From PhilH: Bringing Death at the Chamber of Darkness (62 Points)

Again, the Level 1 Chambers of Challenge were kind to my Challenge planning, as I had just the thing for the Chamber of Darkness. Alas, I bottled doing anything in true greyscale, rather had a set of Star Wars Legion Death Troopers that I was itching to sling some paint on. These were out of stock for literally a year after I bought into Legion. FFG's abiltiy to keep product in stock was woefully lacking, especially in the UK. But I managed to snag a box at a random game store in the US. Maybe the new curator of Legion will sort out the logistics of being able to sell product to Star Wars fanboys.

Death Troopers made their debut in 2016's Rogue One, as bodyguards for Death Star architect Director Orson Krennic. Basically they're the super-elite special forces to the regular Imperial Stormtroopers, instantly becoming fan-favourites and being crammed into every piece of Star Wars media since. But the do look pretty badass, so that's fair enough.

I used Sorastro's painting guide for these, he uses a blue-black tone which, while not strictly right, adds visual interest. I didn't take the highlights as far though. I couldn't resist adding some OSL to the glowy chin-lights.

They're strong in Legion: tough, adaptable and hard-hitting, but are a big points sink. Which of course makes them the biggest magnet for opponent's laser blasts, so the inevitably don't achieve much. Ho hum. Maybe I need another box. These were finished way back, but stuck in limbo while I hunted fora new varnish: my beloved Testor's Dullcote being discontinued (and my latest can not being a patch on the usual finish). Thanks to Nick for the recommend of Army Painter Matte, which did the trick here.

Six models nigh on 40mm tall, plus the Chamber bonus, for 62 Points. Onwards!

Those Death Troopers look great, Phil. The blue-black works nicely. I enjoy watching Sorastro's videos, despite the fact that the models he paints aren't ones that I am ever likely to.

62 points are headed your way.

Tamsin

From EdwardG: A sprint through three Challenge Chambers! (78 points)

 Hello all,

I hope everyone is having/have had a great Sunday. Today is the first warm(ish) day of the year. The wife is already making long to-do lists for the garden in the coming weeks. So I can foresee hobby time taking a slight battering. So with this in mind I made a conscious effort to get the three Chamber entries that have been sitting around on my desk for a while finished off. 

First up, the Chamber of Darkness! I am sure everyone is now well aware that this is a grey scale challenge. I must admit, I have never tried painting in grey scale, but I found it to be a very interesting experience. There is something simple, yet tricky, when using such a reduced pallet. In hindsight, I am quite please with my entry, but tbh, he certainly is not the best grey scale figure I have seen. I am in awe of the skill of several of my fellow challengers. 

My entry is a strange figure, he is made by Foundry (I think) as part of their Gallic Priests/Druids pack. He is a short 28mm figure, nearer 25mm in size. When I first found him lurking at the bottom of the lead pile I thought I had a figure of a dwarf, which would have been most odd as I am purely a historical gamer! 

Next up on my sprint to get as far through the dungeon Challenge Chamber crawl as possible before the Spring time of the Garden. Is my entry to the Larder! I have to admit, I struggled with this one. I finally decided to take the larder theme and stretch it a little, in the hope that I could paint something that could squeeze in. 

My entry is a simple one, it is as a generic 15mm camp for one of my many DBA armies. In DBA the camp is something to be either defended to the last man or used to bait and switch an opponent into falling for an overly complex and totally flawed plan. I think it is a great, if poorly written and edited, set of rules and my gaming friends and I have a wonderful time playing it. The actual wagon is from a Mirilton set, that I bought with the idea to one day create a Communal Italian army complete with Carroccio. Sadly to say, that army has never managed to make it to the table. So in an attempt to bring some of the lead to life, I thought to use the wagon for this piece. I had misplaced the traces, and thinking back I am not sure if it ever came with them. So I improvised some with a tooth pick that gallantly sacrificed itself under the knife. 

I only took one photo, as it is a very simple vignette.  

Finally! I have made it to the Second Level!! 

In an attempt to keep this going, I managed to finish off my entry to the Hatchery as well this morning. It is another figure from Scythe, as I had no figures with any kind of bird in the lead pile. The figures in the game act as avatar character pieces for the players. Each one represents a faction and has some kind of animal. Luckily for me, the avatar for the Crimean Khanate has a falcon. The figure is made of a soft plastic, and was a struggle to paint compared to my normal metal figures. The details are not very well defined, but I think I managed to get an acceptable figure out it. The faction colour is yellow, hence the main colour choice for the mini. I have now painted 1/5th of the Scythe set (from two different factions), and so now I think I am required to finish the set although sadly I am not sure I will be able to do them all before the end of the Challenge! Possibly something for Challenge XII...

