From MikeD - Breaking the ice with some Norman knights (120 pts)

The goal for my Challenge this year is to make some headway into building up my historical wargaming armies. During the past couple of years I think most of what I've painted have been skirmish and board game figures. A lot of GW and painting-for-its-own-sake projects. Probably because the possibilities for putting big armies on the table has been so limited. Anyhow, this past November I went to my first Historicon since the pandemic started, and it lit my fire for getting back to my hobby roots. It's been a minute that I took on a big army project. 

Over last summer I read a couple of books about the Normans in Italy that really got my imagination working on getting an army together I could use for Italo-Norman and Kingdom of Sicily. ('Normans in the South and Kingdom in the Sun, both by John Julius Norwich). After shopping through all the figures on sale at the show (Conquest, Vitrix, Gripping Beast) I decided I didn't love any of them and I wound up ordering Perry Crusaders by overseas mail, because you know, wargamer.

So here is the first batch of what should be several entries of Normans over the next couple of months. (By this point I feel that there are certain ranges that have appeared in the Challenge over the years that they 'Need No Introduction') And that's just from me; I've seen at least one set of Norman knights already in this years edition.

Also, let me say how happy I am to back in the Challenge. I believe this is my sixth year. This past year the profile of the Challenge seems to have increased, and I've heard a lot of my favorite podcasters and bloggers talking about their participation. It's just increased the connection  I feel with so many talented people who share love for their hobby.

So the math should be pretty straightforward here:

12 28mm mounted @10 pts each = 120 pts.

From Millsy:

Lovely brushwork Mike. There's something properly menacing about ranks of Norman cavalry. I should know, I have some too and coincidentally used Perry Crusaders as well. Yours really look the part. That diamond blue and white shield is a corker and really makes your commander pop. The basing is spot on too.

It's great to hear you getting the same sort of buzz from participating mate. That's just what the Challenge is all about. Keep it coming!

From TeemuL: Imperial Imperial Fists [Coruscant] (45 points)

After keeping the distance on Perelandra, it seemed like a nice idea to continue with that habit. Imperial world of Coruscant seems nice and easy, but there seems to be a war nevertheless. Imperial Imperial Fists, half a company in fact, seem to preparing for a battle on the green fields. Nothing says Imperial better than Imperial, doesn't it? May be Imperial Fists says it even better, with a little punch, eh? I know, Imperial Stout would be the ultimate victor, but let's not drink and space drive.

Imperial Fists are one of the original 20 legions created by the Emperor thousands and thousands years ago (the current time is about 40 000 AD) and they wore the bright yellow colors. They were known for their specialization in the siege warfare and carefully created and executed plans. Later on they were splitted in several Chapters, but one of the Chapters carried on with the old name. They still stick to plans and formalities, they follow the Codex Astartes closely, so you can see that all of these are members of the 3rd company (red trims on shoulder pads), each unit is 10 men strong (can be divided in two 5 man combat squads if needed) and led by a sergeant (red helmet) or veteran sergeant (red helmet with with stripe) while his second in command is a veteran (white helmet) leading the another combat squad, if needed. You can also see the chapter icon on the left shoulder pad (inadequate xenos intelligence most likely sees just a tiny black spot on a white spot before being terminated by overwhelming firepower) and the squad type and number on the right shoulder pad (this might seem as a tiny white spot on a black spot to an untrained eye). They carry flags with them, so that the high command can follow their actions in an old fashioned way in case the high tech equipment fails due the the warp storm, magnetic fields, radiation or other malfunctions. In the flags you get a better look on the squad numbers, the red stripe on the flag identies the sergeant. Flags are made of that very useful metal thing you can find on some wine bottles.

There seems to be some chaos there, since some of the second squads seem to have disoriented space marines, which is quite unlikely to happen on the parade field. May be they are expecting an assault and survey the environment closely, who knows? All of these were already glued on the bases by the previous owner and I didn't want to try to detach them, I only noticed the strange facings after priming them and starting to paint them yellow... All the disoriented fellows went to the 2nd squads, they can train there with the veteran. I know some people now use round bases for these, but since these were already glued to the square bases, it wasn't actually an option for me.

