From GregB: 20mm WW2 German Panzer Grenadiers (86 Points)

Some more 20mm Germans for my WW2 collection.

More WW2 output for this next Challenge submission, but in a different scale this time - yes, I love WW2 gaming so much, I paint it in pretty much every available figure/model scale.  These are 1/72 scale/20mm models and figures, German Panzer Grenadiers from WW2.  There is an eight-man squad of Panzer Grenadiers, a tripod-mounted MG42 team and a pair of Hanomags.

Panzer Grenadier Squad

20mm metal Panzer Grenadiers from AB, purchased from Eureka Miniatures.

This group of Panzer Grenadiers are metal figures from AB, sculpted by the incredible Anthony Barton. There are eight figures here, organized as a squad for the "Battlegroup" rules, but of course useable in any set of WW2 skirmish rules.  As with the 15mm figures, the NCO is mounted on a square base, to aid in easy tabletop identification for players during a game.

I have a "love-hate" relationship with the AB figures. In terms of the "love", well, these are simply the finest sculpts out there, period. They look amazing, and they are metal figures, the proper material used for all true and honourable wargames figures.  These miniatures are a joy to paint, and I try to work in AB figures to my growing 20mm WW2 collection wherever I can.

Panzerfaust gives the squad from AT punch.

Yet the AB figures are also extremely frustrating.  For starters, you are not able to purchase LMG teams separately from the infantry squads/sections.  AB/Eureka is hardly alone in this, but it is very frustrating if you are looking to accumulate a more accurate platoon organization, which in the case of the Germans will often require multiple MG34s/42s for each squad.  So for AB miniatures you end up needing to purchase entire extra squads of infantry just to a second LMG team.

MG34 team - one of the few non-prone, non-marching, non-relaxing German MG team sculpts available from AB.

Even more frustrating is the preponderance of sculpts in the AB range of figures just standing around. Generals standing around. Tank crews standing around. Infantry sections standing around.  These sorts of figures look wonderful in glamour photos in fancy wargame rulebooks, but look like crap on an actual gaming table. It's a Second World War battlefield...GET MOVING!  There are, of course, beautiful - stunning- action-oriented figures to be found as well, but as a proportion, the number of non-action sculpts is something you have to work around.

"Grenade!" - love the action on that sculpt.

Even more frustrating is the number of LMG poses that feature the crew just standing around and/or marching with their weapons, even as the other poses in the accompanying infantry section are more action oriented. Makes me nuts...I can imagine the guys coming under fire, and wondering desperately why their own LMG team isn't getting the damn weapon into action...

But that said, I am no figure sculptor, and the AB figures are the product of world-class sculpting talent, simply amazing.  Awkward as it is to put it all together, I will continue to try and figure out ways to get more AB sculpts into my 20mm forces. 

Tripod MG42 Team

1/72 MG team from Plastic Soldier Company.

This is a plastic kit from the Plastic Soldier Company.  The models are set for 1/72 scale, and as such are a touch taller than the AB metal sculpts. That said, these fellows are kneeling down around their (very deadly) tripod mounted MG42, so the difference in figure size doesn't really show on the table.

The plastic infantry figures from PSC really are well done.  While I was disappointed with the crispness of their 15mm offerings, their 1/72 stuff is generally fantastic, especially considering they are plastic.

Hanomag  251D Transports

251D Hanomag - model and crew in 1/72 scale, from Plastic Soldier Company.

The Hanomag is an iconic piece of German WW2 kit.  If you are playing Germans in any WW2 miniature game, you are probably going to want to play the panzer grenadiers leading some manner of assault out of these vehicles - at least I certainly do! These are the later variants of the Hanomag, the 251D, which I believe entered service in 1943, and were in use right to the end of the war.

Easy to build, with lots of detail - fantastic kits.