So as for points total. I think I have the following: 

3 x Challenge Chambers = 60 points

2 x 28mm mini = 10 points

1 x 15mm vehicle/camp = 8 points 

Total = 78 points! 

Stay safe and hope to post again soon!

Best,

Ed :D 

From MartijnN: The Chamber of Darkness (41 points)

Here is the next instalment in my small contributions series, slowly treading my way through the maze.

The funny thing about these Chambers is that, even though I was resolved to stick to my historical figures first, I cannot seem to stop musing about the Chambers and trying finding ways to get through them. As a result I have been painting far fewer historical figures than I should have been, but also doing some things I would never have taken up otherwise. For instance,  I have never ever painted anything in greyscale before. I decided to stay on the safe side and paint a statue. As I  mentioned earlier, I have recently started using a 3d printer. So, I printed this statue from the City of Arkenfel Kickstarter. I tried to use as many shades of grey as possible (no, don’t even think of going there). I used Nuln Oil as a wash and stuck it on a grey base as well. In full Technicolor it looks like this:

 

To back up the statue there are eight Bactrian Greek Indian archers (or two elements Lb) from the Essex Miniatures DBA army languishing in my lead pile since the early nineties. That means six elements are now done, or half the army; all the Greeks still to go though. The photos are not the best, but they'll have to do for now I fear.

 

For points I will claim the statue as a 28mm figure (it is a bit larger than that, but this was a rather simple paintjob after all) for 5 points, plus eight 15mm foot figures at 16 points, and the bonus for the Chamber of Darkness for a total of 41 points, bringing me within an inch from my modest total. On to the larder!

From: AngusW - 28mm Cows for Chamber of Darkness - 40pts

 Continuing my theme of painting more fluff for the table I embarked on some Friesian Holstein cows. I think they are probably from Warlord, but I got an unboxed sprue from ebay.

It's odd how you look at a cow then when asked to paint it, it's really tricky getting it to look right. In retrospect, I would have done sheep.

Next into the Larder...

Score: x4 28mm cows = 20pts + The Chamber of Darkness 20pts = 40pts in total

From MilesR: Chambers Catch Up Submission (359 Points)

 

I've been a little remiss in wandering through the Chambers of Challenge - having posted only a measly 2 chambers to date.  Well this weekend was a catch up weekend for me and now I've got 6 additional rooms to report.

So sit back and prepared to be bored as you follow me on my tortuous logic for meeting the the stated themes of the Challenge.  Where I could, I tried to keep things related to my Stalingrad project.  

Chamber of Darkness:

The first submission is a greyscale version of a ruin for the Stalingrad project.  Now the base isn't fully greyscale as it couldn't use it in the game, but the building is completely greyscale .

The base of the building is a MDF kit from a Polish company called Terrains4Games and I highly recommend them -shipping can take a few weeks but the product is very affordable and of superb quality.  You've seen other versions of this same building and I've got 2 more to build.

It has a dark grey base color and medium grey highlighting for the exterior.  I started with some black paint and just kept adding white to lighten it up as the painting progressed.

The floor is a lighter grey and the ways a white-grey.  Some black and grey weathering powders were added at the end and voila a greyscale building.

The building is a little over 4 inches high so lets go with 10 points plus 20 for the room.

Larder:

Next up is a stroll through the Larder.  Submitted for this room are 2 Soviet Supply Dumps that will be used during the Stalingrad game.  The Soviets were forced to keep stockpiles of ammunition and other supplies along the Volga river banks and these would occasionally blow up due a stray German artillery round - sometimes in spectacular fashion.  The supply dumps are resin casts from JR Miniatures that have been in my lead pile for over 10 years.  These are nice but simple terrain pieces so how about 5 points for the two supply dumps along with the 20 point room bonus.

Hatchery: 

Ok this one is a bit of a stretch - Aviary is pretty close to aviation and these to HS-129's are definitely birds of prey.  These were specialized ground attack aircraft that saw extensive use on the Eastern front.  The model on the right is armed with a 30mm cannon while the one on the left has a 75mm PAK gun.

These models are from Battlefront and, like the supply dumps above, have been in the leadpile for about 10 years.

Technically the one with the 75mm gun was not available until after the Battle of Stalingrad but it was just too cool looking not to build.

Lets score these as 15mm vehicles so 8 points each along with the room bonus.

The Armory:

How about a bunch of 15mm Soviet tanks and rocket truck?  All of the models are from Battlefront

First up 5 KV'1's - these are my favorite tanks from WW2 and I can't wait to see them rumbling through the streets of Stalingrad

4 T-34's to reinforce the 5 I already have painted (pre-Challenge).  These are later model turrest (I messed up) but still will work for the game

4 T-70 light tanks.  Not the most effective of vehicles but they will be useful for searching out spot in the fascist lines.

