From BruceR: All aboard Lady Sarah's Star Yacht for the Death Star, OOP Citadel, Front Rank Sauerkraut (150 points)

Back for another Wednesday and kicking off with another ticket to ride on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht.  For admission to the cargo hold and maybe the co-pilots seat I present Amelia pilot extraordinaire.  This is my 8th and final crew member for Stargrave.  Amelia is from Victoria Miniatures and a freebee from a past Adepticon.  Hopefully she will travel again this year to the Windy City.  I again created the base with table junk to blend with the other crew members.  Tally ho with laz pistol and power sword. 

Once we land on the Death Star our space pirates look for an ancient artifact used in primitive times.  The item is worth billions of credits from collectors and could only be found where all items Of Questionable Design can be found.  This little gem sat on my shelf for likely since the early 90's.  As I finally completed a green skin army the infamous LEAD BELCHER Goblin Organ Gun Multiple Cannon from a group of Machineries of Destruction, was no longer in the mix and it sat there, until.... AHPC.  Doing some google research it appears I do not have all the correct crew, but the extras do have big balls.  It's also missing some wheel blades.  Fun to paint and little graffiti added.  The Lead Belcher is a multiple weapon, comprising three small bombards and one howitzer.      

The Citadel Lead Blecher and crew:

There end my travels for this week.  Now on to the Sauerkraut.  I finished my New Jersey Blues last week and intended to get a start on completing the Front Rank Hessians I had in the pile.  I admit I paint best in groups of 6-8. I had finished 7 of the Hessians and was able to play Sharp Practice 2, which recharged the batteries.  And painted up the other 6 for a gang of 13.  This with the other 20 I have for SP2, 4 groups and an officer AWI.  Look out rebellious colonists.

   

The Group

Thats a wrap for my Wednesday.   Hope everybody has a great week.  Keep painting and playing.

20 28mm foot                     = 100 pts

Travel on the Star Yacht     =   20 pts

The Death Star                    =   20 pts

28mm artillery                    =    10 pts

Total                                    = 150 pts

 ***

 

Fine work once again Bruce. That old Citadel gun is very fun to see, and work on the Hessians is very, very impressive, another fine display of brush skills. 150 points for you, well done.

 

GregB

 

From AlexK - More Superheros and space adventures (101 points)

The pull of Atomic Mass Games "Marvel Crisis Protocol" is still pulling strong and most of the last month has been spent painting more Marvel characters. Over the last weeks I have painted in no particular order, Ms. Marvel, Ms. Marvel Embiggened, Bob; Agent of Hydra, Clea, Sin, M.O.D.O.K, Killmonger and Baron Mordo. I still have 10 more characters left to paint and then I think I can call this project done.....for now. The bigger characters like M.O.D.O.K and Ms. Marvel are really good fun to paint and in Ms. Marvel's case quite a challenge. A model with only 3 bold primary colours should be simple on paper, but getting the colours to transition between light and shadow turned out to be a lot harder than I had first imagined. Points wise I think I'm good for 8 x 40mm figures, so 56 points. I also can't help think I'm missing a trick by not submitting these for the planets challenge, but that's a problem for future Alex who will be in no doubt scrabbling for points mid-march.

As a little side project I have also jumped into painting a crew up for Osprey games "Stargrave", a miniature agnostic sci-fi skirmish game were you write the backstory for your crew and do exactly as you please. This format is increasingly beginning to become much more appealing to me due to it's lack of limitations and I'm much happier letting my imagination run riot. So up next we have the first 5 members of the crew for the star ship "Enlightenment".

The "Enlightenment" is a prison transport ship that was transporting prisoners between local systems toward the prison satellite station "Infinity VI" when the galaxy was plunged into civil unrest and contact with the station was lost leaving the "Enlightenment" travelling star systems looking for a new home. The crew consist of a mixture of prison officer, detention droids and several members of cargo. As is usual, orange jump suits are reserved for the prisoners as tradition dictates. It has been good fun trying different skin tones, uniforms and kit bashing to create a cohesive team. That is another 4 x 28mm crew figures for 20 points and a scratch built detention droid that stands 40mm tall for 7 points.

