From TeemuL: Sludge Dragoons (30 points)

Three more dragoons for my Sludge army, very similar to previous ones.

Again Perry minis, the same light cavalry with zoauves heads and arms.

The color choices are same, yellow and browns with some green. The pale horse is Skeleton Horde, if you are wondering. Works quite well on a horse.

3 cavalry for 30 points, no more. Next time more infantry.

From Milly:

Lovely looking cavalry Teemu. Nice too see some lighter toned horses making an appearance and that cream is gorgeous mate! I've mostly done mine using Bleached Bone in the past so I will have to give the Skeleton Horde a try next time around.

30 points it is! Keep em coming.

From ScottM: Arrakis - a desert planet (80 pts)

Our first stop in the middle ring, lands us at Arrakis, the desert planet. And if you have a desert, you have to have camels! All the figs in this post are 28mm metal from Foundry Miniatures. First up is a pair of camels.

Followed by two groups of assorted ancient civilians.

So that should be:

8 - 28mm foot figs = 40 points

2 - 28mm cavalry figs = 20 points

1 location (Arrakis) = 20 points

Total = 80 points

From Millsy:

Ahhh... camels. It's enough to melt the heart of even the most crotchety old curmudgeon like DaveD!

Cracking work on these Scott, especially the skin tones on the humans and the camel fur. We don't see a lot of civilian types posted overall so these are a nice breath of fresh air. Foundry do seem to have one of the broadest civilian ranges and I have a few myself. Lovely sculpts, all of them.

80 points added to your tally sir. Well done indeed!

From JohnS - Sneaky Blue Moon Stikkas + An Uninvited Guest (45 points)

It has been an eventful couple of weeks here in the jungle I call a home. We had a visit from a 3+ foot monitor lizard (known to some as a goanna) who spent a couple of nights in our ceiling space. In the course of attempting to release said dinosaur I fell off the roof, banging up my leg and effectively putting me out of action for 3 weeks. I used to like the monitors, now, not so much.

Bastard of a lizard

Now that I can sit with a bent leg again I have started on a unit of older Warhammer Goblin Stikkas, part of the Blue Moon clan. (I quite like their beer too) Done as an experiment using mainly contrast paints, they have come out pleasingly well.

My vision was for them to be quite dark so they can fit in with my Night Gobbo army but still have a pop of colour.

They are perhaps not as dark as I thought they would be but I still like them. I feel that they would blend in well with the night's shadows. The lighting in these photos is perhaps too strong, they are darker in real life.

In the end they worked quite well since I had to consider techniques that would give me a satisfactory result given I was only able to paint in short bursts.

Since there are nine of the blighters I would like to claim 45 points for them as well as a Squirrel. And they tick off the letter G. Now that I am on the mend I plan to get back on track with the painting, hopefully with some halflings by next week.

Oh, and I finally got the dinosaur out of the ceiling. He eventually decided to spend some time in the rafters of our adjoining garage. I had both doors open to encourage him out and when he wandered on to the open panel lift door I hit the button and happily watched him slide out on to the driveway. Bloody thing was still wandering around in our garden today though.

From Millsy:

That's a decent size for a monitor John. We get the buggers here too although thankfully I've never had to eject one from the roof space. They can be pretty aggressive and are bloody stubborn in my experience so I'm not surprised you had your work cut out getting it moved on. Sounds like you got (relatively) lucky with your fall too. I hope you make a complete recovery mate.

Your gobbos are wonderful. I've always liked this earlier plastic version and have some in my shame pile somewhere too. I've seen a number of painters I rate saying you should never paint black as actual black, but rather a dark grey. Blue-grey seems right to me as a cool version is more appropriate for the night.

Well done and 45 points it is! Looking forward to the hobbits.

From PaulO'G: More Dungeonbowl Players (35 points) (Star Yacht)

Back to the office this week, which has impacted hobby so only a minor submission this week, adding a few new players to my College of Shadows Dungeonbowl team that I submitted earlier in the Challenge.  

Added to the roster is a third Skaven Gutter Runner, Git-git Greenstripe - a fast player who can skitter around the dungeon with great agility...but is admittedly a little fragile (Reilly stomped one to death during a recent match!) 

Also joining the Team is Penny the Pricker, Dark Elf Assassin. This is a player type I haven't used before but anything that against the tower of muscle that is Reilly's team is welcome. 

