From AaronH - 28mm Imperial Guardsmen from GW (105 points)

My next entry in the Challenge is 21 Imperial Guardsmen from GW. These are 28mm models, mostly plastic. I can't stand the 40k rules. I bought an army of these guys before I realized that though. They've sat, assembled and undercoated for years.

A friend and I are planning a campaign for 2016. We'll see if it gets off the ground, but if it does, these will be the core of my ground forces. We'll be using the Chain of Command rules for the ground combat. To start we'll play them out of the box. Once we have a handle on them we'll mod them for Sci-Fi, things like hacking, ECM, teleportation. They are candidates.

The full group

This batch is one squad of ten men and eleven odds and ends.

Rear shot

The rifle squad is a Sgt, a Vox-Caster and eight riflemen. I haven't added any support weapons into a squad yet, but I have the options and will sub them in as appropriate.

The rifle squad

These men are veterans of the Malvee militia, returning home after several years fighting off-world. They have arrived just in time to defend their home from invasion.

A hard bitten Sgt.

The odds and ends are a dismounted armor officer, Vox-caster, missile team, melta gunner, plasma gunner, two grenadiers, two flamers and a Corpsman. The bases are done in my standard desert pattern.

Odds and sods

The officer can be identified as an armor officer by his lack of armor. His sword is a chain sword that I filed down to be a power sword. Several of these models are metal.

No armor, not infantry

The metals are very sharp, very nice poses. They are less bulky than the plastics which are, frankly, not GW's best work. The plastic Cadians are all badly proportioned and some of the sculpts are very soft in places. The metals suffer from none of these problems.

Plasma gunner. I elected to go with the traditional blue plasma chamber.

You can see the difference between the gunner above and the grenadier below.

Grenadier. Not as well proportioned. The faces have great character though.

These men are from the 1st Battalion, 5th Malvee Infantry. The V is for the 5th. The single dot represents the 1st Bn. This is horrible OPSEC but it's fiction and I wanted to give these guys a little bit of color.

Armored officer attached the 1/5 MMI Regt

These models are solid and unremarkable; which is appropriate I guess. I now have two squads, since I finished up another nine models while I worked on these. They don't count as I started them years ago. I'll be finishing up enough models to start playing during the Challenge. These are a nice filler unit. Easy to paint a bunch of them and a change of pace from the more complex historical models that will be most of my Challenge fare.

Great work Aaron! I quite like the desert colour scheme you've chosen for their uniforms, especially the judicious highlight of their green shoulder armour. Nice.

I agree with your assessment of many GW plastics. They were often over-scaled and soft in detail, while the quality of the metals you could usually bank on. That being said, you've done a wonderful job on both here. Bravo!

From KyleC - US Armor division rolling in! (210 Points)

Oh Rah! Armor section rolling in now... Started in on them on Saturday, and finished them on Sunday.

Most of it was waiting for the oil to dry before the photos, so the above photo is from last night.

While I had them all out, I grabbed all the infantry out as well, and did a family photo of this first week's painting work!

So set by set.. starting with some Chaffees.. though they are poorly done recasts that I thought were real casts that I got off eBay in the beginning. Added up some stowage to the lot as well.. and at some point I can dust them up and weather them most than just the little black oil wash it received already.

Next up is the M8, M20 pack... nothing extra thrown on here..

2 M3 Halftracks ready to bring some Marines closer to the fight.. Extras stowage here as well, and the barrels of the HMGs were cut off and replaced with brass rods.

2 M16s here, ready to cause some serious damage to the opposition. Again the barrels are replaced with brass rods as they were far too flimsy overall to survive long in plastic.

Triple Sherman offensive... all complete with stowage and rope connectors. Plus the wood sidings to repel the magnetic mines..

Now this was the first test Sherman that I painted up.. I do not like the coloring as much as the others though. Not enough green tinge to it in comparison to the rest. It was the resin version, and so the wood slats were molded on, but the other stowage was added to it..

And the color variations between them.. I need to do more color variations to the green ones like I did to the other ones.. but that is for another day. Again when I am get to the point of working on the dust as well.. and maybe some markings ( American Stars? )...

And the final shot of them all once more after the matte varnish had settled a bit this morning..

So all in total.. 13 vehicles for the US forces which should be about 195 points at 15 pts per 28mm vehicles, and someone to take on my Japanese at some point as well.. as shown below when I did a quick set up of them at some point this year..

