From SamK - 6mm Modern Armour (28 points)

Hi folks,

My first entry to the vaunted challenge! This year is my first year participating although I've been an observer for the past 3 years or so.

I  find that I'm a very slow painter (quality not quantity - at least that's my excuse to myself) and I tend to game only very occasionally so I've gone for what looked like a fairly low points total of 400. Although admittedly that's now looking quite far away, so perhaps I was still overambitious..!

I'm hoping the challenge incentivise me to finish more things and to get back into some blogging.

Anyway enough of the jibber jabber.

My first entry is 4x USMC M1A1s, 5x Russian T-90s and 5x Russian BMP-3s, all in 6mm. All models are from GHQ, were cleanly cast, have stonking detail but were rather pricy. Such is the GHQ lead addicts lot.

They were painted using an airbrush (although I brush painted the M1A1 NATO three-tone), gloss varnish with enamel washes and weathering pigments fixed with mineral spirits. These techniques apply to small scales as well as the larger kits they're usually used on but you do have to adapt them to work.

T-90s

BMPs

M1A1s -  for some reason these are a nightmare to photograph.

Group shot

Surprise diorama my girlfriend set-up while I was fiddling with my camera!

That's right, a half-painted stormtrooper is riding a Panzer IV hull into battle against the micro-Russian federation.

I think this lot nets me 28 points (2 points for 6mm vehicles x14).

Great first entry Sam - welcome to the Challenge!
Very nice airbrush work on these tiny tanks, which earns you 28 points, meaning you join us in 56th place on the table.

From TeemuL - 28mm Dwarf Bolt Throwers (50 points)

At the start of the Challenge, I planned to paint 2 (or maybe 3) models a week and the bonus rounds. That was what I thought manageable with my current hobby time. So how in the earth I'm painting two war machines with crew of three for each in one week? Both of the war machines are different and all the crew are unique, so that's not helping either. Somehow I managed to have quite a lot of hobby time (and little bit less sleeping time) during the week and weekend and I got them finished. Without the schedule, I might be fixing and painting them forever. However, without the schedule they wouldn't be this ready, so I'm quite happy with the result. And in the end they don't look that bad. :)

In the opening post I wrote, that I'm planning to play some Warhammer with 5ed rules and I'm lacking firepower for the "good" side. These two dwarven bolt throwers will give a nice fix for that problem. Some time ago I bought a mixed bag of dwarf war machines and dwarf miniatures. There were two and half bolt throwers and random set of dwarfs mostly unrelated to warmachines. As you can see from the war machine design, they are Old and Older. The crew on the other hand is mostly Incorrect, some Newer and one Right. As the war machine crew members need to operate the machine and defend it, there's no problem having some warriorlike dwarfs there as well. And if I happen to get proper crew members in the future, I can always reassign some of these to warrior regiments or something.

I have not based the warmachines, although the Older design has a base. I don't know how these might work with later editions of Warhammer, but at the moment I don't care. They are quite simple looking and the paint job follows closely the design... They are mostly wood, so that's what you get.

The first two crew members are real Bolt Thrower crew members, but from a Newer edition, 6th I think. These two are manning the Old Bolt Thrower with the third guy, who is older and I think it reads Bumbo and 198? or something in his base. I mean the dwarf with the axe.

The first of the Older Bolt Thrower crew members is actually an original crew member of the Older Bolt Thrower. The second one is Officer from the 90s I think, don't know much else. I started to think that he might even be a Chaos Dwarf from the non-Big-Hat era, because that crownlike hat doesn't look that dwarfish to me.  Third one is probably some kind of a criminal, because all the identifications were filed off from his base. He is old one, no doubt, the metal looked old and I haven't seen scale armored dwarf in a while.

As I said, the "crew members" of the bag were not really crew members, so I went through my dwarf models and picked some suitable looking guys. I need to browse through the solegends and other sites to find out who they really are. All the help is appreciated, so if you know some of three unknown, please drop a comment.
Edit: The villain is a Norse Dwarf from 1988, by Perry Twins - thanks Steve
Bumbo is Bumbo (or Gomorax by other name), an Imperial Dwarf from 1987, by Perry Twins as well - you can by your own Bumbo from ebay at a modest price of 24GBP... 

And of course, the pictures are bad, it's winter here, it's dark in day time and it's almost midnight now...

They are all 28mm Citadel/GW products (not sure about the "criminal"). 6 foot figures is 30 points and two crew served weapons is 20 points. That's 50 points unless some are deducted because of the lack of the basing. Anyway, those points should keep me in the top half of the challenge and I can focus on the Epic Fail bonus round.

I love these very colourful Dwarves - you've done a great job of finding figures to stand in for actual crew members. Nice work Teemu and, yes, these do score you 50 points.