Chapter icons visible on the left, squad icons on the right

The bases represent the ever green fields of the grim and dark future, where all the battles were fought about the 20 years ago or so. There is green sand (or something similar) glued to them and small tufts, which in this scale look like bushes. I sprinkled some red sand there as well to break the green fields, there are flowers and other non-green vegetation on Coruscant - most likely very poisonous.

Veteran sergeant on the left of the left squad, veteran on the left of the right squad

There is a warp maelstrom next to Coruscant and Vlogsphere doesn't sound that welcoming, so let's jump in to the Warp Maelstrom and see what happens (I expect to apper somewhere along the Middle Ring)!

There are 50 Space Marine, each 6mm tall and worth half a point, so 25 points in total. That makes a Squirrel as well (who would have thought?) and the 20 points for the Coruscant planet.

My personal Squirrel count: 7

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

- 6mm Epic Imperial Fists

From Millsy:

Lovely little yellow fellas you have here Teemu. This is about the only scale I enjoy painting yellow! Good to see the old square bases in use too mate. Another 45 points on your tally. Nice work!

From PeterB: An Iron Snakes Space Marine [Istvaan V] (75 points)

Greetings all from Istvaan V. For those of you not familiar with this planet, I believe it was the site of one of the early battles in the betrayal of the Warmaster Horus when he betrayed his father the Emperor and turned to Chaos. If you would like to know more, I believe there are a large number of education volumes available from your local Games Workshop under the umbrella title, The Horus Heresy.

For Christmas Mrs B was kind enough to buy me a paint your own, articulated, Primaris Space Marine, from McFarlane Toys. Obviously this wasn't part of my original plan for the painting challenge, but as she gave me the gift Mrs B did wonder how many points it would be worth, due to the fact it is 180mm tall!

Not being a 40K player anymore (I still do own a company of Space Marines, but they just slumber peacefully in their foam trays in storage) I am however a big fan of one Black Library author, Mr Dan Abnett. For those who don't know his work, most of his GW titles are about a chap called Gaunt (think Sharpe in space) or an Inquisitor called Eisenhorn. He has also written Dr Who, 2000AD and even Mr Men, but I digress. Mr Abnett does have one title about an Ultramarine successor chapter called the Iron Snakes, so it was really the only choice for colour scheme. Therefore being another chapter from the Black Library, I believe that qualifies me for the points for visiting this planet.

Ultramarine shown for scale

He is armed with a Hellblaster gun and is technically known as an "artist proof" so is fully articulated and therefore also comes apart to make painting easier.

The undercoating stage

The only issue I really had painting it, was there isn't really any option for a model grip, you just have to hold it to paint it and then wait for parts to dry!

As it did come apart, the shoulder pads were the one part I painted fully before putting back together, which definitely helped with the detail.

The Hellblaster is technically loose, but as his trigger hand isn't really flexible (he isn't Action Man, or GI Joe to those across the Atlantic!) once he has hold of the gun, unless you want paint to start coming off, it is not going anywhere.

It comes with a stand that plugs into either of the feet, but to be honest, it can stand by itself as well.

Finally here it is with a ruler to show scale.

So to the points. Well, I don't know. I am sure of 20 points for the planet. Then 20 points for the Space Marine? I'll leave it to Millsy to decide.

From Millsy:

Crikey, he's massive! I hope you didn't need a second mortgage for the paint Peter. Seriously though, what an absolutely cracking model and what a wonderful job you've done too. The shoulder pads are just spectacular and the smooth finish on his armour can't have been easy with a metallic on something this size either. Well done mate!

As to points? I can't score by height or weight unfortunately or you'd break the Miles' spreadsheet and we can't have him in tears this early in the Challenge. Let's call him 50 points for scale and another 5 for the shoulder pads. Plus the quarant bonus that's 75 points all up.

Amazing. I'm gobsmacked.

