From IanW - Curtgeld - Bob the Anti Hero (22 Points)

Spent a lot of time thinking about the correct figure to supply Curt. I really wanted something that would span the whole period of war and as such would be timeless and yet up to date. Then it struck me.......

Here we have a wonderful (if I say so myself) depiction of what I consider the biggest Anti-Hero of all time. The deserter, the man who slips from his post late at night leaving a hole in the line and his so called comrades at risk.

This side view I feel captures the scene perfectly, from the Roman looking out past Hadrian's wall all the way too and past Monte Casino.

From behind he could be any soldier from any period, indeed he even has a place in roleplaying as the PC who always leaves the other players to face the monster. I just hope Curt realises the immense work that went into this piece and suitably rewards me.

OK assuming I am still in the Challenge  :-)

I did think hard about what I would do for this round and you can blame my wife Cath for the above diversion, she was the devil whispering in my ear. I wanted something a little different and I remembered the Black Scorpion miniature I had seen the year before and thought I had my man.

In 1966 Bob Dylan toured for the first time using an electric guitar, his core fans revolted some threatening violence and he was considered by many as a traitor to his music. Of course not everyone felt this and he also received praise for the step so I feel Bob Dylan fits the role of Anti-hero rather well.

Mind you if I had researched what he wore before ordering the figure I am fairly sure I would have picked something else, it was a bugger to paint and repaint and strip and repaint. I had a devil of a time trying to get the pattern right and in the end settled for close-ish. 

He was listed as 30mm but here he is against a Foundry cowboy so he is a rather tall 30mm. Made of resin in two parts he took only a little cleaning up and went together with only a small grinding of teeth.

Here is a photo of that damned suit, the guitar I painted is one of the ones he used on that tour. I hope the choice was not too left field and Curt forgives me my little joke.


From Curt:

When I saw this come in I almost dropped out of my chair laughing. For those who do not know the story, last year AlanD created, as his 'Curtgeld', a Bob Dylan vignette inspired from the movie 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' (where Dylan played the character 'Alias'). I loved Alan's vignette but had to come clean that I really can't stand Bob Dylan (whom I often call 'The Nasal Drip with Ray-bans'). So when Ian sent in this figure I thought he was taking the p*ss out of me - which is all fine and good. But when I sent him a followup note congratulating him, he admitted he'd completely forgotten about the 'Alias' vignette and submitted this one innocently. Hilarious! So, I really can't get away from this little guy, he just keeps showing up, literally! 

Anyway, thanks so much Ian! This is brilliant. I can't wait to put him in with the other Antiheroes that are massing in my display cabinet (who knows, maybe he'll learn how to sing). 

'A Haaaard Raiiiin Gonna Fall...'

From DavidB - 40K Cadian 7th Cav, Blue Platoon (140 Points)

So, my third and last post this week. I finished up a command squad with extras and a tactical squad I began in December. I tried to find the rest of Blue Platoon, but I could only find a squad plus that didn't have any paint applied. I'm not certain where the rest of the lads are lurking, but they are probably up to no good!

Blue Platoon features a lot of the Rogue Trader models with some of the Perry and Morley models mixed in as well as a few bits and whole troopers of the current edition.

The command squad is entirely metal and all Old School sculpts. The Lt lost his jump pack, but I found some old las pistols and Imperial Guard arms in my reclamation box of useful stuff( which my wife refers to as plastic junk) I decided to paint his armor in the trusty battle green like his troopers and not in the NMM like the Capt of Red Platoon. I did paint his decorations in yellow to signify he is a proper gentleman though! he has a commlink trooper, two meltagun troopers, a vet sgt with bolt pistol and power fist, and another vet sgt with a boltgun. he also has an old RT medic he can add. He can only take four, so he better pick wisely!

1st squad has a sgt with chainsword and las pistol,(I really, REALLY like that model) an ancient grenade launcher and a trooper with a shoulder carried lascannon. I still have several of those ugly misshapen lumps of lascannon and heavy bolter, but this fellow is the only one who never surrendered his kit. He was very lucky as he was still in white primer from the 80's and slightly yellowed. I just had to leave him armed with his toy. In games it's range is halved now as is it's strength, but it still has the armor penetration to wreck tanks!The barehead trooper in the front rank has an autogun arm from the Necromunda plastic Orlock set and a robotic arm which used to be an Eldar power fist.

Although a little washed out, you can see I can occasionally get the NMM technique right!

Another favorite is the bareheaded trooper above. His ancient lasgun suffered a barrel break.I found a broken current edition barrel in my' useful box of reclamation' and simply cut the muzzle from it and glued it in place. his snub nosed carbine looks really nice now!( I may dive in the useful box and see how many of these carbines I can make!)

The sgt model above has another orlock plastic arm with a current space marine plasma pistol. I also replaced his chainsword with an elder powersword to make him look like a true swashbuckler!

2nd Squad does not have a heavy weapon, but they do have a plasma gunner! Some of the lads needed parts from the newer models and a few of the newer models had to step in as fresh meat to fill squad vacancies.

