From Barks: More Descent monsters (35 points)

Some more figures for Descent which I pained with AP Speedpaints 2.0 over a white undercoat. First, three Carrion Drakes. These are plague-spreading scavengers of dead flesh. I liked the wing colour (Desolate Brown) which is a nice brown with a hint of green. The green (Charming Chartreuse) and the purple (Dusk Red) are fine, but they go together like an 80s cartoon toy-  which isn't the look I want here. Anyway, they're done and the pustules help pull them together.

Carrion Drakes

I used Forest Sprite for the Goblin Witchers' skin, and I'm really happy with it. The last thing I painted was the feathers, and it really made these figures pop.

Goblin Witchers

I may try and squeeze in a sneaky post before the Challenge concludes, but this should pull me over the line!

7x 28mm figures (35 points)

[edit +16 skullz]

From Millsy: These are really cool Barks! The lime green and rich red on the drakes is an unexpected but really effective combination. Having painted a pile of Death Gaurd I know how much effort can be involved in making something so wrong look right. Love the witchers too, I can see a ton of other uses for them in pulp, darkest (weird) Africa, etc. Cracking work mate!

From GregB: Imperial Shore Troopers (70 points)

More members of the Scarif garrison ready to deploy.

It is good to be back on the painting wagon again, and for my first submission today I return to a favourite subject from last year - Star Wars and the Scarif garrison from the movie "Rogue One". We have a group of Shore Troopers to bulk out the garrison. These are 28mm figures (yes, they still are, even if they are big), a mix of "official" figures from Fantasy Flight Games (not called that anymore, but I have lost track of what they are now called) and 3D print designs from DarkFire.

Shore Trooper squad from Fantasy Flight Games.

The Fantasy Flight Games figures comprise a regular squad of Shore Troopers, an officer and five troopers, including one with a heavy weapon. These are lovely sculpts and I really like the poses of the troopers, a nice mix of action, firing and moving among the group.

Squad leader and corporal, ready to deploy.

I love these firing poses...

The action poses are fantastic too - great sculpts.

Moving into the 3D prints, we have two support groups that are rounding the garrison out nicely. One is a sniper team (cue the jokes), comprised of a marksman and a spotter.

Imperial Shore Trooper "sniper" team - we know all the jokes about Imperial soldiers and their inability to hit anything in the films...but in actual table top games, the Imperial soldiers can indeed hit targets!

And to provide some leadership and direction for what is now a platoon-sized Shore Trooper force, we have a senior officer and a communications trooper. 

Command team for the beach!

Another view of the officer/command team.

I have applied my own interpretation of the various colour schemes I have seen online - and in the film - for the Shore Troopers.  The senior officer has the greatest variety of colours - between that, his pose and his pistol armament, and the flunky with the comms unit following him around, he is all set to look the part on a gaming table and lead an Imperial garrison in response to terrorist acts carried out by the so-called "Rebel Alliance". 

The Fantasy Flight sculpts of these figures are awesome, but the 3D prints are tremendous too - Dark Fire Designs is just great, and if you like Star Wars, I really recommend checking out their STLs. They have a number of licensed printers too, so you are spared from actually having to contemplate owning one of those !@#!@#ing things yourself.

For scoring, these are 28mm figures, although "Star Wars Legion" models have been scored at a larger 35mm size, so with ten of these in this submission I believe this will be worth another 70 points.

Another great contribution, Greg! I really like the colourful accents on these figures, although while they will not help them hitting any better they might help them getting hit. But I am confident they will teach those terrorist upstarts a lesson or two! I must say that the 3d prints look fine and go along very well with the "official" range, and your excellent painting really brings them together. Well done indeed! Now there seems to be some confusion about scoring these, as I have seen them scored as regular 28mm as well as larger, but for the sake of consistency I'll score them just as the last minion did ;-). Besides, after your fabulous monster tank for a mere 20 points I think I owe you something too. So 70 points it is!

