From Curt: Canadian 6 Pounder with Sniper Team - For The Oubliette (48 Points)

Gosh, I've had these minis primed, waiting on pill containers, for years, so they're perfect candidates for the Obliette Chamber.

Being easily entertained, I often collect and paint stuff inspired from books, movies or graphic novels. So this group of miniatures follows suit. 

I sought out these models after reading Mark Zuehlke's 'Ortona', which provides a great history of the 'Little Stalingrad' Canadians fought in order to take the Italian coastal town of Ortona in December, 1943.

The house-to-house fighting experienced in Ortona was so fierce that the Canadians brought forward their 6-pounder anti-tank guns to help reduce Fallshirmjager strong-points. The guns were positioned in a flanking position on the town's pier and coastal mole, allowing them to have a clear line-of-sight to enemy positions in Ortona. 

A 6-Pounder in action in Ortona, December 1943

The downside to this was that, with very little cover, the gun's crews were terribly exposed to German artillery fire. The Canadian gunners found that they had to scamper from their 6-pounders as enemy shells whistled in, and then dash back to quickly re-lay their guns and fire off a few shots before, once again, running back for cover.

Into this story comes Private Howard Mabley.  A country boy from Peace River, Alberta. Mabley was one of those recruits who, no matter how hard his drill instructors tried, could not learn the fundamentals of being an infantryman. It wasn't that he was disrespectful, he just couldn't retain the skills. Finally his officers gave up in frustration and sent Mabley to the regiment's kitchens to help there. 

So it came somewhat as a surprise that an officer found Mabley, under fire, happily loading one of the anti-tank guns. The officer upbraided the sergeant commanding the gun for having a cook there, but was told that Mabley could not be deterred, desperately wanting to help his mates in the fighting. The gunner went on to say that he never saw loading done so quickly and without mishap. 'Eight hundred rounds when through that gun and every shell was loaded by Mabley.' He served as loader for the rest of the battle, permanently loosing his hearing from the firing of the gun. 

These are 20mm figures from AB Miniatures. All of them, exquisite castings. The 6-pounder is from Empress Miniatures and fits perfectly with the gunners. 

As an interesting side-note, the Canadian version of the 6-pounder had it's gun manufactured in Longueuil, Quebec, whereas the carriages were made right here in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Finally, to finish off, I'm including a prone Canadian sniper team, searching for targets in the rubble. 

Another set from AB. Not as crisply realized as their usual fair, but still more than serviceable.

These figures should give me 16 for the gun crew, 8 for the gun itself, 4 for the prone sniper team and 20 for the Chamber. 48 points total and my 9th point for our Squirrel Challenge.

Next I need to call upon a sorceress for a teleportation to the Knight's Solar!

- Curt

From JeremyM: Aliens in the Larder (40 points)

 So I got a bit distracted by other projects and actually jumped ahead of where I should be. More on that in some future posts. I last left the golem's haunt and was transported to the larder which I'll complete today.

After one of my earlier posts for the alien facehuggers in the pendulum chamber I had several requests for a chestburster. Not to leave my fans unsatisfied I decided the larder was the perfect spot to do an homage to one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history.

I started by dipping into my 3d print archives to find some appropriate scifi terrain. The computer, vending machine, table and chairs are all from Stoneskull Studios' partially failed kickstarter. I did get all the stl's of his files but originally he had planned on sending physical minis. I didn't feel to bad about it honestly I could tell it was a too good to be true scenario from the start and that the creator had bit off way more than he could chew. Having recently acquired a 3d printer as well made it reasonably worthwhile in the end.

The poor fellow on the table is actually a zombie mini from wargames factory's plastic set. I drilled a hole through his chest and sculpted a little chestburster out of green stuff. I was pretty happy with it but sure enough a search of thingiverse after doing all that work revealed a few 3d print options for the future.

