From HowardT: Later Achaemenid Persian 1/72 20mm (188 points)

Slower Progress through January.  Working with 1/72 plastic figures for this half of the Achaemenid army.  This submission includes Takabara, skirmish bow/sling,  Cavalry, Light Cavalry and Horde. Scale 20 mm. 

All HAT plastic figures.

Points breakdown:

Takabara,  four stands of 3 figures each.        Points = 4 x 12 = 48.

Skirmishers, four stands  of 2 figures each.    Points = 4 x  8 = 32.

Horde, one stand of 7 figures.                         Points = 4 x  7 = 28.

Light Cavalry,  two stands of 2 figures each.   Points = 8 x 4 = 32.

Cavalry, two stands of 3 figures each.            Points = 8 x 6 = 48.

Total of points is  (48+32+28+32+48) = 188 points.

 

Based for DBA, 13 Stands of Achaemenid Persians of Darius III, 330BC ish.

Right side profile.

Front profile.

 

These HäT models hold up well. I like the bright colours and the conservative basing.

Barks

May I implore the tardy Thursdayites- Howard, Dallas, Dave- to submit your draft posts before Saskatchatchatchewan Thursday, or else there's a risk it won't go up for a week.

From DallasE: Bolt Action Schwimmwagen at Kaiserbaracke Crossroads (Klendathu) (43 points)

I've always wanted a little schwimmwagen for my WW2 collection, and recently came across Warlord's 1/56 Bolt Action model at a local shop. It was pretty pricy at $30CAD but seeing it gave me an idea, so I picked it up.

I thought I would model a specific vehicle that's pretty famous - at least as famous as a vehicle from WW2 could be. It is of course the infamous schwimmwagen of SS-KG Knittel that was featured in a propaganda newsreel made during "Wacht am Rhein", known nowadays as the Battle of the Bulge. The schwimmwagen in question was driven by a soldier wearing a Waffen-SS camouflage smock and some very distinctive headgear - identified online as a US Army winter tanker's helmet.

The Bolt Action model came with a driver of course, but the separate heads supplied were wearing a helmet or an M43 einheitsmutze. So I swapped in a bald head from my bits box and did my best to sculpt on the tanker's helmet with greenstuff. I think it looks passable. 

Unfortunately the vehicle itself doesn't quite match the one in the newsreel, in terms of equipment - the real one was missing the paddle and carried spare wheels on the rear deck. No matter to me - the driver is what counts in this conversion. The model is nice though and very detailed.

It's not super-visible here but the model has some nice stowage sculpted in - an MP40 submachine gun as well as a bunch of breadbags and canteens strapped to the roll bar above the seats.

Here's the model pictured with a Waffen-SS officer from Battle Honours...

...and the inspiration for the project.

As far as the Outer Rim tour goes, I visited Klendathu for this one, as "failed invasion" pretty much describes to a T the gamble Hitler took in late '44 with Wacht am Rhein. The idea was to get to Antwerp and split the Allied forces, but as we all know that the German "invasion" ran out of steam well short of its objective.

Points:

28mm vehicle: 20 points (not counting the driver in the total as the vehicle is pretty small)

Klendathu bonus: 20 points

Total: 40 points

I've seen this photo before, but hadn't realised the driver was wearing US headgear. I'll throw in a few points for the driver with camo smock.

Barks

From DaveS: Heavy Metal (121 points)

This week has been a week of two halves.  I started with a plan to work lots on my Florence Army, and got started with that.  I managed to turn out a unit of Mounted Crossbowmen, a light cavalry unit, made, as is becomming traditional, from the Perry Plastic sets, with a few bits from the Warlord Landsknechts.  These are in teh same Red and White colour scheme that I have used for all of the regular forces for the army, and are, as usual, based for Basic Impetus II.

While I was waiting for an ebay order to get the Polearms I need to finish the last of the "regular" units that I have to do, I moved onto a unit that both inspired me to choose this project, and scared me a little.  THe Landsknechts.  I decided to start with a small "Skirmish" unit, the Zweihander armed models.  These, I think, are skirmishers only because they roamed in front of the main units.

I knew that I had to make them "colourful" and not uniformed. I think that I might have taken this a little bit too far with this unit, but will jusitfy it to myself by claiming that these are the most flamboyant of their troops.