Martijn

From Barks: More Descent (20 points)

A few more Descent figures. I don't like the sculpts or the pseudobiology behind these dragon-men, but at least they're painted now. I'm following the art and trying just SpeedPaints for these, and could really do with an extra highlight. They're over a plain white undercoat (which hasn't quite cured right...) and I think something with a touch of shading or zenithal would be better. The thing I do enjoy is to try out new shades- the green is Forest Sprite, which has a nice yellowish tint for orc skin or other vegetation.

Hybrid Sentinels

Hero: Reynhart the Worthy

4x28mm figures (20 points)

+6 skullz

From Millsy: I can see why you didn't enjoy these Barks, they do have an odd set of proportions about them and the posing is a bit robotic. They almost looks like flats to me. Even so you've done a great job with them and the red/green combo is really eye catching. Nice work!

From Barks: Bony bits (25 points)

 Some quick bits with plenty of skullz. First, some Bone Horrors from Descent with 30 skullz.

Next is a purchase I specifically picked up for the Skull Duel many months ago when I saw it on special. It is some sort of Age of Sigmar scenery, but I will use it for post-apocalyptic desert terrain. The details are exquisite- the suture lines in the skull and the internal structure of the broken bones are pleasingly accurate.

Halo Jones for scale

The jaw can be opened...

... or closed.

Three separate parts.

Quite tall, and the base is festooned with skullz.

I spent more time trying to get the base to match my mat than I did painting the skeletal remains. There are 17 skullz including the big one.

3 x 28mm Bone Horrors (15 points)

Skeletal scenery (~ ½ terrain cube) (10 points)

Skull Duel +47 (total 128)

From Millsy: Some great bones here Barks! The Bone Horrors from Descent are skullariffic but I think my favourite is the dinosaur(?) skeleton. It reminds me of the weird tunnel-like bit in Pitch Black, still one of my favourite sci-fi flicks. 25 points for you mate!

From Barks- Old and new (Front Desk) (Fantasy) (85 points)

I'm stomping my way into the library. My first entry is my most recent acquisition, the new Biovore sculpt. This is a 40K Tyranid with a symbiotic ranged weapon* on its back. This spits out spore mines, which are exploding jellyfish balloon thingies. I really like spore mines as a concept.

Biovore and friends

He's on an 80mm base.

Biovore

Love me some spore mines

The sculpt is rather nice, and the 'gun' can be removed entirely or replaced with one that sprays acid as a close-support 'nid (a 'Pyrovore'). It's a bit of a challenge to parse the sculpt and work out which bits are claws, shell, armour, fleshy bits etc.

Pyrovore

No ranged weapon. A useful xeno-arachnid thingy.

I was going to place this next entry under 'Overdues & Returns', but was a bit bamboozled by the well-trod library pathways. Luckily, it fits under 'Fantasy'. These are Razorwings from the Battlelore boardgame. I got them back in 2015 and they've followed me on multiple house moves etc. I keep a list of miniatures to do during a Challenge, and these have stayed on it for many years, neglected. No more! They're AP Speedpaints; mostly Warrior Skin and Ruddy Fur.

Battlelore Razorwings

1x 28mm bug: 15 points?

6x flying beasties: 24 points?

Front desk: 20 points

Fantasy: 20 points

* Frankly I find the idea of a bug that can shoot, offensive.

__________________________________________________

Welcome back to the Challenge, Barks!

Terrific opening gambit, sir. I really like both your giant bats and your Biovore, though I, who has an almost pathological fear of spiders, must agree with you that the whole concept of malicious bugs sporting guns to be rather horrifying - but I guess that's the whole point.

Let's pitch the Biovore as a small vehicle (15), but the rest as 28mm 'infantry', so 85 points total.

I look forward to your oncoming entries, Barks!

- Curt 

From TeemuL: Drows [Books] (40 points)

"I guess you have heard the news? Warner Bros has bought the rights for Lotr and, well, we aren't Warner Bros... I though we already had the rights and everything was ready to go, but this is show business. But not be sad, I have already fixed the situation, almost. Instead of directing Murin and Drar adventure movie in Middle-Earth you will be directing Murrin and Drarr adventure movie in Forgotten Realms! Yes, we almost have the rights for Dungeons & Dragons, and some small adjustments later we are ready to go. The worlds are pretty similar, elfs and dwarfs and orcs and so, but we need some dark elfs, or drows. And we already have here the first wannabes, welcome!"

