From TeemuL: Blood Bowl High Elfs (25 points)

I have had three quite rough/busy/tiring weekends in the row, some planned, some unplanned, which has naturally affected my output. For example these 5 were "almost finished" last week, but in the end I "barely finished" them for this week.

These are classic Blood Bowl High Elfs, solid metal miniatures, which I bought a few years ago, when they were available as Made-To-Order from Games Workshop. I painted three linemen quite quick after I received them in Challenge x (x means unknown Challenge number, not X or 10). But then Blood Bowl enthusiasm cooled off in our group, covid came after that and so, but now there has been new sparkles, so I decided to move forward with these.

 

 

There are 4 lineman and 1 thrower, so that leaves the other positionals waiting for the future - and since the positionals are pretty much mandatory, I need to paint them before playing - an odd lineman might have been forgotten. The colour scheme quite nicely follows the Oldhammer High Elf style, light and bright and simple. Using mainly white, yellow, red and silver on a miniature might sound like a madness to someone, and I won't challenge that... Anyway, I used white undercoat, then painted the flesh (quite dark compared to some other high elfs, but I figured out these guys are outside a lot) and blocked yellows and reds using traditional colours (the first three were painted before Contrasts and I wanted to keep the look same). After that I painted the silver and gold and washed the silver with blue, to get the texture more visible. Finally some fixing here and there, black boots and mandatory green bases with green painted sand.

You might spot that they all have identical hair colour, that is on purpose. High Elfs are pretty strict with their standards and when forming the team, they can for example select only elfs with proper hair colour. They would only play on a perfect pitch in order to avoid getting mud on their white uniform...

These 5 elfs give me my tenth squirrel, surprisingly no skulls (those are reserved for Dark Elfs, I guess) and no planets. But instead let's give a warm thought to one of our sponsors, Wargames Soldiers and Strategy Magazine. A few weeks ago I was browsing the sponsor webstores looking for something nice. I am restricting myself of impulse buys (of miniatures) so I was mainly looking for a nice ruleset, may be terrain or may be just something to read. I do have too much terrain and reading, but I'm not stressing or restricting myself that on those. Also, I have been mostly a GW person for a long and a long time reader of White Dwarf. But I have learnt that there is so much more in the hobby, as you can see from my entries this year. I have been thinking about reading some general miniature magazine and when I got to WSS website I decided to give them a try. I decided to take a look at the covers of few of the latest issues and pick few (more than one to compensate the postage). I ended up ordering all five of them - the latest was a preorder and hasn't arrived yet. Each magazine seems to have a theme, but there is lots of other stuff as well to keep everyone interested in, I think. So far I have read only the first one, but I really liked it - there was a beautiful battle on Malta, too.

I had the magazine on the coffee table and my son was looking at the German cats on the cover and asked questions, so I said you can take it and read, if you like. Of course, he doesn't read yet, but he browsed the whole magazine. Most likely this is a known friend (the magazine) for many of you, but if not, my warmest recommendations. I already have forgotten half of the minis/rules/books I'd like to purchase. :)

 

 

My personal Squirrel count: 10

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

- 6mm Epic Imperial Fists

- 28mm ADD Boardgame

- 28mm Runewars Waiqar

- 28mm Blood Bowl

From Millsy:

Some lovely looking elfs you have there Teemu! I've always liked the clean High Elf look and you've executed it to a tee. Nice work all round mate.

I can well remember my Orcs and Humans being towelled up by well played Elf teams so I can attest you are onto a winner here. Barks would likely have a lifetime of advice for you too. 

Great to see a shout out to WSS mag, which I really enjoy. The publishers have found a great balance of everything that was good about 80s and 90s mags and then taken it to another level with quality layout and design.

From TobiasK: Technicals for Afghanistan (60 points)

For this week's entry, I painted some technicals. Technicals are a stable of today's warzones, so I needed some for my collection.

Technical SPG 9

The first technical is armed with an SPG 9 recoilless rifle.

