From Curt: 'Chaff' Light Infantry for Turnip28 (40 Points)

Hellooo,

I have to say, I'm having a bit of fun reading the bewildered responses from some participants to all this Turnip silliness. Remember, be inclusive people, root vegetable-based wargames need love too.  :) 

So, another small post from me for my T28 project. Moving on from the rank-and-file of the 'Fodder', we now consider the much-abused 'Chaff'.

As you can imagine from their name, Chaff are the light infantry of Turnip28. They're typically tasked to screen other units, nip around the battlefield to seize objectives, and generally be an annoyance. Similar to skirmishers from other systems, Chaff benefit from being able to deploy in a loose formation, making them harder to hit, and, as they sometimes clean their begrimed, rusted muskets, they are marginally less horrible shots than their comrades.

Here are two units of Chaff for my forces. One for the 'Rutabaga Brigade' 

...and the other serving 'The Fighting Fennel Fusiliers'. 

I wanted them to have a slightly different look than the Fodder, so, pulling from the artwork in the rules, I gave them each a pavise to lug around the battlefied (makes perfect sense, right?).  I had a bit of fun freehanding some unit heraldry on the shields. Granted, its pretty rustic, but I figure it fits with the overall setting of weirdness, decay and dissolution of Turnip28.

These eight Chaff will give me 40 points on the long path towards my 1300 point goal.

Next up for T28 will be the 'Brutes', or maybe the cavalry... or perhaps the artillery. No clue really. It'll sort itself out. 

Thanks for popping in for a look! 

- Curt

From FrederickC - The War Lord and HIs Tower [Historical Drama] (58 points)

  Moving Southeast from the High Adventure studio, we arrive at Historical Drama. Years ago, I had picked up 28mm figures of William the Conqueror and his brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeaux, which then languished in a drawer for several decades until now. If I recall correctly, these are some early sculpts from Gripping Beast, but if anyone recognizes them, let me know. I am not planning on painting up a Norman army in 28mm as I already have one in 15mm, but plans can change. They seemed appropriate for the movie, 'The War Lord'.

 I mounted them on fender washers which are the same diameter as the Games Workshop cavalry bases, and then used some spackle to get a smooth transition between the figure's base and the washer. As with all my other figures, I glued some fine sand to the base with PVA, and then primed the figures black with an airbrush. I used Vallejo acrylics to paint them, along with some Citadel washes, primarily on the horses.

 

The War Lord from 1965

 

Bishop Odo of Bayeaux and Duke William of Normandy

Closeup (front view)

Closeup (back view)

 

   Unlike the 2D rocketship I used on the Sci Fi set, the tower in the photos for this set is 3D and was inspired by the tower that features in the movie. I had a thick cardboard cylinder in my terrain building hoard for years. It measured 5.5" high with a diameter of 5". I didn't think that was tall enough to be Chrysagon's tower, so it was augmented by three layers of 1.5" thick blue styrofoam, plus a layer of thick cardboard to form the floor at the top to give a total height of 10". I originally thought I would clad the entire structure with stones cut from more blue styrofoam, but it was taking too much time, and I only did as far as the top of the foundation, as well as the stones around the windows and the door. The rest of the 'stones' were made using self-adhesive address labels that I cut into smaller lengths and stuck on the cylinder with slight gaps in between. It's a technique I used when I refurbished a Vauban style star fort a few years ago. The floor and the door are coffee stir sticks, and the iron banding on the door is made from strips of thin card. Once everything was glued and pasted, the whole thing got painted with black latex house paint, followed by a dry brush with medium grey paint and a final dusting of light grey. I used acrylic craft paints for the brown on the floor and the door, and a green wash on the stones of the foundation. All in all, it was approximately eight hours of work to get it to this stage. At some point I need to build a dedicated ramp and/or bridge to get up to the height of the door, but that is a future project. If I build one of these again, I am going to get a Proxxon hot wire cutter first.

 

Towery McTowerface

An elevated view showing the platform at the top

 The points being claimed are as follows:

2 x 28mm mounted figures @ 10 points each = 20 points 

0.90 x Terrain cube @ 20 points per cube = 18 points

1 x Studio lot @ 20 points = 20 points

 

My progress so far

 

Minion MilesR: and here is Frederick's second post - he has been a busy beaver this week.  love the tower.  I highly recommend the proxxon wire cutter - it's worth the investment

From BruceR; Italian heavy weapons to the front; Challenge Studios Casting Couch (95 pts)

As can happen I missed last week due to life and work.  Maybe retire?  The War Department doesn't know what I would do, I say bid 3000 pts in the AHPC of course.  Boom, problem solved.  And spend more time with the CSM.  

