From DebD: Dark Sword: Female Ranger with Bow (10 points)

This week I had a bit of fun with Dark Sword's Female Ranger. I wanted to try to create a forest scene and use bits of nature. I really enjoyed this project. Surprisingly, bark is very fun to work with!

Scale: 28mm
Mfg: Dark Sword Miniatures
Product: Female Ranger with Bow
Material: Metal

The bow was added to the model. It is a metal spear that I clipped and filed down.

The trees are twigs, bark and moss found on a hike and later dried in the oven.  Some people bake cookies, I bake bark lol

The ferns are card stock paper that has been punched out with Green Stuff World's small branch punch.

The leaves in the trees and on the ground are birch seeds that have also been dried out. 

One of these weeks, I will have more than one figure to post :)

1 x 28mm from Dark Sword

Thanks!

Deb

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Wow, what an absolutely stunning vignette Deb. 

The figure's ridiculous pose aside (What tortured mind comes up with these incongruous, quasi dance-class animations?), you've done a terrific job on the bow modification and the painting is top shelf, particularly her face.

The forest setting you've created is truly inspired and I really like what you've done with the various mixed media to achieve the overall effect (Note to self: I absolutely NEED that small branch punch thingy). 

On top of the standard 5 points for the figure I'm giving you another 5 for the groundwork and bow modifications. Lovely work Deb! 

From MilesR: Treasure Markers and Dungeon Rooms/Corridors (160 Points)

I decided to scratch build some treasure markers to use for games like Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago and D&D.  With the Challenge now including terrain, these might net me a few points.

 A close up of the six smaller markers - all mounted on 25mm diameter bases.  The two chests and the trap door are all scratch built.  The large barrel in the left front is my first 3D printed terrain piece and then the two gold piles are just just glitter and rhinestones .  The weapons are extras from the plastic sprues of Frostgrave minis and the new Oathmark Dwarves (which will be painted later on in the Challenge.

The larger supply depot is a scratch built chest plus a barrel from a Rendedra kit.

Lastly there's an open chest loaded with "treasure". I had a lot of fun making these and think they came out nicely  It was really simple:

The bodies of each chest are just some popsicle sticks cut to size and glued into place.

One the Box is dry cover the "lid with thin trips of wood and you've got a chest.  To have it open just wait until the glue sets and then use a razor saw to cut the lid off.  Easy Peasy as they say.

You know, I was thinking "now that I've got a bunch of dungeon treasure markers, I need some dungeon terrain to go along with them"

So I went about making some dungeon terrain:

Here's the first batch of sectional terrain.  They're all based on a 4x4 inch grid with 2 inch high walls.   I cut all the EPS foam using my trusty Proxxon hot wire cutting table (love that tool).  The bases and walls are all 1/2 inch think which has a nice look but also some stability.  Some of the pieces are bigger than 4x4 but every dimension if a multiple of the base size.

Some of the sharp eyed of this group might be asking - where are the doors?

 I'm trying something new - clip on doors, which still look ok but provide a lot of flexibility.

 Here's a close up of a door mock up.  It's pretty crude but does the trick.  I'm playing around with the 3D printer my son built for me to make some more ornate clip on doors.  Lets just say my 3D CAD skills are, ummm, rudimentary.

The building process for this style of terrain sections is:

- Cut the EPS to size.  Do this in large batches as it's a bit tedious.
- Hand "carve" the stone work - the walls need to be done on both sides.
- Texture the "stone" with some balled up tin foil pressed into the foam.
- Glue the walls to the bases.  I use Eileen's Tacky Glue
- Prime with a 50/50 mixture of black paint and Modge Podge - this both covers the pink and hardens the foam
- Paint Dark grey
- Dry Bruch with a lighter Grey (50/50 mix of grey and white paint
- Wash with a black/brown/green wash.

Make sure to allow sufficient drying time between each of the priming and painting steps

 An action shot with some minis and one of the Treasure markers.  I built enough so far to do a small encounter with just a few rooms but plan on adding more...

A lot more!  These will be used for a gaming event I'm hosting in April and then at Historicon to augment the DAK & Dragons game.

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Amazing!! Miles is on the 3D printing bandwagon. Woo! I look forward to seeing the grandiose medals he'll print for himself for his past Challenge victories. ;P

Really wonderful work here Mr. Reidy. I really like how those treasure chests turned and your ingenious use of Popsicle sticks to build them. 

Nonetheless, the star of the show is your dungeon rooms and corridors. Wow, those are just spectacular! I love how you did the texture of the rough stonework and I really like your 3D door additions - it's all very effective and professional looking. I'm so impressed.

Miles has kindly provided an estimate of the size and volume of these terrain gems and it comes to about 7 units, for a base score of 140 points. I'm going to add another 20 for the scratchbuilding and general creativity of this submission.  Great work Mr. R!

