From SanderS: “Don’t waste your time looking back, you’re not going that way.” oh and Curtgeld (40 points)

Hoi - Before you even start reading this post, scroll down a bit and put the YouTube movie to play for some more atmosphere ;-)

Let's get started! I have painted 5 miniatures depicting, for that's what they do let's be honest, characters from the EPIC and ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT (sorry just had to shout that) Vikings TV series. These are from several producers and none of them will remain in my collection... The Ragnar figure in the action pose will be my Curtgeld contribution and the other 4 will be a B-day present for my brother (whose name IS Norse but not Rollo :-P ).

The story behind the procurement of these figures is rather funny. I have been a fan of this series for quite some time and when preparing for Crisis I pre-ordered some of the very nice Stronghold Terrain metal figures. They are very good but in a bit passive poses so I also ordered a Brother Vini Ragnar whose pose is more dynamic, it's also on the Stronghold shop page above).  My brother joins me for the Crisis each year even though he is not into figures or wargaming. As a matter of politeness I asked him, upon entering the Great Hall, whether he wanted me to keep an eye out for some miniatures for him and he went like: "Oh well if they have Vikings figures by chance I would like some of those." So I ended up buying a second set for his showcase as well and the ones here are to be his. The Lagertha figure is from The Dice Bag lady's shieldmaiden set.

Anyway here they are:

 Ragnar:

 Lagertha:

 Floki:

Rollo:

As to the Curtgeld Ragnar, can you imagine anyone better for a gambler and risk-taker than Ragnar Lothbrok? His initial journey to Angleland could have ended disastrously and his further incursions into Wessex and France were no pick-nick either so yeah I think he counts. The brother Vinni figure is actually larger than the Stronghold figures and so I think it will be a bit too large to combine with my figures but just about perfect for Curt's showcase.  

Well I do hope that both Curt and my Brother like these chaps, I sure do and am glad I have bought some for me as well. In the mean time Stronghold Terrain have released a Björn figure and Hasslefree has a Porunn figure on offer as well!

Great work Sander! I'm positive Curt will chime in below, but I know he is a huge fan of Vikings and I'm sure he will welcome Ragnar Lothbrok to his collection with great enthusiasm.  Excellent brushwork on these figures - they look like wonderful sculpts, and it must be very cool to be painting figures connected to an awesome TV show! I'm not familiar with it, but somehow I'm thinking Floki is maybe not "the calm one"?

So the four figures which are gifts for your brother (nice gift, by the way!) will get you 20 points, and the Curtgeld will get you another 20, so that's 40 points for these fearsome historic TV show fellows.  Well done!

From SamuliS: Regiment Rechten (72 points)

Quick entry this week with another Saxon Regiment, this time Regiment Rechten in their yellow faced uniforms. It seems only the second battalion took part in the 1813 campaign and as such I've only painted the one battalion. AB Miniatures once again and lovely pieces to paint.

Not being phased by my consumption of refreshments on Friday I managed to paint these guys mostly on Saturday with only a final highlight left for Sunday. Nice and fast and really improved my mood after those darn yanks. Basing did take a bit longer than expected as I ran out of flock and had to go restock. Couldn't find the same one I've been using so bought a few different model railroad flocks. This one has a few different colours and shades to simulate meadows, quite nice but maybe a tad bit too light. I'll have to try mixing in some darker tone as well.

With these done it's back to Flames of War again. I currently have the last 10 half-tracks on the project mostly done, but unfortunately probably won't have time to finish them for this week. After those it's only 4 M10 tank destroyers and I'm finally done with Olive Drab for a while.

Not much painting happening at the end of the week with my club hosting the biggest gaming tournament of the Winter season here in Finland and the second biggest of the whole year. 80 tables with games in multiple systems going on and I'll be playing as well trying to repeat my podium finish in Flames of War last year and gain an entry to the national team for the European Team Championships in Greece in August. So wish me luck!

As an end note your calls for Oldhammer have been heard! One random limited edition citadel mini is under works and I've dug up a few Rogue Trader era minis that have been waiting for paint quite a while. And to top it off I managed to prep a whole 4000 point Epic Armageddon army for painting. So quite a few minis on the painting desk. Maybe now there will always be something that I fancy painting and fewer days without touching the brushes.

Magnificent work Samuli - I have a healthy respect for folks who can pull off so much white, and make it look so nice! White can be a tiring colour to work with, but I'm sure you enjoyed the break from all of the Olive Drab (well, that, and the "refreshments":). Excellent to see more Saxons ready for action! Those AB miniatures are indeed fantastic sculpts, and your paint work does them justice. 

Enjoy your gaming, and best of luck with your Flames of War efforts! And your painting list looks really cool! Oldhammer? Rogue Trade? Epic? Bring it on! We are looking forward to it. In the meantime, 36 more points for you! 