Like the commlink trooper above. Back in the day, a commlink was used by officers to call in artillery strikes. Now you can do that, but only with the army commander's master of ordinance. Commlink troopers only let you reroll leadership checks and allows for some of the officer special orders.

My Cadians are primered in white, black, and a few are in grey or terracotta. The different primers really affect the model color, and I am finding that I really like the effect as the hue does vary much like it does in a real unit.

Blue squad has most of my oldest models representing the 7th.(I'm really wondering where the heck I placed the rest of the lads...)Some of the old plastic troopers still have licks of blue paint on the bottom of the bases from when I initially began to lay out my squads in order of battle. Although I use colors and not numbers for the platoons, Blue Platoon is my 1st platoon. It is an understood order of pride that anyone not in the designated 1st Platoon is really in the TRUE 1st Platoon as those in 1st really are unworthy of the perceived place of pride. This keeps everyone in a constant state of friendly rivalry as each platoon tries to one-up the other(s). I choose Blue Platoon to be my 1st Platoon as Blue is the color of the infantry and blue is the cord I wear on my shoulder. The 7th are Cav but they are a mounted Cav Inf. Although an outlandish cartoon caricature of a SciFi host, I found by accident that my perceived superiority of Infantry has infested the Cadian 7th. Red is Artillery so of course they are support! ;) Black platoon is huge and is 99% new plastic troops. They are Cav though, so they have to wear the yellow! I betcha in 40k they still sing Fiddler's Green! ;)

So, twenty-eight 28mm troopers and Blue Platoon is completed....at least until I find the stragglers!;)

From GregB - 20mm WWII Russian Support (18 Points)

One last batch of WW2 20mm stuff for now...

I am basically ginned up to paint science fiction right now, but I couldn't resist one last quick 20mm project to clean up the painting table a little bit.  This submission is a few more WW2 Russian troops - an MMG team, an AT rifle team, and a forward observer team. 

Lock and load! Figures from Elhiem

The MMG team is from Elhiem.  A water-cooled medium machinegun is kind of a "must" to get that proper WW2 look for the Russians - I love the heavy wheeled carriage, the little shield for the gunner, a nice little piece for the defense of the Motherland.

Could be lining up a shot on a panzer, a half-track, or even an unsuspecting grenadier...

The other figures are from FAA Miniatures.  I found the FAA figures to be a little shorter than the Elhiem and Plastic Soldier Company figures, and a little chunkier, but they have a lot of character and a some really well done figures and poses.

Just imagine how much artillery is on the other end of that phone call

Great sculpts from FAA

The AT rifle team is another Russian WW2 classic.  Generally an "early war" weapon, the Soviet army used these AT rifles pretty much straight through the war.  I find AT rifle figures are often fraught, as the long rifles are not simple to cast, and are not easy to assemble properly.  The FAA pack was done very, very well.

"I can see the fascists!"

The observation team is my preferred way to have artillery involved in games, and the FAA package is excellent - very well done.  I particularly love the observation scope, and I love that the one member of the crew is a female.

Liberate the rodina!

I thought it would be fun to take a "group" photo of the Russian 20mm WW2 stuff painted so far in the Challenge - a couple of figures pre-date the challenge, but most of this stuff done has been done since the Challenge started - very fun. 

From DavidB - My First 15mm as Cops...because cops is the theme apparently! (70 Points)

(my gun clerics...one was hiding with the cops in the box when this photo was taken)

Here are my first ever 15mm troops. These are the Police, Gun Clerics, and Merc squad from Rebel Miniatures. I was authorized by SWMBO to trade a swath of 1990's Magic cards to Rebel Mike for a bunch of Rebel Mini products. These were selected because "Equilibrium" starring Christian Bale was a great 'Pistol KungFu' movie which was pretty much Fahrenheit 451 redone. The Cops also remind me of them as well as the special police unit in the Manga"Jin-Ro"The Wolf Brigade.The Mercs?....a long time ago Rutger Hauer did a film where androids ruled the wasteland and mankind's few survivors lived deep underground. Rutger was a new Droid tasked to eliminate any droid deemed a threat to mankind's return. One group that was a threat was a all female android team of ruthless assassins that the Rebel Minis mercenary squad resembled.

These were all selected because I "thought" they'd be easy!  HA!

I have been painting on them for almost three weeks which is enough time to figure out most of what will not work. I still have a long way to go to perfect the NMM technique and I still do not like how plastic their weapons look. I seem to do better with NMM in 28's, but it is not consistent there either.

Here are the Police with rifles, sidearms and knifes as the future is very rough! The yellow base is officer or command, the blue represents squad leaders and the red is for marksmen/snipers and weapon teams. I went with a dark blue for contrast to the black armor and painted the respirator goggles yellow. I tried several different greys and wash combos on the guns and still haven't found the sweet spot.

Part of my trouble is I usually do three layers of color for base, mid, and highlight. On 15's it does not work too well for me. I have discovered that washes are my best friend! some areas just need the base coat and hue is just as important as chroma in this scale.

21 uber armed and armored coppers! They have four fire teams of five; Team Red, Team-Gold, Team-Blue, and Team-Green. an armor plate was given a lick of paint on the right arm to denote team.