Gratuitous Mutt photo (CSM Loki)

Or more time on the ranch with son and mutts.

Well, this week I'm still running around the Challenge Studio looking for the ultimate challenge.  So, I saunter down the boulevard and before me is the casting couch.  Am I the only one, who at my age, still sees miniatures and will buy them with absolutely no idea what I will use them for?  Here is my submission for the Casting Couch studio.  One of my favorite movies of all time is Zulu, so when I'm looking at the Trenchworx table at ACon last year this figure from Victoria Miniatures along with my previous Grog Ard-Nogg submission is space Michael Cain waiting to be cast in some bug hunt movie of the future.  Without the challenge he would probably sit on the shelf of opportunity, but here he is, hope he doesn't flub his lines.  

Again, used some contrast and standard paints.  He is armed with his laspistol and close in saber.  Ready to stem the tide of bugs "Ol' Boy".

Packaging eye candy to entice.  Worked on me.

White background attempt

Black

Back on the grind and after two squads of foot sloggers for the frozen east I pulled out some "heavy weapons" at least in Italian eyes.  Again, Great Escape Games figures regular Eastern Front Italians.  I noted from some recent research my green winter caps were likely grey/green like the rest of the uniform, but the same color would make Mairo a dull boy.  So, this Platoon must have gotten into some Soviet style clothing from a previous raid and one thing the Soviets know is how to dress for success in winter.  

Italian Heavy Weapons, mama mia it's all we got:

Machine gun team:

Luigi, T34/76 heading for trench!  Bring up the AT rifle!!!!

Artillery away, give em the pasta.   

Mortar team:

If they gain the trench melt the snow with your trusty Mario melter.

Flame Thrower team:

Action table shot.

Points:

Casting Couch                                                                    20 pts

Captain Cain                                                                         5 pts

10 28mm Italians                                                                50 pts

Weapons (chart says crew served 10pts) 3 crew served     30 pts?

I'll let Miles decide.  Hmm what to play this weekend?

RAVENFEAST?  

                                                                                             105 pts

Minion MilesR: Well what have we hear - a wonderful dog picture PLUS a gratuitous mention of Ravensfeast in an attempt to curry the favor of a minion.  Well Sir, I must sadly inform you that I am exactly the kind of minion who is swayed by such vulgar inducements.  Might I also suggest you consider some of the other Little Wars TV rules like Age of Hannibal, Altar of Freedom or even Live Free or Die.....Yet your weapons are on the smaller side (as opposed to big guns which were the original intention of the scoring matrix) so I'll need to discount those and give you half credit for 15 points.  The dog picture gets you 5 bonus point so lets go with a cool 95 points

From TeemuL: 512S (100 points?)

512S stands for 512 Skulls, all lovingly hand painted. Black primer, then painted brown, drybrushed with flesh and washed with darker flesh. Drybrushed again with the same flesh and finally with bone. There are some other details, too, like golden doors, OSL lights, crashed Space Marine Bike etc, but we are only interested in skulls, right?

I built this piece years ago (we have lived two years in our house and assembling this wasn't the last thing I did the previous apartment) and primed - I kept the building separate and primed it black, while the base and small ruin got a Zandri dust treatment. I enlisted to the Skull Duel mainly to get this piece done. The building was sturdy enough to stay in one piece, which made the painting easier - it would have been even easier in smaller sections, though... I guess I was having a vision of some kind of a modular terrain tile system. The building itself got basically only a heavy green drybrush and couple of details picked up. The ladders are from some other set, the round hatch is from newer Kill Team ruins set and the crashed bike piece I got somewhere with other stuff, it is a cast, and the sandbags are from unknown source, too.

I was quite near the end, when I realized that the ruined dark green building looks quite strange on a brown base with no piles of rubble anywhere... But I also wanted to have it quite clean, so it is playable. I have some scatter terrain in same dark green style, so maybe I use those.

The building is from the previous (or before that) incarnation of Cityfight terrain by Games Workshop and follows no official design, I just got these pieces from somewhere and put them together in some meaningful and playable way. I wanted a largish second floor and a small balcony, which gives some area to play in the second floor and also gives some line of sight blocks in second floor. Let's see when we start our Kill Team campaign and can use this.

No skulls here

Some skulls on ladder and view to the downstairs

There should be 512 skulls, I made some double checking here and there, but the binary number sounds nice so I'll take it. There are for example 76 skulls in the "skull panel sections" and even 18 in the broken sections, couple of skulls in the lamp post and even on ladders etc.

