From ScottM: Walking Firewood aka Dryads (80 Points)

To kick off this year's challenge I went with something quick and easy: a box of GW Sylvaneth Dryads for Age of Sigmar.  I don't play AoS but I'll probably use these for Warlords of Erewhon.  These plastic figs assembled nice and were dead simple to paint up.

Prime brown and a couple of drybrush layers and then they were pretty much done. 

This entry should be 16 x 28mm foot figs at 5 pts. a piece = 80 points. A nice start!
Merry Christmas all!

____________________________

Welcome back to the Challenge Scott!

'Walking Firewood'. Haha, good one. Nonetheless, these look really great. I especially like the gal(?) with the owl in her 'hair'. Excellent groundwork as well. 

Aaand, 80 points it is for your opening gambit. Well done, Scott!

From BillA: Challenge Prize and Some Miscellaneous Figures (50 Points)

One of my goals for the Painting Challenge is to work through the backlog of Reaper Bones figures I have from their "Bones 4" Kickstarter.  I didn't back as extravagantly as many did (or as I am with Bones 5) but I still ended up with quite a lot of figures, many of which are not ones I would have chosen to buy individually, but when it's 80 figures in a box marked $50, that's hard to say no to.  So I've placed all my Reaper Bones figures in one box and given it a really good hard shake to mix them up.  In between Map goals and other projects, I'll be grabbing a few figures at a time from the box and painting them up - even if they're figures I have no real love or interest in, they're opportunities to practice techniques or test color schemes.  Here are the first few of them to be finished and leave the table:

First up is an "Armorback Barbarian," one of a collection of dinosaur-people included in the Bones 4 "Lost Valley" expansion - a collection of cavemen, dinosaurs, mountain giants, and the like.  I don't know when I'm ever going to use an ankylosaur-man for anything, but he was good practice for washing and layering with his well-defined muscles. 

Second, a "Crone" from the "Dreadmere" expansion - a swampy, steampunk setting that also provided the rowboat in my last entry.  Nothing fancy here, but she's out of the box now.  Bases on both of these were painted a simple Vallejo Goblin Green. 

Third, a cart that I believe was part of the Dreadmere expansion - again, nothing fancy here, just plain wood and rope, but I'm sure it'll be showing up on my gaming table quite a bit - I know there's a Frostgrave scenario revolving around a broken cart, for example, and it's just an otherwise very useful piece of scatter terrain. 

Finally, my contribution to the Prize pool for people conquering Snowlord's Peak - appropriately, a mountaineer, or as Reaper has him listed on their site, an "Antarctic Explorer." He was a fun figure to paint and base, including noting "AHPC X 2019-2020" around his base.  I'm looking forward to see who will be adding him to their collections. 

So let's see, 3 28mm figures on foot is 15, plus 25 for the Prize is 40...is the cart a vehicle? If so this is a 60-point entry. 

___________________________

Wonderful work Bill! I like your approach of using some of the outlier Bones models as guinea pigs for techniques and colour experiments. This being said, I really like what you did with the skin tone of that ArmourBack Barbarian - very cool effect that.

Your tariff figure is excellent as well. We could also easily title him, 'Waiting for the Regina City Bus'. Great work!

-Curt

From PaulSS: Hay cart and wood store (25 points)

Time for one last post before I sign off for the holiday season!

Over the past few weeks Victoria has been gifting me some great items that she picked up from Warbases while we were at Partizan in the summer. Last weeks surprise was a hay cart and a draft horse to pull it. These were cleaned up, assembled and primed ready for the challenge starting on Saturday.

I've noted before that I seem to have a thing about taking something made out of wood, spraying it with grey primer and then painting it to look like wood and I did it again on this model.

The hay load is made from Noch wild grass foliage and I do like the effect more than the resin cast hay loads that are available.

Yesterdays gift was a wood store, this was stuck on a base (4" x 5") and a small fence added then the groundwork was textured with spackle/polyfiller then the whole thing coated in PVA and allowed to dry overnight.

This morning it was all given a primer coat of dark brown paint before painting the groundwork then drybrushing the shed and fence with an off white colour to represent lime washing and painting the roof to look like tar paper. This outbuilding will be a useful addition to the growing town.

Signing off for a couple of days now, hope you all have a great time over the festive season.