Edit by Minion Tamsin - points adjusted as AB figures are being scored as 20mm 

From ChristopherS - 28mm Almoravid Light Cavalry (100 points)

Continuing on with my 28mm Almoravid Impetus army with some light cavalry additions. They consist of two Berber units with javelins and one unit of Guzz with composite bows. Normally my Almoravids are a mix of manufactures, but these units are all Artizan which imho are some of the best in terms of Moor figures around.

I stayed with the low key earthy theme colours with just a bit of green as with the rest of the army. The shields are hand painted as I wanted to keep a certain look as with previous units I've done.

More Almoravids on the way next week hopefully if things stay on course and maybe something else if I can manage.

So 9 mounted 28mm figures should give me 90pts to my existing points which should put me ahead of my rival Nick.....until Saturday at least.

After a careful review of this submission, I can say, with confidence, "holy sh*t"!  Christopher, that is some top notch brushwork.  The colours are so smooth, muted and sombre on the one hand, but also clear and bright.  Tremendous, tremendous work.  Such beautiful cavalry, with splendid groundwork.  And the detail work on the shields is fantastic too.  I'm looking forward to seeing more of these figures - wow! 

So yes, this does get you 90 points to start, but I'm tossing in 10 points for the hand painted effort on the shields.  I know the result is supposedly "low-key", but as I said, you somehow manage to keep the details subtle and have them jump out at the same time.  Well done!

From JohnM: USMC Platoon Pacific 1942-43 (192 points)

These troops were finished a couple of weeks ago, but the tufts to decorate the bases just arrived. This is about half of the troops needed for my Chain of Command USMC platoon for a Guadalcanal campaign. Most of the troops are from Warmodelling, but I supplemented the support teams with troops from the PSC US Heavy Weapons Box.

Squad 1: made up of a JL, a BAR and 7 riflemen.

Last year I put a lot of work in researching the WWII Pacific theatre (I knew absolutely nothing about this aside from reading Norman Mailer's Naked and the Dead many years ago as well as watching the The Pacific mini-series). My main goal was to put together a CoC Army List for the type D USMC organization. A Type E organization list already existed but this was quite different that what was used in the 1942-43.

Squad 2: ditto, in 1942 most men and officers carried the M1903, by the latter part of 1942, the  M1 became available.

I game WWII in 1/72, and in metals there is not a whole lot of choice aside from Eureka and Warmodelling. There are a 2-3 other companies who make metal figures but they all looked like grunting chimpanzees to me. I had bought a couple of boxes of Waterloo 1812 plastic figures, and they were quite nice but I really am not keen to use soft plastic. Lovely slender sculpts though and they have figures for both the USMC and the Japanese. I can recommend them if you want plastics.

I had used Warmodelling for my Winter War Finns, they are nice sculpts but the casting was quite poor. I had been assured that when Battlemodels took over that the all casts were going to be re-done. Unfortunately they were not and the models suffer from the same problem with especially poor faces and a lot of flash that is almost impossible to remove.

M2, 50 cal HMG, one of the few guns with AP ability. The gun is from PSC as well as the most of the team.

Anyway, I went ahead and painted them up and they look OK. I am still missing rifle, BAR and raider squads and these are on the way from Eureka Miniatures. These are much nicer figures, my Japanese Platoon which is next up on the painting table is made up of both Eureka and Warmodelling, the Eureka Japanese are quite nice and I am sure that their USMC figures will be equal in quality.

M1917, 30 cal MMG, the USMC support teams had big crews.

Each group is described in the captions and I did enjoy putting together the force.

Bazooka Team

M1919, 30 cal LMG with a 3 man crew.

Flamethrower Team

Forward Observer

Five man 60 mm Mortar team.

For those who are interested here is the list I developed for CoC, it has got big Rich's stamp of approval. You can download a pdf here and read about it's development here.

Well, more US Marines for today! It's great to see the Pacific Theatre of WW2 drawing more attention and interest all the time, and I'm sure these fine figures will make for a great force in Chain of Command (an awesome set of rules).  You've done some excellent work here John, between the camo and the groundwork, I can sense the heat, humidity and bugs of the Pacific...and considering the weather outside my house right now, you have no idea how nice that seems!

I sympathize with your experience on the Warmodelling products - very, very unreliable quality and some abominable castings.  It's disappointing the commitment to redo the molds has apparently not been followed up. But good to see there are other options out there, and you have made good use of the US figures from Plastic Soldier Company. Thank you also for sharing this info on the Pacific for Chain of Command, I'm sure there are many folks who will appreciate it.

These lads will net you 192 points.  We are looking forward to seeing their Japanese opponents soon!

From GillesW - Unhorsed Brushjockey! Marines, Mongols & Ancients (127 points)

Hi everyone,

This Friday my submission was delayed by the flocking and basing phase - it was close to not appearing at all! But all is done (for now...) so here is the second half of my third squad of my WW2 marines (5 plastic figures from warlord games figures):

When I see the pics, I think I'll have to add more dots on the brown camo ( one day, perhaps).

