From JonathanO – Ancient Assyrian Infantry (175 points)

Finally, my first ever post in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

Time for some “ancient” history – these are Lamming Miniatures Ancient Assyrians dating back to the 1970s!  I used to go to Northern Militaire and bought the first few figures from Bill Lamming from his then new range in 1975.  I added to the collection over the next few years, but for some reason this army never got painted.   

Having enjoyed following the painting challenge over the last couple of years, I was delighted to be accepted into this year’s challenge and resolved to finally paint some of my old figures.  A lot of the figures did have a rather thick undercoat and maybe one colour after an earlier attempt to get them painted. So I stripped off all the paint and prepared them for painting in the early part of the challenge.  I had hoped to get one unit done in time for the Nostalgia bonus round, but didn’t quite make it.

Rather than the WRG rules that these figures were originally purchased for, I decided to base the figures for large battle games such as Sword and Spear, Impetus and To The Strongest.  The bases have a 120mm frontage.  My friend Scott had based his Successor armies the same way using homemade MDF bases and he kindly game me enough bases for my entire Assyrian collection.  The bases are ¼ inch high, but are great for moving around and providing protection for the figures.  The spearmen units can be supported by the archers to make larger combined spear/bow units, as required.  

So here we have 34 infantry.  That should hopefully get me on the scoreboard with 170 points in the Challenge and also in the Bronze to Steel side challenge.

 

 

 

 

Two debuts in a day! These look absolutely lovely Jonathan. I've had it in my mind for a while to do an Assyrian army (in 15mm) and seeing these might just tip me over the edge.
Great work - I've added a few bonus points for the hand-painted designs on the round shields. Your 175 points for this debut entry will put you a fair way up the points table.

And, dear friends, with Jonathan joining us, this means that three-quarters of this year's entrants have now made at least one submission.

From FranL - 15mm Modern African Forces "The New Simbas" (242 points)

At long last, the first entry in the main Challenge from Fran. Welcome aboard big fella :)

Who doesn't need a small modern professionally trained African force for modern skirmish games?

Seemingly me........

These boys are from Peter Pig, they cover those spots where Warlords or Dictators have money and a penchant for designing uniforms and penning their biography.

The armour though is second rate, T-55's, Unimogs, a Landrover and several wrecks but our Warlord/Dictator has plans, big plans........

....but no one in the region can match his small force yet!

These boys should be followed by the less professional, untrained, less disciplined, larger, nasty militia forces in the region. 

Apologies for less than good pictures (deleted some shots other than the ones above) but it's hard to find space and good light in a mobile home and when a lot of stuff is in storage!

Fran tells me there are 10 vehicles, 79 figures and 6 crew served weapons in this entry. I'll believe him. That comes to a grand 242 points.
Quite a points bomb for your debut on the main Challenge. Now, when is the other half of the Two Bromantics going to join us here?

From TeemuL - Hasslefree Dwarfs (25 points)

Aah, the joys of January - the Christmas and Winter beers are in discount

As I mentioned earlier, my Dwarf army was lacking some long distance firepower. I have now added two bolt throwers and couple of halflings with bows as possible allies, but I want to be sure. So I'm adding these dwarfs with crossbows.

I was looking after the old metal crossbow dwarfs from Citadel, but couldn't found any with a quick search. On the other hand, Hasslefree Miniatures had a Christmas Offer: Buy Anything and get Something for free. They had some dwarfs with crossbows which looked suitable for my needs, so I placed an order. I got this Gromli figure as a free extra. For now he will be the leader of the unit, but I might change that Dwarf Officer from one of the Bolt Throwers to this unit, he has similar helmet and striped uniform as some of these.

How can that shield look so messy???

They all come with round bases, but I changed them to square ones. Gromli also had a nice shield, but I changed it to GW shield in order to tie him and his group tightly with the other forces. These guys are slimmer than cartoonish GW dwarfs and their beards are quite dwarf sized as well. Hmm. I mean small. I believe they will look okay with the rest of the dwarfs, they will be in their own unit, so it should help with optical illusion. On the other hand, they might work as a crusader army as well - all that ring mail and those helmets. They are not fat like most of the dwarfs, so these might work like as smallish crusades era men.

I really liked to paint these guys, I liked the sculpts and details, there was basically no flash. They were really a joy. It is just all that ring mail which might be quite painful, it takes some time and eats my brushes. Well. the stripes are not that better, but I still kinda liked to paint them. I have more of these, I hope to paint them during the challenge.

Gromli observing the practice

It's five points a piece, so together they are 25 points. Now I need to work with some defensive terrain to shield my precious dwarfs...

