From PaulOG: Russian buildings and MG bunkers (68 points)

This week I have laboured to complete the Ukrainian village of Ostrog for the Battlegroup Barbarossa Campaign that Alan and I are enjoying:  3 more small houses (1 damaged) plus a wonderful partly destroyed church.

The fruits of my labours this week

Like the two buildings from last week, these are lovely resin models by Mk IV Miniatures. Wonderfully crisp sculpts with no bubbles or flash, they are a delight to paint.  The battle damage is particularly good - not overly done but still quite evident both inside and out.  The interior detailing is also lovely (all roofs are removable) though took quite a bit of extra time to do justice to it with the brush.

Its been great to finish off the total of six buildings from a standing start i.e. when a mate comes over, tells you your painting table priorities are all wrong, informs you we need a new 15mm village finished ASAP for our games, and points to the buildings in the lead pile looking all forlorn in their packets...  

That said, I bought them at Fall-In in 2015 (where I met Miles) so its good to finally give them the attention they deserve.

Next up are 4 MG bunkers - resin Battlefront models. 3 have Maxim barrels and 1 has MG 34/42. These were fun to paint up.

Overall, the 3 houses and the larger church are three 6inch terrain cubes, totalling 60 points. For the MG bunkers I suggest the same as a 15mm infantry figure, 2 points, for 8 more; a total of 68 points for this submission. Now to get back to some figures!

The village of Ostrog, which I have completed in the last fortnight

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Wow - that's a pretty sizable village you have amassed there in record time, Paul!  It just looks absolutely brilliant, and it's been great watching it come together over the past couple of posts.  The church is an absolute stand-out - it looks magnificent, and I love how its wonderful spire adds a lot of height to the tabletop.  You've most definitely done it justice, and the Mark IV Miniatures buildings are clearly something for me to watch out for at a show or on the internet.  A great recommendation.

I love how you've painted the burn damage on the houses.  I can almost smell the smoke in the ear and hear the crackle of the embers.  Really nice painting, Sir!

And the MG bunkers look great.  Well done with the finishing touches, like the additional grasses growing (carefully seeded or turfed) on the roofs.  The machine guns poking menacingly from the aperture, scanning the fire lanes, is a really great touch.

Great work on all of these Paul and a well deserved 68 points to your total !!

From PhilH: A Swarm of TIEs (60 Points)

My entry into the 'Flight' bonus round was a collection of Star Wars Rebel fighter squadrons. My first normal Monday entry are their Imperial foes: a swarm of TIE Fighters.

Neeeeeoooow

Twenty four of the blighters, in eight squadrons of three. Not much to day about them, just lots of black panelling on grey, pretty dull to paint so I did the whole lot in one batch. The two bases with red detailing will serve as TIE squadron aces named Howlrunner and "Mauler" Mithel. 

They came out a bit dark from the method I used, particularly the cabin sections: once shaded I just picked out the details like the windscreen, rather than highlighting up the whole cab. But slightly non-canoncial colouration aside, I'm satisfied with how they look en masse.

Hiding in the swarm are two Aggressor Assault Fighters, another of the many ships from the extended SW universe. These were painted pre-challenge.

And lastly, paint still wet as I took a quick photo, six TIE Interceptors.

I leave final judgement on points for these to the esteemed gentleman on Monday Minion duties this year (hi Sid!). My guesstimate would be 2 points per fighter, for a total of 60.

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Nnnnnnneeeeeoooooowwwwww indeed, Phil !  These look terrific, and you're being far too modest!  The black paneling on the grey, with the added scarlet flashes look excellent.  A real swarm which look very much like the movies - all tumbling, turning and cascading through space like a horde of stellar locusts, hungry with intent.

They look great as models, but really come alive with a careful paintbrush and their designated basing.  The TIE Interceptors would be a particular favourite - and sure these guys would be a worthy challenge for even the most hardened rebel pilots.  Surely....?

Great work, Phil - which will most certainly garner you 60 points towards your total.

GOOD MONDAY MORNING CHALLENGERS !!

Here’s hoping you all had a FANTASTIC weekend, filled with good food, entertainment and more than a little painting fun. And here we are again, at the start of another week of Challenge VIII, with the race to the end of the first month well under way.

We’ve a terrific selection of entries for your admiration and astonishment this morning. 

