From SanderS - BOOOM! Part 2 (???)

Hoi,

As stated in the first part of this entry, I have gained another 364 points with the Napoleonics I have painted, but at exactly 1475 points this leaves me 25 points short of my objective of 1500 points. (Note from the Friday Minion - you were actually a lot closer than you thought, but keep painting at all costs...)

Now the miniatures featured here have been a bit of a hush-hush project of mine. I have no idea what amount of points they will generate, I'll leave that up to Greg, but I am guessing they will be good enough for the 25 points needed.

Since I have been playing X-wing with buddy Mark, we have been wanting to do this cheaper. Studio Bergstrom offered a simple way out with their 1 inch Fighters series. These inexpensive craft (you get about a squadron of fighters for the price of one X-wing pre-painted one) only needed a scaled down version of the base, which is made possible due to lasered MDF ;-) I have painted up some test figures before (now in the possession of Mark himself) as well as a squadron of TIE Bombers.

Anyway without further ado here are the miniatures themselves.

The Rebel Alliance fighter command

The Imperium's finest. Yup, after taking the pictures I noticed I will have to do something with the TIE-fighter bases, I was not sure whether to use stickers or painted bases when I started with the project and only later, after finishing these eyeballs I decided to do fire-arcs on the bases of the other craft.

There are 5 squadrons of 12 figures each, shown here. Well I say squadrons but the Rebels are divided in 2 units of 6 fighters each, the Imperials have two 12 fighter units except for one of the squints (Interceptors for those not in the know) which I gave a blood red stripe and the initials of Soontir Fell. Also prominent is Dart Vader's TIE advanced so that makes 61 fighters. But how many points would they be worth? 

It would be very bad form indeed not to show my profound gratitude for the excellent services as supplied for by Greg, a better Friday-Minion one could not wish for. I found his commentaries bought fair and stimulating and his replies always swift and to the point. Thanks heaps for this!

That would be my final official post for this Year's Challenge.
Cheers Everyone!

Hoi Sander! Very nice to see a "surprise" project like this come into the light.  I'm sure you feel pretty psyched to have been working away at this for some time, and now be able to share it with all of us.

These fighters look great, and what a clever notion of running it all through a different scale with smaller miniatures.  While I have not been hit by the Star Wars bug myself, it has swept through the hobby space like wildfire (our group here in Winnipeg LOVES it), and yet this is the first time I have seen some clever folks opting for a more economical - and still cool - approach.  Very well done!

As I mentioned before, you were already quite close to meeting you goal, closer than you had thought.  For scoring I will deem these to be 6mm vehicles, which nets you 122 points - so more than enough to exceed the 25 you suspected you were short.  Congratulations on hitting your goal! It has been awesome today to see many members of the Friday Fun Crew beating their targets - we just need to crack the whip on a few to make for a proper team showing (Samuli, Gilles, you had best be painting while you read this...)

It has been my pleasure Sander! I hope we see you in the comments section as this Challenge concludes, and brushing up a storm in the next Challenge!

From SamuliS: Wehrmacht 28mm Support (95 points)

Phew! Just in time for the friday slot with a mad basing rush in the evening. And in time for our Bolt Action game day tomorrow. These 13 miniatures and guns are the last Wehrmacht minis that I had originally bought and based sometime in 2013-14 and subsequently forgotten in the depths of my miniatures drawer. I guess it was high time to get the painted and away from the long WIP list.

All of them are Warlord Games metal minis. They are actually mostly quite bad sculpts with loads of soft  detail in places and plenty of cleaning up to do. Warlord's sculpts are bit of a mixed bag with some great characterful sculpts, but then some of them just look dated and not very well done. I really liked the Red Devils that I did a few years ago, but these Germans haven't really been up to the same level. Also these minis got flooded twice during last week when I managed to spill my brush rinsing glass over a couple of times. As I'm using some Sarissa weapons team bases with them the bottoms are cardboard and a few of them were a bit messed up and had to be replaced. Luckily I had some extras and no real base work needed to be redone so in the end it wasn't too bad.

A 81mm mortar team and a Forward Observation Officer with the traditional "crab glasses".

