From GeoffreyT: Mystery miniatures for identification (Altair IV)(50 points)

Hello again fellow painters,  

This weeks painting effort includes this bunch of mystery miniatures I would like identified.  Hopefully there are some folks of knowledge out there that can help.  Now they are painted and based that will not be quite so easy.  

They came as a group in a bulk lot, identified by a number of possible manufacturers, but I have not been able to get a positive ID on any of them.  All are in white metal, and don't look all that weathered, but are all true 28mm scale and probably recent castings of old miniature lines.  No base markings on any of these unfortunately. 

This is the heinous half dozen of them.

The first two are practicing the forbidden arts of voodoo (Forbidden, the theme for Altair IV!). 

These are really nice sculpts, quite lightly built and good detail. Superfine detail on snake tongue and needle in voodoo doll, initially I thought it was flash.

Of course, no self respecting voodoo practitioner would leave home without a zombi.  And as we all know Z is for Zombi.  That indeed is not only the last letter of the alphabet, but completion of the alphabet soup challenge.  A list of the claimed words is attached below.

This looks like different sculptor, an older simpler sculpt and quite 2D. 

These two crackers look like another sculptor again.  The "Warren Zevon" werewolf in 70's attire is great.  Check out the big lapels and flares. 

Sculpts pretty simple, look like early 80's lack of smoothness that was evident in old lead-pewter ranges.  Humongous hairy wolf hands.

Side on view to show warewolf flares

Last in this set is a lion, licking its lips at some tasty mortal.  I have based in on Arena sand, for you know what comes next.

The base here was a relatively thick oblong without sharp edges.

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6 x 28mm miniatures = 30 points

planet bonus +20 for Altair IV

Z is for Zombi

The completed Alphabet soup side-challenge.

So, thats it for this post.

If your recognise any of these miniatures can you please drop a note in the comments, I would be quite interested to know their origin.

Cheers

GT

I do like a good mystery figure. The wisdom of the crowds should be able to help you out- I think they're from the Dracula's America range. Those voodoo practitioners are great, and I like the tones on your lion. Congratulations on completing your alphabet!

Barks

Thursday follies

As Ukraine experiences a 'special military operation', the Challenge continues.

• Nick has some light artillery
• Dallas burns rubber
• Chris expands his French vehicle park
• Howard shows his Persians
• Samuli uses MLRS to play football
• Simon tests out Warlord's epic scale
• Jez has AVBCW post
• Geoff needs your help!

Barks

From RayR - Haitian Revolution - Spanish Militia (95 points)

 

Its back to the Haitian Revolution once again for my next entry into the Challenge. Here we have two Companies of Morenos Infantry, Volunteers of Santo Domingo.

Once again there isn't much info on the troops

Although I did find this text online, it was originally in Spanish and has a rather outdated look into the unit, so please don't shoot me!

 

It explains the Spanish Militia was split into white-skinned companies and non-white-skinned companies.

"Entry into the endowment companies was prohibited to those who were not of Spanish descent and of white race, except for the Tambores who had to be people of colour. Although this rule prevailed for these regular troops, the recruit was very different in the militias, where it was allowed, rather forced, the entry of men of other races different from the white, maintaining the differentiation of the units separately according to the skin colour of the men who would have to register in her, without mixing them with each other, or at least between whites and those of other racial origins. Therefore, the same division that so markedly characterized colonial society was maintained in fact when raising and regulating the militias and classifying them into units of Whites, Browns, and Dark Haired. Another different question will be the participation of the Indians in the militias, an issue that is fairly regulated and taken care of by the military authorities in areas with or with a large population of said origin, an issue that was not the case in Santo Domingo."

The two Commanders and drummer are from Offensive Miniatures Spanish range, they're slightly smaller than the Militia figures, which are of course from Trent Miniatures. I did have to double base them, just to bring them up to eye level. I do have a standard bearer figure, which I may paint up later, I don't know if they carried a flag and what it would have looked like, so it'd be pure guess work.

But don't tell anyone.

There are 2 companies of 8 figures

and three Command figures., so a total of 19 figures.

So a total of 95 points

 

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Nice work on this project Ray, good to see it continuing to come along. I assume this is still for Donnybrook? If so, I would imagine that you have painted and collected enough for more than a few games by now? Anyway, that is another 95 points for your total. 

