From Ross M: 28mm Skeleton Archers (60 points)

 These figures were not meant to be a part of this challenge or anything at present however, plans are made to be changed and changed they were. 

There is a mixture of old and new in this so starting with the new, well nearly all of the new at eleven Oathmark skeleton based as a regiment for Kings of War. There is a twelfth figure on another base that will be here shortly. 

When I say new, I should say newly painted as the figures have been in the pile of shame for several years now. The colour scheme was painted to match the previously painted figures as best as possible and there is one of the rear right hand group that does just that. 

Here are both groups together, with the newly painted to the right of screen as viewed and the previously painted to the left. Same figures, paints, painting methods and varnishing; the difference between left and right has been a different primer. The newly painted were primed with grey car primer the previously painted skeletons had been primed with Army Painter Skeleton Bone....just goes to show how a little change can make a difference.

Basing these has been interesting and very similar to basing Impetus armies about a decade or so ago. The multi-figure base allows more use of flocks, tufts and foliage to create a theme on the basing and as a result across the army. 

Hope that you like these and that I'll be able to sneak a post in before the end of the week. In terms of points I make this to be:

12 x 28mm infantry at 5 each = 60 points

12 skulls at 1 each = 12 points

Total for this entry being 72 points

Thanks for looking and if I am unable to post for the 20th, its been great being part of this in 2024/25. 

Cheers for now.

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The best plans are those that incorporate agility to shift with our ever changing whims Ross! And I'm thrilled that these bony lads made the cut. They really come together well en mass and the purple wildflowers on the basing give a great splash of colour to bring them together. Good stuff!

60 points for the figs (skulls don't get extra points that I'm tracking, sorry)

- Paul

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 Curt: Anne, Nancy and their Backup Singers (75 Points)

Hi Everyone!

Like many of us I've been making my way through the February doldrums. I lost a bit of steam for a few weeks, which recently included a bad bout of flu and a cold, but I did manage to push along with few more entries and here is one of them.

These gals are a some new recruits to my Sisters of Battle collection.

First up are two heavy weapon Sisters, one armed with a multi-melta and the other with a heavy flamer. These models are from Wargames Exclusive and were an absolute joy to paint. The designer really embraced the gothic aesthetic with their armour, especially with their chimneyed backpacks. These two ladies will be my submission for 'Heresy' as they are the physical embodiment of the Emperor's punishment, created to expunge the heretic in heat and flame (or at least thats whats written on their underwear).

When I first put them side-by-side for my photos it immediately struck me that they look like two epic rockers posing on stage in the midst of a guitar and bass riff, and what better rocker sisters than Anne and Nancy Willson. Maybe I'll go back and put a Heart symbol on their cloaks. :)

The other contingent is a small group of Sisters Repentia with their attendant Mistress of Repentance. The Repentia are older GW models and I love them (made even better as they were gifts from IainW). They are so beautifully sculpted, finger-pokingly crisp and having that wonderful heft of metal. These girls with their monstrous chainswords will be my submission for 'Wrath' for obvious reasons.

The Mistress was a bit of a disappointment, and I feel that someone at GW got the short straw in having to sculpt her. I've never been a fan of the quasi-S&M feel of some of the Sister models and this is one typical of that (though the Madonna bullet bustier kind of cracks me up).

These seven Sisters will give me a base of 35 points, plus another 40 combined for the 'Heresy' and 'Wrath' locations, providing a total of 75 points. I'm not sure if I'm going to reach my target but I'll definitely give it the Challenge try!

11 Skullz, 1 Squirrel Point and a couple for the 'Can Opener' duel as well.

Thanks for dropping by and have a great day!

Curt

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I've always liked a sororal posse of bloodthirsty maniacs; they add a certain je ne sais pas charm to the grimdark universe. To that end my favourites are, naturally, the Repentia with their massive man-choppers, channelling the ultimate "beware the woman scorned" vibe (though I'm sure they all enjoy a post-purge high-tea with scones and bookclub) 

Love the bold colours but also the debris sewn bases add great texture and interest to them. Nice work!

