From PeterA: 20mm Cold War Brits (47 Points)

This is my first time in the Challenge and so I had obviously planned out carefully the figures I was going to paint. But then I saw a squirrel, or to be more precise, the Norwegian drama series Occupied on Sky TV - about the Russian occupation of Norway in a bid to control the latter's oil and gas reserves. So that got me thinking about a what-if campaign set in Norway, with the Russian hordes out to grab fossil fuels (hopefully) being seen off by an assortment of Norwegian and NATO forces. So, the plan went out the window and my first submission is the start of the British sent to support the Norwegians.

First up is a winterised Challenger I - which to the best of my knowledge would never have been found in Norway. My justification is that lots of NATO equipment was stockpiled in Norway during the real Cold War so this represents the Brits mothballing some Challenger Is in Norway after they introduced the Challenger II, 'just in case' the Reds come calling.

This is also the first time that I have used weathering pigments (Dark Earth by AK) and I clearly have a lot to learn! The tank is a Revell 1/72 plastic kit and the commander is from Liberation Miniatures.

Alongside the Challenger is an 8-man infantry squad, again by Liberation Miniatures. They are in a mixture of DPM and winter gear, with Body Armour Chest Rigs.

Sorry about the rather pony photos - still trying to work out how to best use the camera! Anyway this should get me off the board and net me 47 points, and also gets me going in the Squirrel side-challenge. 

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Welcome to the Challenge, Peter!

Very cool entry, literally. I have a soft spot for 20mm/1:72 as a gaming scale as it seems the perfect compromise between the often table-absorbing 28mm and the sometimes too small 15mm scales. 

I've always liked the design of the Challenger and I think your's looks great. Weathering pigments take a bit of getting used to, but I think you application really conveys the heavy winter mud that these beasts would grind up. The Liberation minis look quite nice and I like your snow effects on the bases - very effective. 

I've not heard of the 'Occupied' series, but it sounds very interesting and I will be actively trying to source it 'off the coast of Tortuga' (as we can't easily get SKY here in the Colonies). 

47 well-earned points for your Challenge debut. Again, welcome aboard, Peter!

From KyleC - Christmas Crying Octopus (30)

Hey folks.. another year another marathon of painting...

Can't say that I will be as prolific as I was in the past due to life, but I will hopefully have a few pieces to share with you all throughout this time period.

First up is a piece from our own range, that a friend from the club wanted me to paint up for his boy for Christmas. So with short time and order I got it done and dusted in time for him to collect the Sunday before!

He wanted it as a present for his eldest who is obsessed with Octopuses so when he say the model on our webstore, he asked if I would paint it up. And I did as a present for himself as well (he just paid for the model and the plinth it sits on ).

Luckily I have a few spare plinths kicking around that could do the job, and this one has a slight lip on it to hold in things like water effects! Very important feature unless you like having sticky, glossy water effects all over your desk for 24+ hrs!

For painting, he wanted it to match his son's tattoo of an octopus which was done in a Japanese styled format. So bright orange with blue underneath. Though cause it was a gift I also wanted to give water effects a try. So I pulled out an old box of Pebeo water effect to make it look like he is crying upon a set of rocks in the water.

Sadly I don't have more photos of him aside from this last one as it was quite the rush to get him finished in time and handed over before the rush of festivities over here!

But I am really happy in how the water came out with just a single drop of blue ink placed inside it, and how the Woodland Scenics Realistic water layered on the Octopus a few times helped to give him a nice gloss finish as well.

Quite chuffed on how it came out as this is the second one for me to have painted. With the first one coming out more blue due to my mood while painting it! So was nice to have a bright 'cheery' one in contrast!

No idea on points, but this wasn't done for points it was done as a present. And I hope that if I can get a few things squared away this week, I can get into painting something else by this weekend!

Thanks Curt for the invite again, and for taking so much time to run this great event once more!

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Aww, this is a great gift, Lee, well done mate. I love the idea of a young boy being so into octopuses - that's a very cool kid. As you say, I really like the cheery colours of this chap and the water effect turned out fantastic (I'm going to have to give that a whirl sometime). 

I really like the whole concept of giving figures as gifts (obviously :)), so from now on I'm going to use the same point structure as the Curtgeld with 20 bonus points being awarded on top of the figure's base points. So with this being the case let's put this fellow at 30 points. Lovely work Kyle - I'm sure he's very much appreciated in his new home.

From BenitoM: British Airborne Support Teams (20 points)

My entry today is some more support weapons for my British Airborne unit. In this case a second PIAT and the ubiquitous 2-inch portable mortar… I wonder if besides the umbrella what is more British than a 2-inch mortar (used even today).

The PIAT team is not advancing like the one posted yesterday but in prone position and ready to engage an incoming enemy vehicle.

The 2-inch mortar team is also showed in action, the models in dynamic poses and with a good level of detail. I decided to paint and based them individually (easier to store and carry to the club), but after finishing the team I began to ask myself if I should make a small vignette out of the mortar. Still undecided, any comment from other participants are welcome.

Both teams are Warlord metal models in 28mm.

With this entry I credit and additional 20 points to my Challenge score. I’m almost finished with the support weapons (a Vickers HMG is in the pipeline) so I’ll turn now to the rank and file Bren and rifles sections. Also the Scout Theme Round is approaching fast and should start working in my entry before January 5^th.

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More plucky paras for us to admire - wonderful work, Benito.

Warlord has done a very nice job on this range and your brushwork is showing them to their best advantage. 

Personally, I'd bring the teams together into small vignettes as I just like making vignettes, but also because I think that the loose figures will be more prone to damage or getting misplaced just when you need them. Just my two clips of ammo. :)

20 more points to add your your growing total. Well done B!

From Alan D: 15mm Urban Ruins (40 points)

 

Building terrain is not something that thrills me that much. However, I'm very keen to play some games of Battlegroup - Fall of the Reich, so some Berlin-esque urban ruins are mandatory. I bought a bunch of mdf buildings a while back from the Polish company 'Terrains4games', which were great value and really quite nice, and thanks to the Challenge I have an incentive to get them rubbled-up and painted.

 

This is the first of about 8 boards, and it meant for gaming, so lots of compromises have been made by not finishing the building properly and so on, but I like the result. The Hetzer and the figures are from a previous Challenge.

Not sure how many points this should be worth. The footprint of the base is about 11 x 8 inches - I will leave it up to the wisdom of the Minions!

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I have to agree with you Dux, I find terrain building a bit of a chore as well. Though I must say that it has an odd parabola effect where once you get over the apex it can be quite fun in the last stages where things just seem to fall into place. These two wrecked complexes look great and I especially like your heaped rubble amongst the ruins, something that is usually missing from many of our wargaming tables. 

The size of these sounds like two scoring 'units' of terrain, so let's put them at 40 points total.