From Curt: Diana Stanley 'The Reformed Cultist' for Mansions of Madness and a Trip on Sarah's Balloon (5 Points)

Hi All,

As I've been away for the past week I thought I'd get my eye in with a small entry for Sarah's Balloon. Here's Diana Stanley 'The Reformed Cultist' from 'Mansions of Madness'. 

'Reformed Cultist'. Such a great tagline. Really, who wouldn't want that on their CV for 'past work experience'? 

Diana's special ability allows her to tangle with particularly nasty monsters with minimal sanity loss. All this being said, her strength stat is fairly low, so she needs a heavy-hitting spell or a spiffy magic item to really make her tick along. She's best run by an experienced player who knows how to finesse her abilities, otherwise she'll be more of a burden than a benefit to the party.

Not learning from past experience, I just picked her up and started painting without really looking at the character card. The results weren't as bad as before, as I at least got her auburn hair right, and besides, I reason she'll still be pretty distinctive on the tabletop with her long hooded robe and howitzer shell-sized candle. 

Next Up: Sander's Sand Dunes! 

MikeW Makes Snow Lord's Peak

Dressed as a Polish winged hussar, Mike flutters down from Sarah's Balloon onto Snow Lord's Peak.

This week's Snow Lord's Peak brought to you by Mount Goodsir, British Columbia.

The Snow Lord looks at him appraisingly. 'That's a pretty neat getup.' He points to the czapska resting precariously on his massive head, 'Those Poles really know how to make cool duds.'
Mike shrugs, 'Yeah, my regular cloths are in the wash so I had to make do with this. Trouble is that I always get caught up going through doorways and chickens follow me everywhere.'

'It must be real rough being such a... 'chick magnet'.' The Snow Lord snorts and slaps his knee, clearly enjoying his own unique brand of humour.

Mike rolls his eyes, 'Riiight. So, I understand I need to provide a boon to get to the treasure up here. What do you have in mind, oh mirthful Blue One?'

The Snow Lord wipes a tear from his eye and points to Mike's feathered wings, 'People have been enjoying your Siege of Vienna project, so I say let's see another unit from that colourful period - something for the brave defenders.'

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Okay Mike, you have your marching orders. Let's see what 17th century goodness you come up with.

-Curt

From ScottM: A Balloon Ride to O'Grady's Gulch (64 Points)

A somewhat eclectic post this time. First off the last of my ladies will be chartering a balloon ride to O'Grady's Gulch.

This is from Sash & Saber's French & Indian Ward Female Civilians pack. 

Next up is a pack of Rebel Fleet Troopers. These are from Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars Legion.

I really like the Legion figs, they're nice evocative sculpts and are fun to paint. Now if only they'd do Imperial Navy Troopers and Mud Troopers...

And finally is this rocket bike from Bombshell Miniatures. This is a Barracuda rocket bike from the Lancer's faction for their Counterblast game.

So that should be:

Rebel troopers & Lady = 8 x 28mm foot figs = 40 points

Rocketbike = 1 x 28mm vehicle & rider = 25 points

For a total of 65 points

By Paul: Some great stuff here Scott - love the Rocketbike in particular. What a sweet ride!
I feel compelled to score it as cavalry vice a vehicle though, for a total of 50 points


Edited by TamsinP:
Star Wars Legion figures have been consistently scored as 40mm, so I've updated the spreadsheet and points in post title.

From MattK - Sister of Battle for Sarah's Balloon and odds and ends. (95 points)

As mentioned last time, I've got two larger project I've been working away on and one of which is a new Sisters of Battle Army. This is the first figure I've totally completed for that project and will act as my ticket fee for a ride to Snow Lords peak.

I'm blown away by these new figures and have a ton of them on my workbench now. I simply love painting them as well.

In addition to the actual ride on the balloon, I broke open a bottle of champagne for the bonus points among other celebrations, so included is an unflattering photo of me from the tail end of said bottle.

This location will mark 5 on my map and I'll be taking the balloon to Snow Lords peak.

This Sister of Battle is far from all I've been working on though. I was hoping these would be done in time for the last entry but they're done now. The final batch of boats for my trireme project. As I said at the beginning (and I'm sure every post since) I want to end the challenge having actually tried some of these new games and with this final batch of boats we did finally play Poseidon's Warriors so included is a small photo of that.