At this point, my cunningly laid plans were thrown apart.  I love battletech, as may have been obvious from the number of my posts that are about it so far this year.  Unfortunately, it's been quite difficult to get hold of some of the new sets, and some of them have not yet been released.  So when I found out that the local shop had gotten in not a couple, but 5 new sets, I had to go shopping.  They also had the beginner box in.  Now, despite having been playing this game for nearly 30 years, I needed the beginner box simply because it is the only place that you can get the Griffin, a really rather useful medium Mech.  When it turned out that the other FLGS had got in some supplies of some of the models that had previosly been out of stock that I needed, I was like a kid in a candy store.

The goal for me, with Battletech, has always been to try and restrict my choices of mech to the force I am playing.  Rules wise, this is not required, but to me, it seems logical.  To that end, I spent a few hours with a list of models, the rulebooks, and both the "Master Unit List" and "Sarna" websites.  This, plus some planning, has led to me now having plotted out a Battalion of Mechs for the Capellan Confederation.  A lot of these had been painted, but I had 16 to do, to have the whole force painted.

To that end, I now present the first 8 of the "reinforcements" for the Battalion.

Cataphract

Centurion

Cyclops

Griffin

Highlander

King Crab

Of course, one small consequence of the plan to only use time and faction specific mechs, and to build to Battalion size is that it leaves me with left over mechs........Oh well, lookks like I'll have to learn to paint Lyran Alliance and Draconnis Combine as well..... and then there are all the new clan mechs....

Points wise, this is 4 cavalry (10pts), 5 infantry(5pts) and 8 mechs(7pts), for a total of 121 points

I do like your flamboyant swordsmen. The King Crab is a mech I don't think I've seen before and it looks kind of cool. Now you must paint an opposition with the leftovers!

Barks

From DallasE: Star Wars Legion 3D-printed Snowtroopers (84 points)

I'll admit it: I have a problem. It's a problem with Star Wars. Basically whatever kind of miniatures someone comes out with for Star Wars gaming, I eventually get sucked down the rabbit hole. Star Wars Miniature Battles, Star Wars Starship Battles, even West End Games stuff. I've been strong on some fronts - I managed to resist Imperial Assault and Armada, and even Star Wars: Legion for the longest time, but eventually the quality and coolness of the latter's models just wore me down.

The key to resistance is to limit the scope of the project. For Legion, I've decided to concentrate on the Hoth battle from The Empire Strikes back, and limit the project to that theatre. AND THAT'S IT. So far, it's actually been a successful strategy. However, the emergence of third-party non-official models has really threatened the integrity of my plan. Witness these very cool 3D-printed snowtroopers from Squamous Miniatures.

Squamous funds its operations through Patreon and "sells" 3D files of models that supporters can print themselves. In my case it was Challenger ByronM who came through with physical resin prints of these 12 snowtroopers. They were painted in the simple scheme I've used on dozens of snowtroopers before - Rakarth Flesh, washed with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted back up, with the armour, webbing, and backpack painted Corax White with White Scar highlights. Clean up the eyes, drybrush weapons with Mechanicus Standard Grey, done.

The models are excellent sculpts and are all one-piece with no assembly required - they even come with files to print the bases. The poses are great (mostly) and they scale pretty much exactly to the official Legion models.

See what I mean? Squamous snowtrooper on the left, official Legion snowtrooper on the right.

And unlike the other third-party snowtroopers I got from Wargames 3D, the armour and gear on these Squamous models are pretty much identical to the official models. Score!

And speaking of score...

12 x Legion scale infantry (7 pts) = 84 points

Hopefully this'll keep me in the top 40 for today at least...!

I hear you, Dallas. You must have a restraining bolt fitted to be so disciplined. I like the khaki tone to the snowtroopers' cloth, which really brings out the white armour.

Barks- off to peruse Squamous Minis...

From SamuliS: Amazons and Turnips (Cybertron) (115 points)

This week I have a double whammy for you guys with fairly varied subjects. 

First up a new Bloodbowl team for our clubs league that starts next weekend. These are actually some of the first minis that I started for the challenge, but after rushing them to a level with all surfaces having some paint on them I played a few practice games with them and they got left in a carry case for a while. Now with the league start looming it was time to paint all the highlights and do some proper bases for them.