I'll also use Penny to buy a ticket on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht please: First class (naturally) to Cybertron. Overall, that's 15 points for the 3 figs and 20 points for the Yacht: 35 points please Mr Minion!

From Millsy:

A fine addition to your existing team Paul! I really like the high-contrast limited palette you've used. It works really well with the dynamic poses of the miniatures, especially on the edges of their capes and on Penny's hair. The bases are neat too. Do those come standard with the minis or did you pick them up specially for this?

35 points it is mate. How could I say no when you asked so nicely?!

From HerrRobert: The Cull knives are for our friends [Babylon V] (28 points)

 

“ . . . well, let me put it another way,” replied Malant. “Your lasers, missiles, torpedoes and warships... all of them you will learn to use in combat against the enemies of House Colos — enemies who will eventually be destroyed.

“But the knife is different. Your knife is not intended for the enemies of Colos. It is special. We Colosians kill our enemies with technically advanced distance weapons and political cunning. We kill our friends with knives.

“The knife is for your friends.” 

 

Warned that my approaching exploration of the mythical Challenge Quadrant might soon be terminated due to a strange and dire event known to locals as The Cull, I strapped myself into my newly purchased and upgraded creative cockpit, hurriedly stocked with cheap claret, cheaper craft paints, and a brace of brushes. Clock ticking down, I plotted a course.

The creative cockpit, complete with audio-visual interface

I emerged from the wilds of hyperspace to the sounds of The Silence, approaching Babylon V, home of operatic, low budget fun.  Word of my arrival preceded me, for four Dart fighters rose from the station to greet me. Originally a product of House Red Star, the speedy Dart was now the interceptor of choice throughout known space, and apparently the Challenge Quadrant too. These four gleamed a dark and bloody red, the blazon of House Colos . . . 

 

My fingers flew over the keyboard, the computer querying the databanks and filling in the tactical display. Four ships, fast as thieves and armed with twin pulse lasers and a depleted uranium firing minigun. At least there weren't any missiles this time. After that scrap with the pirates and ninjas of the Ebola Sector . . .

 

The Dart's system display

Resigned to my course, I watched the four form up below me, a dubious escort to my first stationfall in the Challenge Quadrant. . .

For my first entry to Challenge XII, I present four Iron Crown Enterprise Dart fighters for Silent Death. Silent Death is a small space fighter game, originally set at the height of a space-faring Terran empire, and then New Millennium moved into a post-apocalyptic world after a devastating alien invasion tore the heart out of the Imperium of Man and scattered humans across the galaxy. It's operatic in scope, with a dozen different expansions and many, many factions. 

It was also astoundingly low budget to get into. All you needed to get started was the box set, complete with rules, dice, spaceship miniatures, missile and torpedo tokens, and even paper gaming mat. A good felt space hex mat is a small expense, debris, plasma defense systems and the like are easily made from felt or cloth, and you're ready for hours of space gaming. All the expansion books are available as PDFs.

Box set contents

The ships in the box set were plastic, but mental miniatures about, first from Iron Crown Enterprises, then ebay after ICE's bankruptcy in 2000, and now from https://silent-death.mx/.

To aid identification, every ship is labeled with type name and a number

I'd honestly not been too happy with these as I painted them up. The red over black primer didn't really work, even with a Strong Tone wash. It wasn't until I painted the cockpits that they came alive.

So, here they are.

I'm honestly not sure on the points value. I have a vague memory of some of the Kashmiri ships I submitted in the mists of time being 2 points per, so that's how I've done my calculations:

• 4 x space fighters @ 2 points = 8 points
• Babylon V (Outer Ring) bonus = 20 points
• Total = 28 points
  

Onward and upward! Or is that ringward?

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Welcome back to the Challenge Robert!

Wow, Silent Death. Now, that takes me back a bit (I remember the metal minis being very cool). I really like how vibrant you've done-up quintet of fighters. Will you be doing more from the original boxed set?  I hope that we'll see more of these over the next two months!

- Curt 

Jeff B (Sgt. Guinness) - Russians in Central Asia 1880's - Outer Ring - Solaris (45 Points)

Here's my first entry to Challenge #12, just under the wire, I hope. Real life has been a bit more challenging lately preventing me from doing what I would really like to do here. I'm off to a slow start and hope to continue the momentum. 

