From JeremyM: 10mm Vampire Counts [gluttony]

 For my gluttony post I chose to focus on a new 10mm army, vampire counts...and I think the volume of pictures and figures is perhaps gluttonous itself this time!

Our gaming group have been playing with a few 10mm scale rules for fantasy figures. Last year we ran a campaign using the excellent M2 ruleset for To the Strongest https://ttsm2.co.uk/m2/. While it worked well we may decide to experiment with some custom options down the road. While I originally started with a chaos army that was based for warmaster and then used movement trays, I loved Curt's little mini diaromas that I decided to forgo the warmaster option and just base everything on bigger bases for this other system. Everything you'll see is 3d printed with all the figures from forestdragon fantasy's excellent range. I zenithal highlighted them and used contrast style paints to speed the process up, works well with this scale.

Vampire counts have a few figures that struck me as being gluttonous. Let's start with the heroes. I painted up a few vampires mounted and unmounted, a vampire carriage unit, and two necromancers.

The next gluttonous unit I worked on were ghouls. Who better to fit this theme than cannibals that mutated right! I painted up 4 units of them. I tried to differentiate units with a few different colours of figures and themed bases. For my vampire counts army its a fall theme with scenes from a destroyed town, creepy woods, and of course cemeteries.

After that I turned to zombies who are obviously overly gluttonous for 'brains!' With the rules we play they are typically a 'deep' or double sized unit fitting for the horde of undead. They were both fun and unfun to paint as I tried to give each of them different outfit colours and a couple different skin tone options (green for older dead, and fresh zombies as well).

To wrap up my painting for this force I also worked on two units of ghosts, and two units of giant bats....not gluttonous but hey finished them with these others.

A pretty good start to a vampire counts army I hope to hit the tables later this year. Now the tally...and it was a chore to count them all particularly because I didn't put them in rank and file order on the bases (they are horde units after all). 

513 10mm scale figures = 513 points

Gluttony them = 20 points

Total = 533 points.

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...... And a Sunday Morning Points Bomb!!

 Well done Jeremy, a very impressive and gluttonous horde!

I really enjoy the diorama basing, very characterful and leads to great storytelling. These baddies will be great on the table top.

- Sarah

JeremyM - Wrath Aliens Another Glorious Day in the Corps [130 points]

I managed to fit in a little bit of painting this week in between craziness at work, tearing myself away from a video game (just one more level…just one more), and the NFL playoffs. Perhaps the -40 windchills helped a bit with that. But I have to admit my goals this week were pretty limited hence the pretty basic figures you’re about to see.

I’ve long been a huge fan of the Alien and Aliens films (and some of the others as well…yes I enjoyed Romulus…no I thought the AVP series is trash….but I still occasionally find myself putting that trash on). I of course had to go all in on Gale Force Nine’s board game based primarily on the Aliens film, Another Glorious Day in the Corps. It's an okay game, the mechanics aren't the best but do capture some of the feel of the film, but the instructions are really lacking and there are times it doesn't work that well. I may look at some alternate options on boardgamegeek. 

So given that we are starting in hell I thought the aliens are pretty fitting for the wrath theme…as bloody hell they are angry little bugs in the films. I decided to paint the aliens with a blueish hue. Apparently the original film and the dvd version in particular have a really strong blue tinge to them…and the aliens purists are a bit up in arms that they colour corrected the newer 4k versions to be more neutral. I still like the blue so the basic aliens get that.

The stock aliens and their 'little brother' eggs.

The game also comes with an expansion to add 4 different types of alien warriors. To help very subtly differentiate them I painted more in a greenish hue, and used fluorescent green for the text on the bases. Hopefully they stand out enough on the board now.

The 4 special aliens

I also have the queen expansion “Get away from her you bitch!” and decided a more royal purple was appropriate for her. Two face huggers complete the photos. They are pretty small, so I think maybe I’ll count the two as being a single figure for challenge purposes. I should note I am not counting the eggs. While they are alive and have a pretty crucial role to play in the game as well as the films, they don’t really move at all so terrain seems more appropriate to me.

The queen, a couple facehuggers, and a few eggs

The whole 'happy'....rrr 'angry' family all together

Well now I’ll have to turn my attention to the far more detailed painting for the marines which might involve a big excuse to rewatch the movie for the 80^th time!

22 28mm figures x 5 points = 110

Wrath circle   =     20 points

Total = 130 points

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Hey Jeremy!

Your Aliens are awesome! Great choice on the blue-ish hue - really helps evoke the  space alien-ness of the creatures. I get scared even just just thinking of the face huggers.

And you don't need an excuse to watch the movies for the 80th time, just .. remember, In Space No One Can Hear you Scream

130 points added to your score board

-Sarah

From JeremyM 15mm Winter War Russians [Limbo] [130 points]

Hi all, I am starting off the challenge this year by going back to a stalled project from several years ago. I had painted up a whole whack of 15mm Winter War Finns several years ago but have no Russians to face off against them.