As with the MG42 team, these are 1/72 scale plastic models from Plastic Soldier Company.  PSC sells them in boxes of three models - I painted the first one back in 2015, and the other two have been sitting in my pile of shame ever since.  I decided to clear that up, finishing these two during a quiet New Years holiday this week.  Three 1/72 models over five years? Yikes...

Very basic cammo pattern painted on the vehicles.

Iconic WW2 vehicles.

Anyway, these are fantastic kits, very simple to build, with great details.  I would love to do some more of them, but PSC has been sold out of these for some time.  Still, since I took five years to get these first three vehicles finishes, I guess I have only myself to blame, as I could/should have ordered more of these things years ago.

For points, we have 12 infantry, one crew served weapon (although it's just an MG, so I'm thinking just 4 points for that) and two vehicles in 20mm, which should work out to something like 86 points.  A little more progress towards my point goal, and some long overdue progress on my 20mm WWII collection.

***

Stunning work once again Greg!  Especially on the infantry.  I know you have showed me how you do it, and how your style works so well, but I just can't replicate what you make looks so awesome (and do so fast it is amazing to me).    I am especially impressed with how you make the infantry from PSC pop so well.  I know you say that the 20mm are better than their 15mm line, but I have seen them in real life and the detail still seems soft to me, but your high contrast style gives them a great look!

While I am kind of trying to avoid yet another scale, you keep turning out awesome looking 20mm stuff and trying to tempt myself and others over to it.

I hope you keep painting more of this, both to see, and so that we have more awesome figures to game with!

- Byron

From TamsinP: 15mm SYW Russians (110 points)

As many of you know, one of my ongoing bouts of megalomania long-term projects has been to paint every regiment of the Russian army which took part in the Seven Years War. Earlier this year I painted the last nine regiments of line infantry and had finished the regular cavalry a couple of years ago. That just leaves me with a few odds and ends to do, so this might be the very last time you see a post for this project during the Challenge. But have no fear - there will be doubtless be more megalomania projects to replace this one in the future.

All that is left for me to add now are Suvalov's Observation Corps (that will be two "regiments" of grenadiers, eight of musketeers and some artillery), Cossacks (one can never have enough of them), more generals and some converged grenadiers. speaking of the last two...


Converged Grenadiers

That's two more units of the blighters. At some point I'll need another two.


Generals

Back in August our club did a refight of Kunersdorf - I supplied all the Russians apart from the Observation corps and some Cossacks. It became evident that I didn't have enough "generals" to act as brigade commanders, so I thought I'd better add some.

The chaps in cloaks will be used as infantry brigade commanders, the cloakless ones as cavalry and artillery brigade commanders. Here's a pic of my generals collection in their storage:

Looking at that pic tells me that I might need to add some more "division" commanders.  Adding those to the list might mean there will be a SYW Russian entry from me in AHPC XI. I should probably also do a C-in-C base and maybe some hussars acting as messengers. OK, I give in - there will almost certainly be an entry for this project next time around.

All the figures are 15mm from Essex Miniatures.

For scoring:

36 x 15mm foot @ 2 = 72 points
9 x 15mm mounted @ 4 = 36 points

Total = 108 points

***

A great project and a worthy one for you to attempt as well!  However, if you really want to label this as a monomaniacal project, I would suggest you have to do it in 1:1 figure:real life men count!  Come on Tamsin, are you up to the challenge????

All kidding aside, they look awesome and it is a very cool project.  I love the look of all of your ranked up 15mm figures, they look amazing, and it boggles my mind how you a) deal with all those damn finicky uniforms in 15mm and b) how you stay on topic with such a large project.  I have far too much gamer ADHD to deal with any large project anymore, and when I do, its 10-20 models for project X then sidetracked, then back, then sidetracked.... rinse and repeat, then at some point just completely squirrel out and leave it 75% done forever....

I envy your ability to stick to a project of this size and get it done, and for that rounded your score to 110 points.

