From JamesM: 15mm Cromwell tanks (24 points)

Hi folks,

Bit of a break since my last entry, new baby is taking up much time!

Continuing with my 1st Polish Armoured Division project, I've added the first of the combat platoons to the completed list. These are Cromwells from 10 Pulk Strzelcow Konnych (10th Polish Mounted Rifles). This was the Armoured Recce regiment of the Polish division. Painted as part of my Flames of War Normandy project. 

15mm Plastic Soldier Company models, on 60mm by 40mm bases. 

As usual, decals have been applied for the unit, aerials added and no need for magnets due to the turret pegs. Commander model to be added at a later date, and twin aerials help identify the command vehicle. 

These three tanks come in at 8 points each, giving 24 for the unit. This takes me above my target for this challenge (the joys of small targets!). Three more troops like this to do, and the whole unit will be finished. If only young Alex will give me the time...

From PhilH: Zeitgeist Curtgeld, Din Djarin (30 Points)

Afternoon folks, Soooo, my challenge has gone a little awry, largely because 1). I was waiting a few weeks for a key component of my Pit of the Pendulum entry, and 2). I was loath to skip the room, as I have a great vignette for it, and the things I have been studiously painting while waiting have taken quite a lot of time. Thus, Every Point Counts for me to reach my target. Sooo, I've a few hundred points of stuff waiting in the wings, but haven't eeeeven started my Pit entry. I'll get there over the last few weeks, but whoops. In the margins I've painted up my Curtgeld offering, which is channeling the current hotness TV Show The Mandalorian. I hope it will fit pleasingly in some Challenger's SciFi collection.

Yep, i's Din Djarin, our dour but sensitive bounty hunter protagonist from the latest Star Wars hotness TV show. Unlike most Mandos you see, this isn't a 3D print, rather a traditional metal sculpt by Tim Prow of Diehard Miniatures, from a Kickstarter 18 months or so back. He's nicely scaled for 35mm Legion, so has a pleasing heft.

One of the things I've been trying to do recently, is try new painting methods by trying to add more texture, particularly here to the boots and cloak, rather than defaulting to my usual entirely smooth layered style. Part inspired by recent work on vehicles, Twitter inspiration and also by watching YouTube channel 'Not Just Mecha', by Marco Frisoni while working. Marco does wonderful work, usually on GW models, that's both inspirational and depressingly done in just a handful of hours. He draws a lot on the old masters and colour theory, so a good opportunity to learn along the way.

I have spotted a couple of bits in the photos that need tidying up, and of course he'll a few layers of varnish for transit to his eventual owner.

From BenitoM: Taking a Smoke - The Guardroom (25 points)

Moving from the Gallery of Ancestors, I stepped into The Guardroom. Having finished in the office early this Friday, I had the opportunity to make a quick paint work to this 2WW German model that fits nicely in the room's theme

I have had this model for ages, but I cannot recall when I bought it or even the manufacturer. So, if anyone around can identify the brand, I will really appreciate. The model is interesting in two ways: it wears the Zeltbahn cammo poncho/tent (and I do not know a lot of models wearing this characteristic uniform piece) and he is smoking a cigarette while on guard duty, providing the model some character.

The model is a metal 28mm figure and will make a nice addition to my games attached to some headquarters building or check point position.

With this entry I add another 25 points ( 1 x 28mm @5 points + room bouns 20p) to my Challenge scoring this year and I gets very close now to my 500 points target. We still have one month to go, so I expect to comfortably reach and likely exceed the target (and it will be the first time since I've been participating in the Challenge)

From ScottC: Lair of the Spider Submission - Huge Spider! (30 pts)

I have painted up a Reaper miniatures Huge Spider to lead my previous spider forces. She was intended to be used as a Spider Queen for the Middle Earth SBG. This beast is 100% and I am thankful for having learned about a sneaky trick to help metal on metal connections. A little piece of Kleenex placed on the joint helps increase the surface area of the adhesion and increase the strength of the bond in addition to speeding up the adhesion time.

She is mounted on a 60mm base

Points:

54mm infantry = 10 points

Challenge bonus = 20 points

Total 30 points

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everybody. This has been my first year in the Analogue hobby Challenge and everybody has been extremely friendly and welcoming. I am lucky and grateful to have had participated and while I approach my final dungeon I will try and keep up my fanatical pace until the end. This has been such a fantastic community to be a part of, hobby on and stay safe everyone!

Now, bring on the ALTAR OF THE SNOWLORD!

From ScottC: Treasure! - The Snowlord's Treasury submission (47points)

I have had these treasure chests in my pile of shame for about 3 years. I am happy to get them painted and used for fantasy objective markers! 

I didn't realize until after, the fourth treasure box has since been rebased. These guys are a very soft plastic that I had to rough up pretty well on the bottom in order to get them to stick to bases. The details are pretty good for the price! (They are all Nolzur DnD miniatures)

Points:

5x ~20mm = 20 pts

1x larger pile = 7 pts

Challenge bonus = 20

47 pts total

It's Friday...

... and I've been late to take up my minioning duties. But I have at least a good excuse as I took advantage of the excellent weather around here and did some gardening. Important stuff as you can clearly see:

From SimonG: Circe Transports us to The Snowlord's Treasury (32 points)

 Having finished up in the Hall of Heroes I now need to be in the Snowlord's Treasury so it's time to call on Circe the sorceress for the necessary ethereal transportation.

Circe was of course renowned for turning men into pigs -- so perhaps she is behind the PigMen I previously posted 🐷🐷! Once again this is a LMS Black Rose Wars 30mm PVC figure and perhaps my favourite of all I have worked on so far. The elevating pose and robe work is top rate and the snakes making their way up her leg really set off the piece. The piece was rather beset by tricky mould lines at least one of which is far more visible in macro photography then in the "real world" (at least that's my excuse!).

