The Votes are in for 'West'

 Hello All,

As the title says, we have the results for our 'West' theme. It was another great round with a host of wonderful interpretations of the theme: 'West'. Many stuck to the compass' meaning while a few used its possibility as a surname as an inspiration.  If you've not managed to take a look at the entries yet, I really suggest you head over and enjoy the gallery.

The runners-up are:

MartinN's 'Western Roman Cataphractarii'

PhilH's Cdr Hector West, Naval Officer (ret), Adventurer (and the lovely Camila)

Curt's 'Herbert West - Reanimator'

ChristopherS' 'Abraham Lincoln Brigade'

For our podium finishers, we have:

3rd Place: SanderS' '80s Pulp Revealed Part I'

Sanders' entertaining trip down memory lane will also give him 25 Bonus Points. Great work Sander!

2nd Place: ByronM's 'Chinese Rail Workers'

Byron's terrific Malifaux Chinese Rail Crew will give him 50 bonus points. Lovely work Byron.

and in 1st: DaveD's 'Viva Zapata!'

This fabulous 'Bad Hombre' will give Dave 75 Bonus Points PLUS a set of Western-themed buildings from Byron's SG2 Creations. Wonderful work Dave, and congratulations!!

A big thank you to all the participants for their great work this round!


...and a snapshot of the theme's stats

 
Next week is our final theme for this year's edition of the Painting Challenge. It's theme is: 'Character(s) and/or Scene from a Movie, TV Program, Book or Piece of Music'.

I'm looking forward to seeing many interesting and creative visions in our last theme round.

Have a great week everyone!

From Curt: Italian Wars Spanish Rodeleros (80 Points)

Thirteen entries! Well, that turned out to be quite a good day after all.  Great work Team Saturday!

Before I toddle off for bed, I'll close off the day with an entry of my own. 

I've been working on these figures off-and-on since the start of the Challenge. I was hoping to get them in on Friday for the anniversary of the Battle of Pavia, but it just wasn't in the cards.  Nonetheless, I'm still happy to see them off the table and awaiting orders in the display cabinet.

These are Spanish 'Rodeleros', translated as 'shield bearers', or known simply as shield-and-buckler men. They were an interesting troop type, which saw brief prominence during the early 16th century. 

The rodeleros usefulness was being able to break the deadlock between contesting blocks of pike (and in this way they were very similar to the Landsknetches and Swiss halberdiers). Once the rodeleros maneuvered past the hedge of pikes, and got in tight with their foes, their half-plate armour, long swords and small shields made them superior to the lightly protected pikemen.

Nevertheless, the rodeleros, like most classes of infantry, were particularly vulnerable to cavalry, especially eastern light cavalry such as the stradiots, and so had to be cautiously employed and judiciously commanded. 

Though they had a short time of glory in Italy, Cortes' campaigns in the New World was largely made possible by having a host of rodeleros at his back.

This unit is made up of an assortment of 28mm figures from The Assault Group (TAG), Foundry and Eureka Miniatures. I really like the Spanish/Portugues conquistadors from Eureka. They have a great sense of spirit and animation - the commander exhorting his men, seen below in the center, is from the Eureka range. 

The TAG castings were somewhat smaller than the rest, so I made a small rise for them running along the center of the base to serve as a crest, to help mask their slight statures.

I often try to put a boulder or stump at the rear of my large bases so players have something to grip on to when moving them on the table. For this base I've used a 3D printed stump that I scaled to a useful size (this same design was used for my Francis command stand).

Historically, these bravos probably wouldn't be carrying their own banner, but I like my units to have flags, so they've been gifted one from Pete's Flags to hoist in the breeze.

These sixteen swordsmen should give me 80 points for the slow climb out of the doldrums. Eaaaxcellent.

Okay, tomorrow, after a bit of a sleep-in and a bit of brunch, I'll announce the results of our 'West' theme.  See you soon!

From Paul OG: Indian Canoe and Villagers (60 Points)

Please excuse a second post for the week but I only got these finished with an hour to spare!

First up is a native Canoe being portaged - I will be using this as a movable deployment marker in Sharp Practice 2, but have left the canoe separate so I can instead add a ladder or other ancillary equipment instead if required.

And 8 villagers of various ages - some lovely stuff from Aged woman and girl holding hands, Woman milling corn, swaddled infants and quietly smoking pipes.  They will inhabit the longhouse and village that I have planned (for after AHPC finishes).

Figures sponsored by Marlboro!  

All figures are 28mm Redoubt Enterprises.  9 figures and the canoe. I'll leave it to our SnowLord to determine the points value of canoe decoration and kids in papooses :-)

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Lovely work Paul. I've always liked these civilian scenes, no matter what the period. The portage set brings back good memories of going canoeing up north. Our canoe was pretty lame, made of fibreglass, but I've seen many authentic birch bark ones like this. One thing about canoe decoration is that it was typically achieved by scraping the bark to give varying shades of tan, brown and black. Paint was rarely used as it was hard to come by and dyes wouldn't last in the water. Obviously this one belonged to a family that did very well in trading with either the North West Company or the Hudson's Bay Company. :) The family taking their leisure, enjoying the day is brilliant - great job on their buckskins. Now you just need a tipi to complete the scene!

This group of Native Americans, including the little bairn, camp bits and their canoe will give you 60 points. Nicely done Paul.

