From IainW: ECW Horse and Commanders (170 points)

So here we have a unit of horse for the war of the three kingdoms, also known as the English civil war. Eight monster troopers, all Essex figures, to start with. I like them, they're a little retro, cutting edge in 1986, so almost yesterday?  They're also about the same size as warlord plastics and I have happily mixed both manufacturers in the same unit in the past.  There are also a couple of Perry heads, warlord hats, pistols and hammer added. 

They currently have the flag of William Waller. I'd like to do Cropredy Ridge one day as I've often camped there and to be honest in the past drunkenly stumbled around it (it's a music festival you sit out in the rain /sun, drinking real ale all day, with music - it's fun!)  

The horses are a bit long but they're OK.  I've got a few more units to do at some point. 

Next up are a few command stands. One Perry, one Foundry and the third a mix of Perry and Essex. 

The first command stand I might use as Waller for Cropredy or maybe Montrose, although I would have to start another 17th century army for that! The next command stand is Oliver Cromwell - a nice figure and companion piece to last week' Charles the First. The final command stand is a portly Perry officer and at the moment the flag is Fairfax's but it just slips on and off. I was disappointed I couldn't find a house I liked in either Fairfax or Cromwell road when I was looking locally, so I shall need to do "Black Tom" at some point too I guess. 

Finally three battalia commanders for my Covenanters  The Covenantor army is pretty much complete but I've had Essex and Wallenstein commanding so these are replacements. 

Nice Perry sculpts with a little light conversion on a couple of them, the one with the burgonet would make a nice Swedish officer. I've been meaning to move onto the Thirty Years War anyway! Sixteen mounted figures and one dismounted gives me a total of 165 points towards my total and towards the Renaissance Duel. 

All the best, Iain.

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These are great, Iain - and a perfect complement to last week's Royal submission.  I can see the troopers gracing the field in any of the Civil Wars, accompanied by the various commanders.  Once again the Foundry and Perry figures are serving you very well, and I can see some very nice conversations there to make the units splendidly unique.

And, gosh, how much better it must be to have a Covenantor unit led by a Covenantor officer!  I can imagine much relief in the Grassmarket once the correct Officer is appointed, instead of the Earl of Essex or Count Wallenstein.  Your fine Covenantor officers will, I'm sure, be up to the task of leading your ranks of hodden grey to victory in any refight of 'Bloody Dunbar' (or is that tempting fate?).

Awesome work, Sir, and 170 points (adding a few for the various conversions, additions and flags) to boost your points total on the long march towards Victory and our Renaissance Duel!

From KyleC - Poxwalker invasion! (200 pts)

Spent some time on these this weekend in-between watching Anime with my son, playing Sims4 on the PS4 with my son, doing homework with my son, and generally hanging out with him trying to find ways to reduce his computer time ( only thing he likes to spend time on these days ).

So when he was sleeping, or eating, or playing RoBlox for a bit, I got a bit of painting done. Received these on the Friday from a Facebook sales ad, and got straight to work on them that evening.

Are they my best work.. no.. but are they good enough to put on the field in 3 squads of 20 ( as I have 20 done already! )... oh yeah.. And will my regular opponents be happy to see them placed on the field of battle to go up against? No probably not :D ... and less so since they don't know about them yet ;)

I had to paint the cloth different colors just to be able to know which unit is which. Since I run them in 20s anyways, figured that batched of 20 colors will be enough. I have here the Blue and Green squads... and the Orange one ( which is the best for these models ) are no longer waiting for reinforcements.

Would love to say that these were fun to paint up.. but I can't :D They were a bit of a slog to get through, more so over the weekend. But they make the other units that much more sweeter to work on! Especially with some Age of Sigmar rearing its head recently! Which no doubt will reinforce these forces at some point ;)

40 models in total.. at 5 pts a piece.. brings me up 200 pts.. I might just make my 1000 pt target before this Challenge is over!  Maybe ;)

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Oh, I like these Kyle.  There's something slightly creepy, and surreal about them.  One might even say there's "something of the Warp" about these Poxwalkers, as they stagger through the galaxy seeking new flesh to rend and victims to bludgeon.