The team is from Greebo Games and was released through their Kickstarter a couple of years back. Great sculpts and what I especially like is that there are varied body types and not just the "hot bikini blonde" archetype that seems to be fairly common with Amazon models. They also made several extra sets that fit into the theme and allow you to expand the same team to play Norse and Human teams as well which is really nice. Let's see if I get around to painting some of them still during this challenge.

 

 

Pretty standard starter team setup with the maximum Blitzers and 7 linewomen to back them up. I painted up one extra linewoman to add to the team later and to act as a substitute if one of the positionals gets hurt early in the league. Also a couple of markers for the team to count as reroll and turn markers. Especially the little dragon hoarding his Bloodbowl balls is just adorable.

 

 

My next entry takes me to planet Cybertron with some Perry plastics experiencing a transformation into something totally different. I present you the first unit for my coming Turnip28 warband. The world of Turnip hasn't been very actively showcased here (yet), but it is basically Weird Napoleonics with the world having succumbed to worshipping various root vegetables and going at it while covered in mud and all sorts of plant life growing on the battered soldiers. Extremely bizarre and very heavily inspired by the Blanchitsu style.

https://www.patreon.com/Turnip28

My first warband is actually going to be fairly clean compared to the "official" Turnip lore with example models having grass growing on them etc. Technically they would probably be a better match for another new game in a similar style called Sludge. Still I wanted to keep this more as an exercise for making funky looking kitbashes to have what I'd consider great exotic uniforms. My next units will be more modified, but kicking off with a unit of Chaff (or skirmishers) I figured they would be more lightly equipped to be able to move through the mud at a quicker pace.

I've always loved Zouave uniforms, but never really had a suitable project where to paint them as I'm not too interested in any of the periods where they actually appear. So Turnip provided an excellent opportunity to use the Perry ACW Zouave box as a basis for my units. The skirmishers here have weapon arms from the Perry Afgan kit and heads from some of the medieval kits. The jezzails give a really nice archaic feel to them and the helmeted heads really reinforce the idea. For the paint scheme I decided to go with actually a fairly bright uniform as I think that is one of the main appeals of Napoleonics and Weird Napoleonics shouldn't be any different! Though the colours are slightly muted as I did a zenithal basecoat with a sepia ink preshading and painted with very thin layers to allow the undercoat to shine through a little. The next units will see a bit darker overall look as they will have more rusty armor to offset the colourful uniform underneath.

 

The Amazons will provide me with a ticket to Lady Sarah's Star Yacht that will take me to the middle circle after visiting 4 destinations on the outer one. The Turnip soldiers should fit nicely in on planet Cybertron with the transformation theme. With 19 28mm minis (counting the tokens in) and a new planet conquered it should net me 115 more points to my tally bringing me close to my goal of 500 points! I didn't really expect to be able to paint this much at the start of the challenge so it's a pleasant surprise. But the challenge really has got my painting mojo going again and it's really been a joy to put paint on models once again!

I'm always heartened to hear how the Challenge inspires us to Get Stuff Done. Nice basing on both these projects. The red headgear accents on your Zouaves really go well with the pants. Great work on the 'zons! Their Blitzers are hard to put down, but the team can be a little slow. Don't hesitate to up your points target! It's a long bow for Cybertron, but I'll allow it.

Barks

From Nick: 20mm German 8.8cm Flak 36/37 (36 points)

Fielding an 8.8cm Flak 36/37 in a skirmish game is probably akin' to overkill, but it's such an iconic piece, I simply had to get me one. Figures are 20mm AB as ever, while the Flak gun is from Zvezda. I had thought about creating a larger vignette style base, but as the gun comes without carriage I decided otherwise. But given the AB figures would let themselves well for a diorama due to their posing I might yet do one.

Wanted to try out a new recipe for Reed Green summer Drillich uniforms, but it turned out way too greenish. Still I couldn't be bothered to correct it. For the moment at least. Given the Wehrmacht used any kind of captured stock and dyes often varied from batch to batch anyway I think I'll get away with it... even if maybe just ;-)

I'm not completely sold on the shrubbery, thus it's not glued in place yet. 

As the gun was already started before the challenge I'll only claim 36 points for 9 20mm scale crew.

Lovely work, and a bit of variation in uniform tones adds realism and 'campaign cred'. It is skirmish overkill, but makes a great scenario centrepiece and objective. I would like to see you turn this into a vignette... I'm always a bit leery of vegetation and camo netting that would hinder the operation of a vehicle or gun, myself. (Unless it is backed up by a photo.)

