Bi-weekly Duel Update - Games Workshop Minis Duel - Update #3

With 6 weeks of the challenge behind us, it's time to once again review the running in the GW minis side duel. After the initial frenzy of painting over the holiday period, it seems that our duelists have settled into a steady pace and are aiming to continue to slowly build up their scores. This is a marathon, not a sprint after all. I'm fairly confident that we'll see more big changes before all of this is done however.

From the previous update:
Barks - 15

Codsticker - 40

DrQ - 260

GregB - 0

Paul O'G - 107 (with apologies for missing points awarded by a minion last time)

PaulS - 147

Reilly O'G - 430

StuartL - 591

TeemuL - 152

And now for the current scores:

Barks - 320 Points

A massive increase in points due to a horde of goblins, some Riders of Rohan and a very skull-tacular graveyard. Barks has certainly made up for his slow start with some big posts. Can he keep up the pace though?

Codsticker - 40 Points

No changes here, as Codsticker has been working on some figures for the dark ages instead.

DrQ - 300 Points

A small increase as the good Doctor has added some more, very characterful minis to his finished pile. Of particular note are these very spooky Glaivewraith Stalkers.

GregB - 5 Points

Finally adding a small number of points to his tally, with a masterfully painted Imperial public affairs specialist, Greg has joined the race.

Paul O'G - 208 Points

Nearly doubling his score, Paul has painted up more figures for his herd of Beastmen. This bunch of Chaos loving troublemakers look especially bloodthirsty. 

PaulS - 184 Points

Continuing to add points to his tally at a steady pace, Paul has done some great terrain bits and some figures for Necromunda. His Ambull is a scary looking beasty and probably more than a match for anything in the underhive.

Reilly O'G - 450 Points

More goblins, because you always need more goblins it seems. Reilly has done some fun looking fanatics and added to his score. These twirling, uncontrollable lunatics may soon be called on to deal with some Beastmen by the looks of things. 

StuartL - 666 Points

Yet more points rigging and fraud have seen StuartL continue in the lead, well that and painting up a squad of World Eaters. Seriously though, someone should complain to the management about this guy.

TeemuL - 197 Points

Teemu has decided to look to nature for his inspiration, these beautiful Awakened Wyldwood trees are the result.

And those are the scores as they stand. If anyone else would like to participate, the door is always open. 

As it seems a small error in calculations occurred in the last update, please let me know if any numbers seem off. I'm going by the totals given in the titles of posts and searching by user name in the tags (please make sure you do this as there are far too many posts to keep track of). If minions changed your points totals or you posted without tagging your name, please let me know in the comments below.

From SanderS: Entering the Pit of the Pendulum (25 points?)

 Hoi,

 

"Paint something torturous" well yeah I can do that, I still have a lot of stuff for my HeroQuest scenery left to paint so here we go. Most of the pieces in this post are from the Terrain Crate Dungeons scenery except for some HeroQuest furniture complimented with 3D prints, I'll explain later.

First here are the horribly painful assecoires:

Here's the table with it's original cardboard legs:

 

 

As I won two and a half HeroQuest games (1 for at home and one for use with the club at school) I need to paint a lot of furniture pieces. Originally the furniture came in the box as a plastic top with cardboard undersides. The 3D printing community has thrown up some excellent STL files for the undercarriages to be printed and I have printed some for almost all my furniture. Here is a picture of some of the unpainted stuff, the orange pieces are 3D printed.

 Left is another torture table, in the middle is a bookcase and to the right is an alchemists or sorcerer's desk.

As for points I'd say 5 for the actual pieces and 20 as the Chamber's bonus, making 25 points.

 Cheers Sander

From SanderS: Terrible Terminators (110 points)

 Hoi,

 

Yeah it's been a while since I have posted but I have not been dragging my brushes. Although work and family have been a drain on hobbu time I have managed to paint up 22 Dark Angel Space Marines Terminators. Some of these have been awaiting paint for over 10 years and finally they're done (-ish). As the title of this post states: they're terrible, I really should be stripping the paint and re-do them but I just cannot bring myself to do this. They were clogging my workspacefor so long that I just pushed on and rushed it, just to get rid of them off my desk. Now when taking the pictures I noticed, I have spoiled some rust and blue colours on the feet of some of them and I will touch that up soon. 

There's several combat squads in the lot of which almost all possible generations are represented. Without further ado here are the figures and good riddance too I say! 

There's also two old white metal characters in this bunch and I like them best, there's my own Chaplain in Terminator armour, usually that's all black armour with a bone white helmet but I switched this because I thought it would fit in better with the white Deathwing armour. The blue guy is a Librarian (ergo a space marine magic user) and he's the latest addition to the force as I recently bought him off evilbay for near to nothing.