- Byron

From ByronM - 30k Adeptus Mechanicus - Burch's Bluff (100 points)

As I continue to explore challenge island, I am starting to really realize that I probably should have planned ahead for this!  I thought about it before the challenge started, and really meant to, then got distracted with work and then the challenge started and with it holidays, and here I am 2 weeks in and no real plan other than I wanted to follow that path that my own space was on.... but past that, I have NO idea what I am doing...  So it's kinda like a choose your own adventure book for me, where I don't know what is coming next until I get there.  At this point, I think I am going to keep it that way, and just look and plan one move ahead.

 So, on with the show....

My next space was Burch's Bluff and with it having to do something 30k related.  Well, at least that is easy for me, I have piles of 30k stuff kicking around.

So, I pulled out a few giant robots from the Adeptus Mechanicus force that I started during last years challenge and set out to expand it.

These beasts are HUGE.  The largest one is on a 120mm x 92mm oval base and stands about 130mm tall!  The largest one is a Thanatar Calix Siege Automata and while I could describe it, GW and Forgeworld do a far better job than I could:

"Combining arcane and secret technologies, it carries a twin-linked mauler bolt cannon alongside a rare solex pattern heavy lascannon, whose beams of coherent light can reach far across a battlefield to lethal effect. The Thanatar-Calix's most destructive armament though is the graviton ram, a weapon whose origins are lost in the Dark Age of Technology. The ram's crushing waves of gravitational force can pulverise infantry and vehicles alike, and it can be utterly devastating at both range and close quarters."

The two smaller ones are Domitar Battle automata and are nasty pieces of kit for close combat.

The Domitar Class Battle-automata was a sophisticated variant of the ancient Conqueror pattern. Larger than the more common Castellax alongside which it would serve, the Domitar was also swifter, designed to cross the open battlefield at speed, and built expressly to crash into the enemy with shattering force.

 To this end the Domitar’s shock-protected and armoured frame was itself a weapon, while its blows were amplified to colossal proportions by the Battle-automata’s inbuilt gravitational hammers, allowing it to pulverise battle tanks and, as it would later prove, even Legiones Astartes Dreadnoughts in combat. As a line-breaker, the Domitar was unparalleled in the Mechanicum’s arsenal, and its tactical flexibility was further augmented with a missile launcher armed with a variety of munitions.

While I tried to keep the colours the same as the ones I did last year, I believe they shifted a bit, but since they are different than last years, it will work.

I love painting these guys though, they come out amazing looking (in my own opinion, which is hard since I am normally pretty hard on my own painting and think most of it is crappy as I only see my flaws, not the good parts) and especially so given the time this scheme takes.  These are so simple to do.  I simply airbrush 3 shades of red to form the highlights and shades, then paint the silver and copper, 3 shades of ink over it all, then decals, then weathering powder, and they are done!  All told less than 3 hours per robot, which to me is super fast for the outcome.  Maybe I should just do 2-3 colour schemes all the time???

***

Hello everyone - Greg B stepping in here as a guest minion at Byron's request, as he did not wish to "minion" his own post.  And note - "minion" is now a verb :)

And I'm happy to do so! It is always fun to see more amazing stuff from from Byron - and super-cool 30k stuff to boot - and also to smile at the (at times) scathing self-analysis he provides of his tremendous painting abilities. We are all our own worst critics, after all. It is also extra entertaining to see airbrush jockeys describing their process as "simple". My my own mind recoils in horror at all of the fiddling around with the pointless and fiddly airbrush kit these efforts would require just to put down one piddling colour layer.

Byron, these bad boys will fit perfectly with your impressive, terrifying and unstoppable Mechanicum 30k forces!  I'm particularly excited to see that Siege Automata up close, preferably rendering some clueless loyalist opponents down to component particles which would promptly be put to better use in support of Horus's glorious vision of positive change for the Imperium.  Certainly these monsters will carve their own quality viewing spot out on Burch's Bluffs - the Mechanicum are not the sort to let a little thing like "geography" get in the way! Well done.