 

From ByronM - Death Guard Traitors for Istvaan V (45 points)

In typical fashion, I had grand visions of planning out my challenge painting projects ahead of time, and in typical fashion, never did...  So after finishing last weeks submission I madly looked at the star map to try to figure out where to go next and what to paint (which is a lovely and cool map by the way, I just never had any real chance to look at it and pre-plan!), and saw that the next stop on my path was:

Istvaan V: Betrayal; Heretical/Heretics or Loyalty/Loyalists

Well, that's lucky, as I have a pile of Warhammer 30k Death Guard models from Forge World and have been meaning to get around to paint some more specialty weapons!

So, here is a small squad of 5 Death Guard Heretics with meltaguns suitable for clearing out the loyalist scum that worship the false emperor.

These are done in a very grimy style similar to how I did the core of my force a few years ago.  They are painted a bone colour as a base, then washed with a mix of weathering powders in IPA so that it flows well through the recesses, and then wiped off the higher areas with a Q-tip with IPA on it.  I then go back and paint all the details and they are done.  Overall a simple fast and effective method to get these guys looking like they just lived through the bombing and exterminatus protocol that happened on Istvaan V. 

Being a small squad of 5 28mm models this should net me 5 points each (25 points total) plus 20 points for the Istvaan V bonus for 45 total points.  Oh and as my 3rd different themed entry they also net me one additional squirrel point to bring my total there to 3.

From Millsy:

Someone else painting Death Guard! What a great bunch these are Byron, the 30K vibe is such a different look from the stuff I am painting and so very tempting too. The weathering powders mixed with pale ale is something I'd never have considered but it works very well indeed :-P

More please! 

From ScottM: Vulcan, Solaris & Arda (111 Points)

Our tour of the Outer Ring continues with our arrival at Vulcan (something logical). For this I went with some computers and miscellaneous objective tokens for Stargrave (Stargrave fig for size comparison). If I remember correctly, all the markers in pic 1 and 2 were 3D printed by a friend of mine. The ones in pic 3 are metal and I think they are actual Stargrave objective tokens.

Next up is Solaris (deception/illusion). For this world, I went with a 28mm metal Stargrave Mystic from North Star Military Figures' Stargrave line.

I'm really enjoying painting the metal Stargrave sculpts as the figures are nice, clean, characterful figures and they've all been great casts.

And finally we have Arda (fantasy). For this I went with the remainder of my Frostgrave Gnolls. These 28mm figs are all from the plastic Gnoll box set.

So that should be:

10 - 28mm foot figs = 50 points

bunch of markers = 1 point

3 locations (Vulcan, Solaris, Arda) = 60 points

Total = 111 points

From Millsy:

Those are some wonderful objective markers Scott! I'm trying to stay clear of Stargrave but I can feel myself spiralling into the black hole ever more when I see posts like this. I love all the little things like this that really bring a table to life instead of simple card or plastic tokens.

I like your gnolls too. I really didn't enjoy painting mine. Maybe I should have used some more colour variation like you have, yours are certainly more pleasing to the eye than mine.

Three quadrant visits in one post is quite something. Well done!

From PaulOG: Chaos Hellbrute and Razormouth (Skaro)(53 points)

My next quadrant stop is Skaro, planet of Strange Doctors and Weird Robots. Ironically it is here, and not Istvaan V, that we find my next submission - a Chaos Hellbrute/Dreadnought. Basically, this is a hulking murder obsessed robot named KILLFRENZY who is controlled by an insane, blood craving heretic. Good times!

For the 40k affectionados this is a converted Blood Angels Death Company Dreadnought fitted with a pair of nasty looking Blood Talon close combat weapons, heavy flamer and storm bolter.  Lost in battle when its former pilot succumbed to wounds, the happy-go-lucky World Eaters salvaged it and interred their own ill-mannered psychopath who rather enjoys his new toy and its plush (if somewhat blood spattered) upholstery.

