From RichardM - 28mm Landschnechts (60 Points)

I am continuing my foray into the Italian Wars of the very early 16th Century. 

Given it was the holiday period and I thought I had the luxury of time and quiet, I decided that I would use the time to try out my patience on a first unit of Landschnechts. 

They are Foundry figures and again are based for Impetus.  These will be Skirmish shot and can be quite nasty in early parts of a battle - although they will break quickly if not handled well.

Seeing the pictures close up I can see a lot to improve on the painting style - I need more definition in some of the slashing as an example.  In relation to colours I think I have used too much yellow.  Next time I will also want to introduce some stripes on the slashed arms.

Speaking of next time (for the Landschnechts) - I can see these driving me mad.  I have close on 200 that I want to do - mainly pike blocks.  I think they will be done in small groups - perhaps a base being 12 - 14 pikemen - at a time between other projects.  Otherwise this would cause the painters block of all eternity.

I've got 12 figures so I think 60 points for this lot.

From Curt:Schweeet! These look brilliant Richard - I love the way you've done the puff & slash of their uniforms. I must say I'm really enjoying seeing this period being tackled. I know it's not easy. My first large scale figure was a Landschnecht and I make a complete hash of it.  It was really appalling. BUT I absolutely loved reading about the period and vowed that I'd give it another go in the future. Is 30 years enough time? Hmmm...

Great work! 

From SamuliS - 15mm Early War German Panzerschützen (276 points)

Happy new year everyone!

After some silence in the challenge from my part it's time to deliver a small points bomb with the core of my coming Early War Wehrmacht force for Flames of War. Two full Panzerschützen platoons and the company command with all their accompanying vehicles including one of my favorite German vehicles the Zündapp KS750. With these guys finished I have about half of my force finished points wise and a bit over half in terms of individual miniatures left to paint. There's actually a few more miniatures than needed in the lists, but I had the miniatures anyway and it never hurts to have some extras.

I had already planned to post these last week, but then the famous real life got in the way and I didn't really get any painting done over Christmas as I kindly followed the better halves advice and left my painting equipment home. After a mad rush after getting back home on Friday the halftracks were still missing a wash and mud so I had to postpone them until after New Year.

These are mainly Battlefront miniatures with Plastic Soldier Company 251s. These were absolutely the worst offerings I've seen from Battlefront. Massive amounts of flash and hideously disfigured faces etc. BF offerings aren't exactly top quality normally either, but still on the better side of the average when compared to other 15mm manufacturers. These were something totally different then. The difference between the motorcycles and the infantry was quite astonishing with the motorcycle teams having distinguishable facial features and little to no cleaning up to do. Most of the infantry on the other hand look like somebody has hit them in the face with a sledgehammer. And that's after you've carved all the random extra chunks out of them.

The PSC halftracks on the other hand are a joy to put together as there's little cleaning up required and everything fits together rather nicely. The crew detail is maybe a bit on the soft side and I'd rather have slightly over emphasized features in smaller models. Still well worth the money and even if they are a bit expensive for plastic kits they are still half the price of the BF resin ones. They are still missing the aerial recognition flags that were quite prominent in the early part of Barbarossa, but considering the s**t storm you see on the forums when somebody adds a Swastika to their models I decided it was probably better to leave them off from these photos and do them afterwards.

All in all I have 2 platoons of 37 models, 2 command stands with 3 models each, 2 motorbikes with 3 crew each and 10 half tracks with 38 passengers inside them. That should give me 276 points if I've calculated correctly. In addition to these there's also 2 drivers in all of the Hanomags, but I guess claiming points for them would be a bit cheeky as you only really need to paint their shoulders and helmets :)

Next up anything that isn't grey as all of it's various shades are starting to get on my nerves a bit.

From CurtWow, that is an impressive amount of work Samuli! Very fine painting as well. I especially like the well-used Hanomags along with their passengers and I'm always a sucker for BMWs with their sidecars. After this lot I can see why you'd want to steer away from German grey for a bit. :)

From RoyW - 10mm Mounted Knights (4 Points)

If this post featured on any other form of social media it would be tagged like so; #NotAPointsBomb

Hello everyone ;)

May I present to you two 10mm Pendraken Miniatures mounted knights.

The bases are plastic 20mm slotted bases.

The colours and heraldry is all fictitious.

Painting the Iron cross -like design was easy. The other (red horse) was a swine!