From ClintB - 28mm Big trouble in the Tiny Dojo (20 points)

And now today's last entry from Clint. At least that's what he tells me...

One of the things I have promised myself this year is that I will play more zombie games! Well just got back from the wargames club and I have offered to put on a Samuari game next time and a SCW game the time after, so you can clearly see I am keeping my (self made) promise!

Cutting a long story short I do plan a zombie/kung fu game. I know the idea sounds very naff but some games are just for fun! So in support of that idea here are 3 modern martial artists! The figures are Dixon Miniature from the "Yak 03" pack and are totally usable for zombie games set in the modern world. I can picture certain members of the blogosphere frowning at the idea of Kung- Fu Zombies. I can also picture others in the blogosphere grinning like a gin addled gibbon. I am one of the gin addled gibbons who like the idea of modern comic effect horror. I am even grinning as I type this. While the figures are not the very best sculpts they have a cartooniness to them which in my eyes just adds for this game idea. Someone is bound to ask about what rules I will use. And while I could use "a Fist full of Kung fu!" by Osprey I think "7ombie TV" will give a better result. So if you are ready to shout out "Thwack!" "Crunch!" or even "Kaaaaaapow-ie!" please feel free to show me some support for some fun  games now and again! And if you can keep a straight face in a zombie kung fu game well just maybe you are taking the hobby far too seriously!

And in addition another VBCW flag carrier for the BUF. The same Footsore miniatures as last time but as I dropped the figure (Scratching it) and put the flag on upside  down. ("Stop laughing, we all make mistakes" said the Dalek climbing off of the dustbin). If the flag had been geometric I would not worry but the pig had his feet up in the  air and that was not the desired effect. Don't get me wrong I like bacon a lot, but it did look very wrong! So I had to order a few extra flags and wait a couple more days and that is why this is not with the others. Sorry about that it happens!

So all in all 4 extra 28mm figures. Thanks for looking and no more posts until the Epic fail bonus round.

Not sure I believe him about "no more posts" - I'm sure he's monkeying away painting several more entries which he'll submit the drafts for after I've gone to bed.
We do all make mistakes; just look at Miles, Grand Master of the Challenge Spreadsheet, who managed to submit his posts on the wrong day!
I do like those Yakuza guys and that kung fu/zombie mashup game sounds like a hit.
Four 28mm foot figures does give you another 20 points.

From PaulS - 28mm Savage warriors from ancient sagas (148 points)

I last year's secret santa, some kind soul sent me a batch of Black Tree vikings so I could start a Saga force I'd been talking about doing. 12 months later and I can happily say that they are all painted, with a few of the Gripping Beast plastics thrown in to bulk out some of the stands. This can be fielded as 4 points of vikings, if necessary, but I'd like to add another set of warriors (these are in the painting queue). I may have to order some more Black Tree vikings instead of the plastics though as they are really nice models. Thank you, whoever you are :)

Historical accuracy with the shields is well out the window, but the fabric colours are all pretty accurate and were compared against a pile of naturally dyed wool in my wife's wool stash. That makes up for the shields, right?

The other thing to note is that unlike most of my models, I decided to actually put decorative basing on these guys as I really didn't want to spend weeks filing off the metal bases. The reason for the snow will become apparent later.

The warlord stand is three Gripping Beast plastics. You can't have your warlord going around unprotected now can you? The first bodyguard likes geometric, pacman style shapes for his design. The second bodyguard is obviously on some sort of mushrooms with the abstract design on his...

The main Heathguard unit is a mere 4 strong, but they look like the toughest of the tough. Worthy warriors to attend the Warlord.

We then have two more groups of Hearthguard that will go together into one larger group. They are here in multiple angles to show off their fancy shields. this group was bulked out with two plastic Gripping Beast models so that all of them, except Mad Karl and Slightly-less-mad Jorik, have chainmail. I think you can guess who Karl is...

These are accompanied by a group of 8 warriors. One of them is a bit camera shy as he wanted to show off his shield instead

I decided to use colour to signify the different groups. They might be family groups... they may just have a very picky boss who likes colour co-ordination... I'm not quite sure. When all 23 figures stand together, it makes a very satisfying sight

While I was planning these, I realised that (other than the warlord base) these are all perfect minions for Frostgrave, hence the snowy bases. The snow is made using ground glass fragments and water effects. It is not so obvious on these, but in person they catch the light and sparkle like real snow.

If I was to use these for Frostgrave as well, I needed a wizard and an apprentice that fitted with the theme. Red Box games came to the rescue with two really nice figures. The detail on these are stunning and they just seemed to paint themselves.

I can't believe I missed the wonky line on the headscarf. Too late to fix that now, but I will go back and tidy that up after the challenge. Probably... or maybe it is a loose thread that has popped loose during the fighting. Yes... that is it. It is on purpose... honest!