Colour-coding the squads is a great idea to keep track of these hordes as they stagger across the battlefield, and I love the deep shading on the models, contrasting with their rotting grey-green flesh.  Most unnerving, I'd say.  I can imagine that an endeavour of this sort does take a heap of time, so well done fitting it in between bouts of family life and homework.  (Question to self: why didn't mapping the Imperial defences of Cadia get examined in Geography homework?  I'd have done better in that subject had such things been on the syllabus.  Ah well.....)

They're going to add a stonking 200 points of Nurgle-inspired horror to your steadily amassing total, Kyle.  Well done, Sir, and keep up the horrifying work.  The Ordo Sepulturum are watching....

From BenitoM: Austrian Napoleonics Vienna Volunteers Battalion (20 pts)

A very busy week at home and at the office and I could only display my painting tray on Friday evening. For this reason this week's contribution to the Challenge is rather small an additional company for my Vienna Volunteers militia battalion.

Despite that I still maintain my goal of present 1 submission per week, even if it's as modest as this one.  As in the previous submission, these are Victrix plastic minis with some militia spare heads from my Perry boxes.

And this is how the battalion is looking by now.

One more company and the first battalion will be concluded (with General d'Armee, I'm using 4 companies per "standard" or regular sized battalion = 16 models).

So it's 4 models in 28mm x 5 points = 20 points.

Hopefully next week I'll come back with a better output.

Have a great week all participants 

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Great work, Benito!!  The Vienna Volunteers are coming along really very nicely indeed.  As we saw in your last submission, they are a perfect balance to the overwhelming white uniforms of so many other Austrian units, and will look terrific on the tabletop.

Your goal of one submission each week is a fantastic one.  I was emailing Curt the other night about the same thing.  It's all about trying to get a momentum, and into the swing of weekly submissions.  Climbing a lead mountain, or paddling with the flow of the Challenge, is all about that rhythm - and, by goodness, you certainly have both momentum and rhythm a-plenty, as well as great quality!

(Of course, all these helpful encouragements have been derived by me through watching OTHER people paint in previous Challenges, and not by me looking in the mirror!)

Also, on a personal note, I love the colours of your bases.  Is there a secret Anibal Invictus recipe for that you might share with the other Challengers and me?  I'd love to have a go at replicating those colours.

And, yes, these fine volunteers will add a very worthy, and thoroughly well deserved (and consistent) 20 points to your total for Challenge VIII.  Well done indeed, Sir!

From SamuliS: Roquefort Rodents (95 points)

After a quick start to the challenge I faded out a bit, but finally it's time to get my second entry and first weekly submission in! In early December I made the mistake of starting on some Napoleonics before the challenge and not surprisingly I failed to get them done until New Years Eve. So my painting progress towards the challenge goal was a bit lacking due to having to finish them. But with 2018 dawning I could finally get started on my first real entry.

For 2018 I have a few main projects and themes, with plenty of Skaven, 40k and Napoleonics in the pipeline. I decided to start off with a soft start to my Age of Sigmar Skaven by painting up my Willy Miniatures Skaven Blood Bowl team that I had gotten late last summer from their Kickstarter.

2 Throwers and 2 Blitzers

These guys represent the first half of my team with all the core players and a few special linemen to represent players who've already picked up some skills. I still have all the star players, plenty of different mutations and all the supporting staff to paint up, but they'll have to wait for sometime while I get other projects going forward as well. Considering that a team can have a maximum of 16 players it could be said that I might have gone a bit over the top as the final player and support staff count will come up closer to 30...

4 Gutter Runners

These Willy Miniatures sculpts are quite nice, but the casting quality did let the minis down a bit with massive flash and some slipped mould lines on them. And the sculpts are clearly done by at least two different sculptors with the style changing quite a bit between different minis. The difference is already quite clear between the normal linemen and the special ones like the kicker and fat rat, but with the star players and mutated players it's even more pronounced.