The other minis in the background likely look familiar if you've seen any of my earlier posts. They are my 3rd copy of two modern scared civilians. Their look of horror and revulsion seemed too perfect not to include them. The base is homemade using cardboard and some mesh. I tried to capture the mix of industrial and sterile clean environments you see in the ship in the first film. 

The scene was so iconic because the actor's really didn't know what to expect. They used oysters, organs, and lots of blood from a butcher shop. It apparently smelled horrendous. After the big reveal one of the actors passed out and another left and refused to come out of his trailer. I guess sometimes acting is no replacement for real reactions.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/13/making-of-alien-chestburster

So with this post I have 20 points for the room, 3 28mm figures for 15 points, and I think likely around 5 points of scenery for a total of 40 points. Now where to next?

JeremyM

From MartijnN: Provisions and properties: The Larder

 Although I love food,  I have never felt the need for any food-related figures in my gaming or collection. As a result, I found myself hard-pressed to find a suitable figure for passing through the Larder.  However, once again the 3D printer and Kickstarter came to the rescue. In the glorious Desert Adventures Kickstarter are some very nice figures, among which is this Arabian merchant selling his fine gourmet foodwares at cut-his-own-throat prices:

 

I am quite sure he will “make very special price for you, my friend”! I let myself be inspired by this 19^th century illustration:

 

By now it should not come as a surprise to anybody that I used Contrast Paints on this one again.

Obviously, a merchant needs to live somewhere, and so here is his humble dwelling in 6mm scale:

 

As a matter of fact, not far off is the little town where he is wont to sell his fine fruit:

 

These buildings are one again 3d printed, this time from a small Kickstarter simply titled “3D Stl Desert village Tabletop 6mm 1:285”. Just what it says on the tin, really. They are nice models that print up well.

So how much are we talking here?

Well, one 28mm foot figure at 5 points + the bonus for the Larder= 25pts. Easy.

But then: one 6mm dwelling at 10 cm³ (2.5x2x2cm) and one 6mm Arabian village at 150 cm³ (10x10x1.5 cm) for a total of 160/3375 (that's about a 6” cube in cm³ for us non-Imperials, if my reckoning is right) or almost 5% of a 20 points 6” cube or 1 point, rounded up. I'll just have a little lie-down now, thank you.

Total 26 points, which sees me passing my goal! Yippee! 

And what's more, I can go a level down!  And take some time to think about upping the ante for the remaining month of the Challenge...

From: AngusW - 28mm 'Hello ladies!' - Sarah the Sorceress - 25pts

We have here Helga, a 28mm Prussian camp follower from Foundry. Ever since playing Sharp Practice I've wanted to paint some female figures, so when I get to roll on the 'Random Things Happen' table and get 'Hello ladies! 1D3 men are convinced that a nearby building is home to some rather beautiful ladies' I can actually put some ladies on the table.

Currently I'm in 'larder', having entered the dungeon via the Aquifer. I now find that I can complete the Hall of Traps though I need to get there, so I invoke 'Sarah the Sorceress' to transport me there skipping 'Golem Haunt' and 'The Pit of the Pendulum'

Helga (5pts) + Sarah the Sorceress (20pts)

From MartijnN: The Chamber of Darkness (41 points)

Here is the next instalment in my small contributions series, slowly treading my way through the maze.

The funny thing about these Chambers is that, even though I was resolved to stick to my historical figures first, I cannot seem to stop musing about the Chambers and trying finding ways to get through them. As a result I have been painting far fewer historical figures than I should have been, but also doing some things I would never have taken up otherwise. For instance,  I have never ever painted anything in greyscale before. I decided to stay on the safe side and paint a statue. As I  mentioned earlier, I have recently started using a 3d printer. So, I printed this statue from the City of Arkenfel Kickstarter. I tried to use as many shades of grey as possible (no, don’t even think of going there). I used Nuln Oil as a wash and stuck it on a grey base as well. In full Technicolor it looks like this:

 

To back up the statue there are eight Bactrian Greek Indian archers (or two elements Lb) from the Essex Miniatures DBA army languishing in my lead pile since the early nineties. That means six elements are now done, or half the army; all the Greeks still to go though. The photos are not the best, but they'll have to do for now I fear.

