From AlexS: Hundred Years War, Fantasy, Civil War in Russia (630 points)

Hello everybody! My name is Alex, I'm from Russia, and I'm a Stakhanovite.

The fact that I'm going to move to another apartment and about a month I can not paint. Well, or I can, but not so much and quickly, as usual. So I decided to meet the monthly rate for a week. Let's see what happened.

Firstly, I finished my concept project called "One hundred miniatures for the Hundred Years War." This project will allow me to play small games for the period of the hundred-year war in Europe. Until I was determined who it would be - the French, English, mercenaries or just bandits. So I did not draw any symbolism on clothes. Most likely it will be a big gang (or even two) of tuschenov or jakery.

The next part of my work - these are two large additions to my collection of fantasy and miniatures for a visual novel for the period of the civil war in Russia.

I really love this event because it is possible to paint miniatures that have been in the closet for years and decades.

For example, this Bretonian knight, made up of a warrior of chaos and an oldschool ogre.

Or an old necromancer and a miniature from the firm "Rackham"

Or here is such a strange set: the barbarian from the Russian manufacturer "Technologist", the elf of the work of a Czech master and a goblin made from a skaven.

Well or here such classical and new miniatures from GW

I paid special attention to miniatures for the period of the Civil War in Russia.

Blacksmith and French (?) pilot

Crazy with a shaft and an old Cossack.

Junior officer of the White Army.

Two Orthodox priests. The one on the left is made by the great Russian sculptor Presnukhin. On the right - also a Russian sculptor, they both made these miniatures for Siberia Miniatures. Since they are molded by Russian sculptors, in details they correspond completely to reality.

 Cook and hand bear. Some of the villains in my visual novel are a cannibal cook, and a bear eats people (in Russian it is connected with the play of words, but I'm not sure that it is understandable in English).

Farmer and his wife with children. Miniatures do not quite fit in appearance to Russia, but I have a German colonist with his wife and children.

A woman in a national Ukrainian suit and a veteran of the Russian-Turkish war.

Many thanks that you read this great post and looked at all the pictures. I think now you can give my wonderful curator Michael a break from my endless posts.

total
124 inf 28mm - 620 points
1 monster creature - 10 points

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Wow!  No, seriously wow, Alex!  Your posts are just amazing and always so varied in content.  The 100 Years War project would have been stunning enough, but the characters that you have selected for your visual novel are really intriguing and I can't wait to hear more about it.  I am more than happy to honour your 630 points.

Best of luck with the move and we hope to have you posting again soon.

Quiet, perhaps too quiet?

It is suspiciously quite around here this morning!

Not a huge amount in the inbox for Minion Michael to deal with, I can only assume that everyone is entering the second bonus round, due to be submitted by midnight tonight, I know that’s what has been taking a lot of my time of late.

That said we have some noteworthy additions this week with Keith, another massive submission from Alex, (how does he do it?) and a debut post from Grahame.

 Anyway enough wittering, let’s get on with the Saturday Showcase!

From RayR: 28mm 17th Century English Horse & Mounted Civilians (95 Points)

 Phew! Finally got some figures done!

The first 6 x 28mm figures are from Warfare Miniatures and represent a generic English of Jacobite

Horse regt at a pinch they could be French as well. These will be used for Donnybrook, when I can get my butt in gear!!

The next 3 figures are from Col Bill's Depot Battalion

selling as C17th Century Mounted Peasants

Once again these will be used for my Donnybrook games......yeah I now?

Not too sure how Mr Campbell will score these as there's an extra lass on one of the horse's, but I guess you already noticed that! 

Now I gotta take the kids swimming for 2 1/2 hours. Wonder if I'll get time to finish my 

BFG Bonus round figures!!

Fingles crossed!

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It's great to see that you've come out of your sick bed, Ray, brush in hand and purpose in your heart! :)

Personally I'm not a big fan of Warfare Miniatures' castings, but you've done them great service here. Besides, who can go wrong with a bunch of red-coated donkey-wollopers, wearing floppy hats, festooned with pistols and swords? I like those mounted civilian models as well, especially that one of the young girl riding side-saddle behind her father. An excellent series of poses and quite useful for the tabletop, I'd expect. 

These nine equestrians, plus passenger will give you 95 points for your tally, Mr. Rousell. Well done sir!

From MilesR: 28mm Pirates Unaligned Faction (125 Points)

My first of several Blood & Plunder Factions for this Challenge - the rather unsparingly named "Unaligned Faction" - 25 28mm metal figures.  These are really "beefy" sculpts with lots of character.  I did find cleaning them up to be a bit tedious.

Not being part of any faction allows lots of variability in how to paint the figures and that was a lot of fun.  I decided to base them on a simple "sand" base using a vallejo textured sand. I tried a few sceniced bases but they just didn't look good on the ship models.

More scurvy pirates .

The Captain of this motley crew.  Hmmm, I wonder where his ship is?  Perhaps she'll show up  in a future post?

A peek and some new terrain with LEDs - the light flickers like a flame and will be partially concealed under some coal.  What dungeon doesn't need a still?  The still parts were all 3D printed.