Lastly 3 BA-10 armored cars and 2 Stalins Organs.

That's a total of 18 Soviet vehicles for the Armory and at 8 points each gets nets 144 points along with the 20 for the room.

Gallery of Ancestors:

How about a break from Stalingrad?  This gallery of ancients submission consists of 14 15mm US Infantry form Vietnam.  My father served in the war along with most of my male relatives of his age.  None of them had a lot of good memories from that conflict and would rarely speak of it.  My father passed at a relatively young age (56) and I always regret not fully understanding what he went through.

It was nice to do something that had a lot of green in the basing.  These miniatures were given to me by Ed from the club and I hope to get them on the table for one of his games soon.  

The Guardroom:

The last stop on my chambers walkabout is the Guardroom and (surprise!) we're going back to Stalingrad with another platoon from the 13th Guards Division.

The basing was done to match the terrain table and I like how it came out.

There are a lot more Soviets to paint up but I could get these 18 chaps done today.  At 2 points each thats 26 points plus another 20 for the room.

Well there you have it.  To help the minions enter all this into the spreadsheet of doom, a summary table of the points is provided below:

Total Number of Chambers: 6 for 120 points

Terrain "Cubes": 0.75 for 15 points

15mm Infantry figures: 32 for 64 points

15mm Vehicles: 20 for 160 points

Total Points: 359

KenR : The Chamber of Darkness : The Bouncer 27 pts

 

I'm continuing to stumble through the upper reaches of the Chambers whilst others sprint through the Finish Line ! I've got a couple of weeks off work at the moment so I might get ahead of schedule and be able to dip into the Chambers at bit more towards the end of March.

I quite enjoyed my little greyscale adventure and the figure suited it nicely. Most football clubs have bouncers to eject you from the ground for causing trouble, at Bradford City we employ them to make sure you don't leave 😉  This lad has an extendable noose just in case someone slips out, they can be rapidly caught and returned to their personal seat and be restrained for the rest of the game 🤣

To keep the Bradford City theme going from my previous posts in the Chambers I've allowed myself a tiny bit of leeway adding a claret and Amber club tie to the lad.

The figure itself comes from the Malifaux game and the Jack Daw crew which I have used so far throughout the Chambers. The model is massive just over 50mm tall so I have claimed the extra points for size, so 10 for the model and 20 for the Chamber.

I had assorted fun trying to photograph this fig, but managed some semi reasonable shots in the end. I'm just finishing the basing on 32 Principes and have got a lovely Burger Van model from Ainsty so I can complete Level 1 with my Bradford City theme, Bantam Burger and Chips anyone !

From BenitoM: Night Watch at the Rhine Limes - Chamber of Darkness (25 points)

A moonless cold night, on guard duty, in this damp godless place... Marcus Agrippa dreaming with Livia... so far away in that small farm in the sunny plains of Etruria...

 

This is my entry for the Chamber of Darkness. At first, my intention was to paint one of my early German 2WW panzer grey vehicles... but then I though "What the heck! Let's have some fun and experiment with de greys"... Thus I chose one of my EIR legionnaires in grey tones... when suddenly I had the idea of putting some context for my model. So one idea lead to another and I finally worked on the theme of a Roman soldier on night watch with a campfire. 

 

The model is 25mm legionnaire from Wargames Foundry (yes, another from my old 80s ancient armies that I'm currently reworking ad repainting). The campfire I did playing a little bit with green stuff. I'm not very skilled with the product, but as a fire presents a rather chaotic shape, I just cut very small pieces and fix all together... the final result (once painted) was effective enough for my purposes.

I guess this entry is worth 25 points: 5 points for the 28mm model plus the chamber bonus. Now moving towards The Larder and looking to finish exploring the dungeon first level.

 

From MattT - Ninja (Chamber of Darkness ) + Curtgeld - 85pts

Had this group of Ninja on my painting table for ages, waiting for the perfect moment to be painted.

Level 1 - Chamber of Darkness

This week was my first attempt attempt at painting greyscale with this group of Ninja. Not sure if its a bit of a cheat as they are mainly black. Definately fit the brief and am really happy how they came out.

I added some pink to the paint mix for the skin tones to give the colour some more warmth compared to the metal's to which I added just white. 

Wasn't sure what to do with the basing and ended up painting some grass tufts which turned into a right pain but came good in the end.

8 x 28mm model + bonus = 60 pts

Curtgeld

My price of entry figure is an Anglo-Danish Huscarl with patriotic shield, so he remembers where he has come from.

1 x 28mm model = 5 pts

Thats all for this week, stay safe. Matt