One of the two "Skull Panels"

The whole piece is 14x11x7 inches cube which is almost exactly 5 terrain cubes, but honestly there is a lot of empty space there. I'll take the hundred points, if minion allows, but basically I did this only for the skulls.

Minion MilesR:  I think some math is in order 14x11x7 = 1,078 cubic inches.  Divide that by the holy 216 cubic inches of the sacred terrain cube and one gets - what this? 4.9907 terrain cubes and not the reported 5.  Why this is scandalous for 4.9907 is not 5 - I can only award 99.8 points for the terrain.  However, the rules also state that having more than 500 skulls does earn you 0.2 bonus points.  Funny how that works out, isn't?

From KyleC - Adventures - (271 pts)

Another week and some more squirrels here.. 

First up is a solid squad for my Death Guard Horus Heresy forces.. a group of 16 Breachers with an attached Apothecary to follow them around with. 

Heads, guns, shields and bases all 3D printed. Using MKiii armor as a base for them as they feel more breacher and Deathguard like. 

Airbrushed a lot to get the base layers down as well as some of the weathering. Lots of washes both from GW and Oils. 

I feel they are very good candidates for the Book Studio considering the breadth of the Horus Library from Games Workshop ATM. 

We then take a Limo over to the Fantasy Studio whereby I was tasked with our local Dungeon Master for another live game coming up. So a list of models was requested, printed, and painted up this week. Well mostly.. 

First up the tribute for the Limo. A Gorgon ready to trap any foolish adventurer who unwarily venture too close to her lair. Model by Loot Studio. I am really struggling with painting female skin these days it seems.. need to work on that some I guess.. 

The BBEG for the night.. an evil Wizard of arcane and necromantic powers.. model from Cast play. Had fun painting up the swirling magic hand...didn't put as much effort into it as I did with Vadar but I used the same principles. 

He will be very protected though.. 

Flanked by a pair of Shield Guardians ready to protect as needed. Strong and unmoving until set loose! Models free on MyMiniFactory. 

A chain demon pulled from Loot Studios. I figured since it was a demon then some weird and brighter colors would be best for him. So played around with different bright contrast colors here. Was interesting to do wet on wet with contrast paints for sure. 

The main demon needs lackies.. and these Fisherman from Andor will do nicely. Sculpts from SkullForge Models. Had to check images online to get a proper likeness to them but I think they came out well enough and quickly again thanks to washes and contrast paints. 

Another Loot Studios model but this time to represent a zombie of sorts. Felt it fit the theme alongside the Gorgon there. Went with a heavily oxidizes bronze for the metals here. And carried it through to the Wights that will flank him. 

A collection of sculpts by Beastarium. Very fragile and thin models but a lot of fun to play with some new styles like the white robes there. The oxidizes metals really helped some here for sure as before that it was a bit too samey.. 

But then the bosses biggest pet/threat.. a swamp dragon! Model is by Warp Miniatures and is resin cast. Bought 2 years ago and never touched after trying to get it assembled. 

Luckily this was a good time to assemble it. The gaps and slips on the gluing were then covered over with the mid from AK interactive. Helped to give texture but also cover the mishaps and mistakes that the model gave while assembling. 

Lots of contrasts, airbrush, and washes. Some drybrushing and layering but mostly washes of various colors..

No idea on points for this.. is it a figure? Is it a vehicle? 

All I know is that I am kind of scared of what the adventure will be come the 5th knowing what our poor characters are going to be up against! 

And then a random triple weapon pack..

Left over from the 40k walls from before.. maybe worth 1 28mm figure? I dunno.. 

I still have a few more bits for the DnD game to paint up including my character and a pet for another player.. but that is likely to be for next week. 

Seems one more studio and I can try for the Director's Chair.. might just have to give something more artful a go for the Arthouse Studio next! Let's see!

Points wise.. 

30x28mm Figures - 150 pts

3x40mm Figures - 21 pts

2x54mm Figures - 20 pts

Dragon - ??? pts

Books Studio - 20 pts

Sarah's Limo - 20 pts

Fantasy Studio - 20 pts

Total - 251 + dragon pts

In any case.. I have hit my goal for this challenge.. though still have a fair few projects ( and a few more purchases since starting ) to get through.. Let's see where this madness takes us then!

Minion MilesR: Wow what a range of minis - all superbly painted.  As for the Dragon, let me consult the Minion Book of Rules and Arbitrary Judgment:  OK section 34.69, subsection 17, paragraph 3 clearly states that dragons with fungal infections are the equivalent of a 28mm vehicle.  There you go - there is always a rule to be found.  271 points for you, Sir.