They’ll transport you from the wild steppes of Mother Russia to the gridiron fields of a Blood Bowl cup final. They are as varied as the urbane market places of Vienna, the ravaged battlefields of Kursk and the fetid drainage tunnels of the Underhive of Iago V. And they’ll immerse us all in amazing drama as far distant in time and place as the green fields of the English Civil War and the battles between The Empire and rebels in the vast, black, vacuum of Space.

And that’s just for starters, everyone!  I am more than sure that they'll be plenty to come later in the day... 

So, ease up the race for the end of our first Challlenge VIII month for just a moment, refresh yourself with a beverage or banana, and enjoy our Monday Madness over the next few hours.

The Votes are in for the 'Flight' Bonus Round Theme!

Hi Everyone

Well, our first bonus theme round is complete! We had 45 participants submitting entries illustrating their interpretations of the 'Flight' theme. Below are the results of the voting.

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The Runners Up, all tied with 21 votes each:

StephenS' 'An Argument of Witches' 

PaulO'G's 'One Man Dirigible'

BenF's ' Battle of Britain'

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The top three podium finishers are:

Third Place: DebD's 'Scale 75 Jessica Thunderhawk'

Deborah will receive another 25 points in recognition for her excellent submission to this round. Wonderful work and congratulations Deb!!

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Second Place: SidneyR's 'Troops in Flight, 1688'

Sir Sidney will receive another 50 points to add to his total which will also see him reaching his 400 point overall Challenge target. Well done Mr. Roundwood! 

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And in First Place: 


ByronM's 'Dropfleet Commander UCM Beijing Battleship'

Absolutely wonderful work Byron. For claiming top spot on the podium Mr. Mudry will receive another 75 points and a gift certificate from the great folks over at Comic Readers. Congratulations Byron, and thank you for sharing your inspiring work with us.

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Again, a BIG thank you to all the participants of the bonus round - your good natured creativity and sense of good fun really makes the theme rounds sing. Thanks again! 

Finally, as a reminder, next Saturday midnight (Jan 20th) is the submission deadline for our next Bonus Theme Round: 'BFG: Big Freakin' Gun', so roll up your sleeves and get to work so we can enjoy a wonderful spectacle of ginormous guns and compensator cannons!

From ByronM: More Greeks and Mechanicum (140 points)

Hello everyone, I am once again back with more entries to two out of three of my big projects this winter, Greeks and 30k Mechanicum.  I had planned some 30k Death Guard for this week but fell behind a bit, but am madly trying to finish them off today, so I may yet get them in later tonight...

First up this week though are 4 more Castellax Battle-Automata, these ones armed with the much more basic mauler bolt cannon.

Even though the gun is more basic than the others that I have done, it is still an upgraded version of a heavy bolter that is capable of cutting space marines down without a save.  The model also is pretty damn cool with a huge belt feed going to the gun which looks awesome!  The issue with it is the belt feed looks like it holds about 3x more rounds than the ammo box does that is mounted to their backside.... sigh.  Regardless of that, I still love the look of feel of these giant robots of death!

This brings my Mechanicum force to 8 Castellax completed already, and at roughly 100 points each that's already almost 1/2 an army done!  Expect more to come soon.

Next up this week is another unit of 16 Greek hoplites.  Once again these are the very poor Warlord (Immortal) figures, but I have been forcing myself to work through the pile of these before going onto the better Victrix and Foundry figures that have been arriving from various orders, as I don't think I could force myself to come back to these things after working on better figures.

This batch I painted up in white and blue in various patterns and am picturing them as an Athenian unit.  I realize that most units would be more mixed with colours and styles historically, but am choosing to simplify at least a few units so that they look like units and are easy to keep straight on the battle field.  I know, not very historical, but I play more for the look and tactics than any real historical recreation reason, I don't have a burning need or desire to be 100% accurate.

 

I respect those that make sure it's all accurate, but despise those that berate people that take it to the level of "That shade of green was not used until 1941 and your figures represent men from 1939 and therefore I won't play with you", which there is a lot of around my area, and one of the reasons I never wanted to play historical for the longest time (Until I met and started playing with Curt, Greg, Dallas and a few others in the area).  As long as you don't do something like paint your Panzers pink, I could care less.

OK, rant mode over and back on topic...  While the unit may not be perfectly accurate, I think they look good as a unit and will make it simple for people to tell them apart from other units where every figure essentially has the same pose. Once again, these were done to a very basic wargame / tabletop level with only colours blocked in, a wash, and a highlight.  On the table they look pretty solid and I am happy with them, when I pick them up and look closely, I kinda cringe, but again I have too many units of them to get done to take much more time than this on them.