On the subject of adding to projects, In my ever growing Uruk-Hai army (which is now closing in on big enough for a proper game of War of the Ring) I've added another banner to the force and will now probably make it a tradition to add another LoTR banner to my collection with each challenge.

Lastly, I've finished one new scenery piece for This is Not a Test. This is a Shanty Town building I printed off thingiverse. I'm writing a tutorial for my own blog about it so there's a few extra photos.

The building is approximately 6"x5"x3" so for scoring purposes is comes in at just 10 points but it was a blast to paint. I have more printing at the moment but with how close the end is I'm unsure if there's time to get it submitted.

Here comes the math:
Sister of Battle - 5 points
Sarah's Balloon - 30 Points
Champagne Bonus - 5 points

12 Boats -  36 points
Uruk Banner - 5 Points
Shanty Town Building  - 10 points

For a total today of 91 points.

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By Paul:
Well that is quite an impressive menagerie of projects!  That Lady of Battle looks quite focused - I'm sure she will lead her sisters to Victory soon.

Your triremes particularly grab my interest - I was aboard the only one in existence late last year, the Olympias, in Piraeus harbour.  Quite a special day.

The Uruk is great - I particularly like the hand painted...hand. Better give you a few bonus points for that.  The 3d printed terrain is also very nice, you clever chap.

95 points in total, with particular emphasis on the "bottom of the bottle" pic of bubbly!

From TomM: Sarah's Balloon: To the Peak! (5 pts)

And so it comes to the moment we move to the Snow Lord's Peak!

After tasting a lot of the locales of Challenge Island, I take the balloon of the lovely Lady Sarah and hitch a ride towards the central part of the island, dominated by the large mountain and the home of the mysterious being known as the Snow Lord.

The model is from the germanic dark ages range by Wargames Foundry, and great looking for standersby in Middle Earth, especially in Rohan (which is what I am using them for).

Which means that this will be my 5th and final balloon trip for the Challenge, that yields another 5 points to the total for this year, and the 1000 point mark.

Now let's wait and see what daring challenge the Lord lays before me!

By Paul: Congrats on the 1k achievement!

AdamC: French Frigate, Brig and US Brig (40 Points)

Continuing construction of my Black Seas ships which are now slated to make an appearance at Huzzah!Con in May.

First up is a French Frigate.  I haven't christened it with any particular name yet but it could be L'Insurgent a French frigate captured by USS Constellation making it a nice option doing double duty.

Detail work on the windows came out well.  The yellow of the French ships is easier to paint then black and white of the USN paint scheme

There was a French Frigate with the name Carrere very nearly my own family name which gives me another possible name for her.

My second French Brig Not much new to say here other than to note that her sails are printed on paper from a file supplied by Wargames Illustrated.

The Sails came out looking good and this will probably be my go to option when I need sails in the future.

Here is the full French Squadron Two Brigs, Two Frigates and a Corvette. 

Here we have another American Brig.  I used the AWI US flag because I always liked it and why not.

I now have three Brigs in the USN paint Scheme.

I've got one more Frigate to finish up that will be in Royal Navy colors.  Points 10 each for the Brings and 18 for the Frigates so 38 Points all together plus any extras for the various flags ect 

I also wanted to provide a picture of Tom's excellent Naga that I got for my prize at the Snow Lords peak. It arrived a few weeks ago but I haven't had a chance to post a photo of it and thank him yet.
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By Paul:

Lovely ships and those massed Frenchies look wonderful (and ripe for a good cutting out action!)

The USN ships look great too - little scorpions but with sharp stings!

Take 40 points with a few extras for the bunting

PS Great to see that lovely Naga safe and sound in her new lair! 

JasperO: In the Dutch countryside (80 points)

For PolderCon this year, I ran a Chain of Command scenario together with Nick Skinner of TooFatLardies. We'd decided to represent an attack of the Unterführerschule Arnheim, part of Kampfgruppe Von Tettau, on the positions of D Company, the Border Regiment, along Van Borsselenweg in western Oosterbeek (for the full scenario, see WSS 107). Terrain-wise, this was pretty easy. A Dutch farm building, lots of trees, a stretch of road. I wanted to make it look 'proper' Dutch though, which means lots of barbed-wire fence lines (they're useful for all of northwestern Europe actually) and for good measure a Dutch haystack to accompany the farm. For purposes of rolling in, of course...