Although they are from two different factions, they seem to fit together nicely now they are painted up.

And here they are with all of the vikings, ready to raid Frostgrave (minus the Warlord, who isn't useful here)

While we're on the Frostgrave/fantasy theme, there are also three hellhounds from Dungeon Saga. these could be hellhouds of some sort, or maybe just warhounds for the cultists. These had to be painted twice as they were the casualties in last week's varnish-fail. One side of them went completely white, while the other side was perfectly varnished... very annoying indeed.

All in, that is 28 28mm figures, 25 of which count towards the Frostgrave challenge.

Superb work Paul and a great idea to make the Vikings do double duty for Frostgrave and Saga. That's definitely a loose thread on the apprentice's headscarf, not a painting mistake *grin*.
The snow effect on the bases is wonderful. I'll have to remember that mix.
28 x 28mm foot figures gives you 140 points, and I'll throw in some extras for the 16 freehand shields.

From BrettM - 28mm A bit of Kings of War (35 points)

After the busy holidays finally have had time to get into this challenge. I believe this is 35 points. Much more to come!

Some Wraiths for Kings of War

 A couple more for Kings of War

2 Skeletons I some how left off when batch painting the others. Slightly perturbed when I noticed them laying off to the side after finishing the others. Guess I should learn to count to 20 next time.

That's it for now. Not the most epic painting jobs but for rank and file not bad I thought. Working on finishing up some Flames of war stuff that hopefully will have done by next Submission.

Good to see another Challenger entering the fray. That just leaves 30 who have still to submit something - I'm sure they'll all be dropping points bombs on us shortly.
That's very nice work with the pale green on the wraiths Brett. As for the two skeletons who somehow got missed when you were painting the other eighteen, these things happen to us all. I'm sure that some figures deliberately conspire to frustrate our best efforts.
35 points for these gets you onto the table - I look forward to seeing more from you over the coming weeks.

From ClintB - 6mm Meshah Meykanekeyh (30 points)

The second of Clint's entries today (he's got at least one more in the pipeline).

Please forgive the photography. Yes I know we all say that and we all mean it as well. Today an infantry company for my 6mm Arab-Israeli wars (1967) Six day war project. Although as it stands this is a complete company I will add another platoon as soon as I am able, but I for the moment have run out of mdf bases. I feel a small purchase is needed.


All the figures are Heroics and Ros. 1/300th scale or 6mm in wargames speak! The company consists of:

• HQ Platoon. A single BTR 152 APC with a Command stand.
• 1st Platoon consists of. 2 BTR 152 APCs, 1 command AK 47 assault rifle stand and 1 Blindicide antitank stand and 5 AK47 Assault rifle stands
• 2nd Platoon consists of. 2 BTR 152 APCs, 1 command  AK 47 assault rifle stand and 1 Blindicide antitank stand and 5 AK47 Assault rifle stands

So a total of 5 vehicles and 40 foot fingers mounted in 2 or 3 figures to a bases. Ok I will admit purists will want 4 figures to an Assault rifle base but I just ran out of figures and bases and have cut them down to 3 figures on each infantry base. In the game it will make no effect at this scale so I am happy to continue in this manner.

So the ARAB forces slowly grow. I will also be doing some Israeli infantry at a later date.

At least we aren't in peril of summoning any Shoggoths with the name of this lot!
Some nice additions to your Six Day War project Clint. These will score you 30 points.

From PaulS - 28mm WW2 Heer (105 points)

These have been sat in the box of undercoated figures for the last two years, so it is a relief to have finally got them done.

These are all Warlord figures and, with the exception of one figure, they are all the plastics from the old Bolt Action starter set. They aren't intended for use in Bolt Action, so the groupings below are all rough guesses. They will be used for things like 7TV, so the actual unit composition isn't relevant. This may change when the Bolt Action or Achtung! Cthulhu weird War rules come out, but for now... 

We have an officer with his two body guards. The one on the right is the only metal figure in the force.

 Next we have a medic, who would probably be shot by the allies if anyone spotted him with that pistol... but he needs to defend himself against the mythos beasts that he is likely to face in the future.

 Then we have a sniper team... not that headshots work on things without heads.

 Fire team 1 has 1 MG and 2 panzerschreck to add a bit of punch to the rifles

 Fire team 2 has 2 MGs and 1 panzerschreck

In total this is 21 Heer to add to my small WW2 collection. 

One of the great things about the Challenge is that it encourages people to paint up figures that have been sitting forlornly in their primer (or even unprimed) for a long time, looking whistfully on as other figures get painted.
A lovely bunch of Heer here Paul.  21 x 28mm foot figures gives you 105 points.