Back to work now, and hopefully I will talk to you all again late tonight with another last minute submission this week.  If not, I hope everyone has a great week and keep those brushes flying until next week, I am loving all the great submissions everyone is putting in!  They are keeping me hugely motivated this year trying to keep up with some of you other amazing artists.

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Fabulous Byron and once again thank you for reminding me that not everyone is having a beer when I am.  Cracking work Sir and I just love your work, the painting is brilliant and I love the full armour vibe that is going through your posts. 

From TeemuL: Metal Guard (35 points)

Here I jump into the world of Warhammer 40000. I used to play the game quite lot in the 3rd and 4th edition, but then friends moved, real jobs started, girls got into the everyday life and so on...

The 8th edition kind of simplifies the rules, but with the huge codexes and lots of special rules of units, I'm not sure anymore. Nevertheless after one demo game I decided to give it a try and started painting old metal figures I have had for ages. The purpose was join a local slow grow league, but long period of flu on all family members, work travels and other things said no. Third round of the league starts next week and I still don't have my army on the size of the first week. Well, after I realized I won't be able to get my paintings done in time, I have painted something else. Anyway, I'd like to finish (or at least continue, as the proper saying goes) my project, so here is a Cadian command group.

I'm not using them as Cadians, I will be using mixed group of Astra Militarum, including Cadian, Tallarn, Valhallan and Mordian (Sanders, they are coming), but painting them all in the similar colors to tie them together.

They are all old metal miniatures, with some small changes. The one guy on the lascannon base has a plastic backpack, which has a nice antenna, so he is now a vox caster, or how was it call. The sergeant/lieutenant guy had an accident, when I was stripping paint. He lost his original sword in the process, so I used the opportunity to give him a nasty looking chainsword.

The current rules say, that there must be a company or platoon commander for each command squad (earlier versions of rules used to have 5 men command squads with officer included), so here's one. To add more the mix, he is a Valhallan officer, I believe.

There is a story behind the mixing units and chosen colors, but I just haven't written it yet, so keeping it secret. :) I believe you can handle the tension. This last picture shows the commander and command squad together, you can see that the unified color scheme ties them nicely together.

4x28mm figures and 1x28 crew served weapon should give me 30 points, if I understood the crew served weapon part correctly.

Next there will be some Oldhammer for Age of Sigmar (and hopefully a Big Freaking Gun).

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Splendid work Teemu, a lovely group and we are all looking forward to the great reveal of the secret paint recipe.  I love that commander's hat, it lends a certain Cossack feel to the unit.  That's a pretty big lascannon too and must have been a contender for next week's bonus round, so I can't wait to see what you have found that is bigger!  I make it 5 x figures and a weapon so that's 35 points for this submission. 

From AlexS: An Estate Villa or усадьба (45 points)

Hello everybody! My name is Alex, I'm from Russia, and I'm a loser. After the solemn dropping of the paint bomb last week, I decided to paint 300+ miniatures, thereby closing the required number of points. Then tell everyone:

And before March 21, drink vodka, play a balalaika and ride a bear.  But instead I went for a walk with the children, ate, slept and talked about moving to a new apartment. So today is just a small addition.

Russia before the revolution and industrialization was an agrarian country. 90 percent of its inhabitants lived in villages.

Even the nobles had houses in the countryside, which were called "усадьба" (estate, villa), and lived in these houses part of the year. In front of you is a photograph of the most famous estate of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. For such buildings, there is an entrance with columns and a balcony.

I decided to do something like that with my own hands. I also added a kennel and a barn.

Then I painted these structures for a long time. I used both an airbrush, a brush, and a dry brush, but I'm still not very satisfied with the result of my work. But, I think, on the table, from a long distance it will look normal. Especially if you decorate everything with miniatures.

Thank you very much for your attention. I hope this post gave you interesting information about architecture in Russia and now you know that there were not only "izba"

2 piece 6"x 6"x 6" terrain - 40 points

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I always look forward to your posts Alex, they are always so creative and funny - not to mention informative.  I really like the усадьба with its grand balcony and it certainly looks the part when defended by the nobles.  Your imaginative use of materials and painting are really bringing this period of history alive for me, thank you.  Thank you also for the handy addition of the rule to help with the awarding of points.  I am more than happy with your assessment, but it doesn't seem enough to me so I am awarding a bonus 5 points for the scratch building over the three structures, giving you 45 points for this entry.