From JohnM - When I Screw Up, I Screw Up (20 Points)

Way back in the first Challenge, I made what Curt called a "Uniform Malfunction". I am sure he will remember that I painted up some French Cuirassiers in green. I was absolutely sure that I was right as I was painting them, but somewhere along the line it was recognized that they had blue uniforms and they had to be repainted.

Well the similar error has just happened. I had been thinking long and hard about what I should submit as my entry price to this year's challenge. I wanted to do something different to show my appreciation to Curt for doing all this work (I also needed forgiveness for still not sending last year's price). I had received a bunch of Empire of the Dead Kickstarter figures from the Netherlands in December and in the collection was a number of figures that represent the Nemesis Criminals (of Sherlock Holmes that is) and one of them was of course "The Woman". I also have never painted a female figure for the challenge and I wanted to submit something for "Sarah's Prize"

A Scandal in Bohemia is of course one of the most famous of the cannon. The story starts with the famous line: To Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman. So who better to submit as my 'Curtgeld' than Irene Adler. Well I was painting the figure today, and I started to note some oddities, why was her hair straight, why were her fingernails so long, why was she holding a gun... It just did not fit, so I started to google and to my horror, I realized that the fellow who sold me the figures must of made some error... It is not Irene Adler, I was painting something called "Jade Dragon".

Well, I dug through the figures and alas no Irene!

So Curt, I present to you in somewhat a diminished fashion "A Woman" but not "The Woman", but still from what I understand a rogue..Jade Dragon.

From Curt:Not diminished at all! In fact with that wonderful back story it makes the figure that much the better.  In fact I think this is indeed Irene Adler, but cleverly disguised as a woman mysteriously called 'The Jade Dragon' in order to foil Holmes' famous abilities of detection (and man, those are some serious fingernails she has...).

Thank you so much John, it is very much appreciated!  

From JuanM - 28mm Pulp & Spanish Civil War (30 Points)

Hello!

Here is my first entry for the New Year; I´m continuing some old projects, and (of course) thinking about other new ones.

1.- Another fantastic 28mm model from Pulp Figures; this time, Doctor Newton, the head of the US Archaeologist expedition to Bolo Bolo, in the South Pacific. These figures are, simply, fantastic and a pleasure to paint.

2.- An Spanish Civil War 28mm Maxim MMG team for the International Brigades. I´m finishing, at last, this long painting commission, one that I have enjoyed a lot, and I have on my table (or near it) some other models from Empress Miniatures like these ones. With the Barrage Miniatures "Desert" warmat in mind, these other works are going to be desert-based...

3.- Finally, the rest of the MMG team crew or a pair of surplus brigadistas. They are also from Empress Miniatures. 

And this is all for now. As I have said previously, I´m painting more Pulp figures but this is time to change to another and different "period": Fantasy!

Cheers!!!

From Curt:As usual, lovely work Juan. Its great to see Bob Murch's 'Pulp Figures' getting some more love with that excellent archeologist figure and these Brigadistas Internacionales look fabulous as well. I really like the sun-faded blue of their berets and side caps. Wonderful. 

It's a pity to see this project come to a close but I do look forward to seeing your upcoming Fantasy figures. Bring them on Juan!

From MartinC - I thought you'd be taller (126 Points)

As others have already posted the Anti-hero bonus theme, and Curt's well deserved fee, I thought I'd post mine. Snake Plissken strode though my youth like a surly Collosus.  Not surprising when every one who met him said "I thought you'd be taller". I loved Escape from New York.

The 28mm figure is from Hasslefree and was great, although I find the separate arms with both hands on one piece annoying, I always end up with a gap that needs filling. He has been injected with the microscopic explosives in his neck and sent on his mission to Regina where Curt will need to de-activate them with X-rays within the week. His mission is to slightly interfere with Curt's OCD by moving everything 1" to the left..

For Christmas I received a 28mm scale Empress Rolls Royce armoured car from my baffled sister. The model is beautiful and apart from a huge chunk of resin on turret had almost no flashing. It was fairly easy to put together apart from the radiator and engine cover which I could not get to fit well. Of course there were no bleeding instuctions and only a couple of unpainted diagrams on the interweb. Why oh why oh why don't they at least include a decent diagram (sorry slipped into Daily Telegraph letters page mode for a minute).

