From JamieM - Pulp Sci-Fi (Babylon 5)(30 points)

Just time to squeeze another quick one in - a pulp hero and heroine.

These two were originally a pack of two from statuesque miniatures for use mainly with the Pulp Ally rules. The chap came with a pistol and the mechanic lady had a spanner.

After reading the Stargrave rules, I realised that I needed more figures with rifles, so I swapped his weapon with a brilliant ray gun that I got with a Bombshell miniatures Kickstarter.

I decided that the lady also needed some weaponry, so I found a combat drone (from the same bombshell Kickstarter) as she looked like the sort of character who would put robots together to fight for her.  I pinned it to her arm to give the illusion of it flying….. I decided to go with this instead of a clear flying stand or similar.

I’m pretty pleased with how they came out and they gave me the Low Budget fun vibe (the drone stuck to the heroine’s arm reminds me of zaphod beeblebox with the second head stuck to the actors shoulder!) so hopefully that’s enough for the planetary bonus….. if so, I find myself next to a warp maelstrom and so await the minion’s guide as to where I end up in the middle ring!

For scoring, 2 x 28mm figures and a planetary bonus for 30 total points.

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Very, very nice work here Jamie. I love that this one Kickstarter somehow provided all of the weapons and conversion bits you might require in order to suit your vision for these two figures. "Stargrave" certainly sounds interesting! Also, brilliant stuff with the flying drone - you managed that just right, in my opinion. Very cool...seems to be waiting for her command, like a loyal (if mechanical) hawk. Nice work. 

Now...as to the Maelstrom...well...I get to drop you any old place I like, do I? Let me go find a 40k Navigator figure and some star charts...and some wine...some more wine...just a BIT more wine...mmmm Chianti, so good with pasta...

The gods of the Warp Maelstrom have deposited you on Coruscant! Bring forth something Imperial, or something touching on "Good vs. Evil"! The soulless authorities await your efforts!

GregB 

From JamieM - Dreadball teams (160 points)

For this week’s post, I have four Dreadball teams.

“What’s Dreadball?!??” I hear you say. Well, Dreadball is a really good fun sports game produced by Mantic games quite a while ago. It’s fast to play and easy to understand once you get the hang of it (after about half a game) and it appeals to me as I find Bloodbowl to be a little too time consuming but I do really like sports games. When it came out, my gaming group played a season and we could get a  couple of games in per night.

The first edition was good, but Mantic put out too many teams and the power creep was real and damaging. Second edition was released a couple of years ago and essentially reset all of the teams. I’ve had these teams hanging around for ages and I suddenly decided that I wanted to play it again so out they came!

First up are the Kalyshi team (Dark elves)

Nice and bright colours for the armour. The game separates players into strikers, jacks and guards, but not all races get all of the positions.

 

To help differentiate when on the pitch, I’ve painted the strikers with pink hair and the jacks with green.

Next up are the cyborgs. This team takes mortally wounded players of any team, patches them up (with added cybernetics!) and chucks them back out there.

Lots of metallics in use here.

The next team are the Brokr - space dwarf miners! Although Snow White is nowhere in sight…..

I went with yellow and black as a nod to JCBs….. and the blue hair because sci-fi. Strikers with no hair, jacks with blue hair and guards with helmets.

Hobgoblins form the last team, with a particularly large “hulk” as their blocker.

The big lad makes up for the others and I expect he wanders around pulverizing people whilst the others bicker and fight.

Liberal use of contrast paints and highlighting to get these all done and I’ve doubled the amount of teams that I had available so time to play!

Nice and easy, 32 x 28mm figures for 160 points this week.

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Just what we needed Jamie! Another game to distract us and take up our attention! It does seem to me that this game maybe requires fewer figures on a team than "Bloodbowl" - is that the case? Regardless, they look lovely. Even the Space Dwarfs, who I am sure are totally useless at both mining and Dreadball. Great work, and a nice little points explosion (although I'm sure Paul SS has just painted 200 points of Union infantry in the time it took for me to type this). 

 

GregB

From Iain W - 28mm Napoleonic Austrian Infantry regiment no10 Anton Mittrowski and infantry regiment no15 Zach (245 Points)

These have taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, 48 28mm Perry plastic Austrians, although as you only get one command in a box and I like to field units of 24, I've supplemented them with 2 Victrix plastic figures converted into a flag bearer and the other into a drummer with surplus Victrix French drum arms and drum,the officer is a rather more heavily converted Perry plastic dismounted French dragoon with Victrix arms,he is alright but for the additional six boxes I'm going to use the Perry plastic Confederate command sprue as you get an officer in a long coat, a flag bearers arms and pole and a drum with arms ,perfect for £1.00!

I still haven't got the white right, the red faced regiment has had another process (a top highlight of white) whereas the green faced regiment I've only used white on the straps  and I kind of think that might work better with the off white uniform? I also was wondering if I should have primed them black like the casualty figures I've done,they're converted from British casualties that you get with Perry's French heavy cavalry and as I have no intention of doing British  (my nephew is and you've got to draw a line somewhere!) so hacked them about a bit, I think they're good enough. So 48 x 5 and 2 x 2.5 gives me 245 points to add to the total and be my first entry in the Napoleonics duel, two more posts like this should more or less get me to my total, better get on with it,I've been thinking about my approach to painting white and I might be onto something, let's hope so as I have literally hundreds of the blighters to do!