Other than that the models were easy and a joy to paint.

With 10mm miniatures it's all about using shading washes (in this case those from Games Workshop) and then layering lighter shades over the raised areas, I'm finding. But I've only painted a handful, as of yet.

I'm now waiting for a copy of (the rules book) Lion Rampant to arrive and then I can begin work on buying in Pendraken models for some armies.

The painting area, up in the attic/loft space. Don't be fooled by all those paints (not many by most painter's selection) as the majority are never used and have, I'd imagine, probably gone dry inside the pot and need throwing out.

The two models from this post can be seen undercoated atop the piece of wood on the cutting mat. For those interested, the other miniatures are; Artizan Cowboy, Gripping Beast Dark Age, Pendraken ACW and assorted C20th for VBCW. 

Back to the painting; two 10mm mounted figures should get me four points! 

Great entry Roy! I love this scale and you've done a cracking job on them, especially the free hand crosses on the horses' caparisons - very nice. 

I also appreciate the photo of your hobby desk. Nice, neat and bright (and I can attest to the high percentage of dry pots in my setup as well). 

From MilesR - More WWII Figures in 15 and 28mm scales (241 Points)

A bit of a mixed submission and likely my last over the holiday break - some WW2 figures in 15 and 28mm scales.

 First up a 28mm Pak 38 anti tank gun with crew and a Kubelwagen.  All of the miniatures are from the Perry Brothers with the gun and figures being metals and the kubelwagen a resin cast with a handful of metal detail parts.

 I really like these metal figures and am looking forward to the arrival of a few more support options for my growing DAK force (Heavy machine guns, a medium mortar and some arty).

 These figures were painted in the same way my other DAK miniatures.

Next up is a US Armored Rifle Platoon in 15mm scale to be used with Flames of War.  The figures are made by Battlefront and are from their new plastic ARP box set - both the figures and the halftracks are plastics.

I'm a pretty poor painter of 15mm figures but I found these plastics to be really easy to do and they were a lot of fun.  The following statement may force my to turn in my figure painting card but I really prefer plastic over metal figures.  I find plastic to be a lot easier to work with.  I suppose that makes me uncool in certain circles!

 The ARP is a great unit in FOW - it's highly mobile and bristles with bazooka's and machine guns.

 Lastly, a unit of German pioneers in 15mm scale.  The figures are metals from Battlefront and have been in the lead pile for a long time.  The sculpts were pretty poor.  I tried basing them on the rubble base set which is also produced by Battlefront.

Have you ever had a project that just turned from fun to chore?  I'm sure we all have and that's what these guys ended up for me.  I think they came out OK but it's not the best paint job and I could have been more creative with the basing.  I kind of just wanted the unit to be "done".

Gamewise, pioneers are a lot of fun so while the paintings pretty pedestrian, the fun quotient of have these guys on the table makes them worth the effort.


Thanks!

From Curt:Oh, that PAK 38 and Kubel are very fine indeed. I keep resisting doing DAK in this scale but I find it very difficult when I see this stufff in the flesh.  Your 15s are great, especially your Americans. 

I still have a hard time warming to these FoW socket-bases (not yours specifically, Miles, but the concept as a whole). I know what they're trying to do but I'm just not sold on it. For the amount of time you need to fiddle filling in the socket gaps you might as well just do your own custom basework. Maybe I'm missing something...

Great work Miles. Now that you've tipped over your half-way mark (and in 2nd place no less) what's on your roster for January?  

From PeterD - Moorish Horse Archers (81 Points)

Ok no regular posts for 3 weeks and now two in one day – but it took me til the 26^th until I could get painting.  I have completed a unit of 8 Moorish Horse Archers in 28mm to add to my El Cid hordes.  I think that this gives me 80 points towards my very far distant goal….

The figures are hard plastic and produced by HäT, who mostly do a wide range of 20mm figures.  I picked up 3 boxes of 12 figures each on my last business trip through Vancouver in June at Imperial Hobbies, which is a well-stocked store and is conveniently located when traveling by Skytrain to the airport. 

These were the first HäT figures that I have painted, and they in the end produced reasonable results (to my eyes anyway).   The detail is not a clean as found on metals, but the plastic is neither bendy like Airfix nor brittle.  They are also a little lighter in build than metals, but that doesn’t hurt for a LC unit.   In particular the horses are very nice and have the look of fine boned Arabians. I painted them in my artist acrylics with generous washes. 