I undercoated the whole kit in black post assembly and then painted with several washes of Foundry Drab. I then went over all the seams with my permanent black 0.1mm micro pen and dry brushed with the light drab. If you don't own one of these pens I strongly recommend getting one. For years I have undercoated in black as I find it gives depth to the figures but means using many coats of flesh and white. However I have been adding shadow lines with the pen and it works really well, especially on webbing and straps. From now on I will be undercoating in the predominant colour and using the pen The whip aerial and tools are from my bits box.

Then there is the ubiquitous ACW regiment, the 7th Louisiana. The strap edges have been done with the pen and I used all my shades of grey to paint these (sounds like a mucky book). I'm also starting to get the hang of washes now, not something I do normally. I am so old school.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!". These figures will take me over my target of 1000 and I still have 5 infantry regiments and 4 cannon to paint. I have also gone a little mad at the January sales and bought a lot of stuff. Lets up the target to 2000 and see what happens.

Finally this is my space with another one of my presents a magnifying lamp - these are great and pretty cheap - excuse the curtains, I only bought the house recently from an old lady and haven't got round to changing them yet.

From Curt:Brilliant! I look forward to trying to thwart Mr. Plissken's nefarious mission. Thank you very much Martin! 

I've been wondering how that Empress Rolls AC measures up. You've made it look very good indeed. I'd like to see how it compares to the new one from Trenchworx.  

I like your painting station (great natural light) but those curtains just HAVE to go. ;) 

AND congratulations on meeting your points target. I'll get you logged in for 2K - good luck!

From JamieM - Pulp Sci-Fi Started (35 Points)

As my gaming tastes expand out from 40k (the game that game me into the hobby in the 80's and then back into the hobby after a hiatus in the 00's) I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at other game systems and miniature manufacturers, generally of the skirmish variety.

Two games that stood out as looking like fun were Pulp Alley and 7TV. Both looked like labours of love by their small company makers and gave me an excuse to get some unusual figures in..... And all gamers need is half an excuse!

As I was putting together some sci-fi scenery for infinity, and having a general love of sci-fi, I decided I'd go for some pulp sci-fi. I found the "good guys" relatively simply and they should be finished soon, but it took me a while to find my equivalent of the baddie storm troopers. These figures are from Statuesque Miniatures (who is also the UK supplier of Pulp Alley) and they had the right amount of 70's/80's cult sci-fi TV silliness for me, right down to the combat high heels and sci-fi equivalent of the D&D chain mail bikini.

I like my dystopian far futures nice and bright, so bright yellow armour glazed over white with a sepia "black line".

I couldn't decide if I preferred the helmets or the bare heads, so I split them and had the best of both.

The bases are resin hexagons, because I think we've known since the 70's that the coming of "The Future" will be heralded by the realisation that hexagons are far better than the boring squares and rectangles that we build with today.

Shown below is my painting area and the painting "station" can be cleared up onto a high shelf when required and the other boxes cleared away.

My one recommendation would be the clear acrylic nail varnish holders that you can see just above the paint station. Cheap as chips, hold paints brilliantly and as they are clear and stepped it's easy to see all the paints. I can also recommend 12 year old Clark's shoeboxes like the one at the top in the middle as I haven't had the heart to replace it given the sterling work it's done for me!

From Curt: 

'In the bright light  of the future there are only hexes...' 

Damn!! I was just prepping these very same figures and you've beat me to the punch! Haha! This is the second time this has happened to me and both with Statuesque Minis (the first being DaveD's excellent Dillinger and Long Sarah). Actually I'm kinda happy with how this worked out as I think your's are brilliant and I may need to rethink how I approach mine. I love the yellow plaststeel thong-armour, especially when matched to the redheads - wonderful colour combination there. I also really like the tech bases you've used for these - they fit the theme perfectly and are very slimming. :)

Good tip on the nail varnish rack as well and I find your loyalty to your Clarks paint storage box very commendable. 

From JohnM: Something for "Fury" to Plug Away At (12 Points)

A very small submission, but it arrived in the mail the other day and I wanted something to do while my "Victorian" Fortnight bonus submission was drying.

Just before Xmas, I got to see the movie "Fury" at the Imax in the Forum Cinema in Montreal. I know there has been a lot of criticism of the movie for it's historical inaccuracies, but I have to say it was a great film. I also really enjoyed watching the Sharpe TV series, so I probably would not be one of the cognoscenti in respect to historical accuracy. So it goes!

