From JamieM - Is that a Playmobil Coliseum I see before me? (150 Points)

The fiendish challenge that I accepted was to get off my procrastinating backside and actually paint one of the Playmobil coliseums that I had bought many moons ago.  Curt mentioned that he had one during on of his posts and I, carelessly, tried to trump him by showing that I'd bought two that I'd done nothing with.  I'm now rightly paying for my hubris with my Snow Lord's peak challenge......

This is how it started life - look at all the smiles...... who knew that fighting to the death in a gladiator pit and bleeding out on the sand whilst careless onlookers cheered could be so much fun!  Byron's post done recently will also give you great idea of what the coliseum looked like originally.

These are all of the pieces.  The characters were cast aside for probably ebaying at some point... and this is what I made from it (space marine standing near the columns for scale and the mat is a standard one from deepcut studios).

Basic Grey colour scheme with sandstone accents

The most fun bits are these pieces, which link to made the area fans can stand and have a bunch of gates.

There were a TONNE of stickers on this thing.  You can see the pink stickers on the piece in the box art and they all needed peeling off and "sticky stuff remover" used to get rid of the residual crud.

I went with creepy blue flames for the small sconces and kept the large orange flames that came with the kit (for now) as I thought they were pretty effective.

You may be able to see the weeds and moss I added around the stadium to go with the rusty doors.  Stadium upkeep ain't cheap and skimping on it increases profit margins after all... I tried to keep this subtle so it didn't look too overgrown and disused.

Another aerial shot.

Close up of the rusty gates and the sconces.  The details are great fun on a kit like this.  I intend to make some statues for the games I use it for to stand on the pedestals.

There were a fair few places where I had to cut and carve plasticard to cover the holes in the structure which were originally covered by stickers.  The gateways on both sides slide up and down to let both teams in!

All of the doors open.

A view from the balcony, the area on the right of the balcony was originally a trapdoor to drop playmobil dudes through, so I used plasticard again to cover it up and carved some flagstones into it as I won't be dropping painted figures through!

I really enjoy playing Blitzbowl, which is a little 6-a-side version of Bloodbowl that is great fun and I was delighted to see that the board fits into the stadium perfectly!

Game about to start from yesterday.

View from one team's side (this was before I had added the greenery to the coliseum)

View from the other side showing the two gates that the teams would enter from and where the fans would sit.

I must admit that I had grand plans for adding fans, drinks and food outlets, merch stalls, etc. but sadly events conspired against me recently and so I'm presenting it on its own before the end of the challenge.  I'm definitely going to crack on and do those after the challenge though, as playing Blitzbowl in the stadium was really good fun and took the game to another level.

Having seen Byron's post yesterday I'm also now inspired to make a custom board for it to sit on with a blitzbowl pitch modelled on to complete the effect.  I can also see myself using it for any gladiator games or when evil space overlords force captured heroes to fight monsters, etc,  I just need to work out how to store it...

Now then, scoring..... It's a large terrain piece and when split up and squished together it's about 45cm x 45cm x 10cm on average, so over to you!

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Wow, this is fabulous Jamie. We're all so spoiled, having been treated to two versions of this monstrous kit within one week!

I appreciate your overall colour choice as the grey will work particularly nicely for future sci-fi shenanigans. I also really like the rusted gates, weeds and the methane fuelled flame sconces (ewww!). 

For ease on my brain cells, I'm going to score this similar to what Tamsin came up with for Byron's efforts (his was more for the bespoke base, while your's is fully painted). So that makes it 120 points for the coliseum plus another 30 for the Peak Challenge. A very tidy points haul, I must say.

As to a prize? Well, I think it only appropriate that you have a spiffing contestant for your new arena, so I'm awarding you with Nick's beautiful Murmillo gladiator. Congratulations!

Thanks for treating us all with the product of your labours, Jamie - it looks absolutely magnificent!

-Curt