This post almost didn't exist. It was Saturday morning when I realized, that after painting loads of Lotr minis, I hadn't visited the Books studio! And I didn't have any primed. Luckily I had primed these a couple of weeks ago and they fit the Books criteria, so here you are.

These three are (from left to right) Yvonnel  Baenre, Dinin Do'Urden (in Drider form) and Jarlaxle Baenre. Painted rather quickly with Contrast paints, but these plastic board game minis, so not very high quality. They will do though, and I'm quite happy with the cobble stone basing, which I have used on all of my Adventures of Drizz Do'Urden Board game minis - it sets them nicely in the dungeons or streets.

And here is the final map. I have some primed Soviet SPGs for Historical Drama, but no time to paint them. I have couple of Matchbox cars for Arthouse, but they are still in the packages... I had some ideas for Gift Shop and I could have created something for Yellow Brick Road, too, but originally I was supposed to just quickly go around the Studios and not complete everything, but then I got obsessed with bonus points. :)

As for points, these are all 28mm minis and I'd say Dinin is mounted, so 10 for him/her (in the lore driders have no sex apparently) and 5 each for the others. And 20 for Studio, total of 40. I'll create a wrap-up post next week, but now it is time to go to bed. Have a nice and energetic final hours!

____________________________

This is wonderful brushwork, Teemu - so vibrant and colourful. I really like the skin (carapace?) tone of the Drider and cobblestone effect is simple, but works very well. I'm delighted that you got drawn in by the themes and enjoyed their various challenges. We'll see what we can dream up for next year for you.

- Curt

From GregB: Director Krennic and Death Trooper Bodyguards (49 points)

Director Krennic and his Death Trooper body guards - figures from Fantasy Flight Games

For my last submission today (sorry Stuart!) we have the antagonist from the film "Rogue One" - Director Krennic, accompanied by his bodyguard squad of sinister Imperial Death Troopers. These are all figures from Fantasy Flight Games range for Star Wars "Legion". 

One of the many things that made "Rogue One" so awesome was the non-supernatural nature of the protagonists and antagonists. Clearly, it was a sci-fi setting of course, with all that can entail, but Ben Mendelsohn's portrayal of Director Krennic, leader of the Death Star development program, was so well done. Thankfully, the Death Star or the Galactic Empire do not exist in the real world (at least, not yet), but Director Krennic types are everywhere in our increasingly futile-o-crat bound society. Krennic is a pencil pusher, a super bureaucrat, adept at navigating and climbing in the bureaucracy of the Galactic Empire. Never mind The Force, he has a Program with a Budget. Never mind Order 66, Krennic could have simply buried the Jedi order with TPS report audits. 

Director Krennic, prepared to sort out a few bureaucratic SNAFUs personally...

Sure, he is working on a genocide-level terror weapon, but for him it's all about getting the credit - even after Vader nearly strangles him! Will the Emperor be told I did a good job? Switch out "Death Star" and replace it with "Winnipeg Regional Health Authority" or "Competition Bureau of Canada" and his movie dialogue is depressingly close to real-life. Death Stars and Sith Lords are products of our imagination, but there are Director Krennics all over the place, right now, in our world, accumulating a defined benefit pension obligation that your taxes will have to somehow fund.

So look, he makes an awesome character for a Star Wars game! And Fantasy Flight did a great job on the miniature, although having his pistol drawn is a touch aspirational - I would have preferred him to be holding a stylus or a file folder. But the sculptor captured Krennic's near-constant annoyance with his subordinates, and for that, deserves praise!

The Imperial Death Troopers, on the other hand, are thankfully NOT a common feature of our real world. I believe the idea for these Troopers came from one of the Star Wars FPS video games from the 90s? I'm not certain on that, but they sure looked cool in "Rogue One".

No need to panic! The Death Trooper are here!