From AlanD - Medieval Russian Cavalry (110 Points)

Something a bit different this week. Because I don't have enough projects, I am starting on a medieval Russian army, and these ten horsemen are the first contigent. The figures are all from Gripping Beast, although I have given a couple kite shields from the box of plastic Russian infantry from Fireforge. I strongly dislike the moulded-on designs of the Fireforce shields, but it was either use them or give nearly all the figures round shieds, and I am aiming to make an army for the early 13th century, when round shields were less likely to be found. The shields without moulded-on detail are all hand painted.

I'm looking forward to painting this army. I have always loved the look of medieval Russians, reflecting the influences of north, south, east and west on their armour, weapons and clothing. A very colourful and interesting army. And it will be massive. Mwahhahahhh!

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Stonking work Dux! This looks to be an amazing project and very, very colourful. 

I like that you're continuing with your snowy base motif. It must have something to do with the insufferable heat waves you've been experiencing down there that makes you want to model the cursed stuff. Of course I can't help but mention that I greatly admire your signature hand-painted shields (and besides, I hear from reliable sources that you get quite grumpy if people don't). Also, I really like the varied details of bronze and steel you've done with their armour. It all helps to give them a very exotic, Slavic flavour.

Well done Alan! That's another 110 points you can take to the Challenge bank.

From Paul O'G: Looting Landsknecht Curtgeld (27 Points)

This week I've traveled interstate with work so productivity has dived.  I'm trying to finish some figures but in the meantime have completed my most important figure of the challenge; the Curtgeld.

This 28mm Landsknecht is busy redistributing goods from undeserving locals to obviously far more deserving liberators.  This is one half of a two man chest lifting team, and Reilly is painting the other guy to complete this small family submission to the larger team Oz effort.

My first Landsknecht and while it as fun to break out all the colours, I'm glad I'm not doing a whole army of them! He is sporting a dapper ginger beard as a permanent reminder of who painted him. 

You'll see some more Landsknechts in the coming weeks as the team contribution comes together.

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Oh wow, this is just tremendous Paul. I can't tell you how stoked I am in knowing that this is part of a larger Team Australia effort - I'm very, very honoured. Amazing.

I actually know this set quite well as I have it myself, but in an unbuilt form, which makes this all the better. 

This fellow does have a rather magnificent beard, doesn't he?  And his garb is a veritable riot of colour. How wonderful! I look forward to seeing Reilly's efforts on the other half of this avaricious set.

I really think the chest warrants a few extra points, don't you say? So lets go with 27.

Thank you again Paul! 

From JamieM: Goblins and their Larger Cousins (202 Points)

Having had one of the pillars of my world crumble when I discovered Sir David Attenborough didn't cover horse sized riding lizards or giant hydras in any of his many natural history programmes when I was researching their colour schemes, I didn't even bother looking to see if he'd covered Goblins.... there's only so much disappointment an Englishman can take after all...

So I went with Green for these 32 Gobboes

 Green is the GW colour after all, but I tried to keep it to an earthy green instead of a bright green.

There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to painting so many champions, standards and musicians (mostly hidden at the back looking at the photos!), but they'll come in handy once I paint a whole load more of them for multiple units, because as we all know, the only better than goblins is more goblins.

I went with red for their outfits as I thought black was a little drab.... and painting that many black cloaks didn't fill me with excitement!

I've been following the debate over "tabletop standard" which has been very interesting and it has helped me decide to do what looked good on the tabletop as opposed to "real life" sometimes, so no rust on the weapons, despite the fact I'm sure rust would be all over goblin weapons, as I didn't like the colour clash with the orange being so near the red and dirty metal just looked better.  The red cloaks are also a little neat for that exact reason, but they will cut quite a dash across the tabletop, I can assure you...!

This is the side of them I'm hoping to see most of as they charge towards the enemy.

And where would Goblins be without their larger cousins to back them up?

Nowhere good, that's for sure so here are 6 smelly Trolls (or Troggoths as the IP wizards at GW insist of calling them - insert eye rolling smiley here).

Colder colours for these chaps as they are river trolls so I wanted them to look a bit slimy.

Lots of rusted weapons as orange rust goes rather nicely with the blue/grey in this wargamers humble opinion.  I also tried to give the scales a shiny look, which was successful in parts, but a little heavy handed in others.

Lots of flesh to highlight on the back and I really did find them rather good fun to paint.  The scale difference of them with the goblins is brilliant, here's a shot to show them with their little cousins.

32 Goblins and 6 Trolls down and whole lot more of them needed!  I was supposed to be painting elves, but seeing this lot made me want to paint them up..... and we have to follow where the painting muse takes us after all.

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 Haha! I loved your Attenborough commment Jamie - that one made me laugh aloud.

I've never really taken to GWs orks, but I've always somehow liked their Goblins. What is that all about? Anyway, the fact is I really think these little guys are pretty cool with their pointy noses and obsession with drugs mushrooms and the moon. Don't even get me started on 'tabletop standard', but nonetheless, I agree, these chaps will be quite sharp on the tabletop. Are you going to do any of the Night Goblin Fanatics or Squigs? Hopefully GW has not killed off that portion of their IP as well.

These Toggoths/ not-Trolls are spectacular! I really like the blueish/purple you've used for their skin and scales, and their weapons look suitably rotten and manky as well. Loverly.

A very respectable 202 points for the bag, Jamie. Well done!