GregB

From RayR - Austrian Artillery 1683 (60 points)

More artillery, this time its for the Austrian's defending Vienna.

There are 6 Austrian artillerymen, I will paint a few more later.

They are all Essex Miniatures apart from the chap on the left who's from Dixon Miniatures.

These two artillery pieces are painted up in Austrian colours. I'm not sure what make the one on the left is. The larger gun is from Warlord.

What a boring uniform all dark grey, shouldn't grumble though, they were a doddle to paint!

I was going to paint this small gun in the yellow of Austria, but decided to go for a beige colour.

Then it could be used anywhere in my Donnybrook collection.

But here it is with the Austrians anyway.

6 figures @ 5pts each = 30pts

3 artillery pieces @10pts 30pts

Total 60 pts

 

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Nice to see the defenders of Vienna getting some artillery support, especially after you were adding to the Ottoman artillery park the other week. I agree the grey isn't perhaps the most inspiring uniform colour for the artillery crew, but it does set off the snappy yellow of the Hapsburg gun carriages quite well in my opinion - although perhaps I am just biased in favour of Austrians :) 

 

Nice work Ray!

 

GregB

From RayR - Krypton/Superhero - The Phantom (25 points)

 

I've finally made it onto my last planet on the Quadrant Map.

Krypton: Superhero

Well he looks like a Superhero to me? What do you think Greg?

From the first Comic Strip May 28th 1939

I bought the figure several years ago from the now defunct Avolak Castings. It was sold as The Spectre.

He's been sat in a box waiting for Curt to do a Superhero bonus round all this time.

I've not used my pot of purple paint very much, apart from on my Ottomans.

It was great to scrap the crust off the top!

So with this post I make it into the centre of the quadrant and await my punishment from the Snowlord.

Nice and easy on the points on this one.

5 points for the figure

20 points for the Bonus round

 

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A super-hero? Sure...looks like one to me. I have never heard of "The Phantom", or known his history apparently dates to 1938? Here I was thinking that this guy's formative moment came when he was exposed as a young man to Keir Starmer giving a speech on "personality", causing him to blackout while his brain turned to mush, and when he woke up, he was clad only in purple tights, a victim of unknown military experiments...

So yes, you get 25 points, and have achieved the core of a Challenge Quadrant! Well done. 

GregB

From PaulSS - 25th Virginia Infantry Regiment (92 points)

Todays' challenge entry is a firing line of Crusader Miniatures representing the 25th Virginia Infantry Regiment that saw service from 1861 to 1865.

The figures were picked up from North Star, while the standards are from Flags of War. Given the battle honours depicted on the battle flag I suspect that it represents the unit in 1864.

As all my Confederate infantry so far is from the Perry plastics it's pretty much entirely in the advancing or right shoulder shift poses, so a firing line adds some variety to the collection.

These really are lovely figures and I've already started another unit of them that I hope to be able to post next week.

I took a few pictures of the whole unit deployed in line, but for whatever reason they came out a bit blurry.

Eighteen 28mm figures and a pair of standards is 92 more points on the board and should see me passing my 1000 point target with just under a month to go.

American Civil War Duel Totalizer: 118 foot, 2 mounted, 4 horses (733pts)

Napoleonic Duel Totalizer: 8 foot, 2 mounted (100pts)

 

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Fantastic work as ever Paul. I just love firing line poses for units in the "black powder" era - I know marching figures are very common (maybe easier to base) and look great, but there is something excellent about the ranks of little figures looking they are ready to unleash a volley at their enemies on the table. 

 

Your brush work continues to be top-shelf - and in particular, with a Confederate unit, I am impressed with how you vary the uniforms of the individual soldiers, while still keeping an overall unified look for the soldiers. Great stuff. 

 

GregB

Ready for Wed - From MattT - A change is as good as a rest (50 Points)

A bit of a change in direction for this post. I find one of the things that stops me burning out when painting is to switch to something completely different for a bit of a rest. I guess it helps that I'm a bit of a gaming butterfly. In my mind at least I'm being productive and not just staring out the window.