- Paul

From TeemuL: A Fistful of Skeletons [Heresy] (121 points)

One of the many sideprojects I have (I guess I don't really have any main projects:)) is this Warmaster army. I have painted couple of bases before for the previous Challenges, here's one example: Heavy Metal. In December I heard there might be other players in my area, so I decided I need to paint couple of more units to my army. I need some character at least to lead an army, but with these I have enough units for a very small army for a small battle to learn the rules. I guess. There are six bases of basic skeletons with handweapons and shields including two command bases and one base of cavalry. I have now six cavalry bases in total and some archer units from earlier painting sessions.

These are all painted with Contrast paints excluding the metal areas and freehand skulls on the shields. Basing is simple and traditional, goblin green everywhere, then some PVA glue and green sawdust and they are ready to battle on the legendary green grass graveyards of Khemri... I understand the gravestones kind of underline the fact, that these are undead from the graves, some skeletons are still emerging from underground. But why there would be battle in the graveyard? Happily this seems to be a human graveyard and all the warriors were buried with their green shields (with skull motifs) and red shafted weapons! I mean how ragtag they'd look like if they were just random unarmed people from every race in different coloured rags? No Necromancer would never accept a chaos like that!

I must say they look rather nice, grouped thightly together like this and seen from above. Quite pleasing, I'd say. And still enough details and size to actually paint them. And they can be painted in reasonable amount of time, too. Hmm... What would be an ideal "scale" for a wargamer, I guess that is a question I must ask myself (and everyone else on the internet forums). It would be much simpler, if all the miniatures would be the same size, don't you agree? :)

Here they are from the side. As you can see, they are not nicely glued to the bases... They were painted by previous owner and I stripped the paint. I tried to be clever and not remove all the basing material, believing it would make it easier to hide metal bases. Yeah, you can see. The sawdust is so light, it doesn't really cover any gaps, I need to be more careful with the next batch and add some filler to the edges. Additionally some of the strips are not in 90 degree angle, but leaning a bit forward, something I noticed too late. Or was too lazy. But I believe they look quite ok on the battlefield.

Finally a closeup of the hand painted skulls and some bony butts. Geoff has made an observation that necromancy is heresy and I will follow that idea and claim 20 bonus points for Heresy circle (which is next to the Violence circle where I were).

There are 4 cavalry models, 3 points each. And then 89 skeletons in total (I have counted two half skeletons as one full) for 1 point each. 101 points from the skeletons and 20 bonus points, 121 points!

Additionally 90 skulls on skeletons (some are too hooded to count) and 3 on banners plus 83 hand painted skulls on shields and banners.176 skulls in total.

___________________________________

Oooh, Barks will be very pleased with this entry, Teemu. Wonderful work here. Tomb Kings were my first Warmaster army way back in the day and I think you've done a great job on these boney fellas. I agree, 10mm is a wonderful scale to work in and it just works so nicely for close-ranked units, giving a terrific sense of mass. Also, nice work on hand painting all those skulls on the front ranks' shields - this will please Skully McSkullface to no end. 

Well done Teemu!

- Curt & Huck

From MikeW: 28mm Polish Dragoons & WoR, Emperor's Guard Space Marines plus other bits and pieces (206 Points)

Hopeflly I will not overload or wonderful minions but as we enter the last weekend of painting, I'll be putting posts into a 'Ready' status as and when I get a good batch of figures completed! Thank You Minions! 😀

Polish figures for my Siege of Vienna project

So today  have a group of Polish soldiers who would have been at the relief of the Siege of Vienna in 1683. There are two mounted figures, an light cavaltyman with a hand axe plus a drummer, who can be added into any suitable dragoon regiment as I but this together. Additionally we have a command base - again likely to be used as dismounted dragoons.

Dragoon Drummer

Dragoon Officer, armed with an axe!