For points, well, let's see...I would count these as "vehicles", but given the overall size of these beasts, I shall allot some bonus points...together with the bonus for a "Challenge Island" location, let's make it a nice, even 100 points for you. 

From SamuliS: Aufklärungskompanie transports (112 points)

Back to probably one of my most consistent subjects in the painting challenges that I've taken part in with some Flames of War miniatures. Actually if I remember right my first entry ever was a platoon of Grenadiers for Flames of War.

I had actually planned to start with these and submit them as a Fran's Fjord entry seeing that the requirement was 15mm miniatures. Then on another reading while writing this blog post I noticed that the requirement was a sci-fi or imagination subject in 15mm scale. Oh boy, I guess I need to start my challenge island exploration from somewhere else then :D

Even though Germans were my first Flames of War army they are actually probably my smallest army that I have. I have a large amount of them for battles between 1939-42, but my late war collection is pretty dated as they were painted straight when I got back into the hobby and honestly look pretty horrible and as such hasn't seen the table in 6 years or so. I did build a 1945 spring themed force a couple of years ago, but it's not really suitable for the latest books that are set around Normandy landings so I needed some additions to my forces.

Recon forces and especially mechanized recon has always interested me since serving in a mechanized recon outfit in the army so naturally with the newish German D-Day book heavily featuring Aufklärungs units it was finally the push I needed to get them started. To kick things of there I started with the bare minimum of an Aufklärungskompanie, 2 HQ 250/1's and 6pcs of 250/1's and a 250/10 for the first platoon.

Older Battlefront resin halftracks as I had already planned to do this army sometime during V3 times of Flames of War. Unfortunately the minimum platoon size went up from 4 halftracks to 7 in the latest edition so I had to scrounge up some extra tracks to have all of them the same. Though in hindsight it might have been a good idea to just get the new plastics as they are actually far better looking and have better detail than these. But I already had most of the halftracks ready and I hate to mix different looking sets together.

Paintjob was mostly just done with an airbrush. A simple yellow modulation with some camo patterns on top without any particular example to follow. Then just painted the crew and dirtied up the halftracks with enamel washes and some mud effects.

Photos are bit of a potato quality as I'm taking them with my mobile phone. My camera is having some weird issues and not starting up so I'm stuck to just using the phone camera.

So with 9 halftracks and 20 crew it's got me an extra 92 points.

***
Great work here on these transports, the camo looks great even though you say they are just kinda random.  To me that random nature makes them look right, as my understanding is that while there were templates to follow, in the end they ended up getting paint slapped onto them with mops or brooms, or even by hand, just to get them done for the right season.

I hear your pain on shifting unit sizes, but remember the books are just a guide (and one we happily ignore most of the time around here) so you could always just keep to the old unit sizes or make up your own.  Most of the time is seems like FOW has no relevance to reality anyway, so go with what makes you happy, no matter if that is 4, 7, or 10!

Regardless, these are really sharp looking models, and a well earned 112 points (or at least that is what the handy dandy minion points calculator spits out for 9 15mm vehicles and 20 crew)!  Have a great weekend!

- Byron

From LeeH - Ral Partha Sorceress (Millsey's Millpond)

As previously mentioned I'm going to be playing a lot of Frostgrave with the Padawan this year and have largely been able to repurpose my old Dungeons and Dragons figures for use in this setting. However, she did note that my collection didn't include many (or indeed any) female wizard figures. I did wonder if this was a sad reflection on the nature of figure design in the 80's and 90's (ie lots of chainmail bikini's and little else) but looking back through old magazines I see plenty of female figures that I could have bought. So I guess this 'gap' in my collection says more about me than it does about the availability of figures when I was buying them!