Haystack and fencing with some 28mm Empress Germans for scale.

The fencing was made from the slats of an old set of wooden window blinds, which were rather perfectly sized at 1.5" wide and the 'outside' parts (each side of the hole for the guide rope) about 6" long and the inside part about 12". I drilled holes for 1" tall sections of shish kebab skewers and hot-glued them in. I then used a rattle can to spray the lengths brown, applied my standard basing mix and applied Gale Force 9 barbed wire. I found it easiest just to bend it around the end posts and apply some glue there. I then finished the fences with static grass and some tufts under the wire. I figure it's harder to mow the grass there.

6 6" and 3 12" lengths of fencing. Labrador not to scale.

The haystack started as a piece of 3mm cardboard (binder's board to be specific, which doesn't absorb moisture and warp) of about 4*4" with a 3" cube of blue foam stuck onto it. I glued 4" lengths of more of those skewers to each corner and then used an online pyramid calculator to figure out the card triangles I needed for the roof. I glued those together with lots of hot glue on the inside so, once dry, I could drill holes for the posts without the roof separating under the pressure. Somehow, it worked! The roof tiles are from Charlie Foxtrot with lead sheeting out of paper. I glued a few layers of static grass to the sides to make the foam look 'fluffy', and then airbrushed the base coats for the various colours. The wood and roof were dry brushed, the hay was airbrushed with very light coats of successively lighter shades of yellow. The green of the static grass shines through, which I decided makes it look like fresh grass. It was then finished with some basing material and tufts on the corners. Points-wise, I guess this would fill about 1 6" cube and a bit? I'll leave that to the mercy of the Lords of Pointing.

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By Paul
I do like nice terrain and this is Lovely! I'm sure the players really enjoyed playing on such a nice table. Those lengths of wire obstacles roughly have the same floor area as 3 terrain blocks so added to the haystack we will call that 4 blocks total for 80 points. Nice work!

From SanderS: Conquest of Tatooine (128 pts)

Hoi,

Since this last week was a week off from school I managed to up my quotum of painting time. Therefore I have managed to get some more figures from the Star Wars Legion commission I am painting done.

My client basically bought one of each set available at the time for the game and that means I had a squad of Scout- and Snow Troopers still to finish. Since he has a matt for gaming that is firmly themed for desert warfare, (Tatooine anyone?) we decided I would paint all his remaining troops in desert/ sand-coloured outfits as well as the regular Sand troopers I'd already finished.

We start off with the Snow/ Desert troopers.

 Next are the Scout troopers. Well I say Scout troopers, but upon researching them we stumbled along the "Shore Troopers" as featured in Rogue One. This is just such a cool scheme we had to try it out and I must say these are so damn cool I would almost consider getting a box. (Yes guys I know Fantasy Flight games have in the meanwhile released an actual box of dedicated Shore Troopers) 

Last of the bunch are two speederbikes. Now we all know they are flown by Scouts so I left these as Scout troopers but painted the armour sand colour, so they would match up better with the others. 

The bases deserve a separate mention since they include lines that depict fire arcs or somesuch. This is rather a bummer since it means I should keep them functional and not cover them up in basing material. I had a few trials and ended up with the results above and I think it really works: I only put filler on the spaces in between the lines leaving them free. When painted I dripped some Agrax wash into the lines to make them stand out a bit more.

That leaves us with the points counting and I am going to follow Tamsin here who scored my first Legion entry is 40mm figures. 14 foot figures is 98 points and 2 mounted figures is 30 so that makes for 128 points this lot gains me.

This leaves me with an AT-ST, Assault tanks, some specialists and Lord Vader himself still in the cue for this commission.

Cheers Sander
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by Paul:
Thats a great collection of Imperial troopers Sander.  Given how nice these look, I'm not sure why anybody would be inspired to play Rebels! Great stuff!