 

These guys have the distinctive dragoon and infantry uniforms of some of my existing collection - red trousers with blue knee length jackets, often with red braiding on the chest. Figures were all undercoated in white and then painted in much the same way as most of the others I have described this challenge.

Dragoon command on foot, Officer, Standard and Musketeer

The flag is a generic Polish banner, of the period, taken from the internet.

Another view

Next up, I have a lonely Mexican Grenadier, waiting to join his comrades in my Alamo collection. I found this lonely soul, in my drawer the other day so decided to paint him up. 

A lonely Mexican Grenadier figure found at the bottom of my drawers,
now ready to join his comrades at the Alamo!

Front view!

Next a couple of 40K Space Marines, these are for my new Emperor's Guard Chapter that I have been toying with building an army for. A few months back, as an experiment, I asked the Chat GPT AI site to generate a Space Marines Chapter for me. This is what they came up with  (see here for more details).

I'm putting this down as a test figure,
not overly happy with the way the paint has finished on this guy

Saw earlier today that a recommended undercoat for purple is green!
Will need to give that a try!

So I have done a standard Marine plus his Terminator 'Big Brother' to accompany him

Happier with this big boy, note skull on base
but may come back to this to do some more detail and weathering

Also maybe need to do something with the power fist!

Now a cheeky one pointer for a piece of terrain, a Bretonnian brazier!

Smoking brazier...

My final work for this year's challenge is a group of 31 x Perry plastic War of the Roses 28mm figures, painted to represent part if the retinue of Sir Robert Whittington, in their distinctive green and white livery.

All 31 figures as they enter the battlefield

The group includes 9 x Archers, 5 x Crossbowmen, 8 x Handgunners and 9 x Men-at-Arms, Standard Bearer & Musician etc.

The 9 x Archers, most in livery jackets

Close-up of right of line

And close-up of the left of line

All were undercoated in an 'oatmeal' colour - exact colour is hard to determine as I used hobby paints for this job! I then drybrushed the figures white and concentrated on faces and hands to get a smooth white finish. Skin had GW Darkoath Flesh applied before being highlighted with Army Painter Barbarian Flesh. All metalwork was painted with GW Leadbelcher and then the livery jackets were painted in with white and green halves.

8 x Musketeers

Another close-up

And again

I added various colours to block in leggings, sleeves etc before using a cream colour to paint in padded jackets etc, these were washed with GW Agrax Earthshade for depth and shading.

5 x Crossbowmen

The crossbow arms on these guys came from an Oathmark figure pack, I think!

Armour was washed with Nuln Oil and all other materials were give an Agrax Earthshade wash before varnishing.

Command and Men-at-Arms

Musician and a couple of extra guys

Figures were all based in my usual manner  on old US 1 cent or European 2c coins which are the same size!

Three armoured Men-at-Arms

Sir Robert Whittington with his standard and another family member

So there it is hopefully enough work to get me over the 3,000 point level - something I didn't think I'd have time for this year. Thanks to all the minions and other participants for making this another great challenge and yet again Grahame H. outscores me, the man is a painting machine!

POINTS

2 x 28mm Polish Mounted @ 10 Points ea            20 Points

3 x 28mm Polish Command @ 5 Points ea             15 Points

1 x 28mm Mexican Grenadier                         5 Points

1 x Bretonnian Brazier                             1 Point

2 x Warhammer 40k Space Marines @ 5 Points ea     10 Points

31 x 28mm WoR Retinue Men @ 5 Points ea          155 Points

TOTAL                                            206 Points

+2 Squirrel (War of the Roses & Polish Dragoons)

+1 Skull

A great varied post from you, Mike, and also an impressive final (?) dash!. They are all great, the Polish cavalry, the Mexican, and the purple space marines (love how you used AI to get your backstory for those) but my favourites are the WotR figures. A nice collection, I love the livery and together they look very good. Your total output during the Challenge is frightening, you are quite the painitng machine yourself! It has been great to see your projects rolling along, and I am sure we will meet you again in Challenge XV!

Martijn