 

For points I will claim the statue as a 28mm figure (it is a bit larger than that, but this was a rather simple paintjob after all) for 5 points, plus eight 15mm foot figures at 16 points, and the bonus for the Chamber of Darkness for a total of 41 points, bringing me within an inch from my modest total. On to the larder!

From GeorgeS - The Shrine - 1:30 Indian Priest, Shaman - (30 points)

    Finally find some time to finish something for "The Shrine"..

   Not a Christian theme but sure religious one, this Native American Shaman would pass me through..

  One more figure from my "Cherilea" 60mm Indians set witch is still around my table...

Painted as stated before, in a vintage "Toy Soldier" style with some realism elements. One more figure for my collection under the project " paint one of each.."!

 

I just noticed that I didn't paint the earrings!! Oh god!!

 That's all for now. Hope you like my "Priest"

'till next time..

Keep Up The Brushes!

PaulS: Snowlord's Altar: Cops vs Cannibals (180 points)

 When Curt reached out to ask what I needed a specific push to complete for the Snowlord's Altar I had to think about it for a while as there are so many things I need to get around to painting. Eventually I settled on the personal challenge I had set myself; to try and complete one of each Necromunda gang. I'd already done two this challenge, so it made some sort of twisted sense to try and do two more gangs for the culmination of the dungeon crawl. It just so happened I had a paired set of gangs lined up in the queue that work well as opponents... to the point that they come together in the Dark Uprising box. Just to fill it out a little bit more there's also a selection of scatter terrain added too. Everything you see is new for this.

We have a lot of Enforcers; the police of the underhive. With the other gangs I'd just pulled together one 1000 credit gang but with the Enforcers I decided to pull together two as there was a juggernaut of a list put together on the Necromunday pages from Goonhammer.com that is pure beatstick with 6 heavily armoured Enforcers with riot shields and shock staves that looked fun. I'd already stuck together some as test models... so rather than 10-ish models I have 21 for the Enforcers.

The Enforcer judge was made to stand out a little... (ok, a lot) by adding the officer's coat from the Scions kit. Here you can see him checking up on the enforcer terminal

It looks like a local Cawdor gang has been defacing the terminal with graffiti... issue the arrest warrant!

And here's that beatstick squad. I don't think I'd want to face off against this one...

The most gruesome of the necromunda gangs released to date is the Corpse Ginder cult. This is made up of individuals that work in the Corpsestarch plants that convert the hive's dead into a starch like food for everyone. Over time some people start to hear the call of the flesh and start to consume the dead, rather than convert them into corpsestarch; turning to Khorne's embrace. There are some bits in the kit that I'm not ever so keen on, so there are some replacement bits dotted throughout.

I bought the stl for the middle character from Ghamak on MyMiniFactory as a nice boss. He's using one of the GW heads though as it looks slightly better than the Ghamak version. I'm tempted to reprint him a little larger though as he's skinny compared to some of the others...

I used heads as an identifier for the different levels of character within the cult. These skull heads are for Skinners. The hooded heads are for the Cutters.

The standard heads for the initiates are these weird caged things that just look terrible (imo), so they got replaced with some of the more crazed flagellant heads. One even seems to be licking blood off his blade, which was a nice surprise when it went together!

and here's all the terrain bits, except for the Enforcer comms unit gathered together.

All in all that is:

21 enforcers for 105 points

9 Corpse Grinders for 45 points

probably half a cube of terrain for another 10 points

plus the 20 for the chamber

Total: 180 points

plus another 30 figures for the GW challenge and a whopping 53 skulls spread across the bases, barrels, graffiti and all the iconography on the green jacket's clasps and medals. I'm not counting the 27 Enforcer logos even though they look skull-like

I just realised that this also tips me over my 1000 point goal... so I guess 1500 is the next target!