I will start with the planet Solaris, a fictional planet in a 1972 Soviet sci-fi movie about a mystery planet where the space station crew suffers from man's conflict with the unknown. Thus I present these 28mm Russian infantry figs painted in the colonial uniform for forces fighting an unknown and deceptive enemy in Central Asia 1839-1895. You see how I feebly tied that all together to scrape out an extra 20 planet points? 

These figures are the remainders to a 20 man TSATF unit I started for our Epic NWF colonial campaign, "Never Trust Anyone on the Frontier"...hmmm... more mystery and deception.  The figs are from Askari Miniatures from their Russian Colonial Range and paint up nicely. I have lots more from this range on my painting bench and hope to post more soon.

Planet Points = 20

28MM Figs: 5 x25 = 25 Points

Total: 45 Points

Cheers, Sgt Guinness 

______________________________

First, welcome to the Challenge Jeff!

Great work with these (Space?) Russians. They have a bit of the old school toy soldier look to them, which is quite wonderful. They cut quite the dash with their red pantaloons and white jackets. I look forward to seeing more of these in the future!

- Curt

From BrettM: Heavy Starship Troopers Klendathu (45 Points)

First submission of the Challenge is finally here. Always seem to push to the limit due to holidays and catching up. 

So recently started looking at this old Starship Troopers game. I wanted to start painting some figures for it and had these guys sitting around.

So went with a gray pattern as in the movie and figured these would be more of the "heavy weapons" guys 

Still searching for some figures for normal infantry. Will have to fire up the resin printer for most of this if I keep going with it. Really like the helmets how they are half open. Painted the helmets separately and then glued on after finished with their faces. 

First submission at 5 models at 5 points each for 25 plus 20 for Klendathu.

______________________________

Welcome back to the Challenge Brett!

These troopers look brilliant (and a perfect choice for Klendathu). I'm curious, are they 3D prints, or are they from the game? I quite like their angular, plate armour, which your two-tone grey accentuates very nicely. I also think the red alien ground really make pop. Great work! 

- Curt

From GrantH - 28mm Canadian Highlander Recce Team (10 points)

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well and staying healthy out there as the pandemic goes on. It has been a rather busy time for me since I have just started a new job following the winter holidays, so I am sneaking this small post in just before the cut off. I have already begun to make good progress on my backlog, so hopefully I will be able to make consistent posts in the coming weeks now that I have settled into the new routine.

Anyhow, for my first post of this challenge I have prepared a 28mm Canadian Highlander recon team using Warlord Games' plastic British and Canadian Infantry set. Their old commando and infantry plastic sets were definitely in dire need of an update and I was quite pleased with the new designs overall. It definitely motivated me to finally get around to building a dedicated Canadian force for my games of Bolt Action and Chain of Command.

For these lads, I have opted to depict them with the darker green Canadian battledress as it distinguishes them nicely from their British counterparts on the table-top. Having recently read Tim Cook's excellent two book series on the Canadian contribution to WWII, I decided that building a Canadian force themed around the First Canadian Army in northern Europe was the way to go. As such, this recon group will likely be the first part of a force themed around assault pioneers and WASP IIC detachments that were present for the Battle of the Scheldt. 

The spotter is just a little more on edge than the sniper as they navigate the marshy terrain of the Scheldt.

 This recce team are possibly D-Day Veterans as they have Mk. III assault helmets strapped to their packs.

A pair of completed 28mm figures is worth 10 points total if I recall correctly. A small start, but I plan on ramping up quickly since I set a total goal of 750 points back in December!

Ideally, the rest of the Scots-Canadian pioneers will be completed soon so I can move on to new projects. I think every year I participate in the challenge I claim that I will finally get around to the Napoleonics that have been in the backlog for several years, but something tells me the Spanish Civil War will be my new distraction after I finish the Canadians...

__________________________

Wonderful to have you with us again this year Grant! These Canadians looks terrific. I like that you have them in their slightly darker battledress, wearing their tams, though I expect the tin hats will be going on quick enough when the Jerry mortars start up. :)   Tim Cook's such a great historian and I can see how his work would get you enthused to get a force of Canucks painted up. I look forward to seeing more from this project!