So there are a few more vehicles to get some paint and such soon enough.. the only part of my Japanese that are not finished really.. But that is for another day.. for now, we have some more batch painting to get prepped ;)

Awesome work Kyle!  That is a very impressive passel of American armour. To be honest, I think I may like the more subdued green of your test model the best, but that's just me. Nevertheless, the oil does tone down the more vibrant green and brings out the details nicely.

The base of this submission is 195 points <gulp> BUT I'm going to top you up a bit due to the extra stowage and mods you've done to some of the vehicles. Lovely stuff.

 

MarkH - 15mm WWII German Tanks (30 Points)

Hi Guys

Busy painting week this week but not a lot got finished. There is lots of stuff on the table including 4x 24 man Confederate ACW units (which may be done by next week). Several other 15mm Flames of War units and 21x 28mm Samurai Bandits. (I seem to have the dreaded finishing disease at the moment...)

So this weeks submission is 5x 15mm Tanks

3 Jadpanthers and 2 Panther G's

I've done them with a bit of wear and tear and used filters and streaking effects similar to last weeks submission with the Panzer III in 28mm. The effect isn't quite as good in 15mm but they stand out well on the table top.

Left and right side of Jadpanther 212.

Left and right side of Jadpanther 213.

Left and right side of Jadpanther 214.

I used a mixture of Tamiya and Vallejo Paints and Ak interactive enamel washes.

Left and right side of Panther 420.

Left and right side of Panther 421.

No idea what a 15mm large tank is worth in points but at least i finished something.  

Mark

:)

'Interactive enamel washes'? What is this heretical sorcery? I'm barely interactive when I'm at my hobby desk and certainly don't like the idea of being upstaged by my paint. Seriously though, these are beautiful looking tanks Mark - the camo looks brilliant and so does the weathering.

These five will give you 30 points, but your description of your painting queue sounds very impressive and I sense an impending points bomb on the horizon.  Now, back to work! 

From TamsinP - I'll Be Max (10 Points)

When I got back from my Christmas break away from London, I decided I wanted to get a few more points in before I set to work on my 6mm Confederates. So I decided to paint up a couple of (post?) apocalyptic character figures, and what better pair than these?

Getting the pallid, greyish skin tone wasn't easy, but I think I pulled it off OK. I'm not so sure about the blue-green tinge I gave to the bruised lumps on his face though.

With both wearing so much "black" leather, I had to go to take drastic action to create some differences between the different clothing items, using different basecoats washed with black, then mixing various greys and browns into the black for the layered highlights.

Once again, the smooth transitions from the layering doesn't show up that well in the pics compared to the reality. Sorry, but there isn't a lot I can do about that I'm afraid.

These two are both 28mm from Hasslefree. They don't seem to be showing in the web catalogue at the moment though.

That should give me 10 points towards my target. I am slightly behind, but then again I haven't done any points bombs yet!

"I'll be back!"

Nice work Tamsin. I like what you've achieved with the fleshtone on Arnie - you can especially see it in the last image when compared to that of the Road Warrior. Best of luck with your upcoming Rebs!

From JamieM - Time Spent in Recce (50 Points)

This is my second Painting Challenge and I have started it just like I did my first one..... Lots of excitement, masses of stuff started and nothing finished! So, instead of getting disheartened I decided to get a couple of simple things done to get some points on the board...... I remembered I had some 15mm soviet scouts and BA-64s that were based and undercoated that shouldn't take too long.

First up are the scouts, with unfortunate German prisoners.... I shamelessly "took inspiration from" the Model Dads blog who did this first. The surrendered Germans are from Peter pig and the thing I like most about scales smaller than 28mm are the fact you can make little dioramas on the bases like these.

These unfortunate "tongues" have been snatched and are being taken for de-briefing.....

The dark amoeba pattern that I tried to paint on the scouts has largely been lost in the brown wash, but such is the way of things!

Next up are 4 BA-64s.

Not the most inspired sculpts by battlefront, with the same chap poking out of the top of all 4, but they were nice and easy to get together and paint up.

I'm never sure how to add decals to Soviet WW2 vehicles as it seems to have been pretty randomly applied in reality, but I like the fact they add some interest to the mono colour vehicles, so add them I did.

Sadly these add exactly zero points to my 30k challenge, but they get me started and should (hopefully) give me the encouragement I need to get my other plans moving.

It's good to see you on the scoreboard Jamie! These Soviets looks great and I especially like the prisoner vignette - simple yet chillingly evocative. 

Welcome aboard and I look forward to your next entry (no pressure). :)