From KerryT - A walk down a country lane (270 points)

Morning afternoon & evening all

I seem to have moved away from 3d prints for now and have painted some metals instead. Both units were prepped for last years challenge but never made it to the painting table.

Both sets of figures  find themselves walking down a country lane a few hundred years apart

The first unit to take the walk or ride are a unit of Footsore Arthurian or Romano- British cavalry. They've just crossed the river at a ford and are now on the lookout for an ambush

There doesn't seem to be anyone at home

I came, I saw, I had a look and now I'm going home

Milling around

Ready to charge

The banner is from LBMS but the shields are hand painted but only because I must have previously used the decals that I had. I copied to designs from the LBSM sheet

A few close ups 

I like the flying slug

Arthur Pendragon

I wasn't entirely sure how to base these as my Romano Briton army is based in singles (though I only have foot) but I figure that I'm likely to use these with Midguard or Lion Rampant and figured  multibases would be best, though I wish I'd had another figure that I could have added to Arthur's command stand.

Now imagine that you've somehow fallen asleep under a hedge in that lane for a couple of hundred years and you've just been woken up my the stomp of marching feet. You now find yourself in the 1930's and are watching the dreaded BUF take a stroll down that country lane

The lane has changed a little with a bridge over the ford and now a small village

They're on the lookout for trouble

My VBCW collection started more that 10 years ago when my good mate Giles Allison was visiting NZ and had kindly gave me some figures he had painted for myself and another friend. I added to the collection, basing my back story on the exploits of a pair of twins who I imagined had grown up in my valley back home in Wales. My VBCW back story if you are interested is here https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vbcf/viewtopic.php?p=31839#p31839

I've played a few games and added quite a bit of WW1 figures to act as opposition to the valley forces but I've since added some BUF figures using the Footsore range and some additional figures from Empress Miniature Spanish civil war range

These guys are attired in blue rather than the traditional black of the BUF

Anyone coming down the lane is going to get shot up

The Empress figures are in shirts

The figures were painted with Vallejo Dark Blue Grey for tunics with trousers in Black Gray, washed and then highlighted. Those in shirtsleeves were given a highlight to the VJ Field Blue

All together say cheese

Once again, thank you for looking and your previous encouragement

In summary

14 x 28mm Mounted figures @ 10 points = 140

25 x 28mm Foot @ 5 points = 125

Total 265 points

2 Squirrels =- Romano-British cavalry & VCBW BUF

(previous Squirrels - Berber Cavalry, Goblin wolf riders, Dwarf cavalry, Spanish Military order knights. Scottish archers, 15mm Napoleonic British, 15mm Napoleonic Naval, 15mm Napoleonic French, 15mm Napoleonic Spanish,100YW French Pavisiers) 

Many thanks and best wishes Valleyboy

From Millsy:

Oh wow! These are spectacular mate. I spent the first 5 minutes distracted by looking at your amazing terrain and then the figures finally broke through my distraction.

The vibrance of the blues and reds on your Roman Brits is wonderful and the hand painted shields are so crisp! I've added 5 points bonus for those because I can only imagine how long that took to complete.

Good to see I am not the only person with a solid BUF force for VBCW. The Empress figs are almost perfect Blackshirts and I have a bunch in my collection too. I assume you have seen Outrageous on the goggle box? It captures the craziness of the times so well and I can't wait for season two.

Wonderful stuff everywhere Kerry. 270 more points added to your tally which kicks you up to first spot in considerable style as well as bringing you within sight of you target with a month yet to go.

Cheers,
Millsy

From MikeW: Warhammer Fantasy Goblin Wolf Riders and 28mm Arthurians Skullz Squirrell (150 Points)

When your Greenskin army already has 40 or so Goblin Wolf Riders the question is do you need another 10 of the little guys!

Completed unit, wolves were undercoated grey, drybrushed white and then give a coat of Army Painter Rune Grey to give them some depth.

The answer is No! I don't need them but I do want them! And I have more to get painted...

Another view of the unit focusing on the command group, in my opinion focusing painting time on some obvous details such as the wolves' mouths, teeth and tongues distracts the viewers eyes away form the less detailed parts!

Over the last few months I have been pulling together Goblin and Wolf parts from eBay and combined with old spares sprues in the loft and garage  I have been able to put together a new unit for the Wolf Rider wing of my army.

