The Votes are In for 'Character(s) and/or Scene from a Movie, TV Program, Book or Piece of Music' Theme (phew!)

The votes are in and tabulated for our final theme round of Challenge VII: 'Character(s) and/or Scene from a Movie, TV Program, Book or Piece of Music'. 

We were treated with 35 interpretations of the theme, from the movie 'The Man Who Would Be King', and TV series 'Rome', to the song 'Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!' and children's comic 'Batman'. It was a wonderful panoply of scenes and characters - I want to thank all the participants for their creativity and hard work.

We had many ties amongst the runners up, and they are:

SanderS' 'The Most Dangerous Man in the World!'

 KyleC, ClintB, IanW, SimonM's 'Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?'

MartinN's Commissar Ciaphas Cain - 'Hero of the Imperium'

LeeH and RayR's 'Inglorious Rejects'

KenR's 'Blake's 7'

Curt's 'The Duellists'

AlexS' 'Astérix and Obélix'

For our podium finishers we have: 

Third Place: Bark's 'Mystery Investigators'

For his masterful and very colourful brushwork Barks will receive 25 bonus points (and a Scooby Snack, if I haven't eaten them all...).

Second Place: MichaelA's 'Who You Gonna Call...'

Michael's incredibly cinematic vignette will give him 50 bonus points to add to his total. Well done Mr. Awdry!

First Place: ByronM's 'Steampunk Mary Poppins and Bert'

 

For his fine brushwork (and whimsical gift to his wife, no less), Byron will get an extra 75 points AND a gift certificate from Pig Iron Productions. Congratulations Byron, and thank you for treating us to your work.

Again, to all that participated, wonderful work! Bravo!

For those interested in the voting stats, here they are:

As hard as it is to believe we now start our last week of the Challenge. Our Daily Minions will take their teams for their final review and then this weekend I will manage the Free-for-All until the finish at 12:01am Monday - the first day of Spring! 

Remember, for both Saturday and Sunday ANYONE can submit as many entries as you like, so pile on - I want to be swamped with submissions!

Have a great week everyone!

From RobH - Roman Auxilia (170 points)

My first Roman Army consisted of  Airfix plastics. It was painted while I was in High School and was used to play both a variation of Chainmail and WRG's Ancient Rules 5th Edition. It was later replaced by a 25mm lead army with a mix of figures sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

By 2005 I started to replace these 25 year old veterans with a mix of Wargames Foundry, Gripping Beast and Warlord Games figures  I was able to pick up at local shops and on Ebay.  I was going through the mountain of unpainted figures and pulled these two units out. The Western Roman Archers  are by Warlord Games. I believe the auxilia spearmen are a pack of 10 figures by Wargames Foundry. I could be wrong on that point. The command figures are a mix of Gripping Beast and Warlord Games.

The single figure with the yellow plumage is to serve as my Curtgeld. In total there are 32 figures in two Aux Units of 16 figure each. The legionnaire's shield was already completed and was taken out of my spare parts box. It's not a proper Aux shield, but either it was picked up off the field or perhaps a Centurion found himself temporarily attached to the Aux. 

Sorry Rob, this post should have been posted earlier. But here it is, just a couple of hours before H-Hour. Nice job on these Romans. I like the details on you shields and for this reason will throw in an extra 10 points. Happy Challenge ending! (Sylvain)

AND I gave you an extra 20 Points for the wonderful Curtgeld. Thank you Rob!

Side Duels and Challenges Updated

That'll teach you NOT to dismiss International Women's Day!

Hi All,

Another points update for the Side Duels and Challenges
has been posted.

There's a bit of a shake-down this round with a few contenders looking more like a sure thing. Nothing is set in stone (or sand!) but hey, I have to write something here right?

Please check and confirm I have things right!

Cheers,
Millsy the Duels Wallah

From DavidB: Dark Angels (65 Points)

Before I get to the eyecandy, Above is a Dark Angel from the venerable terminator box set. I liked the black armor and the crazy checks and painted my first Spacemarine force as black clad Dark Angels. Mostly I played the terminators in Space Hulk.

Enter the first novel I purchased from a hobbyshop. 