Cheers,

Alex

 

***

 

Hi Alex - well, I must confess, I just can't do superheroes...but that's OK, it is good that there is a ton of variety to the hobby and to subjects that motivate the participants in The Painting Challenge. Whatever my hopes for Marvel's executives to be placed in a rocket and launched directly into the sun while the rest of the company simply plunges into bankrupcty, I know great brushwork when I see it, and you have done a fine job here on these heroes - who other Challengers will surely recognize. The colours are brilliant, and each character is quite distinctive (even though Marvel writers will make all of them exactly the same in 15 seconds, but I digress). Well done.

 

And another Stargrave crew! It is fun to see this set of rules taking off amongst many Challengers, and it seems like a set of rules I should check out for myself. Once more, your brushwork is top shelf, and the back story sounds fun and engaging (so, the opposite of Marvel). I'm particularly blown away by that "Dentention Droid" - how cool is that thing?! I'm going to score that up as a 28mm vehicle, so you will get some bonus points for your excellent conversion work all around on that Stargrave crew - hopefully supporting Future Alex...

GregB

From PaulSS: 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (Vogsphere) - (112 points)

 

My next entry to the challenge is the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment the second African-American regiment in the Union forces and made more famous in the 1989 film Glory.

Why Vogsphere? Well here is a tale of heinous bureaucracy, instead of the $13 per month paid to their white comrades, they were only paid $10 and had a $3 stoppage for clothing that was not withheld from the pay of white enlisted men.

A Congressional bill authorized equal and full pay to those enlisted troops who had been free men as of April 19, 1861. 

Not all troops of the 54th met this criteria, Colonel Hallowell had them swear "You do solemnly swear that you owed no man unrequited labor on or before the 19th day of April 1861. So help you God".

Heinous bureaucracy foiled!

All the figures come from the American Civil War Union Infantry 1861-65 set of plastics, and I've assembled the infantry in this unit at right shoulder shift, the African-American heads are from the supplementary set available.

The standards are from Flags of War.

Having completed Vogsphere I throw myself into the Great Abyssal and journey to the Inner Ring

Eighteen 28mm figures and a couple of standards with the location bonus is 112 more points on the board.

American Civil War Duel Totalizer: 100 foot, 2 mounted, 4 horses (641pts)

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

***

Good morning Paul - Only one Regiment this morning? You were hinting at a big week this week, and I was expecting a corps or something at least. At any rate, once more we are treated to your fine brushwork in the ACW setting, on a unit of some renown at that! Very well done - 112 points for you. 

GregB

On Squirrel Patrol - Side Duel Update #3

Hello fellow Squirrel enthusiasts.

First of all my apologies for being a couple of days late with this update, real life got in the way a little, but have no fear, I have compiled a list of our usual Squirrel chasing painters and tallied their scores.

Please sir, can I have a point please?

Top Squirrel baggers TeemuL and MikeW continue to set the pace for the side duel, though KerryT is trying to close the gap a little. However, I am afraid that I am going to have to declare the first penalty in this contest. It has come to my attention that one painter has forgotten to properly label his posts. Yes, you are right to boo and jeer. The rules were made clear earlier in the challenge and this type of behaviour cannot be allowed to continue lest it set a dangerous precedent. As the Squirrelfinder General, it is my sad duty to issue a Yellow Card to the culprit. Let it not be said that I am not without mercy though. The responsible party will still be allowed to claim future Squirrel points (properly labelled ones), but they have forfeited their opportunity to claim the unlabelled point. Perhaps they will think of the repercussions of their actions in future.

Penalty! Improper labelling!

Oh, but who is this ne'er-do-well, this rapscallion, this tearaway? Why, it is none other than the Snowlord himself!! You can find the offending post here if you are curious.

And with that out of the way, on to the more positive news of the current scores. We have quite a few more points on the scoreboard, but no-one in double figures yet. Get those brushes working everyone.

A question was asked on a post by IanS if he could score points for Napoleonic Line infantry and Light infantry from the same nation. Unfortunately, no. It is one point per army, even if they do have different uniforms.

Keep hunting those Squirrels folks, and don't forget to label your posts. 