And another view, note two skulls on the banner.

Here is that new unit, 10 x Wolf Riders, in the past I have armed my Wolf Rider units with spear and shield and shunned their lighter bow armed brethren. This unit has been given a bow as well as spear and shield, so I can field them as either type. 

The Command group - musician, standard bearer and boss.

Three of the unit, close up

I'm also looking to raise a purely bow armed unit as well if the spare parts allow me to put enough suitable figures together but at present I'm short of what is needed.

The remaining four goblins, you can clearly see they are armed with both Spear and Bow.

Next up is a unit of 10 x 28mm Arthurian Archers, constructed from the Gripping Beast Late Roman Infantry kit.

The completed group of 10 figures

Another view, from the left

And from the right!

I have fixed things up by swapping out some of the Gripping Beast Heads for Victrix counterparts as well as adding a couple of shields to vary the look and feel.

I'm not sure if it is accurate to show the archers placing arrows in the ground ready to fire, but I had some of the Perry arrows in my bits box - so used them

Another close up of three archers.

And the last four.

I painted these figures in grey tunics with blue trim to allow me to add a couple of figures I had painted earlier in this Challenge to give a tabletop strength of 12. Next week more Arthurian Infantry and more Greenskin Odds & Ends and maybe a surprise item, if I have time.

I'm claiming A Squirrell Point for the Goblins and 2 Skullz for the Goblin banner

POINTS

10 x 28mm Goblin Wolf Riders   @10 Pts ea      100 Points

10 x 28mm Arthurian Archers  @5 Pts ea             50 Points

TOTAL                                                                  150 Points

A fine addition to your armies, Mike! I do not think you can ever have too many wolf riders, and they look terrifying! The extra attention you paid to their mouths and tongues definitely paid off. The Arthurian archers are also great, the extra arrows are a nice detail. Good job, 150 well-earned points!

Martijn

From JezT: Arthurian Mixed Bag - 28mm (53 points)

Dear All 

Happy Thursday all and late post this morning UK time so hope came be posted today. 

Last Challenge painted some Arthurian infantry on round sabot bases and the idea was to mix these with my Saxon Levy spearmen and make a new Arthurian Post Romano-British option. For the cavalry my idea was always to use my existing Goth cavalry bases. However when I set up the army the two parts did not gel and lacked impact. Basically I was missing the signature "White Chi-Rho" shields carried through on the cavalry. 

My solution has been to touch up the Goth cavalry shields with a more general white and red design and select some for sabot basing, to this I would add in some purely Arthurian characters. 

The one newly painted figure being presented is this Arthurian standard bearer painted using some unused Foundry left-overs I had. 

I am adding a few pictures just to show how he fits on the sabot base as part of the unit. I had to have an Arthur so just painted up the shield on an existing Goth captain, 

Also I realised if I followed the same idea I could "convert" my Welsh Dark Ages army into a Pict army as opponents for the Arthurian army - my brother will eventually finish off his Early Saxon army for the classic battle match up. 

So these are the new Pict character figures painted up - again these will fit on sabot bases for the Basic Impetus units. 

These are new Figures from Footsore the light cavalry part of the Welsh range:

Finally a couple of odd foot that painted up and gave square shields to give some Pict character.

Altogether is 3 x cavalry and 4 x foot 28mm so should be a simple 50 points for me and looking forward to trying these out in a game shortly. 

All the best Jez

TeemuL: Fine additions to your projects, Jez! And don't worry, as you can see, your post is in good hands. There were 2 entries ready yesterday, couple of more came during the night, so this is a quiet day (for a Thursday). I'll give you couple of bonus points for the handpainted shields and banners.

From Mike W: 28mm Necrons, Elf Mage & more Arthurians. (Heresy)(150 Points)

For this week's post I'll start with a group of 3D printed 'Space Skeletons' that are obviously stand-ins for GW Necrons. For some added spice I'm claiming bonus points for Dante's Heresy - as one of the Necrons has had a Space Marine's 'Crainial Cognitive Unit' (Head!) grafted onto the otherwise robotic body - an Imperial Heresy if there ever was!

The completed unit of 18 x Necrons

Close-up on one seide of the unit

And the other side!

In reality the sculpted head had broken off and I decided to use the Heritic Space Marine head to replace it!

