From LeeH - Assorted Frosgrave Debris (54 points)

I have been collecting together all manner of bits and bobs and now have an eclectic collection of 28mm 'fantasy' debris that I can use in my Frostgrave games. Some of this is the stuff that I have made myself; some bits are leftovers from other kits; a few items I bought without any particular use in mind (oohh Shiney! etc); and a few items are freebies given away with other purchases. I decided I needed to have a big clearout of this growing hodgepodge of items and paint them up. No idea how to score them so I'll leave that particular conundrum to the unlucky minion on duty today! 

Bits from Spellcrow 

I bought a few items from Spellcrow late last year and after some issues with Royal Mail I ended up with two sets of stuff. So you'll see there are two ruined building corners in duplicate. They also sent me a few freebies with these parcels, including useful items like the Ladders, and some more eclectic stuff like the Mushroom! I'll find a use for it all one way or another. 

Collapsed Walls

I saw something like this on another website (sorry can't remember where) and decided to make some myself. I can use these around my other buildings to block roads, create cover and provide little elevated positions for line-of-sight. All are made from offcuts of foam as I'm trying not to waste anything that could conceivably be repurposed at a later stage. Incidentally, I have run out of my usual 'frosted' grass tufts so I found some similarly shaped tufts, recoloured them and dry brushed the frost on them. They match pretty closely the commercial ones I bought and won't look out of place on the table. 

Reaper Funerary Sculpture

Back at the end of November, I went to Dragonmeet in London with my daughters. This show is primarily aimed at roleplayers but it has always had its fair share of miniatures to buy. I bought myself a new set of dice for roleplaying (one never has enough dice!), and also picked up models and these excellent graveyard sculptures from Reaper. 

It's school half term next week so I'm taking my stressed teacher wife away for a short holiday to the wilds of Sussex. Little does she know I have a list of museums that I want to visit, but I'll broach that subject when we get there! I won't be getting any painting done but I will be spending some time assembling a load of plastic 28mm figures for the latter weeks of the Challenge. Not six millimetre and they are fantasy figures for Frostgrave...Ray's going to love them!

Your Frostgrave table is going to look fantastic. Painting tufts is above and beyond. As for points - no clue. There are 18 pieces of random shapes and sizes and the terrain pts are harsh. I think that 54 pts is sensible.

Martin

From Barks: 15mm modern Australians (54 points)

I have a very soft spot for Australian infantry, and Eureka released these lovely 15mm modern diggers a few years ago. I snapped some up, whereupon they mocked me as I held off painting them because I wasn't sure I could do them justice.

They are wonderfully detailed and posed Alan Marsh sculpts. They've got the latest kit with all the add-ons. If I must nitpick, there should be more eye protection and night vision attachments. I selected a variety of figures to represent a sniper team and other observers with a protection detail, to fit with the RSTA theme here at Bromley's Butte.

Commander and signaller

F89 Light Support Weapons

F88 with underslung 40mm

F88

Sniper with SR-25

I've painted them in DPDU, the desert version of the iconic jellybean Auscam. They're unusual in that their uniform, webbing, body armour and helmet covers all match! DPDU was seen in Iraq and Afghanistan from ~2003-2013ish, but has been superseded by other designs. I'm not sure if the inbuilt-kneepad uniform even comes in DPDU.

Afghanistan 2008. Source

Moderns can be challenging for the painter to show different details on the figure, and to get that tabletop presence- particularly in 15mm. I'm pretty happy with these.

I think they could be used as Irish or Austrians with the Steyr AUG.

12x 15mm figures  24
Bromley's Butte, 30 points

From DaveD - Barks that's another fine effort, very nice!

From AlexandroL: Dwarf & Treasure Mimic (15 Points)

These little Dwarf from Mantic games It’s a part of my new Warband(Northern Alliance) to play Vanguard, Skirmish fantasy game. We are looking for a fantasy game with few figures, fun and easy to play.

We are very surprised with this game, it's a lot of fun scenarios with interesting missions that go beyond killing each other. And the most interesting thing is that it has a campaign mode where you are gaining experience and money to buy new equipment or hire new mercenaries.

The marker (Treasure Mimic) is one of the first files I have printed on my 3D printer. My wife gave me this Christmas and it has certainly been great. I bought the file on the page of my mini Factory, where there are hundreds of fantasy miniatures of all prices.

I think that in five years almost everyone will have their own printer at home, design their own minis or pay for them. The consequence is that everyone can have the minis they want or have always wanted. A dream for me.

From DaveD - might nice Dwarves you have there . I think the 3d printing as you say will really change things over the next few years for sure.

From SimonM: "Wizkids" U-Men (20 Points)

These four 28mm U-Men models are produced by “Wizkids” and can (still) be bought as miniature number 002 from their “Heroclix” Marvel Mutant Mayhem range. Dedicated to "using mutant body parts to augment their human bodies, as well as to grant themselves superhuman powers" this "cult of geeks" first appeared in the 2001 "New X-Men" Annual and were created by Grant Morrison and Leinil Francis Yu.

Having previously painted a fair few of this particular model in the past, I thought I'd spend a little time beforehand converting three of the U-Men so they carried some of the more 'specialist weapons' used by Dr. John Sublime's acolytes to harvest mutants. As I result I simply snipped off the barrels to their propulsion guns and attached some spare "Gale Force Nine" bitz I had left over from assembling the vehicles from the "Tanks" World War II skirmish game.

I wanted to make these deadly devices as 'weird' as possible, so ended up drilling/pinning all sorts of odds and ends, including the entire barrel of a 15mm armoured fighting vehicle, a combination of a tank's open turret hatch and spare wheel, and some bizarre piece of plastic I really haven't a clue about. In my mind, these choices ultimately gave my U-Men a 'long range' explosive option to force out hidden muties, some sort of wind turbine option to knock over targets or extinguish flaming super powers, and a hand-weapon which looked as if it might fire a debilitating net...

Once assembled, the quartet's environmental suits were initially primed using a couple of coats of “Citadel” Abaddon Black and had all their breathing pipes, apparatus and weapons picked out using a combination of Ironbreaker and Nuln Oil. As I haven't yet ever created an actual leading U-Man figure, I did momentarily consider painting one of them with the garish blue face mask found on the "Wizkids" pre-paints. But as I really don't like that look much, I decided to stick with my 'tried and tested' second splash of "Citadel" Nuln Oil instead, and have them lead by either the Black Manta or my recently completed Major Maxim.


From DaveD (Martin seems to be stuck banging the rock together today! so I will do a few).
Its the return of the Nuln Oil kid...good job Blax!

Thursday's Minion is....

Knackered. It's been a bull week at work and another meeting filled day tomorrow. If I had a pound for every hour I spent in a meeting, I be considerably poorer than I am now.

Diamonds are easy to make, 725,000 psi and 1400C. When they 1st started making diamond they tried loads of substances as a starting material and peanut butter was best, and crunchy was better than smooth.
Of course the problem with diamond is that it is not the most stable from of carbon, graphite is the most stable. You will now know for the rest of your life that expensive diamond you bought is slowly turning into a pencil.