6 basic Linemen

I actually had the miniatures themselves painted up for last week already, but ended up trying to do some water effects on the bases in the form of puddles, which caused some issues and a bust schedule. I'd bought a bottle of AK Interactive Still Water that I decided to use on these guys. And to be honest the product was quite a disappointment. The end result was quite nice, but to get there required way too much effort to be really worthwhile if doing large batches of miniatures. It's supposed to be usable with layer thickness of up to 3mm, but even with 1-2mm thickness shrinkage was a major issue already on puddles as small as the ones I have on the bases. All the liquid would pull to the sides and I'd have a massive hole in the middle. 

In the end I ended up doing 5 layers of the stuff on the worst bases and 3 on even shallowest one to get the whole thing even. And with long drying times this whole process took ages to go through and I only managed to get them completely finished on Friday evening.

Kicker, Fatty and another Lineman

Another new product I used on them was Warcolours paints. I've had them for a while, but never really used them too much. There's bit of a learning curve to them as they don't exactly work like other acrylics, but rather have much longer drying times, are a bit gel like before thinning and are extremely translucent. But for doing smooth highlights and blending different paint layers they are just amazing! 

My photography doesn't really show things well enough, but even with my skills achieving really clean highlights and semi-borderless colour transitions was easy to achieve. The paints definitely aren't that great for painting large armies, but I can definitely see use for them with heroes and some more special minis.

Rat Ogre

With that my wall of text is over. 17 28mm infantry and 1 Rat Ogre who comes at around 60mm tall so should be about the same as 54mm infantry should amount to 95 points. Next up some Napoleonics in the form of a few Saxon battalions for my 1813 project. Hopefully they won't take as long to get finished up as these guys did.

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Yaaaaay….go Skaven…! These are terrific, Samuli! I’ve been harbouring a secret Skaven admiration for many years – probably linked to their slightly insane, warpstone-fixated mindset – so this team is doubly welcome to the Challenge in my book!

They’re a perfect way to kickstart a project, leading on to hopefully many more gnawing, long fanged fanatical vermin during the rest of your Challenge entries. And I really like the way that you’ve covered the base of the team, and then gone on to add more, and more – a true gamer, bringing along the ‘kitchen sink’ (or ‘circular spinning wheel’, as older Skaven grandmothers would say) to the game.

I have to say, I can’t see the problem on the casting that you’ve mentioned. If the mould lines are there, I think they’re more than masked by your super brushwork. I do, however, share your pain on the AK Interactive Still Water. That stuff can be very tricky to work with. Have you tried ‘Solid Water’, which is a two part resin? It’s a little fiddly to mix, but it applies quite well, and you only need one coat. Worth a look for at some point, maybe.

And thanks for the heads up on the Warcolours paints. That’s news to me, but if your fantastic Rat Ogre is anything to go by, I can guess we’ll all be getting some soon!

This most excellent work will gain you a Skaven-skittering 95 points to scamper you up the Challenge ladder. Tremendous work, Samuli, and we can’t wait for more.

From ValeryN - Soviet tanks and Scout Cars M3 (156 Pts)

Hello everybody!

Today I want to introduce you to Soviet light tanks BT. 5 BT-7 with 45-mm cannon and 3 BT-7A with 76-mm cannon. 

The second part of the reinforcement is the american armored personnel carriers M3A1, supplied by Lend-Lease. I did not put Soviet symbols on them to be able to use them in the future in the American army, which I began to collect.

Total 26 models with 6 points each = 156 Pts

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Mother Russia...!  What an arsenal!  That's a wonderful points-drop in a single week, Valery, and I would feel sorry for anyone facing up against this sledgehammer.  It's just 'Soviet' to look at - a tremendous mass of formidable armour, rolling inexorably towards East Prussia or Berlin.  Great work!

I think the decals look great - and that gives the models additional versatility for use with an American army.  A quick swap of the borscht for ginger beer and you're good to go.  

Excellent work, my friend, earning you a thoroughly deserved 156 points and propelling you up up the Challenge VIII rankings like a favoured son of the Politburo!