Nicely proportioned, that big gun is a really monster.

But back to this submission, well there is a nice little "Fury" campaign in this month's Wargames Soldiers and Strategy and I needed a Tiger I for it. I was buying some stuff from SGT'S Mess, a supplier of 1/72 WWII stuff in the UK and I noticed they had some AFV's as well. I checked and they had the Tiger I, so I went ahead and ordered it. It arrived in about 10 days and a very nice little model it was. Some problems, but nice enough. So lets get to the pics.

It is an all resin model except for the gun, which is nice, but it seems to have a pebbly surface which was a little disturbing

Also not a lot of detail and I had ran out of stowage. But all in all I like the model.

So how does it compare to other 1/72 models. Here we have a PSC Firefly. Well the Tiger I was about 30% wider then a Sherman. The Tiger model is about 15% wider.

The Tiger was about 8% longer then the Sherman. As you can see here the PSC Firefly is actually about 5% longer then the Tiger I. Some problems with scale as well.

So since it is a single model and the other contestants have been showing off their painting/gaming areas I thought I would take a few photos of what is my chaos.

My gaming area is in 2 parts both in the attic. I have two 6x4' tables which are my staging/storage areas. You can see the first is set up with some lights to do some photography, but really is quite a mess.

Table 2, has a lot of trees stored there, an eternal problem for me. Stacked in the boxes are my 28mm French Napoleonics, all 30 battalions and I have forgotten how many cavalry.... that just could not fit.

The floor and the staging table are stacked with even more terrain pieces 

Some of my Allied Napoleonics, mostly Brunswick and Prussian to the left and British to the right.

So then we take a little turn to the right and we go into the loft that overlooks the matrimonial bedroom (my wife is always finding odd bits in the bed). As you can see I sometimes really lose my mind and start airbrushing terrain pieces on the floor. My wife just shook her head. You can see what is left of my Challenge figures to paint on the floor.

Then finally the nerve centre, I got a very nice light for Xmas which is quite good. You can see my airbrush to the left, I use it more and more since I got an Iwata. Always very messy on the table, but stuff does get done.

From Curt:

This is a great post John. Even though I like the Tiger (while the elastic scale of wargame vehicles is a perennial picadillo with me) I have to say I found looking at the pictures of your hobby setup far more interesting. The display cabinet of your Napoleonics looks very impressive - and that's just the Allies! Do use the same Ikea cases for your French?  I'm curious that since you now  game more at the local store do you find that your gaming space is being more used for staging and storage? I ask as I know you used to do a lot of solitaire gaming. Finally, I had to laugh aloud when I saw the 'crime scene' outlines sprayed on your floor and your mention of your wife finding hobby bits in the bed! That's just cracked me up. Again, a great post and thanks for sharing it. 

From JamesR Javelinmen, Staff Slingers, Dwarf Puppeteer, Chaplains, and Maniac (80 points)

I've managed to finish a small unit of javelinmen for a Byzantine or El Cid army.  The models were sold by Battle Honors as Spanish javelinmen, but they'll do fine as Byzantine skirmishers.

The spears are floral wire dipped in paint.

Not a very good paint job, I wish Battle Honors ancients were still available so I could try again.

Here's three Old Glory staff slingers.  There's a dwarf who appears to be doing a puppet show, but I think he's an old Ral Partha dwarf or gnome illusionist.  The guy on the right is an old Grenadier Fantasy Wars town guard model.

There's only two pictures, because the rest were very blurry.

Here's two atrociously painted Rogue Trader era space marine Chaplains and a model from Fantasy Flight's Mansions of Madness.

I used Wargames Factory bits for his victims.

Curt should subtract a point, because has whatever it is space marines wear on their back/back pack is missing.

Next week I hope to have a pack of Napoleonic French infantry.  Here I am hard at work prepping models.

Love,
Baconfat

From Curt:I dunno James these figures look absolutely fine to me, I especially like what you did with the axe wielding maniac from The Mansions of Madness box - great job on the blood spatter, the grisly bits and the floorboards. Speaking of grisly, when I say I want everybody to paint their fingers off it was meant as a turn of phrase. Yeesh!