Sean M: Proxies! (167 points)

The sun is shining on our new fallen snow, so it's a great time... to stay inside an post some images to the Challenge! I think I have enough in me for one more post after this one, maybe.

Proxies. For when you want to try something new, without spending more money. A delve into the back pile of lead, some Bitz for the Bitz God, and there you go! A half arsed attempt to keep up with the cool kids. And as we've seen with the Electoral College, proxy systems never go wrong, amirite?

So Privateer Press has sent a new faction for Hordes into the world for beta testing, the Grymkin. This is a folktale faction, where avatars of the seven deadly sins, plus other sins, are brought to the table as a series of dad jokes in miniature (I cribbed that last part from Combo-Smite).

So here's the group shot:

First up are the Trapperkin. These guys are the boogey men who stalk you from the hidden places. They started out as some Malifaux dead babies, or something questionable like that. There a sizeable amount of Malifaux figs in this post. Some green stuff to sub in some glam rock hair, and there you go. Yes, my green stuff skills leave something to be desired. The bases without minis on them are their trapdoor markers, where they can be hidden away to be kept from being trivially removed by ranged attacks.

These are the some almost stock figures. The spectre on the left is a former Harlequin spectre who now a Lantern Man (really). He is the unit attachment for a unit called Hollow Men, which are made of magically enslaved deserters. I shaved off his crown and shield peg, and added watchman's lantern from the Mordhiem sprues. The two ladies next to him, stock Malifaux figures, represent a character unit of witches called the Twilight Sisters, one old, one young, measuring your fates, you know the trope. The lady in front is a Clan Wars Wu-Jen, a stock figure, and represents Lady Karianne, a hopelessly insane woman taken in by the Grymkin. If she is removed from play, all Grymkin on the board go into a frenzy.

 This is the one bald face "cheat", as this unit is already released. These are Gremlin Swarms, who love to play havoc with mechanical items, like Warjacks, Battle Engines and airplane engines. The are made from spare 'jack parts and GW Snotlings.

 The Warlock is a Defier called the Wanderer. None of the Grymkin warlocks have names, just titles that define their characteristics. He is all about movement and hiding magics, and smites people with his magic lantern. Maybe I should have used a Green Lantern as a proxy figure.

He started life as a Confrontation warrior priest, and his right arm has been bodged together with GW bitz, plus a spare raven from the Old Witch pack. Some extra ropes and stowage on the back cover up where I had to clip off a slung rifle. He comes with three markers which he places on the board within 5" of his position. At the start of his next turn, he can displace to one of the markers.

These are the warbeasts. The black one is a Gorehound. He started off as some sort of Malifaux Cerebus, but with only one head mounted. His extra long tongue is a Skaven tail. The two white guys are a rabbit/crab hybrid, imaginatively called Crabbits. They are two GW Squigs with Genestealer arms pasted on. The Big guy is called Skin and Moans, who gains power as he collects the skins of his foes. This started as a Confrontation Minotaur, with a Reaper Troll head, Privateer Satyr arms, Starship Trooper Bugs arms for evil skinning knives, GW Zombie face tambourines and a judicious use of Green Stuff to make the skin sash and hair.

Battle for Skull Pass Night Goblins have many uses. The Cask Imps are lower torsos attached to some spare barrels, including two from the kid's Lego collection. The two guys plucking bombs from their pouches are part of a mobile distillery team that creates Cask Imps in game.

These last guys are called Dread Rots. They are pumpkin headed nasties that harvest people to fuel the rest of the army. People being harvested by plants, get it? Yup, subtle like a smack on the head with a thumper, and i should know (see my "Home" entry). These are the current spamming option for the playtest. These are GW Zombies with cheap beads for their heads, painted like Jack-o-lanterns. I know, they look like a Scooby-Doo villian, but not from the good Scooby-Doo. The bad ones that they snookered Vincent Price into doing.

I'm going to throw myself on the judge Minions' mercy for scoring for the Dread Rots. Three were top to bottom new paints, one reused a set of legs, and the other six were merely head and right arm swaps. But I needed to display the entire unit in it's ridonculous, Saturday morning cartoon glory.

Until that one last post,

TTFN.


Tamsin - what a wonderful collection of weirdness! And lots of great conversion work (I'm sure we'll all keep schtum when your kids start asking where their Lego barrels have gone!).
For scoring, I'm going to count Skin and Moans as a 40mm figure, then there are 25 foot figures, two engines which I'll count as crew-served weapons and all the conversions (and figures which have been coverted after previous painting) which I'll give 15 points for. So, if I've got the sacrifices to the spreadsheet of doom right, that should come to 167 points :)

From AlexS: Hall of shame (15 points)

 Hello everyone, my name is Alex. I'm from Russia and I'm an alco- paint-holic. Last week, I decided to repeat what I did in the first week - to paint 100 miniatures and get ahead. I prepared everything and started to work.

 But then I got into my hands two new novels by Umberto Eco - "Prague Cemetery" and "Zero Release". And instead of painting miniatures, I read them days and nights, at work and at home. And as a result - I painted only three miniatures.