Nice looking Dwarfs! I think I might still have a few of the early 1980s Citadel ones in my collection at my dad's house, but don't remember if there were any crossbowmen among them. This little group will give you 25 points well earned :)

From Kawe - 28mm Hobol Firebreath and Halfling Knight (18 points)

Another Challenger makes their debut...

Hobol Firebreath! My first monster ever! What a fantastic model he still is...

I was also toying with the colour scheme for some knightly order of the new halflings.

What a great debut, combining the rather old and the brand new. Hobol has certainly stood up to the test of time and looks fantastic. That's a great effect you've created with his eyes - he looks rather sleepy, perhaps he had one too many halflings for lunch?
As for the halfling knight, well, what can I say? Superb!

I'm going to score Hobol as a 54mm figure and the halfling knight as 20mm cavalry (well, he is mounted on a goat!).
Once again, a fantastic debut and welcome to this year's Challenge :)

From ClintB - 28mm Get Your Motors Running.(40 points)

Clint's 2nd entry of the day...

Well continuing the VBCW/WW1 theme I have been pursuing. Here are 2 28mm Motorcycles and sidecars. The models are by 1st Corps but come with no instructions and with the need to create holes that need to be plugged in order to hold them together.  You may get the impression that I am not overly impressed with these models and truth to be told I have had MUCH better. Still they do have a web site so you can check to see how they should look and as my first order from the company there might be instructions in other orders. So whinge over as the service was quite good and I have managed to complete the models even without instructions with the minimum of pieces left over at the end!

Do not feel bad for me as I am happy with the final result. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of early motorbikes is minimal, In fact it is probably less than minimal so if you see anything wrong, well done but please do not point it out as I will not be rectifying it! Let me continue in ignorant bliss!

So one Motorcycle has a machine gun, while the other carries an officer. Each driver has a different head for variety which I like as it breaks them up quite nicely. The Machinegun is a real ar*e to fit as it has to be painted first and then cut to fit, or else it extends well beyond the mount the cooling tube also needs to be trimmed but without instruction you would never know! As for the gun shield, not that it would protect anyone that is also a b*gger to fit! Please do not let my frustrations put you off the models but do realise that unexpected work will need to be done on each of them.

The riders fit nicely though but the passengers do not! The senior officer seems most uncomfortably perched and not at all enjoying the ride. The machine gunner has the shortest legs imaginable in fact he looks deformed when not in the sidecar. But eventually it all goes together you grab a cold beer and relax as you type this up. And all is well with the world, at least in my miniatures kingdom.

Now that they are done I am happy with them. But I will not be ordering any more in the near future.

At least it is something a little different in the challenge and on the table top and we all like a little different in a wargame. Thanks for looking and that should be it for this week. And I am no longer rocking back and forth as I know I will be painting some socialist Kent Miners next week.

All the best Clint

...head out on the highway...
Lovely jubbly Clint! Hmm, how to score these? You know what, I'm going to score each of these infernal machines as 2 cavalry figures, so that will give you another 40 points.

From PaulS - 28mm More Frosty Goodies (150 points)

This week has been catching up a bit on the core Dungeon Saga figures in order to try and finish that off in order to get one side challenge out of the way. One of the most interesting sets of figures in the Dungeon Saga set were the undead dwarf warriors... I'm not sure I've seen skeleton dwarves before. They, along with the three undead Basilean knights, can also be used as Armoured undead in Frostgrave. I just noticed that I forgot to do the glowing eyes... I'll have to go back and do those at some point!

After finishing those 6 skeletons, I figured it was about time for a few heroes and henchmen, so I started on some of the sneaky or different characters. First up is the assassin character from the Dungeon Saga KS. This is a once piece resin figure; nicely sculpted, but I think painting it with black armour was possibly a bad idea as you can't really see the detail in the photo. He'll also make a good thief henchman for Frostgrave.

Sticking to the thief theme for a second, I made one up for a cultist/necromancer style warband using the Frostgrave Cultist and Henchmen sets. These two plastic sets are great fun to play with and offer plenty of scope for swapping parts.

After the darker side of the henchmen list, I decided to go for some brighter souls. The smaller of the two is a halfling warrior from the Dungeon Saga kickstarter who is, I guess, supposed to be Tyrion Lannister.  He will make an interesting Templar. Next to him we have the warrior nun character from Zombicide: Black Plague. I tried to do some eyes on her, but failed... failed so badly. Unfortunately the face is quite open, so it really needed eyes as there wasn't enough depth for shadows to suffice. She will also be a templar option, or potentially one of the new Captains.