I decided to try improve my camo work this time around and took some tips from Nick's excellent tutorial. To keep it a bit simpler I left out the rain drops as I hadn't done any before and didn't feel like going back through 50 or so Germans to add them to previous minis as well. Still turned out quite nicely even if I say so myself! I also tried to do an OSL effect on the Flamethrower crew, but it just ended up looking horrible so he was painted up again in a normal way. I'll really need to practice that though as it would really be a cool addition on miniatures like these.

Panzerfaust, Flamethrower and MG42 teams

With these out of the way it's back to finalizing the last few entries. I have a Saxon Regiment nearing completion and I've finally started on my Curtgeld entry. There's also the my Secret Santa gift that has been waiting for embarrassingly long. With those three entries I should see myself cross the 1000 point line and succeed in achieving my goal! So it's back to the painting desk again!

Great work Samuli.  The colours, cammo and basework are all top-shelf here, very well done.  In fact that chap with the flamethrower leaves me feeling nice and warm down here in my cold spring basement in Winnipeg! 

Whatever issues you encountered with Warlord's hit-and-miss quality (something I have seen myself and often hear of from my gaming friends), and in spite of your own repeated attempts to flood your figures, you are getting excellent results :)  These fellows look the business, and should do nicely in Bolt Action (and other games). 

That is another 95 points for you, but don't enjoy them for long. Get back to work! That 1000-point target won't meet itself, and won't have any members of the Friday crew sliding off course now with the end so close in sight...

From GillesW - Far to be Byzance! (60 points)

Hi Everyone! Not so far from my goal of 1515 points after this submission, but I'll still have to paint 300 points in nine nights (ouch!).

This week it was the "great anything". I've been diverted by Rome Total War 2 and only painted a Basileus for my Thematic Byzantine project and few skirmishers. My choice for leader went to Romanos I Lekapenos, a low-born admiral who became emperor circa 920AD. The guy is very classy with his red boots!!

The figure is from Outpost Miniatures Range like the musician, the standard bearer is from Alain Touller Figures' Nikephorian range. The standard is the "Iconic" Lady of Blachernae.

Up next is the small group of Byzantine staff slingers from Essex Miniatures. There's only one pose but they are easy to paint.

I also painted some Isaurian light infantrymen. The figures are actually Dacians from Essex Miniatures with plastic spears, but they 'll do the business and work just fine at this scale.

Now the countdown is beginning!

Salut Gilles - the countdown is indeed on, and if anyone in the group is going to blast out 300 points in the remaining days of the Challenge, I expect many out there will join me in assuming The French Jester will be more than up to the task.  Another batch of wonderful ancients for us to enjoy, touching on a period of special interest to me - the Byzantines! Red boots for the boss are cool indeed, and that command stand is particularly nice.  I love that banner too - the look of Byzantine art, paintings and imagery just mezmerize me for some reason.  The Basileus will have a great time on the gaming table, I'm sure.

Great work all around, et une autre 60 point pour vous! A la prochaine!

From SanderS - BOOOOM! Part 1 (372points)

Hoi,

Well I have announced elsewhere that I was preparing a sort of a Point-Bomb, I would like to explain a bit more as to the how and why. Last year's Challenge was my first and it was absolute big fun from start till end, but I went about it all wrong for my doing. Somehow I had convinced myself I positively had to enter all theme rounds and that put the pressure up. Besides that I was aiming for a humble 500 points and reached that pretty easy, but then I went and upped that amount twice and in the end didn't achieve the target and that bugged me no end. The "Femme Fatale" side challenge was great fun but added to the pressure as well. In short when the Challenge was finished I had completely run out of steam and fell into a huge painters-block. So much so in fact that I totally missed I had, mysteriously, won one of the targets and gained a giftcard, yup I missed out on that but that didn't matter since I gained quite a lot of new friends and experience. The AHPC FB page people were actually mostly the ones that got the juices flowing again due to their warm comments and support.

Anyway, this year I decided to take a more relaxed approach and so have only entered those Theme Rounds I had a clear plan for in mind, ignored the side challenges for this year, and took last years amount of points as target which I hope to reach today with these posts.

To do this I will be posting two separate entries in order to gain the remaining points needed and since I have found my mojo and do not want to loose it, I am NOT upping the stakes this time round. I'll stop entering stuff for the Challenge but will stick around to see you great folks end it all.