Not only is their armour black, sleek and sinister, but they are festooned with all sorts of different blasters - which they carry with them everywhere! The "Rogue One" film handled them brilliantly - I mean, sure, a small child DID manage to out-whit them (they didn't seem too intent on burning up calories to search for young Jyn Erso, did they?), but notice how the Death Troopers never have any silly Stormtrooper-esque dialogue (i.e. "they're over there!" or "get them" or whatever). Rather, when they are present you catch the faint audio snippets of some kind of closed-channel radio chatter, and that's it. They are communicating with each other, but the only message they'll send to you will come from the barrel of a blaster. I find it makes them more sinister.

I love these poses - Curt described them as having a real "special forces" look, and I think that description is perfect.

Finally, when they are sent to combat, they actually hit pretty hard, exacting a heavy toll on the brave Rebel's making the raid on Scarif.

A handy DLT-19D blaster on the left, while the fellow on the right prepares a grenade...they are going to clear that room...

Great firing poses - they might actually hit something!

Once more, I have to hand it to the sculptors employed by Fantasy Flight Games - they really nailed these models. The blasters, the grenades, the grenade launchers, the harnesses, the cool helmets, it's all there.

Now painting these all-black sinister SOBs was a bit of a head scratcher....how to capture the look? Maybe this called for some grisaille? Hah! Hell no. In the end, I did my best with grey highlights and a lot of black washes. Thankfully GW's new "Nuln Oil" is not as f*cked over as its new "Agrax Earthshade", and so still has applications on subject like this. I also added some red for the eye lenses and scopes, and touch of green on the helmets. I considered attempting some kind of gloss varnish, but decided against it in the end. 

The garrison deploys...

So, these seven 40mm figures should be good for another 49 points - and should also bring today's journey through the Star Wars setting to an end. Thanks for reading - if work travel allows, I should have something next week, but if not, well, we'll catch up on another Saturday after that. Keep up the great work everyone!

If only the world rewarded/punished all of its bureaucrats based on their actual performance, maybe the world would be a better place. Sadly this is not the case and we probably aren't that far off having our first Sith Lords (minus the magic powers) running the place.

These figures make a nice icing on your Imperial cake, hopefully they serve you well on the tabletop and the Emperor will be pleased.  

From GregB: Shoretroopers for Star Wars "Legion" (106 points)

Shoretrooper Squads for Star Wars "Legion" - figures from Fantasy Flight Games.

We continue with the "Star Wars" setting, and more figures for Star Wars "Legion" - here we have a detachment of Shoretroopers. They're like Stormtroopers, but they are, you know, for service near the shore - the specialist tropical climate infantry (I suppose) of the Galactic Empire. 

One of the Shoretrooper squads.

I first observed the Shoretroopers in the movie "Rogue One", and I loved them right away - and I can hardly be the only one, as these things seem to be popular! They are a very cool alternate infantry for the Galactic Empire. Given that you first see them as part of the garrison on Scarif, I suppose it might be inferred that they are a cut above the (highly theoretical) fighting quality of the average Stormtrooper. I'm not sure their actual combat performance bears that out - either as observed on Scarif, or at the remnant Imperial refinery base seen in the second season of "The Mandalorian". 

Some view of the rear detail.

In "Andor" (another amazing Star Wars series) we see them shaking down and rounding up randos as part of a general Imperial crackdown - so I suppose the Shoretrooper is just a basic trooper with tropical kit. That said, they sure look cool - I like the lines of their helmets and the colours on the armour. 

Squad leader on the left, and I used the sculpt on the right as a second-in-command for each squad.

Not only to Shoretroopers have different coloured armour, but they seem to sport a marking scheme. Almost all of them seem to have a stripe on their left shoulder pads, and then varying combinations of red, blue and even yellow lines and pauldrons to denote various ranks and specialties. For my part, I have opted to be much more limited with the markings - while I did put a red armour section on the right arms of each Shoretrooper, and I decided against the "everyone gets a stripe day" - leaving those only for the squad leaders and assistant squad leaders, and only the NCO squad leader got any blue markings. 

Trooper rocking a T-21B blaster on the left, regular grunt on the right.

Fantasy Flight Games did a great job on these sculpts, I love them. And it is kind of nuts, each box comes with a mortar and a gunner. Like - how many mortars do you need? I decided I would only paint up one for now. 