Finally is a massive flock of crows for Zombicide and Black Plague. They are a bit like Flock of Seagulls, but more goth. The plus side of finishing these off is that they can also be used as Blood Crows in Frostgrave. Technically the rules are for one crow, but it makes more sense for it to be a flock. One stand (in the photo somewhere) is converted as I stole one crow to make a Crow Master (which is in the painting queue). Painting these was a pain as crows are black with black and a bit more black...

This is 9 28mm figures, 1 28mm halfling and 20 flocks of crows. The flocks are about the size of a 28mm figure, but I will leave it up to Tamsin to decide how to score them.

Beautiful work Paul. With all those crows, you'd make Alfred Hitchcock envious (and give Tippi Hedren a  severe case of the vapours). I'm going to assume that the flocks are on the same size bases as the rest of the minis and score them as equivalent to a 28mm figure (maybe you could add a comparison pic at some point?). The halfling will also be scored as a 28mm figure as that seems to be the precedent. That gives you a handy 150 points for this entry.

From LeeH - 6mm Polybian Roman Triarii (48 points)

My 6mm Roman Republican army has grown again, this time with four units of Triarii. These were the oldest and wealthiest legionaries in the army and were usually positioned in the third rank behind the Hastati and Principes. They could afford the best equipment and typically wore heavy metal armour and carried large shields and long spears. By the time of the 2nd Punic War (the period I am working on) experience, rather than wealth, was the primary selection criteria for the Triarii. They were still the best armed troops although now they carried larger oval or rectangular shields rather than the smaller round ones of earlier periods.

Polybian (Republic) Roman Triarii

As with my other Romans these minis are by Baccus and are very nicely cast with very few minor defects and virtually no flash to be removed. A handful of the helmet plumes either broke off or were miscast but these are so few as to not ruin the overall impact of the finished units. Its tempting to think that these are virtually identical to the Hastati and Principes that I have already painted but close inspection shows that these really are distinctly different figures with appropriate armour for their class. Some parts of the models were tricky to reach when painting but overall this was a simple paint job just requiring some patience rather than masses of skill to complete.

Triarii

I rocketed through these in double quick time spending just two evenings painting the figures and a couple more for varnishing and basing. Whether I can maintain such a pace remains to be seen but if I can I could get my whole Punic War period wrapped up by the end of the challenge! Having said that I also have some WWII North Africa stuff to work on. It all depends on how long I wait before my large order of Carthaginians arrives from Baccus. I'll let the Paint Gods (or Royal Mail) decide which direction I go in next.

From behind showing the mail armour of the Triarii and the base labels

96 infantry should net me 48 Points which will push me up the ranking table a little bit so I'm quite happy with that.

"heavy metal armour" - biker jackets with studs and patches, bullet belts, faded Motorhead/Iron Maiden/Metallica t-shirts and long hair? ;)It's always good to see more 6mm goodness and you've certainly done us proud with these Triarii.48 points does shunt you up a couple of places Lee, but you've still got a way to go to catch the other Rejects up.

From ClintB - 28mm VBCW Royalist High Command (47 points)

OK, chaps and chapesses, let's start the day off with the first of two (so far!) submissions from Clint.

And today I will start with some more VBCW figures.  The first picture of 4 figures contain a mixture of manufacturers but are all painted to represent Royalist High Command for a VBCW.  But they are all 28mm figures of a WW1 vintage . They are mostly Renegade and Great war miniatures for those of you who really want to know.

The flags are by Pete Barfield   and sold by Solway. The flag bearers can be swapped out for others should the factions change, but given the 3 lion emblem on the flag these are clearly acting on the Royalist behalf.

Lastly we have 5 "Scarab Miniatures" these are clearly representative of the Black adder goes forth TV series and are not Curt and his minions. I cannot take any responsibility for what you think of course, but I would Like to Stress these are not in any way meant to represent the Minions and our leader. Seriously they are not. To think so would of course be utter rubbish these are definitely NOT Curt and the minions! Just to be clear there is no way these are the painting adjudicators and the most wonderful Curt. They are nothing like them at all. I cannot emphasis this point too much. So I will say it again these are not the Leader of the painting Challenge and his wonderful assistants. But your own thoughts and conclusions are up to you. But to me they are nothing like this, I hope that is clear to you ll.

There you cannot say fairer than that!

I have absolutely no idea why anybody might come to the conclusion that the last 5 figures could in any way whatsoever, possibly be representative of General Snowlord and his minions. Especially after that very clear and emphatic statement.
So, still more VBCW goodness from you. At the rate you're going, you'll probably have painted a figure for every adult in Britain at the time by the end of this year ;)
I'm going to award a bonus point or two for your clear explanation that these definitely, absolutely, no way sirree represent any Challenge adjudicators, real or imaginary, living or dead (or undead) in any way at all.