I'm ashamed, I'm very ashamed. But I did not do what I expected from myself and waited for admirers of my talent of a man who paints a lot.

And in the consolation of myself and admirers of my talent and invite everyone to see my favorite video. In it, the Mongolian relatives to me sing that they also had a great past, but now they just go on the steppe and read the books of Umberto Eco :)

total 3 inf - 15 points


Tamsin: curse you, Umberto Eco for writing such engrossing books! Alex - I feel your pain. It's so easy to get distracted from painting. You might have only got three figures finished, but they are up to your usual high standard, so no need to be ashamed. Besides, you've still got over 40 hours left to get the rest painted up - we know that you can do it! :)

From DavidB: Dark Angels (90 points)

I had these fellows mostly finished last week, but I spent some time looking for banners.

This tactical squad of Dark Angels are from the latest 40k game box Dark Vengeance. The tactical squad are loaded with detail including embossed tact squad and chapter icons on the shoulders.

Icons abound all over them. In the Deathwing theme, I did give the Vet Sgt a nice application of war paint.

A Veteran Sgt and Brother Bethor from the late 90's and two RT marines from the 80's make up a vanguard veteran filled command squad.

Although their noggins are huge, I always felt these two fit perfectly with tribal features. The power axe fellow has a scalp on the shoulder plate, fur, earring, and medallion/ The warpaint just cements the look.

I did have to raid my bit box just to find components to complete all four of them. Bethor( long since demoted from hero to plain DA standard bearer by GW) is the only one without a back banner as he will carry the company banner.

I hand painted all the chapter icons since they didn't have them molded in place.

The Company commander came in the box game and all sorts of bling modeled in place. I gave him a red cloak as i decided to paint the 3rd company.

Azrael and his diminutive servant also got completed. For some reason I had them both primed in green. Odd since most of them are robes, no idea what I was thinking back in the day!

Chief Librarian Ezekiel is joined by a nother librarian from the box game.

So 18 Dark Angels to join those finished last week.

The RT marines were primed white, the newer plastic were primed black and the heroes were undercoated in green. I had the easiest time painting over the black undercoat.

I could not find any of the banners, but I did find a pair  of second generation land speeders so the Ravenwing will grow sometime this year. I have Adepticon coming up soon and I will be taking Mercs Recon to the show so RW will have to wait as I'll be spending the last few days on the Mercs....Not too original painting till convention eve! ;)  

Tamsin: I'm not going to pretend to know what these all are but they do look great together. 90 more points for you Darth B :)

From KyleC: Innuit Warrior (12 points)

So here is my last model for this competition. Something that I had painted in between doing a few other items recently and have really worked into adding some new depth and character to the piece.

Excuse the photos as some are a bit out of focus there..

It was sculpted long ago by Oleksandr and Bran from Ukraine/Czech republic a while ago now. And released in short batches, direct from Bran himself. I was lucky to get a copy while meeting up with them at Monte San Savino in November last year during the show.

I did try to copy Bran's paint work, but to add a bit of my own spin on it and make it so that he was pushing through a bit more of a colder atmosphere.

What I really tried with this piece is to add some texture throughout the piece, and to play with more color. So a lot of the areas on him have things like red in his shadows instead of just going to black or brown which is more common.

I think in some areas I really liked how it turned out, especially here on the back section. Where the areas were quite flat and needed something there to make it stand out more.

It was quite the push outside of my comfort zone with it, but I am really liking the final version.

There are of course places that I wished I had done better with, but in the end I think he turned out good. The water effects I tried especially were a major fail for me, but I was able to save some of it with the abundance of snow effects that I threw on it. Probably the only thing to save the base.

Hope you enjoyed the competition as much as I did, and I do hope that next year I am not moving house once more, and can focus more on this fully throughout the entire duration of the competition. And come and hit up those top spots that people are covering so well at the moment ;)

Until next year!


Tamsin: that's a great figure and your painting is superb as always. It seems ungrateful to reward your lovely brushwork and basing with just the standard 10 points for a 54mm foot figure, so I'm adding a couple of bonus points although I still don't think that does your work justice.

From ValeryN: 149 figures for Flames of War -15mm (300 Pts)

Hello everybody! Today I present to your attention the result of my labors in the last month. This is almost a full-fledged army for the Flame of War system: Engineer-Sapper Battalion.

They were elite Soviet combat units intended for storming cities and fortified positions.

Most of the soldiers in such battalions wore a steel breastplate:

In total I painted 149 figures: 34 medium bases of 4 soldiers, 3 small bases of 3 soldiers and 2 smoll bases of 2 soldiers. This is 298 points

Unfortunately, the lens of my camera is not good enough. In this regard, I apologize for the poor quality of photos.