This is a Strelkovy Company from Flames of War for early war Russians that fought against the Finns in the Winter War. I struggled to figure out what colour to paint them. I’ve seen photos mostly of re-enactors and drawings from various books  as well as the box art for the figures that use 3 different colours, a dark grey, a khaki, and a light green. Unfortunately, those black and white photos of the war, don’t shed much light on which one to pick! For now this company will have light green as the predominant colour but I may decide to mix it up for future infantry which is always a nice way to help differentiate different formations. I’ve never been one to focus too heavily on historical accuracy when painting anyway, as long as its playable all I care about. And since in various theatres of this war the Russians had a massive numerical superiority (12 to 1 in some cases) I got a lot more of these fellows to paint up in the future.

15mm Winter War Soviets

For the photos you primarily see flames of war stands with 4-5 infantry with rifles, complete with those great early war hats with the nice big red star on them. There are also a couple of command stands with flags, a mortar stand and a lmg stand. Decent variety to make up the company.

I really got inspired to undertake this after living in Thunder Bay Canada. There is a large population of Finnish immigrants and I was actually a member of their historical society when I lived there a decade ago. I heard a few stories of Finnish history and the winter war ‘david and goliath’ fight was pretty inspiring how so few could hold out against so many. The other really interesting thing about the Finns during this period was how they went from being beloved by the western allies, to a hated opponent as they later joined with Germany against the Russians. Very interesting reading some of the accounts of Finns in Thunder Bay during this period and how public opinion swung so quickly against them after all the support.

I can’t wait to tackle some of the whacky Russian tanks from this period next. And we wonder were 40k got its inspiration from!

55 15mm figures 110 points + 20 points for Limbo = 130 points

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Hi Jeremy

Welcome back to the Challenge! I'm to see you  post before the "dreaded cull" 

As you know, since I'm not really a gamer, the nuances of uniforms  are lost on me BUT I can comment on how f@#$% cold the soviets look and the snow bases do 'look' like snow.

Congrats on 110 points of mini guys and 20 points for Limbo

Looking forward to your next post!

Sarah

From JeremyM: 10mm Chaos Fantasy Army and Scenery (85 Points)

Our gaming group has been playing a campaign using 10mm fantasy figures and the To the Strongest Magic Ruleset https://ttsm2.co.uk/m2/ You can follow along on our progress here https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/15475161/the-isle-of-mist-and-flame-a-warhammer-fantasy-campaign we are nearly at the end with a 3 way tie for first and one player not too far behind. I have been playing the Chaos Warrior forces and have an army of 10mm figures mostly 3d printed from Forest Dragon and Onmioji designs. I based these forces to also play warmaster potentially, magnetized the bases and created larger unit sleds from 3d prints and some metal.

To add to my forces I’ve added some chaos warriors of Tzeentch, this was largely to reflect the pretty amazing good luck (my opponents refer to it as ‘ridiculous’) toward the end of the campaign. So here are 60 10mm chaos warriors in a blue and yellow scheme. Mostly painted using the ‘slap chop’ method which makes things go super fast at this scale.  The models were created by forest dragon and I included a couple views with them in their infantry tray with some scenery I also painted.

One unit my forces sorely lacked were chaos giants. Thankfully greenskin mini’s recently had 2 models on their patreon I subscribed two and I found another on the cults site that I shrunk down (one on the right). While they are giants at 10mm they are basically just 3 28mm figures. To be honest I should have painted their pants some different colours as they seem to blend in as multiple shades of brown…but live and learn they are ‘good enough’ to play with and that’s what counts in the end.

I’ve also completed a few extra bits to add to the unit trays to give things a bit more flavour. I’ve been eyeing Curt’s excellentlittle diorama scenes he’s made for his units for the game and felt I wanted something similar. So I based some little destroyed houses on Warmaster bases to add to my scenes. All were available from Thingiverse and had to be shrunk down a lot to fit. As much as I like the flexibility of using figures for multiple systems, we don’t really play warmaster and I think for future armies I’m going to just bite the bullet and base them en mass on bigger bases to make some nicer scenes.

Finally, I wanted to create a large base scene for my big chaos generals mounted on dragons. I created a scene shrinking some ruins from thingiverse, some dead civilians, and a couple that are even on fire which were perfect additions for my dragons! I have two dragons, one with a warrior mounted on a purple dragon and another with a wizard on a red one. I can’t legally take both so the single base should work well for now. The circle in the middle is some sheet metal cut so the magnetic dragon base will stick. The terrain including the houses above isn’t terribly extensive I guessed around 10 points at most using the suggested rules. Both dragons were painted prior to the challenge so not claiming them just the base.

60 10mm figures               60

3 28mm figures                 15

Terrain                                10

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It's great to see you back with us, Jeremy! 

These 10mm Chaos models look superb. I really like the contrasting yellow cloaks of the Tzeentch warriors against their blue armour, and your new terrain inserts look ace. The Giants are wonderfully imposing and nasty (in an impressive way), but I have to say that your Dragon base is particularly magnificent. The placement of the steel center ring for magnetisation with the model is a brilliant touch. Well done!

I very much look forward to seeing all of these new additions on the table for our next game!

- Curt