From TeemuL: Bunch of Sludge and a Hard Rock Orc (50 points)

Here's something from the world of Sludge. I finally received my army commander and painted him with his bodyguards. I also painted three dragoons to get some variety and mobility to my force, there's at least three more to come.

The commander is a metal figure from Warbases, Captain de Travaille from their Mousquetaires range. He is accompanied by two WR foot knights from the Perry plastic box, just their heads taken from the WR light cavalry box to those nice looking feathers.

These three dragoons are plastic Perry WR light cavalry models with musket arms and heads from the ACW Zouaves box. They fitted very well, the poses might not be ultra realistic, but I like their bit uncontrolled look.

On the top picture you can see, that the horse on the left has an army symbol painted on his "head guard", a simple wheat icon. The other horse has a white star on his head (I don't actually like painting horses, but I do like to paint them individually like this to have all kind of details and markings on them).

The army colors are basically yellow and brown, as mentioned in one of my previous posts. There is some green as well, especially on the more senior stuff (and feathers and so on). The brown means dark soil and yellow means golden wheat, while the green is for the grass - the good old times, before the World went Wrong and it is just mud pretty much everywhere.

The commander and bodyguards are the same size, so no problem mixing these. And since this is not a historical game, it is easy to add fancy looking officers and heroes with funny hats and such and get away with it.

All of these are on 40mm round bases, 2mm thick (or thin), which I started to like more than the bulkier 3mm thick ones. It makes the models look bigger, doesn't it? On the bases there are Stirland mud from GW and small stones, cuts of twigs and pieces of vine, useful left overs from eating grapes! And some orange sand from Hasslefree, it can represent rust or fungi or whatever you can think of.

The stripes on the other bodyguard are hand painted (as you can see), small details which make them more life like. I tried to paint eyes to all of them, with varying results, and mustaches on some of them - again with varying results. The rest of my gaming group are having a game night today to try out Sludge (2 has played one game, other 2 none), but I had already booked myself to another group event, cook and eat and probably play some boardgames while drinking wine type of thing. It was a difficult choice, you understand, but first booking is a first booking.

Second part of this posting is this Hard Rock Orc from Widkidz prepainted range.

You might be astonished by the level of the painting, but there is an easy explanation. It is not actually painted by me, but my 6 year old son. During the last autumn (or fall) he started paying more interest on my painting hobby (probably because my painting desk was temporarily located to the living room) and wanted to paint something himself. He first painted some Stormcast Eternals, which I had primer long ago, but he soon finished those. I was running out of primed models I could let go and the weather outside didn't support outdoor spraying. I went to the local game store and bought some of these prepainted plastics for him to paint.

This has been completely painted during the Challenge XII and the flag is a freehand as well. I was creating a flag for my Sludge force and he wanted a flag for his monster as well. The front side says "LORDI ÄRR" and back side "KISS ÄRR", where the "ÄRR" part roughly translates to "ARR" (like pronouncing the letter R like a true pirate. LORDI and KISS are two hard rock bands which my son really likes (he doesn't understand English, so it must be their appearance and show - check out on youtube, if these are unfamiliar to you).

I'd like to claim 5 points from this Orc to my (family) tally, since it is basically my miniature, it has been painted using my brushes and paints and using my time - he needs help opening the Contrast paint pots and cleaning the brushes, fixing mistakes and reaching the tricky parts.

No planets on this post (or new squirrels or skulls), so just basic points:

4 28mm miniatures on foot = 20 points

3 28mm mounted miniatures = 30 points

Total 50 points

From Millsy

Some super kitbashing here on your Sludge miniatures Teemu! They really come together as a cohesive whole and your commander looks suitably imposing backed up by his guards. You colour choices reflecting the background of the world is a great touch too.

It's great to see you supporting your son as he takes his first steps into the world of miniature painting and gaming. The Challenge is slowly growing a cadre of fresh young blood to take over when the rest of us are too arthritic to paint!