Barks

From GeoffreyT: Something went wrong at the reactor (Klendathu) (40 points)

I pass back through the Great Abyssal to the outer ring, passing space travellers moving in the opposite direction, they stare out their space windows in wonder of my odd navigation.  At least I was moving against the traffic flow avoiding a jam*. Then I land on Klendathu where I find some bugs.

These miniatures are Eureka 28mm 'Reservoir Bugs' from their Movie Monster range.  I must get around to playing 7TV or something like that.  

Are these the cockroaches that will outlive the human race?

Their bug skin/carapace/whatever is black with a highlight of a darkish purple.  

The bugs have had their clothing modified to fix their extra arms.  So it seems to me that after their transformation, they went home and had their clothes fixed up, then diligently returned to work.

Bugs dressed appropriately for work.

I wanted the eyes to look kind of sparkly, so used a funky new Vallejo shifters colour shift paint. When I zoomed in to photograph the eye, I realised this one looks like Gonzo from the muppets.  That then reminded me of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.  I will be weary of doing any more close ups.

Gonzo ... also the last close up I'll do.

These are 4 x 28mm foot for 20 points, with +20 bonus for Klendathu.

In the alphabet soup challenge, you would think I'd claim B for beige here, but I already have that letter, so it will be I for Insectoids.

I have collected a lot of letters so far; that last few will be harder tho.

Arboreal Witch, British Officers, Camels, Dog, Elizabeth, F ?, Ghost, Homunculus, Insectoid, Jon Pertwee, K ?, Landfill, Megatherium, Napoleonic's, Obelix, Pixie, Q ?, Roundhead, Shells, Trans-Siberians, Unicycle Clowns, Veteran Frog, Watchman, X ?, Y ?, Z ?

My supply of Eureka miniatures is dwindling, and I have one last batch on the painting table now, it will be a nice mini achievement to clear the backlog of metal at least in one identifiable way.  Thereafter I will need to revert to 'foreign' brands from the occidental antipodes.  

Cheers

GT

*NB: I assume a traffic jam in space is a 'space jam', and therefore well worth avoiding

Well done, Geoff. Those sparkly bug eyes are great. The tailoring does indeed raise more questions. Space jam can also glitch your scanners.

Barks

From GeoffreyT: Clowns, Bins and a Ripe Witch (Vogsphere + Earth + Lune) (111 points)

This week it seems, I am in a sector of the quadrant for which my miniature claims are somewhat paltry but bonus points will abound. 

VOGSPHERE - Black Comedy

From Cybertron, I drift anticlockwise around the middle ring and appear on the planet Vlogsphere.  Looking for black comedy miniatures, I need go no further than my favourite Eureka miniatures brand.

These 28mm meat-cleaver clowns on unicycles remind me of bad guys from a Roger Moore era Bond film.  Dangerous and frightening killers with overly complicated methods that comes unstuck with a bit of lateral thinking by 007.

This bunch of clowns are quite bright (in colour), indeed so bright I had to photograph them in the near dark to get a half decent picture.  To get this effect I used predominantly primary colours and white.  I have kept secondary colours to a minimum, but they are there in small amounts.  By using a few contrasting colours a brighter image forms, it also saves using black-lining to delineate areas.  I also added some patterning with dots and stripes, because thats what clowns have, but again kept in to a minimum.  This is because patterning mutes the colours when viewed at a gaming table distance.  Patterns scale badly from full size to miniature.

From the reverse.   

These guys are quite big for 28's.  Much bigger than usual fare from Eureka.  This is an image of the largest one, held with a ruler on a bit of a backward tilt to make it look bigger than it really is.

As much as I protest, they are largish 28's and not 40mm, so 4 of them does not constitute enough for a squirrel.  Maybe the big one could be classified as next scale up.

Next up is another black comedy miniature from Eureka (28mm).  I painted him up as a Napoleonic era Ghost for The Silver Bayonet game.

I really love the way he is looking backwards at the water pouring out of his horse, it gives an impression of sudden realisation, that just perhaps, there may be something wrong with his horse.  It is a great theme for a ghost who doesn't realise he is dead yet, kind of like in the naff 80's romantic film Ghost.