I love the poses on these sculpts - well done by FFG.

Painting these was a bit tricky, as it brought me further into the realization that GW has utterly f*cked up its "Agrax Earthshade" wash. They issued a new formulation for this beloved and endlessly useful product last year, and the new formulation suck sh!t. It is glossy as f*ck (even though there is still a separate "glossy" version - can only surmise that one finishes so glossy you can see it from space), and has lost its tinting properties. I have no idea why GW chose to (yet again) fix something that was not broken, but the fact that I had to turn to some of its new "Contrast" paints as a possible solution points to some potential motives...

DF-90 mortar and its one-person crew.

Anyway, the usually straightforward process of achieving some highlights via recess wash was distended and challenging on these models, as I ultimately had to cave and try "Skeleton Horde" (a "Contrast" paint) after finally accepting that "Agrax Earthshade" under its current formulation is just not up to the job any longer. "Skeleton Horde" was better, but still too light...anyway, more experimenting will come in time...

Another view of the mortar and gunner.

On the plus side, my Imperial forces are now considerably expanded with the addition of two squads of Shoretroopers, supported by a mortar (or, I guess, a "space mortar"). I am scouring the 3D printing sites to get some more specialists kitted out in Shoretrooper armour, as I much prefer the look of these fellows to the basic Stormtroopers. Depending on shipping time, they may appear in this edition of the Challenge...

For scoring purposes we have 13 infantry, in 40mm size - should be good for 91 points. Thanks for reading! Just one more post to go...  

I haven't tried the newest Agrax Earthshade yet and from the sound of things, I don't want to. I've been using a brown wash from Vallejo for years now as they don't seem to reformulate their paints on a whim. 

These shoretroopers look great, but I think you have under-valued their score. 13 infantry plus 1 crew served weapon nets you 106 points. 

From GregB: Specialist Stormtroopers for Star Wars "Legion" (28 points)

Stormtrooper specialists for Star Wars "Legion" - figures from Fantasy Flight Games.

My second post for the day moves to the larger scale of Star Wars "Legion". These are specialist Stormtroopers, plastic models from Fantasy Flight Games' figure range. 

Some detail on the backpacks. Is that one guy carrying beers? Sure looks like it...

These figures are meant to represent a selection of enhancement options for your Stormtrooper force - there is an officer, a communications specialist, and a couple of Stormtroopers equipped with heavy weapons - a DLT-19 blaster (i.e. a "space MG34") and a DT-21 blaster (i.e. a "space Lewis gun"). Also interesting that the fellow with the DT-21 also seems to have a communications unit in his pack too.

There are also pauldrons on all of the models. With a little help from Dallas, I did some digging into what the different colours might mean, and settled on orange for the officer, white for the communications specialist, and black/dark grey pauldrons for the troopers carrying the heavy blasters.

This photo shows up the limitations in my approach to painting bright white...but hey, they'll do.

All of the blasters look impressive, but we all know what the chances of these fellows hitting the broad side of a wampa barn with any of these things is...pretty low...that said, you can't play "Star Wars" without plenty of Stormtroopers, so it is nice to have some specialists to bulk of the firepower of my Galactic Empire collection. 

"Have you seen any droids?"

Painting white is always a hassle, and the bright, clean and clear white of the Stormtroopers is an extra challenge, and a bit of a bridge too far for my painting style. It occurs to me that if I'm ever going to paint up more of these fellows - or even Clone soldiers for the Clone Wars - I'll need to lean into white base coat sprays (madness) or finally screw up the courage to try my airbrush...all problems for another day, and maybe another Painting Challenge...

Points wise, these four 40mm infantry should net me 28 points. Stay tuned for more!

With that much firepower your stormtroopers will hopefully be able to hit something, maybe even a rebel or two if you are lucky.

Painting white can be really difficult, but these figures have turned out nicely. I imagine it's hard to keep your armour looking pristine while you're out hunting rebel scum in the desert. I like the fact that you put extra effort into decoding the colours on the pauldrons, SF enthusiasts can be just as much a button counter as a historical modeler.