From RayR: 28mm The Last of the Mohican's (30 Points)

Oh gawd I feel like crap....Man Flu has hit the Rousell household!

Grooooaannn!

For my first entry into this years Challenge may I present Hawkeye and his pals, Cora Munroe, Alice Munroe, Uncas, Hawkeye, Chingachkook and the dreaded Mague.

Boo Hiss!!!

I did plan to paint these up in the summer, but only got as far as undercoating them and they were the first figures I saw in my box I thought they'd get done first.

They were and are a simple paint, which is pretty lucky for me!

Of course these aren't for the French Indian War, they'll be for my Donnybrook excursion

into Bacon's Rebellion.

I make my first entry 30 points! 

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I had not realized you had not submitted an entry yet, so welcome back to the points roster Ray!

Great looking minis, Mr. Rousell. Maque was such an epic villain in that movie. I quite like how you did the buckskins and the flesh tones of both the tanned Hawkeye and the three aboriginal characters. I can't remember, do you have Redcoats and French in this scale for them to frolic with?

These six will give you 30 points to start your climb up the roster - well done and I hope you feel better soon!

From Millsy: Frostgrave Beasties (10 points)

In something of a coincidence I found myself painting a resin Reaper Bones Giant Worm at exactly the same time as EvanH. Not such a surprise I guess as he gave it to me and quite likely bought them as a pigeon pair.

What was a bit weirder was the fact I also painted mine purple. This says a fair bit about how we both think I guess. Unlike Evan, however, I find myself much less preoccupied with the bodily effusions of said creatures and settled for simply painting him a lovely shade of violet and giving him a suitably icy Frostgavesque basing scheme...

At the same time I painted Mr Worm, I also painted up an Ice Spider. In this case I decided to see if I could make a cheap-ass Christmas cracker toy look good enough for the table which I think I managed to achieve.

He's a nasty looking beast, especially given the "designer" elected to given him TEN legs. Go figure, but it does mean extra work chopping legs off for intrepid adventurers in the frozen city, thus making him 25% harder to kill.

And so I present "Ice Ice Spider", an ear worm if ever there was one to go with Mr Worm above...

And obviously this chap can't go without a Challenge tune to accompany them...

10 points of fun. Now back to some serious painting...

Cheers,
Millsy

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My good friend Doug has always been brilliant at twisting the lyrics of ridiculous pop songs into perverse (and often obscene) renditions. I remember him dancing around my uni apartment after seeing Vanilla Ice's video, singing, 'Lice, lice, scabies...doot, doot, doot, dee-da-doot-doot!'

Haha, I think its brilliant that both you and Ev painted that same worm almost the identical shade of purple. The only thing that would make it picture perfect for the set is if this one had a tissue proffered in it's maw. 

While the worm is great, I have to say that I really like how you did the blue and black of this 10-legged spider - especially the light grey dots on its back. Very eye catching (and makes my hand instinctively twitch for a can of RAID or something heavy to splat it with).

Nice bugs Mr. Mills - 10 points for you!

From BenF: 6mm Cold War Soviet VDV force (115 Points)

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and wish you all the best for 2018. For me, 2018 will be quite exciting. Laura and I have booked a trip over to Europe around Easter, and we'll be visiting a load of places which we've not yet been to. I'm particularly looking forward to spending Easter in Madrid (any tips on where to go/what to see Benito M?), driving around Greece to see a bunch of ancient sites, and seeing St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Speaking of things Russian, this entry is a decent sized force of 6mm Soviet airborne troops, the famous VDV or Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska for my Cold War Commander collection. The figures are all the new Heroics and Ros offerings, which are simply superb. The detail that Andy has got into these miniscule figures beggars belief.

First off, some command stands. The VDV fielded a range of air-portable trucks and armoured vehicles, making them more akin to an airmobile mechanised force than a 'pure' airborne unit. On the command stands are regular UAZ-469 and GAZ-69 'Jeeps', GAZ-66 trucks in air-droppable and office body configurations, and a BMD-1. I've added aerials using brass wire for the ofice trucks and nylon brush fibres for the rest. The figures are Heroics and Ros, vehicles a mix of H&R, Scotia, and CinC. When painting these, I really wanted to try to approximate the camouflage suit worn by the Soviet airborne, but without the figures disappearing into the base. I'm relatively happy with the result, which was surprisingly quick, and to my eye does the job.

Next up is the core of the force, the two airborne infantry companies. In CWC2, you can upgrade regular infantry bases with anti armour capabilities. As most of my regular gaming buddies have armour heavy forces, I'll not often be fielding infantry without some kind of anti-armour capability. I've represented their AT ability with one battalion being equipped with RPG-7Vs and one with RPG-18s. The quality of the H&R sculpts and the variety is better than any modern figures I've seen in 6mm.