Pointswise these chaps should net me 110 points. Cheers Sander

 

 

KenR : 28mm Italian Allied Legion Principes Pt1 - 160 pts

 

I can almost hear the kids at the back screaming are we there yet ! 

Nearly son, nearly, this is the 4th of 6 batches of foot leaving 32 Principes, 32 Triarii to do along with another Cavalry unit and a couple of General bases and we are done ✔ One thing is certain, whatever I paint in the remainder of the Challenge will not be white !

If it ain't broke why fix it ? So its 32 28mm Victrix figures on 4 60 x 60 bases, helped along with some LBMS transfers. 32 x 5 points is 160 more towards my total.

Compared to the Hastati the main difference is in that ever important plumage, I've mostly used the 2 plume helmets from the plastic set for this unit (can you guess where the three plume heads are 🤔). With the Hastati I added a sprinkle of un armoured guys, with the Principes they are all armoured, mostly with bronze plates but there are the odd cuirass in there.

In addition to that I've done a bit more weathering on the shields to give them a bit more of a grimey lived in look. I like the slight variation you can get with plastic figures. Romans should always have a uniform, discipline look but lots of small changes in head or shield position along the rows really brings the unit to life, just like the guy on the end of the rear rank who has clearly seen something more interesting off to his rear 😀 

I did start to flag a little at the end of this unit and getting started on the next lot of 32 Principes has been a bit of a Groundhog day but I'm determined to get them done, at the end of the day this is a pretty small Project for me, I already have a Roman Legion sat in a box ready to join these add to that the Carthaginians the whole Punic Wars thing will top a 1000 figs fairly soon.

And just to finish off, cause I know you like these, here is the unit in its rightful place in the formation. Still no joy 😕 with the 8 missing Velites, if anyone does have any Victrix ones spare, I'm happy to paint up a couple of figs on a Command Stand in payment 👍

From Dallas: Grenadier Wizard's Room in the Laboratory (50 points)

Now for those of you who enjoy the old school of fantasy miniatures, here's something right up your alley...

It's the Grenadier Wizard's Room from their AD&D figure range licensed by TSR, circa 1980.

And here it is in its newly painted glory. Like some of the other old-school minis I've painted for the Challenge this year, I have to admit to being the original owner of this set... much the same as the Ral Partha Cold Drake, the Wizard's Room was likely purchased at the Hobby Hunter in Brandon around 1980-81. But while it reposed peacefully in its original box (with insert) for lo these 40 years... it's now painted. So let's take a look.

 

First, the "Cauldron with conjured face" resting on the "Thaumaturgic circle". I counted five points for the cauldron and face.

 

Brazier and treasure urns. Together with the Thaumaturgic circle I collectively counted five points for these.

The Familiar Lizard! Five more points.

The Wizard his own self, seated at his desk. Looks pretty familiar to those of us working from home.

Here's his "work desk with components". I think that's supposed to be a candle on top of the skull. (Five points)

The Wizard. Certainly a bit on the small side for modern figures, he's truly 25mm. I like the pose. (Five points)

His bookshelf. Very important, this. I haven't quite figured out what the object sitting on top of the shelf is supposed to be - looks like a transistor radio??? (Five points)

Here's all the bits tucked away in their box. Honestly this Laboratory room challenge was causing me some consternation until I remembered I'd had this Wizard's Room set socked away for 40 years. I guess I could've maybe painted my new in blister Fabius Bile (that's probably only half the age of this set) but it was fun putting the brushes to this classic metal set. Fifty points altogether and on to the next room!

Stay safe!
 

From PeterD Gretchin Tank for The Armoury (40 points)

 

This isn't how I had intended this little tank to turn out.  I had wanted to paint a mock Caunter camouflage pattern to echo back to a 10mm Western Desert collection that I did nearly 20 years ago.  But then the tank talked to me.  It said "Paint me liken Italian Racing Car.  Paint me like a Maserati 250f like Moss and Fangio drove".  Far be it for me to question the Words of Wisdom beamed into my skull by the Mothership so here we are.

This is a 3D print gifted to me by fellow challenger JeremyM.  Cheers for that Jeremy and have have other item from you in progress  on the bench.  I have no idea exactly what back of which truck this fell out from but it's a goofy little tank.  It painted up quite nicely in a very simple and basic job, but I had fun with it.

The inspiration

Points wise I think it's 20 points for a 28mm vehicle and 20 points of the Chamber, pending Minion approval.

Skull-o-meter update- Week 6!

Halfway already! The Skullz have been raining down like morbid hail. Surprising nobody, the vast majority have been from GW, with a few exceptions.

GuyB's Oathmark skellies

DrQ's chibi skull

BruceR's characterful witches

There has been jostling for the skull throne. Thirty-six Challengers have included skullz in their entries so far, with 1411 total skullz.

Click to embiggen, and check out that y-axis! Yeah!

Skull of the week:

MikeF's character-filled skull says so much with one eye!