Originally I tried to line them up so no one was shooting a fellow rider, but after a while I couldn't be arsed...

The shields and flag are free handed, because that’s how I do them.   I may redo the flag later but I am mostly happy with my results. 

I’ll toss my thoughts into the forum on free hand vs. bought flags and shields.  Which is I see no point in paying good money for products that are more frustrating and time consuming than DIY, especially as the results never seem to be worth the bother, cost and time.   Yes I am an old fashioned curmudgeon but my first ancients army was Hoplite Greeks and I handled that so can handle anything else.  As for flags, free handing ancient banners is quick and for Horse’n’Musket I get them free from Warflag, or in some cases DIY on the MacBook.  So if you are buying flags and shield designs, you need to grow a pair and get on with doing it the real way!

From Curt:Great looking figures Peter! I really like how vivid these fellows turned out and, like you, I appreciate the slimness of these horses - they seem to reinforce that these are light cavalry. I also really like the shield and banner, which brings us to our next topic... 

In regards to bought vs hand painted, I have to say that even though I find working with decals a pain I will take them over my freehand efforts any day of the week. There are some patterns, scripts, intricate designs, etc. that demand to be present on particular models (Roman Legionary shields for example) but are just too difficult to paint (especially in repetition) for some, and transfers/decals etc. do the trick nicely. As for banners, Flagdude is my man. A fully animated flag, staffed, finialed and tasseled for the price of a cavalry figure? Sold.

So, I'll happily keep 'my pair', grit my teeth and stick with bought flags and transfers.  But, horses for courses, of course.  :)

From PaulS - This is not a number, it's another Christmas present! (10 Points)

As I mentioned in the Ghostbusters post, I painted up a few sets of figures for friends this year and they seem to have been very well received. The other set completed on time were Number 2 and Number 6 from 'The Prisoner'.

The figures are, again, from Crooked Dice... possibly my favorite gaming company. The sculpts are nice and clean, with plenty of character that brings the models alive.

Unfortunately I had an accident with the spray varnish as it misted up. Thankfully a coat of hand painted gloss varnish managed to fix the problem... but I didn't have any flatter varnishes to take the shine off the models... hence the photos being a bit dark to counter this. 

This should be another 10 points I believe?

From Curt:Great work Paul! I really liked this series when it was out - it was just so wonderfully strange! Issues with the spray varnish aside I think  you've done a wonderful job on #2 and 6 (2's scarf is ace! and I love their shoes). 

Now, who's going to do some stuff from 'Space 1999'? 

From MikeP - 15mm Soviet T34 76/85 Tanks (37 points)

Continuing my Soviet spree, I have five 15mm T34s from Plastic Soldier Company.  These, with a previously completed box, gives me a full company for my glorious little Red Army.  The nice thing about this PSC kit is that it includes turrets for both the early war T34/76 and the late war T34/85.

They were airbrushed in Vallejo Russian Green surface primer, treated with Army Painter Strong Tone, then dry brushed with successive shades of VJ Russian Green mixed with white.  Tracks in Army Painter Gun Metal with a wash of VJ Panzer Aces rust.  I added a few bits of stowage from a RAFM stowage kit.    I applied some VJ earth shade pigment on the tracks, bogeys and lower hull.  The bases are because I like the look of them, but they also have magnets on the back for storage in a cookie tin.  I move a lot, and I like having things stored away.

The only real special thing with my work on these models is the turret slogans, copied from this website of Soviet propaganda slogans.  I don't speak Russian and I don't understand Cyrillic, so if there are any Russian speakers in the Challenge, please let me know what you think.

"Leningrad"

"To the West!"

"They Will Not Pass!"

"Fight to the Death!"

"Glory!"(I wanted to do the full slogan, Glory to the Red Army, but that was a lot of characters.  I figured Glory would do.)

I'll be happy with 30 points for these, and will happily take any extra points for the second set of turrets.

I wish all my fellow Challengers a very happy new year.

From Curt:Very nice work Mike. I really like the weathering you've done on these, and the addition of stowage and the patriotic slogans are just terrific. I also like basing my vehicles that are 15mm or smaller. I find it helps to keep them safe from getting mashed together and I like the option of tarting up the bases with terrain/crew etc. 

I'm awarding you some additional points for the extra turrets and for the commanders. AND you're now past your half-way point for your points target. Well done!!