The primary story was how a group of Dark Angels had returned to their recruiting world which was a population of  AmerIndians. Needless to say I purged a lot of my black Dark Angels and went full bore Deathwing Armor. I even built a full squad of metal marine scouts complete in warpaint. discovering their world was overrun by a genestealer cult that had enslaved their tribes, The group went native. They painted their armor white and inscribed tribe and clan markings on their armor, sang their death-songs, and went to war. They won and divided the untainted among them and taught them the old ways.

By this time, GW had changed the Dark Angels to a dark green armor, so I built a couple squads up in the green livery to back the Deathwing troops. Codexes and new editions pulled the story of a small band of DA Terminators going native on a genestealer invasion. I gave and sold all of them away. My nephew got a lot of em.

GW only hints about the old story and Deathwing's origin now, but I picked up Dark Vengance that had a strike force of Dark Angels. The idea that my tribe could still be around 40,000 years in the future and part of a Anglo scifi knight force is a strong clarion call! ;)

Interrogator Chaplain Asmodai is leading the advance party.

He was primered green for some odd reason. I had to paint over all that green primer and the only green he sports is a single shoulder plate.

An assault cannon and a come at me pose, the plastic termies from the game are excellent sculpts and I went full tribal on them. The glyphs are Ojibwa for war, bear, deer, vengence, etcetera. 

I did paint their shoulder plates and a few other armor plates in the dark angel green. Just because they are Ojibwa, doesn't mean they have forsakken sworn allegiance.

These fellows are same pose-itis, but I altered the paint a touch. I goofed up the wolf pictograph on the right one and it kept getting worse as I attempted a fix! I think in the future I may try micro pens!

This is my favorite of the bunch, He is off to avenge the tribe!

Ravenwing bikers, I never used Ravenwing before so this will be different.

I gave the brother sgt. a darker complexion, He must be Cheyenne!

The bikers were my favorite to paint so far of the force. lots of detail on them and the black and white livery reminds me a lot of my first Dark Angel force....wish I had them still!

A plasma gunner completes the troop. The game is filled with plasma guns which is fine for me, I prefer plasma pistols, guns, and cannons. Stops most traitors fast!

I still have a few more Dark Angels and some other miniatures to clear the desk.

At least I'm getting back in stride. I have work in the early AM, but I will try to catch up with what I've missed. I've only been following via the email notices as I've been on the bounce lately to make up for missed time from sickness and accident.

So 6 infantry and 3 scifi cav. I'm only claiming the Deathwing and Ravenwing sgt as natives so Millsy can mark me for 5 as only the Deathwing boys are geared up in the right totems.

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Glorious stuff David! I remember reading Deathwing when it first came out and really liked the Terminator background story. The whole idea of these various Space Marine chapters going around the galaxy to get new recruits from low-tech feral worlds was very interesting and opened up the 40K narrative to something very cool. I suppose the Space Wolves would be something similar with their references to a quasi Nordic/Viking background. They really needed to do a chapter with a Samurai origin - that would make for some nice conversions as well. Anyway, I digress once again.

I really like the tribal Ojibwa markings you created for their Terminator armour, especially the Assault Cannon marine with the war feathers at his waist. I agree with you, the fellow with the chainfist is my favourite as well - he looks like he's going all-out, sending folks to the Dream Lands at 4/4 time. The bikes are excellent as well. I quite like the wing-shield motif as their wind fairings. I was thinking, to follow the Ojibwa theme, you could make some Dream Catchers to suspend between their twin-linked bolters. :)

Great work David! With your 60 points here you've vaulted the Saturday team well into the 800 point mark and provided a great start to our march to the Challenge's 76K final target.  Well done!

 

From JamieM - AoS and 30k Points Grenade (320 Points)

They say that every cloud has a silver lining.  The metaphorical cloud in this case is the fact I'm a hobby magpie, constantly grabbing the shiny things from my garage and starting them and not being quite so good at finishing them before the next shiny thing grabs my attention.  This can leave large amounts of half finished figures strewn all over the study, steadily encroaching out of the zone I'm allowed for "Daddy's little men".  The silver lining, to stretch this metaphor almost to breaking point, is that sometimes the moons align, the Scooby gang catch the baddy and the England rugby team come good to arguably be the best team in the world right now (one for our southern hemisphere challengers there) and I get a load of stuff finished at the same time.