All the best 

Iain 

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Hi Iain - Napoleonic Austrians!! What a lovely sight!! These fellows look lovely, ready to march forward and keep that Corsican fool and his arriviste ambitions in check, where they belong! Very nice work on the conversions too! And as for painting the colour white, I am authorized by the Painting Challenge Gods to share a secret - NOBODY gets it right! It's always some kind of bodge, and I think BOTH approaches you have used here look excellent. I further encourage you to embrace that variety - after all, the Hapsburg Empire was a big place, and I doubt they ever managed a standard of white either. 

Well done!

 GregB

From RayR - Vogshere/Bureaucracy - The Clergy (65 points)

 

Vogsphere: Bureaucracy; Black Comedy

What the hell's Vogsphere were my first thoughts when reading the Bonus rounds this year, after a quick google search, I found out its the home world of the Vogons...

 

Not a clue? And I'm not inclined to find out anymore! Moving on to Bureaucracy, during last week's Covid, I had a Netflix rampage and watched all episodes of The Last Kingdom, one after the other, it took a few days, but I'm still here to tell the tale.

 

Watching the series, made me realise just how much influence the Clergy had over political decisions during this period of English history.

The definition of Bureaucracy is "a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives."

So these 9 figures fit the round perfectly. The figures were gifted to me by my old pal and old Challenge painter FranL. He sent these to me in the post a few years ago, so I thought it was high time I got them painted. They're from Conquest Games and sold as Benedictine Monks and Nuns.

Rear view

From left to right

Brother Martin, Brother Miles and Brother Paul

L to R

Father Curtis, Brother David and Brother Lee

L to R

Sister Natasha, Mother Tamsin, Sister Sarah

Bonus round 20pts

9 x 25mm figures @5pts

65pts

 

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Great work Ray! While of course we would be assured that such spiritual people are in no way bureaucrats, any short analysis will show that organized religion is indeed home to towering empires of bureaucracy! Nice to have these figures, they would make great accent pieces, or even targets/objectives, for a variety of different games in quite a number of different periods. Also nice to have a shout out from Fran! Well done. 

 

GregB

From RayR - Donnybrook - Polish Cossacks (120 points)

 

Back to my Vienna 1683 project for today's post. 

Last week I was banished to my painting shed because I had Covid for the third time!!!. Mrs R works from home so I wasn't allowed in the house, (well only to only to use the loo). I was in there from 6.30am till 10 at night. I watched a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime while painting lots of figures, while still holding the fort for work as the boss was on holiday, beer doesn't sell on its own you know!

I did get quite a bit painted, some of it will appear here today.

These 12 figures are from Barry Hilton's most excellent Warfare Miniatures!

Gotta say these are really nice figures and were a pleasure to paint up.

There's a wide variety of poses, with separate arms and top half of the body, so you can change the style and pose of the figure.

I gave one figure a longer spear changing it to a standard bearer.

There's my favourite figure, leaning back and firing with his pistol, with his Papakha on sat a jaunty angle.

Rear shot.

A close up on the flag, which was from a free download.

12 x 25mm Cavalry @10 pts each

120 points!

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Hi Ray! Glad you have recovered from Covid for a third time, although I expect this won't be the last time you are banished to a shed...

I love this setting, and you have done fine work on some lovely figures here. So much character! The hats! The weapon assortment! So much going on with this lot! That will be a well-earned 120 points for you. 

GregB

From RustyP - Arrows Abound with 28mm Dark Age Archers - (250 points)

I may have been absent from posting but I haven't been absent from painting.  I skipped any space travels this time and went back to my roots.  Here we have 50 dark age archers that I really wanted to get painted and ready for game play.   We game a load of different genres and these will come in handy for fantasy, dark age and even some RPG's as well.  These are hot off the press.  I put my tufts on them and straight away to the photo shoot. lol

The guy in the fancy red shirt is trying to hide behind his bow.

Must be more than 20 here! -- 25 says I...

I'm running out of things to say... The ponytail guy looks grumpy

Pardon me but is that wet glue on your shoe?

Group B - all 25.

They're actually interrupting a Star Wars Legion game.

All together as one big happy thrall gang!

These figures are mainly Gripping Beast plastics with a few different heads mixed in.  A few are metal sculpts from Crusader minis.  Not my favorite figures to paint but I am happy that I completed them.  These will get put to use in many future games.  

As far as points go:

50 different 28mm foot figures @ 5 points per = 250 points

These were kinda rushed as far as I'm concerned.  I would have honestly spent more time on them but hey... they're ARCHERS!  This Challenge is doing me good and getting me to push a little faster than my normal turtle pace. 

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Hi Rusty - painting and pacing are a relative thing of course, but a sudden deposit of 50 different 28mm figures - even just archers - would count as a fairly hectic pace for any us, I expect. Well done on this lot, as they look set to fill the sky with arrows, and do so in a variety of settings. Very nice!

GregB