Tamsin here: wow, what a great points bomb to kick off the day. I guess this explains why you've been quiet for the past few weeks - you've been beavering away to get this lovely lot painted.
As you say, 298 points for this lot is the base, but I hate to see non-round numbers so I'm going to add 2 to make a much nicer looking 300!
Now, I see that will put you on 900 points - it would be a shame not to get another batch of figures painted before the hard end to double your original target :)

From LeeH - Selenite Warriors (55 points)

Apart from the Theme rounds I have almost exclusively focused on historical 6mm figures. But the madness of the Challenge has infected my grey matter and I'll be finishing with something completely different. I have always had a love of Victorian and pulp sci-fi and the works of H.G.Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs amongst others so it was almost inevitable that at some point I would buy something from this genre. So here are ten Selenite Warriors from Ironclad Miniatures. The Selenites feature in one of my all time favourite movies, the 1964 classic First Men in the Moon.

These models gave me a chance to use some of my weirder metallic paints that never normally see the light of day. I chose a metallic blue for the staff weapons and mixed a combination of the same blue with green ink and a dash of silver to create the iridescent green for the eyes.

Initially I bought four of these but when fellow 'Reject' RayR expressed disgust at my choice of something non-historical I went back and bought some more! The figures are quite tall standing about 34mm foot to composite eye and about 36mm overall. I will definitely be buying more from this range (I can hear Ray screaming in the distance) simply because they were such fun to paint.

A relatively straightforward 50 points but these will probably be my last entry to the challenge as I have almost literally run out of models to paint. My lead mountain has been reduced to little more than a few scraps... its actually a rather pathetically sad sight. Now keep this under your hat, and don't tell the wife, but I must start the big restock in readiness for next years Challenge!

MilesR: I thought I'd jump in and post a few for Curt this am and Lee's post grabbed my attention because of its cool content and the fact that he one of the Magnificent Mondayiers.  These are some really great minis.  Sadly, I think we've all experienced the effect of RayR high standards on potential gifts.  The fact that RayR disapproves does make it more fun doesn't it?  It seems unfair to score these as just 28's given their size but there not yet 40's.  What would Solomon do?

Ahh yes - I'm awarding 5 bonus points for the annoying RayR - I think that's an bonus award we can all get support and be proud off.  55 points to you my friend.

Tribute to Phil and Sylvain: HP Lovecraft and a Exloding Star Destoyer(!) (20 Points)

The task of coming up with something to present to Phil and Sylvain, our Friday Minions, was fairly simple as I've been friends with them for several years and know some of their favourite things.

Phil and I are both big fans of the pulp genre, especially anything having to do with the Cthulhu mythos. So I thought it fitting to paint for him a rendition of the Great Man himself, Howard Philips Lovecraft.

HP Lovecraft was a bit of a strange cat. From reading biographies of the fellow you get a distinct sense that he considered himself out of step with the rest of society. Much of the horror of Lovecraft's writing is based on a sense of humanity's relative insignificance and powerlessness when juxtaposed against the terrors of the cosmos. Many believe Lovecraft's own feelings of social unease, racism and misanthropy are conveyed directly in his writings. Yes, 'ole HPL may not have been an especially cheery or warm human being, but he certainly had a knack for writing some of the creepiest stuff in English literature.

This figure is from Uncle Mike's Strange Aeon's range of miniatures. It's cast in an odd resin material which makes the detail somewhat soft. Nonetheless, I really like this impressionistic rendition of Lovecraft, with his tall, gaunt frame and his characteristic lantern jaw.  I decided to give him minimal groundwork and to base him a little off-center to give him more of a sense of unbalance and loneliness. 

____________________________________

For Sylvain, I've made up a critically damaged Victory-class Star Destroyer.

Sylvain is an avid participant in our current Star Wars: Armada campaign, commanding a Rebel fleet in the hotly contested Corellian system. He's tasted both victory and defeat in the campaign and I know he dreams of putting this model down on the tabletop to mark a 'kill' against his Imperial foes (much to Peter's chagrin, I might add).

This model is a 3D design that I've resized to better match the scale of Armada. It's a fairly minimalist model, with not a lot of fine detail, but I think it serves nicely for acting as a casualty/wreck for the game. (I think I may go back and paint-in some running lights on the bridge and superstructure.)

...and check out the wonderfully dorky base I made for it!

Similar to my work on the Nebulon frigate and Corellian corvette, I've used fractal models of  explosions, adding some fire, debris and armoured plate in an effort to add a bit of drama.


I hope you like the figures guys. Thanks very much for taking care of the Friday crew - you did a terrific job.

I'm going to score the Star Destroyer as a 28mm vehicle as it approximates that size, so 20 points total.

Contracting Some Help for the Last Push

Well here we are folks, the last two days of the Challenge. 

We have a little over a thousand points to beat our 75,950 point target. Certainly, it's not an insignificant amount, but with 96 Challengers I'm confident we'll achieve that today with Sunday in reserve for the breakout 'to the Green Fields Beyond'.

I anticipate the entries will be coming in fast and furious over the next 48 hours so I've asked the Minions from Challenge VI to come in for a visit and post an entry if they wish. 

Otherwise, let's get back to our brushes and cameras and close this Challenge out in grand style.