A while ago my brother and I produced a pair of biblical armies for Impetus. At the time i produced some pretty smart desert terrain. Unfortunately it doesn't see much table time. So to rectify the situation we have decided the only sensible thing to do is extend our VBCW setting out to the desert, Raiders of the Lost Ark style.

My first submission is the big cheese himself riding round in a rather smart automobile.

Next up with have a kubelwagen acting as escort.

Thats 2 x 28mm vehicles = 40 points total

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Hi Matt - I think you are in the right place when it comes to sharing about the "butterfly" feeling. Our passions can flitter around, and it can be hard at times to keep grinding away on a particular project. Witness the glory of the Squirrel side duel! Good on you for finding another project, and diving in to keep the brushes going. That is a great way to prepare for the final month of the Painting Challenge.

You get 40 points for the vehicles, but you have some painted crew/passengers as well, so I'll give you some points for those fellows too. So that is 50 points to you - well done, and keep pressing ahead!

GregB

From BruceR - 28mm Norman support archers and citizens of Rome to mix it up (85 points)

In my 2nd year of the Challenge I marvel at everyone's ability to grind out projects.  My first Challenge, last year, was done during social lock down so many minis were tackled.  I'm still doing well, just notice how juggling all during this Challenge is different.  Well, soldier on I say.  

Holiday Monday here in the US and a blizzard day south of the Snowlord's lair.  Posting early as work has me traveling (if possible) to cover in another city for the week, I'll pack some brushes to see if I can motel paint.  

First up this week is rounding out a Norman SAGA force.  I've played a little SAGA and while I enjoy as one on one, I prefer more scenario-based adventures rather than the tournament style game (age showing maybe).  These archers have been primed and in a bin for probably 3-4 years.  Hopefully traveling to Adepticon (at the end of the challenge) and meeting a friend to try SAGA in a team approach.  Never played my Normans so here is an opportunity.  Thus, these levy archers.  They are Warlord miniatures.  Nice models, yet the faces are somewhat chunky.  Yes the helmet nasal piece covers the nose, but faces could have been more robust.  Overall good models.  I did try a speed effort and used my airbrush to base color the models with three different tunic color types.  Washed and highlighted.  Thought I was done and then decided to add some trim colors to round them out.  

Hope you enjoy.

Next, is a story of needing some miniatures for a game.  Actually, gaming again might be the reason I lose some hobby time (ha).  So  my group wanted to play some Dark Age Vikings and so we used a LittleWars TV scenario using the Ravenfeast Rules.  The scenario required 7 monks.  I thought I had purchased a monk package from Foundry Miniatures and discovered I had not.  They look great and I just must have not clicked.  Hmmm, what to do.  Well enter my next submission.  Citizens of Rome break out your acting gear.  I have these for the purpose of having some citizens for "Infamy Infamy" by TooFatLardies.  I base coated them in brown and painted the faces.  Boom, stand ins for Monks.  here is a picture of the game with one of the Roman Citizens turned Monk in the lower left.

After the game and some family time, finished the Citizens for the Challenge.

Citizens of Roman come forward and hear of the latest news of the glorious legions.

I've decided to leave the outer ring with a couple of planets undone.  Oh, well the price for gaming.  I'm throwing my fate in the hands of GregB to guide my travels, so leaping into a Warp maelstrom.  

On to the Middle Orbit.  

Here is my early submission.  Everybody in the North stay safe as mother nature gives us a couple of more blasts before spring and let's sprint to the finish line.  Stay well.

17 28mm foot =        85 pts Total

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It is always nice to see some neglected miniatures getting their time under the brush - good for those Norman Archers! I really enjoyed "SAGA" myself, until they released a second edition, and would not tell me if I needed to replace my boards or not...

Good work pressing those fine citizens of Rome into service as monks! Nothing like the pressure of an impending game to bring out some creativity!

Having stopped on four different worlds in the outer ring, I believe you could travel to the next ring on your own, but who am I to ignore a request to travel via Maelstrom? Sipping on my morning Starbucks, and carefully consulting with various warp navigation authorities (that 40k Navigator figure I painted never talks back, but whatever), I declare your next destination shall be Coruscant - Imperial, Good vs. Evil. Good luck on your next planet, and safe travels here in the current real world!

GregB