From ChrisW - Another Mixed bag (535 points)

 We travel from LV-426 to Cybertron via Sarah's yacht...

...and then we plunge into the great Abyssal arriving at Krypton.

 

 Cybertron

Dystopian Wars Prussian medium robots and 2 Canadian Robots

• Medium robots (7) 40mm tall figures 

 

Dominion of Canada robots

Metzger robots (3)

For a long time these were the biggies in the Dystopian Wars universe, supplanted just before Spartan games went belly up. Also Prussian, they are amphibious and come in both land and water versions and I am painting them in pairs. I figured, I already have 2 pairs painted up, so might as well finish up the last of them...(and yes it is an excessive amount of these for anyone to have)

 

 

Waterline versions

Krypton (Super figs)

I have actually had to stop myself from painting these figures over the last couple of weeks. I am trying to keep with the planetary themes and move in some sort of order throughout the rings. So while I have back tracked once, I really only want to use Sarah's yacht to skip over any planets where I just can't match any figure to theme.  

So Krypton means super heroes, and for me that is a good size collection of Old Glory and Reaper figures. Some of the Old Glory figures (5) are quite large topping out at 60mm! Most are listed as 33mm on their site, but really are in keeping with the scale creep of 28mm modern figures. Some of the figures are very primitive, you could not confuse them with the modern DC or Marvel lines. Heck, even some of the Heroclics are better figures. So why was I keen to paint these, dunno! It just got into my mind to do them. I figured contrast paints might work on these as there were some deep details, but my experience with contrast paints told me that contrast alone would not work. Maybe that's just me, I have some luck with contrast, but basically as a base coat, adding highlights after. 

The Big'uns (4)

Exitor, Host leader

 

Triangle man & Major Payne

The rest of the named supers (mostly named by me)

 Teuton, Red Dynamo and Basher. All are from Reaper, the 'twins' are bones while Red Dynamo is metal.  

Red lightning

Blue streak vs Earth Mother

The villains: King Pin, The Magister, Pinhead

Orange Julius, The Proletariat, Green virus

Ultra, Night watch, Guardian

Dynamo, Gladiator Ape

Green Ronin, Mr Hilter, Cyberman

Artemis, Blue Hawk, Blue Angel

The Henchmen

These guys worked out as I envisioned them. I see them as being made out of a super strong, but malleable plastic and can transform themselves into different shapes or even weapons. Well I figured that would mean the plastic would get discolored when it stretches out, hence the change in colour from a deep pink to the light pink shade.

I find the eyes kind of freaky in the pictures. 

 

 Gun toting & sword wielding elite warriors

 They sorta look like Ninjas but I already have lots of Ninjas and just did not want to do more dark outfitted ninjas, besides, this is for a superhero game, so bright colours should be the rule! This is more like the orange that I was trying to achieve with the workers from last weeks post. Would have been a good idea to have paid attention to what I did to paint these guys.

  28mm vehicles (5 cars)

 

The points

• 40 for two planets
• 20 Sarah's yacht (Blue Angel)
• ?? points regular 3 x ? DW Metzger robots 75mm tall
  
• 45 points waterline 3 x DW Metzger robots (treating as 15mm vehicles)
  
• 91 points 13 x 40mm tall DW robots & the 4 big supers
  
• 185 points  37 x 28mm foot
• 100 points 5 x 28mm cars

Total 481 + Big robots

Squirrel 3 points Post apocalypse, Super, Dystopian Wars

 (may be too late this week, but will learn for future posts)

Wow, what a load of robots! And submitted before midnight in the UK too! Lovely stuff, Chris!

You might have avoided causing me some confusion by posting the Supers first and noting that Blue Angel is your fee for taking Lady Sarah's Star Yacht from LV426 to Cybertron, but I got there in the end!

I've scored the regular DW Metzger robots as 40mm vehicles. Just to note, 15mm vehicles are 8 points each not 15 points. You've still got a total of 535 points for this submission.

Tamsin

 

Yep, brain not too good sometimes, thought 15mm figures, saw the 8 points, but '15' stayed in mind, so I of course recorded 15 points each, I am a dufus...!😁

Thanks again for your help, maybe next week I can be before noon your time, baby steps