Devotio in the Shrine - Mark Backhouse (48 points)

 For the shrine it was time to return back to the Ancient World. I’ve been playtesting my rules lots and on one feature we hadn’t visually represented very well were skirmishers and generals. To compensate I scratchbuilt a load of strips of skirmishing troops that can be deployed in front of and behind the larger units. Each is made of coffee stirrers, matchsticks, a bit of Pollyfilla and sharp sand. The individual skirmishers are literally bits of grit from in the sharp sand. Your eyes trick you into thinking there is a bit more there! Yes, this is the joy of 2mm. Individually they look like spots of paint. Together they look like an army and truly epic!

Now time to get onto the shrine part. I wanted a way to depict super aggressive troops that carry out a devotio. A devotio was an act of self sacrifice carried out by Roman volunteers. By promising to Mars they would carry out this sacrifice they hurled themselves into the enemy lines to inspire the rest of their army and win favour from the gods to grant them victory. Of course they all expected to die in the act! Probably the most famous was carried out by Crastinus and 120 volunteers from the 10th Legion at Pharsalus in 48BC. They charged headlong into the Pompeian ranks, hacking their way into the enemy formation. Crastinus himself died with a gladius that was thrust through his mouth and out the other side! Ouch! I decided to model them as aggressive looking wedges that I can place in front of the legion they are inspiring. A completely ridiculous one shot weapon, but adding a bit more period flavour.

The devotio here leads the legion to attack the German tribesmen! The legion and warband were painted before the challenge but hopefully show in context how they will be used!

So these are all the bases I made. The two devotios and 4 general bases are at the front.

These are all the bases I made. 13 strips of skirmishers, 4 generals and 2 devotios. I made two just in case there was a Civil War game and both sides wanted to use one! I think there are about 100 men per strip of skirmishers roughly.

This final picture shows how the skirmishers supporting a legion now look. The devotio leads the way!

I realise points for these are a bit abstract, so I’ll claim 2 per base or strip of skirmishers. That’s 19 x 2 =38, +20 for completing the challenge makes a grand total of 58 points.

On to the Oubliette now and something I found from about 2004...

From MartinC Bozo the Brexit Beast (10pts)

 Deep in the bowels of the Bullingdon Club the cabal had assembled. The satanic runes had been drawn to represent the basest fears of humans, poverty, foreigners and nationalism. This would surely protect their money and influence. The ground had been prepared for years and their frog like "Renfield" had done his job well but he could never be their totem, he was hated by half the nation. They needed a harmless puppet. They turned and looked at the club clown Bozo, who was carefully ruffling his hair. Bozo looked up, smiled a mawkish smile and said "Of course I'll be in charge, everybody loves me, they think I'm harmless"

The cabal turned and nodded. Bozo stepped into the circle and the spell was cast. The spell fueled by rotting fish, fruit and vegetables which were spaffed up the walls. The evil coursed though his veins. Red, white and blue flashed before his eyes. The feeling was power and joy but this quickly turn to pain and agony. it was too much. Even his empty shell couldn't contain the power unleashed. The evil of nationalism was too much for him to hold and the transformation began

This is Mr Lees Minis stone golem and is a brilliant figure. I buy a couple a year to test my painting skills and I'm building up courage to buy the female duellist 

It arrived yesterday and just demanded painting immediately

The colour scheme lead to the narative and the hair is a straw tuft.

I have another figure from Kyle but that will take much longer to paint.

Score for our unless PM is a 54mm figure = 10pts (no bonus for 118K covid victims and rising). In case you hadn't guessed I'm furious that this dick has wrecked my beloved country twice.

From ScottC: Star Wars Landspeeder and Airspeeder (65pts)

 I have had these in my closet for far too long. I have painted a star wars legion T-47 Airspeeder and Landspeeder.

They are mounted on 100mm bases and are ~32-40mm ish scaled.

Points:

2x 40mm vehicles = 50 points

3 crew = 15 points

Total 65 pts