In Rutger's movie, the assassins all had black hair, I went for a more varied spectrum with these.

I painted them after I painted the cops and found them to be a little easier. Maybe I had already learned, or maybe the colors used here were easier to work with.

The Gun Clerics were 8 models in 4 poses and also went a lot easier than the police.

Just because I'm going to use these in 5150 and Grunts, I made one in a blue coat to be my police commissioner. the grey and blue coat is his aide. four black coats were given a sinister red trim and will be my gun clerics while the other in grey will be my stand-in for Mr Bale. The Ginger in the green frock is the boss of the mercs!

I haven't given up as my 15mm birthday gift was enough stuff to proxy Alien Legion and that is just not available in 28mm. Since I've been tooling around 15mm websites and stores, I've found proxies to Tron, 5th Element, Blade Runner, and nearly any other Scifi  movie or comic book you could think of. I'll keep on with it, and hopefully I will feel confident enough to get cracking on the Alien Legion before Old Man Winter stops blowing!

21 cops

8 gun clerics

and 6 mercs

35 15mm scifi skirmishers!

From DavidL - The Last Malifaux Roundup (15 Points)

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd finally managed to track down the original Perdita Ortega miniature for my Latigo Posse crew for Malifaux. Well, the lot I won on eBay also came with a few of the other first-edition Ortega sculpts, and wouldn't you know that I preferred them to the current plastic offerings as well.

(Yeah, that's right - I'm giving Malifaux the Oldhammer treatment! I hereby coin the term "Malif-Old" for those of you who want to take up the banner as well.)

All joking aside, as I've mentioned before, sometimes the newer plastics are my cup of tea, and sometimes it's the older metals. It's nice, actually, to have a bit of variety to choose from. And at the end of the day, of the three metal models here only one actually replaced a plastic.

And here he is: Papa Loco. The older metal sculpt has waaaay more character than the new plastic, and his role as a crazy dynamite-chucker is much more clearly laid out here.

Once patriarch of the Ortega clan, Papa Loco is now a shell of his former self. His recent time as an inmate in Malifaux Sanitarium did little to help his addled mind, and he still dresses in the accouterments of that grim institution.

It didn't quite come out in the photo, but the placard from his time in the asylum identifies him as Inmate 24601...

A new addition to the clan (and the final "brother" figure) is Santiago, the resident tank of the family.

As you can see from his burly build, he's tailor-made to go wading into combat, shrugging off whatever the enemy throws at him.

I did do a bit of customizing with his guns; I didn't like how cartoony his sculpted guns were, so out came the clippers and off came the hands and guns to be replaced by more reasonable (yet still threatening) smoke wagons.

Lastly, we have Perdita's "pet" - an Enslaved Nephilim. The Ortegas hunt the demons endemic to Malifaux, the Neverborn. Among the worst of their kind are the giant winged demons known as Nephilim.

The Ortegas, willing to do anything to win the battle against the Neverborn, captured a juvenile Nephilim and clipped its wings off, then bound it to enchanted shackles that prevent it from growing and force it to do their will.

Hey, no one ever said the Ortegas were particularly nice people...

So that makes three 28mm figures for 15 points, and a bow tied on my Malifaux project (for now...). Next week, I'll be going small for the first time in years...

From JaccoK - 20mm WWII Civilian Vehicles (24 Points)

Three scenic items for the next 20mm WW2 game.

Simca 5

Original Simca 5 from 1945

This entry is a small one. I just wanted to paint the two 20mm civil vehicles and the memorial I purchased from Sgt's Mess.

Ford short chassis cargo body

French WWI memorial.

The Simca 5 was also used as a staff car by the German Army but I decided to paint the civil version.

From IanW - 15mm Thracian Infantry Mixed Bag (124 Points)

I have had these figures kicking around for the last few years. Most of them were given to me when I came back to painting and about half of them were part painted so before this years challenge I stripped them best I could and primed them in black.

I also had twelve figures I had already painted and planned to add to the sixty two I was painting up. Two of these had broken off arms which in the end I did not repair, just as well as it would have given me two excess figures.

They are a mix of suppliers some I am not sure about but the majority are Chariot Miniatures and Museum Miniatures. I had a lot of fun as I used over twenty different colours for the base colour of the cloths and shields. 

Being Thracian you can be reasonably creative with the shields though for the most part I tried to copy others designs, thought some looked a little unlikely.

But I could not resist a shield I knew my daughter would love, well it IS a Chariot Miniatures figure after all (they had a black cat as their mascot).

I mixed the makes and weapons freely though these will probably be used as Thracian Heavy Weapons and I do have an army that can use up to 24 bases of such troops though it's hard to see me getting to use all of them and some may get traded away after I try to use them all at least once.

Some of the figures are not strictly Thracian but I think I can get away with them in the mix and it's only the headgear that is technically wrong.

The cloaks also needed more attention than a single colour though I did leave some plain most received some form of pattern and again I tried to follow others examples.

So a very colourful bunch and a great tonic from the single pose Roman archers. I have managed over 100 15mm figures in January and put a sizeable dent in the lead mountain. So I have 62 15mm figures to score and not many prepped figures left in hand.