First part of the point-bomb will be a Napoleonic bomb the other one...well we'll see about that later.

The units shown below are all part of the 1:72 plastic figures I really wanted to paint during this Challenge. First up is a French HQ stand for the Old Guard infantry. The grenadiers and dismounted officer are Zvezda figures, the mounted officer (actually a Marshall but will function as Generale de Division) is an Art Miniaturen white metal figure.

Next up is an HäT Bavarian Line infantry regiment.

 

The next 3 regiments are Portuguese regiments of the Peninsular War. The blue coated line infantry are New Line Design white metals. The officer is actually a Belgian Line infantry officer in white metal from Art miniaturen and the drummer boy is an ESCI conversion.

Both the cacadores regiments are basically Revells British Rifles. These were part of a second-hand swap. One of my friends had switched from 1:72 plastics to 28mm and so I got these based and primed ready. 

This line infantry regiment depicts the 21st regiment of the Portuguese brigade which was part of Picton's Fighting 3rd Division.

The larger  Cacadores Regiment depicts the 12th, also part of the 3rd Division

This smaller regiment is painted as the 9th Cacadores Regiment, I am still thinking about adding a command stand.

To finish it all a group photograph:

These 91 figures should be worth 364 points, I do hope you like them. Now what would be up for the last installment?

A Napoleonic points bomb in 1/72 - lovely! Napoleonics are a wonderful subject, but I particularly enjoy these submissions of 1/72 figures as I can just see Curt looking at all of this and deciding to start this period in yet another scale :)  

And what an assortment of nations and figure sources - I had no idea there was such diversity to be found in 1/72 Napoleonic figures.  From France to Bavaria to Portugal, and three different manufacturers, the discerning 1/72 Napoleonic gamer is clearly not lacking for choice.  Excellent work on these fellow Sander - great painting.

This is indeed a healthy-sized points bomb - and, apparently, only "part one" at that, so obviously Sander has some further shock and awe in store for later today.  Your preliminary calculations are correct, but I think you missed the one mounted fellow and the extra horse, so to my eyes this earns you 372 points.  Ka-BOOM...lets see what the Sander Air Force has in store for us later today...

From BurkhardS - Anglo-Saxon Thegns with Spears (47 Points)

So this is it. The Challenge is drawing to an end and I am guessing, this will be my second to last entry (maybe even my last one... not sure how much progress I will make the next couple of days). Again some Anglo-Saxons for SAGA or to be more precise, one (SAGA) point of Thegns.

These are pretty straight forward. Just plastic Thegns with spears, virtually straight out of the box. The only thing I had to do was sculpt a little chainmail around the shoulders, where the separate arms meet the torsos.

The shields are transfers from LBMS and that is about all there is to say about them. Well not really, as there is an extra mini with a standard.

Now in SAGA you have the option to swap one Heathguard or Warrior in a unit for a standard. I could go on forever how clever I am and that I wanted a standard to keep all my options open, but truth be told... I simply lost count while cleaning up these minis and did nine spearmen instead of eight.

So I simply added a standard I had printed out for some Rohan cavalry for Lord of the Rings to his spear and that is it. 

Now with nine 28mm minis this entry is worth 45 points, which leaves me just 2 points shy of my revised target of 500. But since I will also have my Curtgeld  in this weekend's theme round, I can virtually claim the new target squashed.

Before I leave you, I would like to say thank you to Greg, who was the Minion on duty for Fridays. Although i only became active this last month, it has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you for all the work and effort you made and the time you sacrificed. I really appreciated that!

Great job Burkhard - lovely to see more fellows for SAGA. As always, your painting skill really shines through, and I have a healthy respect for any hobbyist who sees sculpting anything in terms of "the only thing I had to do was sculpt a little chainmail around the shoulders."  You green-stuff guys make me jealous with all of the things you can "just" do.  I have to say the shield transfers look impressive too, and I know how finickity that process can be, so on top of the great painting, some excellent all-around hobby skill on display here.

So I have good news Burkhard - that is 45 points base, but I score you an extra one for the banner, and an extra point for "the only thing you had to do" with the sculpting, to get you to 47 points for this submission, which should mean you have nailed your target! Future points are all gravy now - and I encourage you to chase them down.  

It has been a pleasure working on the Friday submissions Burkhard, thanks very much!