________________________________

Some very nice additions to your growing terrain collection, Paul. I quite like the Noch grass hay load - as you say it's a great improvement over the usual cast offerings. Well done.

From TomM: Reidy's Reef - The Regia Marina Sails In (121 Points)

So it is time to start my exploration towards the island core in this year's Challenge Island map.

And I decided to make landfall on Reidy's Reef, to follow from there the route known as The Path of the New Shiney.  And the hours between Christmas parties are just perfect to take the pictures and write the texties...

For this first challenge, the hobby theme has to be naval in kind, and so it is the perfect moment to launch the Regia Marina fleet.

An added benefit to this is the fact I can claim the "New Project" bonus as well, as I bought the models as recent as beginning of November at  our Crisis show, where Nemesis and me decided to try this game out.

But to that end, I painted up the complete starter box for my beloved Italian faction, consisting of the Corvette, the two transport vessels, 4 MAS boats and the aerial support of the single CR42.

Now, I do apologise, but I have no clue how to "score" this submission with the three large 6mm scale boats and the various crew all around the decks together with the smaller MAS and the CR42, so I have to leave this unfortunate job to the Minions I`m afraid...  I know the 30 for the Challenge location, a bonus for a new project, but the models themselves, I`m drawing blanks here... bit like italian firepower during WWII.

But the adventure is a go, see you in the centre!

_____________________________________

Awesome! It's great to see the Italians getting some love for 'Cruel Seas' (Peter will love these). This flotilla looks fabulous Tom. I especially like the corvette's dazzle camo and the distinctive red-and-white striping on all the crafts' bows. It will help keep the Stukas and Macchis away while giving the poor Brits something to aim at. :) 

As to points, we typically give 8 for the smaller craft and treat the larger lumps as 28mm vehicles. I'll also give you 2 points for the aircraft as it's similar to a 6mm vehicle. So, this should put you at a base of 86 points. Add in the bonuses and you get a grand total of 121. A nice little points bomb that. Well done!

From SanderS: First post is a go! (115pts)

Okay okay, how do you guys do it? You take time off when the Challenge starts to paint up something to start it off on the first day right? I have no idea how you lot do it but, the Challenge is all but 4 days old and already I cannot keep up with all the top-notch contributions. This year's Challenge really caught me unaware as I am still only half-way through the prepping!

I have loads of ideas for the Challenge but the foremost one is having fun and finishing off stuff that's been lying around too long!This Challenge is also all about islands. After hearing about Challenge Island, and the fact I have my own spot on the map, I decided I was going to visit each and every locale on there with minimum use of the balloon service ;-) So that journey will start in a while I am sure.

That said, my first entry this year's Challenge will feature a different island or set of islands: the Ghost Archipelago! This is part of the Frostgrave universe/ world, now I do like the idea of wizards touring around with their warband looking for magic treasures and stuff, but the setting of an Ice-city does not speak to me as it apparently does to others.  The Ghost Archipelago setting therefore is really up my street! It can also be very easily be integrated with my Heroquest project. So I have invested in the several of the more recent Nickstarters and this resulted in quite a large stack of Ghost Archipelago miniatures. Here are the first of them painted up.

Some of the human heroes, from left to right: Lady Adalinde, Amuho (in the back), Rhand the Protector and Lord Crowforth the Assasin:

I also made Heroquest cards for them.

The Archipelago is also home to other humanoid races like the Snakemen (or Serpentines as I call them). They are from the plastic set and a love to put together.

There's also a nice spread of white metal characters, from left to right these are Cryssk Soultaker, Lady Esshk the Magician and Grasshakk the Warrior

They are all really characterful and paint up a treat! A picture of all the Snakemen together:

Needless to say I did cards for them as well! 18 Snakemen, 4 Humies and 1 Cortiki amounts to 23 miniatures of 28mm scale and that's 115 points if I am not mistaken!

The last figure for this entry is a spirit of the Ghost Archipelago a Cortiki!

______________________________

Welcome back to the Challenge, Sander, and Merry Christmas as well! 

I always enjoy seeing your Heroquest entries and this one doesn't disappoint. While, of course, I admire all the wonderful figures that you present here (especially those groovy looking 'Serpentines'), I must say I'm most impressed with the time and effort you put into making all the associated cards for them. They're just terrific! Your Heroquest group is very fortunate to have you creating such an immersive experience for them. Well done.

115 points for your debut on the roster - Great job, Sander!