First up, some Salamanders with flamers.  I really wanted a unit with the throwback 30k flamers which pay homage to the flamers released in the first ever space marine box in the early 80's, the one with the beakies in.  No real plan for these, but the Salamander legion do love them some flames so I'm sure they'll get some use.  They were a legion that resisted Horus' betrayal of the Emperor and were mostly massacred for their troubles by the traitor legions in an ambush on Istvaan (boo, hiss).

They'll go nicely with my other Salamanders and I tried to get some muzzle burn damage on the flamers.  Decals applied by my own fair hand on one shoulderpad and flames handpainted on the other shoulderpad to hopefully appease both sides of the decal schism (or perhaps to be considered a heretic by both sides!).

Next up, some more hot death in the form of some Thousand Sons Plasma dudes.

They would ideally be wearing oven gloves as plasma weapons are extremely temperamental can kill the wielder if your dice are bad enough.  So no bad dice out there to stay safe kids.  They originally had converted autocannons, but you know how sometimes you just get a model build wrong?  Took me 2 weeks to admit it to myself as I had a sulk about it, so off went the autcannons and on went the plasmas.  I'm so pleased I did that now.

To support these chaps are twenty members of an assault squad

I see these fellas as the glory boys, laughing at the tactical squads who trudge through the mud as these guys zoom overhead, making themselves a perfect target against the sky no doubt.  Sort of like how the RAF and army consider each other.  So lots of gold and fancy decals showing how much they like flying (birds head on the right shoulder pad, flying scarab on the top of the jump pack).

 I once again showed a cavalier disregard for the make of jump packs in existence during the heresy and used far cheaper 40k ones ( I could buy three units like this for the price of the proper FW one).  All the armour is the correct mark (IV and VI) as I do have some standards... the 30k world is probably as close as GW games get to historical gaming with regards people worrying about exact markings, colours, who fought with whom, etc, but I think we all have to find a level we're comfortable with these things.  The heads are the simply superb Forgeworld upgrade ones for the most part and using these covers a multitude of sins in my eyes!  So look at the pretty heads, not the jump packs...

Some nice chunky axes and swords in the unit and some marines with their helmets off, because it appears to be a tradition that someone in every marine unit won't wear the hermetically sealed life support and vital armour because he wants the enemy to see him snarling...... You can just imagine the conversation

"Sorry Amon, you're the last one here, so you have to leave your helmet behind today and grimace for the next 3 hours about the grim darkness of our present"

"But I did it last time!  Isn't it Azhek's turn?"

"Watch it or you'll be assigned a plasma gun like Hotep was after he complained"

And finally, 32 more gobbos to go with the ones I did a few weeks ago.

Same recipe as the last ones and I was regretting deciding upon two highlight layers on the skin by the time I got to the second one...

These lads will be trampling onto the gaming table shortly and then probably promptly running off again.  I'm hoping to have time to bring some crazed fanatics and netters to the challenge, but I shall have to see how the week goes as time has gotten away from me a little!

So 62 28mm figures in total to shoot me past my target, which I'm rather pleased about as for quite a while I was lagging behind the curve.
 

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Yabba Abaddon Doo! That was no normal points grenade Jamie, but a armour-piercing rocket propelled points grenade. 

Beautiful work all around, Jamie. Your's and Gregs's posts make me laugh as you both have such a irreverent joy of the GW hobby. It's quite refreshing from the fan nonsense you often come across on the internet.

Your Salamanders and Thousand Sons are just terrific, but I would love to see oven mitt conversions for both the flamers and plasma guns - that would be superb. The goblins continue to make me smile though I've never understood individual basing in Fantasy. Why not do group-basing, especially for these mobs? That way you could cheat and concentrate the fine detailing for the first rank while keeping the ones in the back at a more basic level. I often do this with my Napoleonics - only the photo-op boys in the front are pretty in all their facings, while Alf, the Two-Layer Alsatian, always follows in the rear looking rather drab. Anyway, I digress. These ALL look wonderful and more kudos to you for it.

320 points, with a few extra for all the spiffy decals, handpainted flames and that humorous hand-wringing about jump-packs over 10,000 years of history(!). I'm not sure, but I think this entry may put you in the lead in your 30K Challenge, and right up behind Greg in the overall standings as well. The race is truly on! Well done Jamie.