Feeling a little stung by this realisation I decided to see if I could find some suitable female figures online and in particular on eBay (a wonderful source of old mini's) to correct the imbalance. I eventually bought several models, some of which will be featuring later in the challenge. This female sorceress, however, was not only the oldest model in the batch it was also one of the best looking sculpts. The base stamp shows this to be a 1977 Ral Partha figure and when stood next to other '28mm' figures its a perfect example of scale creep over the decades. This magical female is best described as slender, but despite this, there is plenty of detail to be found in the design making it fun to paint.

Given that I plan on using this for Frostgrave, I decided the character needed some additional warm weather clothing and so I added a fur stole across her shoulders. I was going to sculpt this using greenstuff but inexplicably I couldn't find it (must have been lost or misplaced when I moved into my Operations Room). In the end, I used a product I have not used before, Plastic Putty by Vallejo. It's not strictly designed for sculpting but for little details like this, it worked perfectly. I applied a thin layer across the shoulders of the figure and as it dried over the course of half an hour I shaped it with a small brush.

Now if my math is correct this little figure will net me quite a few points. A base 5 for the figure, 30 points for completing the Challenge Island location and a further 20 bonus points because it's a 1970's miniature. I'll leave it's to the umpire to decide if I have also earned the additional ten points for the backstory on how I acquired this figure. So this could net me up to 65 points, and all because my choice of figures from my early days of gaming was a little bit misogynistic!

***
A very cool blast from the past Lee!  I seem to remember this figure from days gone by and old D&D games back in school, but who knows maybe I am imagining things.

I really wish you would have showed a picture next to a current 28mm figure though so people could see the scope creep.  We all know it's real, but many people do not have figures this old to actually see the dramatic nature of the creep over the last 40+ years.

Great work on both the paint job, and actually keeping (and finding) this old gem in your pile-o-shame for this many years.  Also great work and getting 65 points out of one lowly 28mm figure!!!  That may just be a challenge record for points per figure without voting bonuses!

- Byron

From StuartL - Challenge Island Safari Journal - 4th Jan

Welcome back fellow C.I.S.T.ers, sadly our first foray into the Island ran into a spot of bother. So at the moment we are fleeing rapidly away from Cook's Crevase and it's rather hungry looking Ogre population. Sadly I think the Ogre's are gaining on us, they must have gotten a real energy boost after snacking on our baggage camels. Thankfully, to avoid just this type of situation, the Challenge Island Safari Company employs the services of numerous warriors and retainers and one of them is on his way to deal with our little Ogre problem.

One of our highly trained Ashigaru warriors is more than capable of taking down an Ogre or two and no C.I.S.T.er should be without one. In fact, this fellow here will be accompanying one lucky tourist home (assuming that he doesn't get squished or eaten before that).

While I have full confidence in the ability of our plucky rescuer here, perhaps it would be better if everyone hopped in the boat, just in case. Thankfully the coastline around Douglas' Shallows is dotted with small boats and fishing vessels. And, to paraphrase a famous philosopher, “there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply escaping from hungry ogres in a boat”.

I'm sure the fisherman won't mind if we borrow this for a while. All aboard!

And away we go. Luckily Ogres can't swim. At least, I hope they can't. So, we may have lost all of our baggage and several of our slower members, but at least we get to enjoy this scenic view of the island's coast and, provided we can start a fire when we land, a meal of fresh fish.

----------------

As hinted at above, the Ashigaru figure will be given to one fellow explorer of Challenge Island. The mini is from Kensei by Zenit miniatures.

The boat is from Reaper and was mainly painted with drybrushing and washes. The same model of boat has appeared earlier in the challenge and scored 20 points as a 28mm scale vehicle. 

So, by my count I make it 5 Points for the Ashigaru, plus 25 Points as it is an entry fee mini, 20 for the Boat and 30 for the location. That gives me a grand total of 80 I think.

****
What a great entry Stuart, I love the evolving story of your trip across challenge island, it is much better than my bubbling around on it.

The figures look great, especially the boat which I really like (and may have to pick one up).

Your math also looks good, so away you go with 80 points!

- Byron