- Curt

From ByronM - Kingdom Death Good vs Evil on Corsucant (64 Points)

This is a submission LONG in the making, I originally primed these up about 4 challenges ago and then never got around to them.  I kept putting them off as I was not quite sure how to deal with 2 of them and didn't want to screw up such expensive models.  Well, this year it was time to bite the bullet and do them anyway, and I think I nailed it on one and screwed the pooch on the other, but you be the judge.

First up the one I think I nailed, and the one I was most worried about, the Watcher.  This enigmatic entity is your saviour and killer in Kingdom Death.  In this bleak world there is no sky, no sun, just endless darkness and evil, when you wake up in the world though you find magic lanterns that keep the darkness and monsters at bay and let you survive.  [SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT KD SPOILERS!] What you don't realize up front is that Watchers provide and power these lanterns as a way to gather groups of humans into settlements.  Then after a while (25 years/games) they come out from their underground lairs to devour the now hopefully highly populated grown up settlement.  Yeah Kingdom Death is an evil evil place.

The Watchers are supposed to both create and devour light (and hopefully I am getting all this lore correct as its pieced all over the books and cards and not clear on purpose) so I wanted to try and paint something both dark and light.  I went with black but didn't want a pure black so it is actually a deep blue then shaded down to black in the crevasses and up to a slightly lighter blue at the highlights.  I then painted his sash in a bone colour to provide some kind of colour contrast (going black/white but not true colours at either side of the spectrum) and lastly painted the lanterns and some OSL light effects from them, but kept them muted on purpose to show that the light is fading around him.  I am super happy with the result, and I am almost NEVER happy with my own painting, which makes it even better!

Next up is the one I don't like how he came out, the Manhunter.  This is another super cheery monster in Kingdom Death who comes to settlements and demands you sacrifice people to him.  If you don't he likes toying with you in the fight breaking arms, legs, and backs as he breaks you down and then hauls you away.  It never says what he does with the people he takes, but it can't be pleasant.

He is dressed pretty mono-chromatically as he is supposed to be wearing leather made from animals and people, so I tried to use various browns, tans, and skin tones to make up some division in his outfit, but I am just not happy with the overall result.  I struggled with thinking about what to do with him for the last few weeks, but just couldn't come up with a solution, so am submitting him as is, as he is at least usable for the game even though he is not great.

Next up are two survivors to add some extra weapon options to my collection of figures.  The female figure is a Savior figure holding what could be a great sword or twilight sword in game, either a very useful option (even though the twilight sword makes you super powerful for about 8 games then kills you).  

The male is just a random fighter with an axe.  I fell in love with this figure due to the fish head he is wearing as a helmet, so I had to make sure it stood out so painted it a bright green and refer to him as the Fisherman. He kinda suffers from the same monochromatic issue that the Manhunter does though with all his leather items, but again, I wasn't sure where to go from there.

 

 

Overall, I really like the Watcher and the Saviour figures and the Manhunter and Fisherman may need a revisit at some point for more contrast of a few colour changes.  If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As for points, I am not sure so leave it at your discretion Millsy.  Kingdom Death is a 40mm game, so the 2 heroes are easy (2 @ 7 = 14 points), but I am not sure how you want to count the monsters.  Normally monsters are equal to vehicles, but these don't seem quite big enough to count as 25 points each, but they are also not cavalry, but I think it would be more reasonable points wise to count them as such and 15 points each instead of the 25?  Your call completely.  Whatever you come up with, I also get the bonus 20 points for completing a good vs evil post for the planet of Corsucant.  

Oh, and I almost forgot, this will also be my 4th squirrel point! So far my topics for Squirrel points include:

1. 15mm Eldar
2. 10mm Undead
3. 30k Marines
4. Kingdom Death Monsters and Heroes
   

From Millsy:

This is the best of your three entries today Byron IMHO. I love everything about these, the painting style, the colour choices, the glowing light, etc. all just gorgeous. The Manhunter is absolutely ripped with 66% more six pack than the rest of the human race!

I know what you mean about not wanting to paint something for fear of screwing up. I prefer to think of it as letting the resin or the undercoat cure properly [insert eyeroll]. Sometimes you just have to start and see where it takes you. Mistakes are just a part of the process. FWIW I think you nailed it.

I'm happy with 15 points per monster so that's 2 x 7 (14) points + 2 x 15 (30) points + 20 points = 64 points. Well done on three great entries in one week!