming 50 points for one figure. Maybe I will think up a more fitting submission by then.

ByronM: Very lovely paint job here John, and one I am sure Curt will enjoy as well.  I like the contrasting red/yellow and the subtle but effective shading.  This will award you 5 points for the model itself, and an additional 20 points for the bonus.  Please make sure you post a picture once you and Adam have them based together so we can see what they look like completed.

Oh, and you may want to check your theme week topics, the "risk taker" was a theme from last year.  The only two left this year are: West and Movie/TV/Book character, so you may need to adjust your plans.

KyleC - Green Arrow Gang and Hollywood Tiger! (45 Points)

More Batman game models here.. just for some reason many of them were poor for photo taking :(

Lot number 3 here is the Green Arrow gang, along with some new henchmen for Penguin it seems.

First up, and who I would assume to be the leader is the TV Series Green Arrow. Very hard to paint up a model that is primarily one color! So it was all in the texture on the painting for him to get it finished!

A right pain to put together however, and to clean the mold lines off of that bow of his. So bendy there as well!

Now I don't know much of the game so I am not sure if you can have 2 versions of Green Arrow within a single gang if they come from different timelines in the genre. But this is more of the comic book Green Arrow version. I were more yellow into this one, less dark, and have fun painting him up.

Again the mold lines and assembly caused me to spout a few sailor phrases, and that bow is going to be bent and broken if not cared for well enough by the owner... and the arms didn't quite line up properly to the body but with paint it all worked out.

I have no idea who this guy is aside that his name is Speedy on the box. Never seen him but then again Green Arrow was not a huge super hero that I kept up with. Box art was red, so this was a struggle to keep it red without going into Pink. So more oranges and yellows were used over white highlights. Slight issue with the arrow placement as the glue didn't set until the arrow dropped past the bow hand. So it looks a bit off, but still plausible ( I mean he is a super hero, so maybe that is his way of shooting? ).

TV star here again. Diggle is the name.. running around cleaning up Green Arrow's messes is his game. Never watched the show past the first few episodes so don't know much about him. Again just copied the box here for colors.. Tried to do some variations to the browns, but looking back I think I failed in that here.

Captain Cold. Apparently also a TV character? Though which I do not know. The boxart has him much older, but somehow my painting of his face made him look like a small kid on an adult body. Maybe his power has frozen him in time? I dunno.. but he was a lot of fun to paint up all things aside. Comes out as a henchment for the Penguin crew as far as the website states.

Heat Wave! Another villain from the TV series.. and someone else I have no idea who or what he does. Just painted him in a suit of olive green colors like the boxart.. and tried some basic OSL on the gun there. Though his face came out more like Vin Diesel than whomever he was supposed to be.. Again can be used by Penguin, so that crew is quite large now for the client.

And then from this above painting, I received what was told to me to be a Tiger tank to paint up for another club mates German forces. Though looking at it we found that this is not a real Tiger, but the Hollywood Tiger tank instead. In any case it was a fun little exercise to play around with, and something that gave me ideas on how to paint up the rest of my personal German tanks for my DAK/regular German forces.

And that is that.. 6 28mm figures and a 28mm tank! Am slowing down now, and will be more so in the coming weeks due to life.. and lack of major units/armies put together to work on as well ( I hate assembly.. but am alright with painting ).

ByronM: Great work Kyle, I especially like the red guy, although I am in the same boat as you not really knowing much about him.  I just like the shading on the red a lot, it shows depth and highlights without going into either black at the low end or getting pinky at the high end, good stuff there.  The others are nice as well, he is just my favourite.  

As for the one with Vin Diesel's face, wow.  Not sure someone could sculpt it on purpose to look more like him if they tried.

From BillA - Teutonic Knights on Foot (75 points)

Work continues apace with my Warhammer Ancients Teutonic Knight army; with this unit, the infantry of Stage One is complete; I'll be picking up more infantry figures, spearmen and crossbowmen predominantly, in the not too distant future for Stage Two, but I expect this year's Challenge to be over by that time.  In the meantime, I have 32 cavalry figures to keep me busy for the next few weeks!

Let's take a look at these chaps then, shall we?

Fifteen knights on foot, seven of which are metal figures from Gripping Beast, the rest being from the Crusader Miniatures line, purchased through North Star.  I'd originally intended to buy only Crusader figures for this regiment, given their low price, but then I noticed that they didn't offer command packs of Teutonic foot knights - some googling brought me to Gripping Beast, whereby I filled out the rest of the regiment, including command.

These figures will probably end up pulling double-duty for Kings of War; I can throw another five figures
into the back rank there to make a "legal" KoW regiment.

Only one problem - the Gripping Beast figures are noticeably bigger and bulkier than the Crusader figures! Oh well, fill the front rank with Gripping Beast and use the Crusader figures for back rows and hopefully nobody will notice the difference on the table.

Bases are done in my (now usual) way; painted Folkart "Dark Chocolate," given a layer of brown basing grit, tufts glued down (this unit has "Winter Tufts" from Gamer's Grass, as I ran out of the winter tufts from Army Painter), varnished, Army Painter snow flock glued down, varnished again.

Here are a few more shots of the command group; I don't know if the red cloak on the standard bearer is authentic or not, but I loved the way the cloak wrapped around the sculpt of the figure, and wanted to make it stand out.  The standard is a 6cm spear and a spare banner piece from Fireforge.

between the helmet and the horn, it was hard getting the musician's face in the picture!

Finally, a shot with the command group removed, letting you see the smaller and less-intricate Crusader figures:

So that's fifteen 28mm figures, for a total of 75 points.

ByronM: Great looking start to an army Bill, shame about the different sizes of figures, but honestly you will notice it more than anyone else will, probably no one will notice in game unless you say something. 

While the bright red may not be authentic, it looks good and that is more important anyway.  Realistically most of the colours are not authentic anyway, as there is no way whites would have been that bright either, and nothing would have been that clean, so I would not worry about it, we all paint much brighter than realistic for that kind of time frame anyway.  I may dirty up the bottoms of the cloaks and robes on everyone though, just to give a bit of the feel or the age, but on white it could go overboard really easily, so its always a risk.

Great unit though, and can't wait to see the army completed (at least stage one).  Oh, and your a brave man dealing with 32 horses!  I dealt with 12 in a unit this year and that was more than enough for me.

Better Late than never... Wednesday Minion reporting for duty!

Welcome everyone and welcome to Wednesday, is anyone else having one of those days already?  I know I am...

I think this week has just been rough because of that disaster that was the Super Bowl, I mean really, New England winning again... That's like Toronto or Montreal winning the Stanley Cup!  There are just some teams that EVERYONE hates, unless they live in those cities.

Anyway, on with the show.  Today for your viewing pleasure we have at least 4 submissions including some Germans, Teutonic knights, super heroes, and maybe even some halflings!  More may creep in though, and I am sure the Wednesday crew are busy slaving away to bring you even more painted goodies, so check back throughout the day.

Yeah, they have to stop, but that won't be for another 6 weeks at least when the challenge is over.  You just have to put up with it until then!

Have a good day everyone!