I enjoyed sculpting the battle damage and trying to get a more dynamic feel to what is a rather static and boxy sculpt, even trying some OSL and 3d printed effects (Translation - yes, I again made the classic Challenge error in being completely obsessed with minor detail on a single model). I also used some new techniques with oil washes over acrylic base coats.; it certainly takes a lot longer to dry and I haven't got it quite right yet, but I got the grungier look I wanted.  I'm trying to improve my basing game too and did more in that regard with a slain foe who, quite coincidentally, looks remarkably just like the new Thousand Sons force that Reilly is painting... 

"All is Dust..."

While I'm here I'll also post this strange little fellow whom I found lurking in my stash: a Razormouth from the Reaper Black Bones series. I built him as a beastie for Silver Bayonet, but he will be equally at home in the Necromunda Underhive or similar.

Overall I would like to claim a combined 25 points for the large Dreadnought model and his fallen adversary, 5 more for the Razormouth and a 20 planetary bonus for a total of 50 points (and 10 skullz for anyone counting). 

That completes my 4 outer sphere planets (Istvaan V, Glorantha, Klenadathu and Skaro) and so I now transit via the adjacent Great Abyssal to start the challenge of the middle ring...

From Millsy:

I see I'm not the only one being suckered into fiddling with detail! Well worth the effort though Paul, that Hellbrute is an absolute beast and looks amazing! I'd love to see WIP pictures if you have them. I had a good laugh at the 1000 Sons corpse on the base.

Good to see I'm not the only Chaos afficionado tweaking the nose of the loyalists with cheeky basing elements. I really like what you achieved here making it look like he's be chopped into pieces and sand/dust is leaking out (is that right?).

Cracking stuff all round and certainly worth a few extra points for the custom work and the basing. Nice one mare!

From TeemuL: Oceanic Motor Torpedo Boats [Perelandra] (35 points)

We dive to the Middle Ring, and find a tempting planet called Perelandra and we take a closer look at this oceanic planet. And what we find from this place, G-5 MTBs (they are not mountain bikes and I'm not a naval expert by any means) going full speed and guns ready. G-5 class of Motor Torpedo Boat was a Soviet design before and during WW2. Three of them were captured by Finnish forces (hooray!), but only two saw action under Finnish flag before they were returned to Soviet Union after Armistice. Well, here we have four boats, so this is not the Finnish navy. :) They have white flags with red star, so they are clearly Soviets.

The white spots in front are intentional

I don't know much about naval warfare or ships (or boats), but a lot can be learned from Wikipedia, like most of the stuff in the first chapter. I got these from a Warlord Games mystery box (hinted by someone during previous Challenge (or a Challenge before that)) among other things. Like I said, naval battles are a mystery to me, but they are a great fit for the Perelandra planet - I knew they would be useful. I basically followed the cover art on these little boats, painted the windows, spotlights, crew members, coated everything with grey Contrast before using brighter colors to pick up the details - for example the crew members have dark blue uniform, rather pale skin and green helmets.

Since I don't play with these things, basing was a bit difficult. Should I base them or not, and if yes, what bases to use. Without bases they get easily broken in the storage box sitting calmly on a shelf for half a century, I decided to base them. And base them like a small diorama (vignette? dioramette?), which should protect them from wear and tear and also look rather pretty on the shelf by themselves. The base is mdf base from Warbases (terrain base, maybe) and I glued the boats on it in a nice formation. I wanted to create some wave effects, but decided to do it in 2D. I could have looked at reference pictures, but that would have given me pressure, so I ignored it and just painted dark blue first and then gradually lighter tones until fine white lines and spots here and there. It was quite fun, also painting these small boats was fun, but I have no reason to buy more of these, right?

I looked at the posts from previous Challenge, and these 1:300 Cruel Seas ships have been scored as 15mm vehicles for 8 points a piece. And there has been points given for small crew members as well. 8 points for this vehicle is a bit too much in my opinion, but I'll take it. And 1:300 scale is pretty much same as the 6mm scale, so half a point for full figure is reasonable. There are 8 more or less half crew members, so that's 2 points for the crew and 32 points for the boats, total 34 points and a squirrel.