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This is a great looking mob of pirates, Miles! I've only seen the promotional ads for these figures and it's nice to know that the models live up to the original 3D renders. I like the vibrant colours you've gone with and sand effect you've achieved from the Vallejo product looks very...Caribbean! Another similar product (and perhaps a bit cheaper than Vallejo) is Liquitex Texture Gel. It's acrylic based, so you can mix colour directly into it and you can get it in a 8 fl oz / 237 ml tub for around $8 US. Greg, Byron and I have been using it by the gallon for years now - love the stuff.

Is this for a new participation game you're planning, Miles? With the hint of an upcoming barque in the offing I sense a Miles-Proportioned Level of Escalation to this project. :)

125 Points for you, Mr. R!

From JamieM: Dark Elf Black Guard (151 Points)

I've always liked Dark Elves in Warhammer (and other fantasy games).  Who could fail to like emo, goth, whiny elves who mope about in the dark being mean because they feel like it?

They also get all the coolest sounding stuff, like Cold One riders, massive Hydras and Executioners, so I thought I'd move towards finishing the army with the last large unit I have for them - The Black Guard.

With a name like that, I thought I should probably paint the solid armour black..... so I entered that special circle of painting hell that involves drybrushing grey on black, then deciding that's too heavy and trying to knock it back, then deciding it's knocked back too far and highlighting with grey again, and so on.

Anyway, having made a vow never to paint a black armoured army in the future (and as we wargamers seem incapable of sticking to sensible resolutions, expect to see my Raven Guard army in the challenge next year!) I managed to get them finished to a standard I'm happy enough with.  I think the key was getting some other colours on them to give perspective, as I found it really tough to judge the black on it's own.

These chaps are the elite who watch over the Sorceresses of the Dark Elves and hopefully pack a chaos bashing punch with their mighty halberds so they can take out all NickJ's horrible chaotic chaps with aplomb.

Black armour aside, there were a couple of design choices that annoyed me with these figures.  The main one was they carry whacking great big halberds, but GW decided to have the top knots all hang to the right... behind the halberds.  This means they're far trickier to paint and also then harder to see.  Silly design choice as they aren't following history or anything.

Anyway, the best thing about them was the fact that this was a bonus unit in some ways.  GW have started putting two options on a lot of their kits, with two sets of arms, weapons and heads to go on one set of bodies so you have a choice of which unit to make.  These arms and heads came from the executioner kit I did last year and as I fortunately had at least 30 spare unpainted spear-elves lying around (like we all do, right?) it was a simple matter to clip, stick and convert a load of cheap ebay figures into these Black Guard.

30 28mm figures so 150 points if my maths does me right.

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What a terrific looking unit Jamie! I agree, painting black figures can be some hard sledding, especially when you're wanting to achieve a certain effect such as with highlighting gloss black armour contrasted with black cloth (I almost threw my recent Darth Vader in the trash because of this). Anyway, I think you've nailed it with these sado-boyz and I like your use of red as a counterpoint to the swathes of black. 

These 30 Dark Elves will give you 151 points including a pip for their blood-red banner. Well done Jamie!

From DebD: Reaper: Harsk, Dwarf Ranger (5 Points)

Happy Friday!

Scale: 28mm
Mfg: Reaper Miniatures
Product: 60004: Harsk, Dwarf Ranger
Material: Metal

He has a very intense stare. I think he might be chasing down the elf in the forest (previously painted).. he must not like her ballet like poses ;)

I had so much fun painting all the items he is carrying (especially the teapot).

This is my first time adding the foam moss, but I like how it added some depth to the base.

1 x 28mm from Reaper

Thanks!

Deb

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Haha! Yes, Deb, I contracted this fellow to have a little 'chat' with that poncy 'Elf from the Bolshoi'. :)

Again you impress us with your brushwork for this stolid chap. His teapot and plaid rolled blanket are excellent touches, and I agree, the moss adds a nice bit of vibrancy to the flagstone base. I also like how you've done the blued steel of his rune axe - a nasty bit of ironmongery there.

5 well-earned points for you Deb! Lovely work.

From SanderS: Cheating... (15 Points)

Hoi there,

Okay so terrain in the Challenge... I really do not think I have this fixed in my system yet, it feels like cheating, me entering scenery for points. That said, the last two weeks have seen me correcting test of 269 pupils and that kinda sucked the time and energy out of painting. I also have been too busy to react to all the excellent posts here on the Challenge blog, sorry for that.

Shortly before the correcting wave broke, I have been able to paint up some scatter terrain or how you want to call it. Most of it is Dungeon terrain, doors, cupboards and a tomb from Mantic, a table with landscape inset from Zealot games (they do excellent scenery and figures) and two palm trees from well erm China really, the wife ordered them through Ali-express or something like that?

So here are pictures of all the separate items.

Here's a close up to show that the base of the scenery is 6 x 6". In height the palm trees are a little over 6" but the rest is well under. So I leave the scoring up to Curt.

Cheers Sander

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I think we can all certainly sympathize how the desires of our hobbies can often get 'realigned' by the realities of life. Nonetheless, it's great to see that you've been nudging the ball forward with these little terrain gems, Sander. I love the bookcases and that table with the terrain inset - who cool is that?! I'm also impressed by those very fine palm trees. I'll have to pester you to find out where in Ali Express you found them.

Let's err on the side of generosity and say 15 points for the lot? Sounds about right to me.