Next, the organic support for the infantry companies. Here are some Anti-Tank guided missiles, the 9K111 Fagot (AT-4 Spigot NATO designation), the anti armour teeth of the force. There are also some 9K32 Strela-2 SAMs (SA-7 Grail NATO designation), a PKMS MMG on a sustained fire mount, an 120mm mortar, a recce team in a UAZ-469, and a few SPG-9 recoilless rifle teams. Again, all H&R figures and vehicles.

The VDV were also supported by a variety of air portable armour, dropped on pallets fitted with retro firing rockets. Crazy stuff. Below are a couple of ASU-85 assault guns, a BMD-1 company, some BTR-D transports, and a brace of BTR-RD 'Robot' SP-ATGMs (these last are a conversion of mine using regular BTR-Ds, brass wire, and GHQ 9K111 launchers). All models are CinC.

Finally, some higher level support options. Below are a few bases of assault engineers with LPO-50 flamethrowers, two T-12 Anti-tank Guns and BM-21V 'Grad-V' rocket launchers. The Grad-V is the VDV's air-portable version of the regular BM-21 Grad rocket launcher, the successor to the famous Katyusha of WW2 fame. While you don't technically need to deploy artillery on table in CWCII, I do always like to include artillery and support for the sake of completion, and to allow me to try other rules. Figures are H&R, the equipment is Scotia.

Below are some group shots of more 6mm VDV than anyone in their right mind would need, a grand total of 29 vehicles and 113 infantry (and more dots of Vallejo pale sand than I care to count :) ) 

I've got a few bits and pieces still to paint up for these guys and then on to the West Germans, who thankfully are not wearing camouflage. The helos below were painted late last year and are included only for dramatic effect. The size of those Mi-26 Halos is surreal, in 6mm they are 13cm nose to tail!

Next up on the painting desk i'm working on some more 6mm scale stuff, but from 1940 not 1985. I need to paint up a couple of Battle of Britain era aircraft for Bag the Hun 2 which is becoming rather popular of late with the local gaming club. Hopefully they can make the cut for the 'Flight' bonus round which is closing up soon.

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Wow Ben, such beautiful work in this small scale. As you say, Heroics and Ross have done a great job with this new range and the attention from your brush really hits them out of the park. I wouldn't think doing camo in 6mm would be possible, or even desirable, but you've pegged the right balance between accuracy and visibility with these guys. I particularly like the bright turquoise berets, which I know are a shade or two brighter than required, but look perfect in this scale.

I know the vehicle aerials are a fairly simple addition, but they provide that extra touch of realism to the bases.

Your upcoming trip to Europe sounds marvelous. Madrid is fabulous and I know Benito will have some advice to the sights, tastes and sounds of that great city.

This formidable Soviet airgroup will give you 115 points. Well done!

From:PaulS: The Plague Garden (126 Points)

Sorry to do this to you Curt, but here are some more Nurgle models for you to score ;)

These are most of the Nurgle forces from the Blightwar starter set. Some additional bits and pieces are further back in the painting queue. With the new Nurgle models and rules coming in January, I suspect you will see a lot more in the coming weeks from many people... especially Great Unclean Ones... that thing is insane ;)

Leading this warband is Horticulous Slimux, riding his snail-demon Mulch. I really like the model, but had to make a few changes as the standard build has some weird bits on (nurgling on a fishing rod to guide the snail) and it definitely needed a less comedic paint job than the box version. The tree at the back has loads of little bits dotted around the bottom of the tree, including a small Audrey 2, but the top half felt a bit bare... so I've added a nurgling dancing on a branch as well as some severed heads from the Plaguebearer kit to the branches.

Following Horticulous is a band of Plaguebearers. Nothing special about this lot

There is also a set of Nurglings. The kit is supposed to make up 3 bases, but with a bit of careful placement and the inclusion of all those spare nurglings from the other plastic kits, I've managed to expand this from 3 bases to 7!

I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave scoring to you Curt as I'm not sure how you want to deal with the nurgling bases. There are 10 plague bearers (standard figure size), Horticulous on his large snail (probably single cavalry?) and the 7 bases of nurglings, which contain lots of smaller figures.

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I'm typically not a big fan of Nurgle stuff, but when I see this kind of work, well, my preconceptions go out the window. 'Mulch' is absolutely awesome and I love the slight modifications you did, including the Nurgling riding shotgun. Also, good use of the spare bits to stretch our your bases from three to seven! I really like your controlled use of colour to bring some visual interest to the otherwise fairly drab palette.  

I'll never forgive GW for killing off the Old World and replacing it with with the Age of Sigmar, but when you see creative models like this it help salve the sting somewhat.

Lovely work Paul.

I'll count Mulch as a vehicle with a couple crew and round out the Nurglings on the mass bases as 15mm figures. Let's pitch the score at 126. Well done Paul!