Closeup

My personal Squirrel count: 6

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

From Millsy:

Super stuff Teemu! There's not a lot to work with in terms of colour with these guys so the effort you've put into the water effect really lifts them up. The high contrast styles is really convincing and gives a real sense of speed. Have an extra point for the flags mate.

From JohnE - 28mm Town Crier [Babylon5] - 25 Points.

Just cruising around the Quadrant at a scorching sub-light speed. Here's a Town Cryer [sic] from Foundry. Same old bag of tricks - Scale75 ScaleColor and InstantColors. Makes a pretty good animated character for Sharp Practice and seems operatic to me, so fingers crossed.

Points Summary:

1x28mm foot @ 5 points = 5 points

Babylon5 (Outer Ring) bonus = 20 points

Total = 25 points

From DaveD

Oj yay, oh yay,,i can hear him shout from here - lets add another 25 to the tally!

From JeremyM: Solar System, Demon Donoldium Drumph [Death Star] (60 points)

  Hi All,

Procrastination (and waiting on a birthday to not spoil a surprise) has me starting a bit late this year, but I was painting pretty frantically right at the start of the challenge. I’ll start my first entry with something that might fall under the terrain category perhaps?

3D Print of Solar System to scale

So this first entry is a model of the solar system I made for my nephew who just turned 7 this past weekend. He loves space and when I saw this model on thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4656228) I just had to print and paint it for him. So I’m a little unclear at what scale the figures one might play with on this model as the scale of it is 1: 1,250,000,000, so umm figures the size of dust might be too big. That being said Curt pushed me to include this in the challenge as it fit this year’s theme to a T!

Earth and the moon are 3rd from the left

Saturn's ring was rather thin, but survived shipping

I printed the overall structure (the two halves of the base and the two halves of the partial sun) as well as the big planets on my ender 3 max in PLA filament. It’s a pretty big model with the base coming in around 40cm wide, 20cm tall. Jupiter is about 10 or 15 cm alone. The small planets and all of the writing were printed in resin. I had to learn how to make text 3d to do this, but it was worth it to add the planet names for him even if it did start to make the base look a bit busy. Fun to also learn a new 3d modelling skill as well. Researching how to paint the planets was a challenge. I’m not sure I got it completely right as the online photos and colours vary depending on when they were taken, the light etc. Overall this took me about 1 month to print and another month to paint. My nephew loved his birthday present…despite it not really being a toy. He told me on videochat that “I have the whole world in my hands!”  Made me a pretty happy uncle to hear that! The model does an excellent job giving a real sense of scale. Since I completed the final parts of this right around the start of the challenge I’ll claim 1 terrain submission for 20 points as a lot was done prior to that but the model is pretty darn big so at least 6” square would have been painted near the end. And now onto my Hubris entry for the Death Star…and what a more fitting entrant than the embodiment of “excessive pride or self-confidence” than the former legitimately not re-elected U.S. President.

Demon Donoldium Drumph

This model I call Demon Donoldium Drumph. He is a kitbash of a great old one on a scooter (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4057326) and a caricature of Donald Trump (https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/donald-trump-pooyanofsky ).  He was made for a campaign game I was running using OnePageRules GrimDark Future setting. Over the course of the game there were multiple variations of Donoldium Drumph as he morphed into ever more evil versions until he finally met his demise fittingly sent back to the warp by Curt’s Inquisitor model. I’ll post a synopsis of our campaign on Curt’s blog soon (thanks Curt!).

Various versions of Donoldium Drumph from our campaign

Since he is riding what is effectively a death guard blight-hauler I think he likely counts as a 28mm vehicle. So I'll start my journey on the Analogue Hobbies galaxy on the Death Star....hmm where to next?

1 Terrain @ 20 points
1 28mm Vehicle @ 20 points
Death Star @ 20 points
Total  = 60 points

Thanks, JeremyM

From DaveD 

A welcome to another of the Friday crew - great to have you along. I agree it certainly fits the theme alright! Even better you got to be the cool uncle! The Demon Donoldium Drumph is to me weirdly scary.. and rightly so i reckon. Good to have you off the mark - 60 it is!