I cannot resist to post a picture of all my very early Marine jungle troops ("Catachans" :), and now it's time to work on the support teams and armour.

Then, as promised last week, more 15mm Essex Miniatures mongol cavalry (only 12 figures):

And last but not least, the Corsican footmen for my Early Carthaginians. I had no idea of what they looked like, so I chose to paint them in a mix of Greek and Etruscan style (27 figures). I cut off the lead spears as usual and replaced them with small plastic brush bristles.

A few close-ups just for fun:
 

The bases are not close to each other because they were not fully dry when I took the photos.
Stay tuned! I'll be back next week...

Salut encore Gilles! Un autre présentation diversifiée et bien fait! Great work once again Gilles, as we are treated another wide assortment of periods in one post.  Those Marines look the business, and as always, I love to see heavy cavalry.  The mongols look excellent - I can seem them trampling their helpless foes right now.  The Corsican footmen look great too, but I wouldn't know Greek from Etruscan - wouldn't know if they walked right up and tossed a spear at me!  Those shields look great - are those hand painted?

This gets you 127 points, but I'm throwing some extra in there for the fiddly work of converting spears.  And if you hand painted those shields, I'll owe you more...à la semaine prochaine!

From AlexS - Antiquity and Napoleonics (533 points)

Several components today.  Up first, a small brigade of Russian infantry. I've always dreamed about big battles on small tables. And miniatures in 10mm scale suited to this very well. So I decided to try to paint two small (size and scale) armies for the Napoleonic wars. Before you is an Infantry Brigade of the Russian Army.

One stand has one regiment, and we have two musketeer regiments, and one regiment of Jaeger, one artillery battery and General. It probably would have been correct to make the four infantry regiments and two Jaeger Regiments, but I decided it would be a reserve brigade or brigade who have suffered losses. 

I do not know if I'll continue to work on this scale, and the era in the framework of the event, but I liked to work again on this scale.

Next are some random individual 28mm Napoleonics. I do not always get to paint large groups at once. Sometimes I make small pieces, and then compose them into a whole. The following photo - just show these little pieces.

Three foot dragoons:

Three bases of grenadiers:

Three bases voltigeurs:

Unfortunately, they have not yet become part of the whole, but more on that below.

And last, some ancients. Since my childhood love affair Sprague de Camp "Arrow of Apollo" and I have always admired the history of Sicily - especially in the ancient period. So I decided to put together a small army of Syracuse.
The main troop was the phalanx consisting of 50 hoplites:

A must in this army was ballista. This is Syracuse, is not it?

And no less important for this army of mercenaries. I chose the barbarian cavalry for this purpose.

 General view.

A total in this submission of 80 different 28mm foot castings, 6 mounted 28mm castings, one artillery casting in 28mm, and and another group of 10mm as well - 67 infantry, 2 guns/limbers and one mounted. 

This is the last "Painting bomb" from me. Two weeks ago, my second daughter was born, and now the time that I was assigning to paint will be taken by my children. I tried to paint instead of sleeping, but it turned out to be a bad idea. So I had to put aside the big projects, but I'm still going to paint and share with you our work and history.

Wow Alex, this is quite an astounding painting "bomb" indeed, with a wide variety of figures from two excellent periods/eras.  The volume, together with the quality, are indeed incredible - no doubt you have been painting instead of sleeping! I think we have all tried that...in fact, that is my plan for tonight, in the hopes of cramming more in for tomorrow...

On behalf of Curt and all of the Challengers, congratulations on the arrival of a second daughter! I'm further amazed that you are getting any painting done at all as you must be busy with a young family! We can certainly understand more time being focused now on the kids, although I suspect sleep will remain in short supply for you :)

This "last" painting bomb nets you a whopping 533 points - a nearly Tamsin-esque level of points...congratulations!

And We're Back! It's Friday Fun Again...

 

 

Hey, hey! It's Friday again! I'm looking forward to more fabulous submissions.  I see with a certain amount of pride that, once again, the fearsome assemblage of brush jockeys who post on this, the most interesting day of the week, have assembled another fantastic set of entries to wow us. 

What will we see? Will Alex - the painting machine - hit us with a whole new army? Will Sylvain hopefully have not painted anything remotely connected to sci-fi? Will I have to accidentally delete any other 30k-themed entries in a vain attempt to catch up in the Horus Heresy duel? Stay tuned to find out!

The countdown to our first post is on...and trust me, that's a lot more fun than what I should be doing, which is painting terrain for the theme submission tomorrow.  But as Curt will tell you (laughing the whole time), I would rather gouge my own eyes out with a rusty spork than paint terrain, so I'm not sure I will make that deadline, to be honest...

And so - on to the first submissions of the week's finest day!