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| "X marks the spot" |
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| A close runner up was "If you can Read dis, your too close." |
After some solid Challenge productivity in quarantine, progress slowed when Mrs Man Cave checked for secret doors in the Chambers of Challenge. A mystery staircase went up to the hitherto unknown location: The Balcony of Domestic Distraction! Cue the requested significant sanding, repainting etc With that now out of the way, I'm back to more entertaining scales of re-modelling :-)
Back in the day, hearty Beastmen Gor warriors could be given different marks of Chaos. Many know the erstwhile Pestigor (who also make fair Blood Bowl players on Nurgle teams) but those who follow the Blood God are known as Khorngors.
The Khorngor models were removed from production back in 4th or 5th edition so it took me a few years to collect enough of these metal figures to complete a full unit of 20 (including Command characters) but finally here they are in all their Oldhammer glory.
In addition to the 101 points these should earn me (20 x 28mm figs plus 1 for the standard), they boast an impressive number of skullz - as you would expect for followers of Khorne. In fact there are 127 of them amongst them, taking me to a total of 132 for this Challenge.
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| Blood for the Blood God! |
According to Unesco there are over 3 million shipwrecks world wide. Making the Oceans of the world a very large tomb.
The two sinking ships are from Warlord's Terrain box. They are up to the usual standards of Warlord's sculptures.
S.N. Owl-Ord was not sure how Sararwen managed to get him to this door, the port was probably playing tricks on his head. She had spoken something about the Grey Chamber, Shellington was not sure they had mutual understanding about his destination, but at least this Chamber (of Darkness) was not having a pest problem. It was having a problem with lights, everything was a bit grey. Even the bard in the corner looked grey with his lute and his face didn't look good. He had a foxy grin when he followed S.N. advancing through the room. "This is not the Principal's office and I'm getting hungry", Uggla thought as he moved on.
Continuing in the Chambers of Challenge, the Chamber of Darkness was quite difficult at first. I have never done anything in greyscale, but I have given it a thought or two in the past. I was thinking, that yes, I can paint a Ringwraith or some statue like thing, but then again this is a challenge... I remembered the soldiers in camouflages painted in grey, but that was may be a bit over the top. But I was thinking different colors, maybe a sport figure, Blood Bowl or something, with stripes and so on? You know, that the figure itself should have colors, but it is painted with greys - not a grey model painted in grey.
Luckily(?) I have lots of stuff in my lead pile, lots of miniatures, which I'm not intending to use in any games, just paint for fun, for example lots of different models from YourModelBox subscription I had for a year. I decided to pick up Rox the Bard from the exclusive Model Box range. And grey fox was something I just couldn't resist, even though Rox is a red fox originally.
I started with white primer, as always. Old habits die hard, I usually start with white undercoat, because if I draw or paint something, the paper or canvas is white, so why would miniature painting be any different? Starting from white is bit difficult when aiming for greyscale, so next I painted the whole thing with old Citadel Black Ink. Now I could see the details, there were some dark shadows etc. Then I opened three grey paint pots, Light Grey, Mid Grey and Mechanicus Standard Grey, which was the darkest. I painted the face and hands first with the Light Grey, leaving the recesses black. Then I started to paint the different clothes, lute and stuff with different colors, adding highlights and layers. The watered down Black Ink helped a bit. I was thinking about going to the white, at least on some areas, but then decided not. It looks quite nice now. I continued the greyscale in the base, painting a simple cobblestone pattern to follow the Chamber theme. This was a nice experiment and after the Black Ink had dried, it took about 30 minutes to be ready. Much faster than with different colors... The lightning and shadows are not correct, but it looks good enough for me. I might paint even more in the future.
5 points for 28mm miniature
20 points for the Chamber of Darkness
25 points total, no skulls, no GW models.
My take on the next chamber, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a Chinese version of the tale. My good friend Mad Guru from Maiwand Day blog fame asked his wife to translate for me. This is her translation, thank you Xinhua.
Poor Yu had been convicted of crimes against the govt, tortured, and forced to watch his comrades being beheaded prior to his own execution. His story is timeless.....
陷阱与钟摆（The Pit and the Pendulum) Xian Jing yu Zhong Bai
The figures are based on washers to sit in their magnetized boxes. I used wood glue, ballast, sand, and old coffee grinds for the basing materials and painted with craft store paints. Burnt Umber, then Honeycomb, then highlighted with Bamboo.
Here's some close ups.
(4) 25/28mm figures x 5 Pts each + 20 points for the chamber = 40 Pts + standard pts - ?
First up are two of these great Ork Blood Axe Kommandos from GW. These two have been sitting primed for donkey's years, and it only took one evening to get them painted, go figure...