Clearly there were some judgement calls in how to paint a piece like this and how to not get an NSFW rating -- I elected to follow the Ruskin policy when it came to certain areas (probably quite appropriate for a classical greek figure in any case!)

For the detail on the dress I used a mix of classic patterns (albeit simplified) for the upper part and a detail inspired by Waterhouse's first iteration of Circe for the lower. The choice of colour for the dress was driven by a colour that would allow me to get that partly transparent effect without too much trouble -- something I think worked out pretty well on the décolletage (probably not a word that gets brought up too often on this blog!)

Once again much time was spent on the face, the green eyes just seemed to work, and if you look closely you may see some red eyes on the green snake!

I guess pieces like this help you work up techniques that can be employed in more normal wargame situations, but they're also fun in and of themselves plus I look forward to deploying her as my character in Black Rose Wars. For today however she should be worth 32 points (7 for a 40mm figure, 20 for the ride and an extra 5 as a sorceress I believe)

From DrQ: Orks and Chests in the Snowlord's Treasury (70 points)

 

For the Snowlord's Treasury I've painted up some lovely little treasure chests. These five are from an old CMON kickstarter-exclussive box for Masmorra: Dungeons of Arcadia. 

Not really much to say about these, aside from the fact that I painted them in the standard cartoon style I do for all chibi miniatures (see earlier posts). I decided for a group shot showing all the sides in one image, since there were five of them to paint up. 

Additionally, if there's going to be loot, there needs to be someone(s) there to do the looting. As such here are five more 40k Ork Boyz.

These boys are a fair bit more dapper than the blokes I have been painting. I picked up some steampunk heads from Spellcrow, figuring that a head swap would be an easy way to distinguish between units when the Greentide of 3-4 units of 30 models comes in on the charge. Oh, and I used a different colour of tufts as well. 

Aside from the head swap, I painted these boyz in my standard troop scheme, which I'd best describe as "Evil Suns Lite." I could have upped the glow on the one boyz' head coils, but I don't want him to stand out too much—it's not like he's got a forceshield or any other bonus for those blue coils. He's just a very dapper lad. 

As far as points, there's ten 28mm miniatures for 50 points and another 20 for the area challenge, for a total of 70 points.

From here I move into my penultimate challenge area: the Lair of the Great Beast. I've been slowly working on my Kharadron Ironclad for this area, and hopefully I'll have it finished by the end of the month.

From SanderS: The Hatchery... (60 points)

 Hoi,

 Let me introduce you to Tom, he is peeping. 

Yup he's a Peeping Tom! But when he's looking through the  keyhole, expecting to see scantily clad young ladies, he's actually in for a bit of a surprise:

As with a lot of other Chambers in this Challenge, I had to really think hard what mini's I had to use for them, to end up with stuff I can actually use in a Dungeon game after all!

These monsters are from the last Frostgrave Nickstarter I participated in; The Perilous Dark. This is the same Nickstarter (a North Star Miniatures version of a Kickstarter) in which the Ballista from the Golem's Haunt was obtained.

Gathered here to jump poor Tom, are two Hellcrows, 3 Vapour Snakes, a Magmite and a Matriarch, if I am not mistaken. Tom himself is a resin figure I got with a set of two ladies without cloths bathing and using a towel in front of a big standing mirror. The ladies have yet to be painted but Tom seemed appropriate for the Larder, yet I couldn't find him until after I had posted the figures for it. So I thought I would turn him into a part of this post.

Next op are the Hellcrows, according to the Frostgrave supplement Perilous Dark, they are a flying kind of minor demon often in the guise of a bird like entity. I had to paint them like a kind of Fenix. 

The Vapour Worms are ethereal creatures made up of magical chemicals or something. They are Arthur's favourites.

 The Magmite is a sort of magma monster made up of lava, but my youngest son (Hugo) likes Ornage, it's his favourite colour so I indulged him and made the magmite orange. 

The Matrarch is described as a huge Ice Spider, but I kinda think it looks like a huge tick... YUK! I hate ticks. So anyway I tried to paint it like one and I think it worked out fine.

That's the miniatures out of the way but I thought you might also like to see us in action playing a game of Heroquest. 

Here's Arthur rolling the dice in the dice-tower he was kindly given as a prize by the Snowlord and the Lady Sarah some Challenges ago.

Here his heroes (Lodjar the Wizard and Aldor the Axewielding berserker) are confronting the Boss in the Boss Chamber only to succumb to his noxious breath and get captured!

 Points are easy this time: 8 figures of 28mm is 40 points together with the 20 for the Chamber makes 60 points.

Cheers Sander

AdamC: "Kights of Gondor and the Mark, Kights Solar (30 Points)

 I got these for taking part in one of the "Great War Gaming Survey" That Wargames Soldiers and Strategy does each year. 

I have done many Knight over my six challenges I had a few traditional option but I wanted to do something different.  Like many here I love the works of JRR Tolkien so doing Merry and Pippin as Knights. The models are a bit too Renaissance for Tolkien but I think they work.

Merry wears the green and white livery of Rohan. He winds the horn gifted to him by Eowyn a horn that was an heirloom of the royal house. I made my best effort at a horse head and it's not terrible.

Pippin is dressed in the Black and Silver of the Tower Guard along with my best effort at rendering a 'white' tree. He wields his Barrow Blade "trollsbane."

Pippin's shield came out reasonably good... I think it looks like a tree anyway! Points two 25mm scale infantry for 10 points then another 20 for the room.  Not sure what I'll do with these but they were fun to paint.