All figures were undercoated in grey, and then painted with GW Lead Belcher, the grey being a good base for the gunmetal metalic. I then used Bronze to add detail to each figure, on upper arm and knee pads, plus the banding on teh shoulder pads. 

Mithril Silver was used to add a highlight strip on the outside of each shoulder pad.

Deatil of the figures here - there are two types of weapon supplied with the group

 

I painted the weapons with GW Ratling Grime, a 'noce' grubby, oily brownish black, once dried I painted the Plasma coils white - using Windsor & Newton White Ink - my new favourite medium for such work. I find this white ink incredible smooth, high in pigment and easy to apply.

More of the guys with the triple barrelled plasma weapon

A final shot of the heavier weaponed robo-guys.

Once the ink was dry, I used GW Frostheart Contrast paint to give the plasma coils the almost fluresent blue look. A similar process was used to do the Nercon helmets, giving a green glow where the eyes & mouth might be expected to be seen.

Necron guys with Plasma rifles, note the bayonet-like device on each and the green glow on their helmets

Another group of Rilfle Bots

The final two figures, one of each weapon type, with the Heretic on the right!

Obviously the heretic Marine Necron is the simplest of all conversions - ironically I found the proper Necron head in the packaging when I came to throw this out - but decided the Heretic Marine was a good story!

Bases were painted using craft shop flesh acrylic paint mixed with wood glue, to give the bases an alien feel, before sprinkling with fine sand and adding some tufts.

Next up are some more Arthurians, these foot are Victrix Armoured Infantry who will be making up a unit of Close Order Heavy Infantry, once I source another frame of figures from eBay.

Another six Arthurians off the production line, these are all Victrix figures using black & white shield patterns - I must try and source / produce some additional colour combination!

The same process to paint these little guys was used as in my other recent submissions - so I won't repeat here. These figures are really nicely animated - more so than the Gripping Beast and Wargames Atlantic figures - in my opinion! Shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios.

The unit commander has been given a gold scale armour to help him stand out

Same figures with the rear rank brought to the front to show them off!

Lastly we have a classic Elf Mage, mounted on his Elven Steed, I purchased this figure off eBay after completing the two classic elves in my first post of this challenge. I was keen to get the Mage to have long white robes but with blue ‘add ons’ to get the colour scheme to tie into the figures I’d just completed.

The Mage in all his glory!

The figure came undercoated white but needed a couple of repairs and a general tidy up, once repairs were done I gave the whole figure a coat of GW Adminstratum Grey, before a dry brush of white.

The Elven Stead was deliberately painted as a 'Grey'
but with a golden tail and mane to differenciate him from a regular horse used by humans.

I wanted to make sure that the Mage's mount was clearly not a regular horse, a somewhat unrealistic colour scheme was therefore used, with the Steed's mane & tail reflecting the hair colour of the Elves that will form my new Elven Army as I build it.

The scale armour was given a padded leather base - to make it look more 'realistic'.

Gems were picked out in red, which were gradually highlighted to orgage to give them a realistic effect, runes on teh Mage's sword were also treated in a similar manner.

Another view of the Mage

With such an old model there are some limitations, the bridle appears as a solid block and the base of the Stead's armoured barding is somewhat crudely shown. All you can do is embrace this - so I painted the underbarding as padded leather and the results of the work on the bridle can be seen below.

Final View, showing electrostaic grass on fine sand base,
that I use as standard for most of my models.

That's it for this week. I have a group of Arthurian Horse nearing completion and I'm looking to set-up to do a regiment of High Elf Spearmen for next week!

SQUIRREL    Necrons                                +1 Point

POINTS

18 x 28mm Necrons  @5 Pts ea                90 Points

Heresy Bonus                                             20 Points

6 x 28mm Arthurian Foot @5 Pts ea          30 Points

1 x 28mm mounted Elf Mage                     10 Points

TOTAL                                                      150 Points

A fine selection of figures, Mike! I like your necrons. Thanks for sharing your recipe, I think it works very well. The Arthurians are great too, I actually think the black and white shield patterns suit them. The mage is the piece de résistance of this post for me, however. The blue and white colour scheme is great, and the horse looks excellent. A very bright and lively figure! Well done, another 150 points on the board for you.

Martijn