Initially I tried painting him in full colour, with ethereal edges, it was cool idea, but didn't work.  Then I painted him in the typical GW Aethermatic blue often used for etherial things.  That didn't really work either.  There was not enough contrast between the etherial blue and the watery blue.   Finally I settled on a quite bright white (whiter than I would do white clothes).  So ultimately I have painted this guy three times.  I'm still not happy with it, but the paint on him is getting pretty thick now and I'd have to strip it off to try again.  I was happy with the water tho.  For that I did a thin wash of dark blue over a very light grey primer.

TERRA - Earthbound

From Vlogsphere I penetrate the inner ring, by travelling travel through the Great Abyssal to Terra, where I present for you something that is earth bound.  That something is garbage, bound for landfill in the earth.

The bin metal outsides didn't take much effort, but I fiddled around a bit getting the garbage done.  I used a burnt umber base coat with a flesh wash then detailed in a bunch of the shapes with random colours and a few stripes.

I think these resin castings are from rubicon models.  They are a nominally 28mm scale. 

Hopefully my paltry tally of three widgets for 'Terra' is offset by what I'd like to think is a quite poignant observation on the earthbound theme.

LUNE - Witchcraft

Finally for this week I have an sacrificial offering for Lune.  This is again a 28mm Eureka miniature "Witch in a tree" from their rather funky Avalon Burning range.

When I saw her in the catalog, I was intrigued how she would be attached to the tree.  When I received the model, I was no clearer on this matter.  Initially I glued her so she was hanging by her feet, as her hair was pointed, thus I assumed the hair was hanging downwards.  Then on closer inspection, I noticed her boobs were hanging in the opposite direction to her hair, and therefore there was either some powerful witchcraft at work, or I had this witch glued on upside down.

Close up of boobs to show direction of gravity as intended by sculptor

Eventually it dawned on me she must be hanging by her hair.  I assumed this would hurt a lot, unless the hair wasn't just hair, but somethings stronger.  Therefore I painted her as if she was a fruit on the tree, ripening up.

For her skin tones, I used some contrast paint diluted by glaze medium, then highlighted the flatter areas with solid colours.  The colours came out subtle and nice, but the overall texture isn't as 'solid' and clean as I like my minis to look.  But good to try a different way.

I shaded her from green thru to red so she looked like an apple, but I did it all a bit too vertically and without much transition, so now she looks more like an Italian flag. Finally I glued some green vine basing material onto the tree and called it done.

POINTS

So what does all this add up to.  That is a debatable question.

Four oversized 28mm clowns = 4*5 = 20 points, is the big one worth more?  or are they mounted on unicycles for a cheeky 10 points each?

A ghostly 28mm cavalry man with half a horse (is that 3/4 of a cavalry piece ?) = 3/4 * 10 = 7.5 points

3 widgets (1 point each?) = 3 points ? 

A witch in a tree.  She is true 28mm scale, but is about 40mm to eye from the foot of her tree = 7 points?  Or is she a 28mm mounted fig, mounted in a tree for 10 points?  Or since I added foliage, is she now a terrain piece for 1 point?   Should I get a flag bonus for the dodgy ripening apple attempt that looks like an Italian flag ?

Three locations, Vogsphere, Terra and Lune = 60 bonus points.

A total of 100 points maybe ?  I'm not sure.  I have left some tricky decision making for Barks the Thursday minion.

SIDE CHALLENGES

No squirrels.  Sad face emoticon.

However, my one of this two of that approach to painting has given me some more strong progress in the alphabet soup challenge;

U is for Unicyclists, G is for Ghost, L is for Landfill and A is for Arboreal Witch.

I'm tracking pretty well in the alphabet soup side challenge and will give an update on the tally and my progress around the planets when I have a shorter post sometime.  But at this stage if you are still with me, you have probably read enough of my ramblings.

From here I will probably go back past Terra, through the Great Abyssal to Klendathu on the Outer ring. It is on the challenge packed outer reaches where I would like to resume my hunt for challenge planets, but is going back outwards allowed? 

Kind Regards

Geoff.

A very impressive and spooky variety show today, Geoff! Eureka coming up with the goods yet again. As much as I wish to run screaming from your clown posse, I respect the bright colours and the dots and stripes. I'll shell out 28 points there which may yet score you a Squirrel. Your half-horse has a nice water trough so that is another 10. I'll chip in 3 for the useful earth-bound garbage, and 10 for the gravitationally-affected witch. And, yes, you may go back to an orbit further away.

Barks