Technical ZU-23

The second technical is armed with a ZU-23, 23 mm anti-aircraft twin-barreled autocannon. The ZU-23 itself is removable.

Technical Vehicle only

The third technical is unarmed and serves as a transport.

The ZU-23 is not glued to the vehicle, so it could also be used on the red one.

Group shot:

All models are from Empress Miniatures. It was my first try at painting windshields on vehicles. Although I am not totally happy with the result, it doesn't look too bad either.

Book keeping:

3 x 28mm vehicle = 60 pts

From Millsy:

Three very solid, reliable looking technicals you've got there Tobias. As you say, the staple of brush wars, insurrections and all manner of off the books operation in the middle of nowhere. I can't imagine engineers spend a lot of time thinking "This will go down really well with shady types" but there you go.

Windscreens are a mini painter's curse IMHO. I've painted a pile of them this week and there's no right way. I err towards the simple like you have, figuring that's better than making a pig's ear of something more complex.

PS. I'm fascinated by the poster. Clearly someone is having a poke at Toyota's marketing department and it's rather well done indeed.

60 points for your tally mate.

From Peter B: Stargrave 28mm and Epic Trolls - Challenge XII star - (59 Points)

Well, greetings all, from the centre of the galaxy. I seem to have made my way to the challenge star already. Don't think I shall be complacent though, I still have plenty of painting to come for the rest of the challenge. The leadpile never diminishes.

Millsy challenged me to paint some more Stargrave or Epic 40k for access to the Challenge star, so why not do both? 

First three Stargrave crew. I have waxed lyrical about how I love these plastic kits on my own blog here. They are a delight to put together and if you mix them with just a smattering of other spare bits from other plastic kits you can make some awesome characters.

Very briefly, the lady on the left has some arms from Frostgrave and I think a Mantic halfling head. The chap in the middle has all the spare backpack parts I could find and a bit of paperclip for an antenna (if you don't have bits of paperclip floating around your modelling desk who are you?) The chap on the right has a Frostgrave head. I can imagine him staggering through a blizzard then trying to decide which of his colleagues is actually a shapeshifting gribbly monster from another planet.

Then I have a little bit more for my Chaos Epic 6mm army. I originally rejected these trolls as a bit silly and not really a good fit for a Chaos army, but they are part of the original battle force sprue. After painting some I decided I love them after all. I've fully embraced the old school 40k vibe. Those were the days when half of 40k was populated with characters from fantasy. (shock horror, you could save money by using models for more than one thing!) So I embraced the old school look and although their skin is painted in new fangled contrast paint, I went for shocking orange hair.

Only a small amount this week, there is a hell of a lot still half done on my painting table though.

Points tally

• 14 x 6mm trolls = 7 points [Millsy - scored as 10mm infantry = ]
• 3 x 28mm Stargrave crew = 15 points

Total 22 points (although do I get something for the Challenge star, I couldn't find anywhere how much?)

From Millsy:

I like a man who sees the word "either" and decides it reads "both". It speaks to a proper state of hobby investment, a level of belief that you can never have enough projects or enough miniatures for those projects. He/she/they who dies with the most wins!

Cracking work all around Peter, especially the kitbashing of fantasy and sci-fi minis together. If only a certain Skywalker chap had only had a decent woolly hat he'd likely not have ended up shoved inside something that had it's own insides on the outside.

In terms of points I cannot find anything specific for achieving galactic nirvana so I'm going to make an executive decision and call it 30 points. It can't be worth less than a warp maelstrom now can it?

Well done mate, another 59 points all up.

PS. Nice to see an epic troll somewhere other than the comments section :-P

From PaulO'G: 'Nidzilla!!! (Arrakis) (45 points)

News of the upcoming release of the new Tyranid Codex had Reilly and I reaching for some unpainted bugs this week. You saw his Broodlord earlier this week and this is my contribution: a Trygon - and a big (half a foot tall) menacing fellow he is!

Game wise, he is a burrower and erupts from the ground in a nasty surprise attack kind of way. He also generates a tunnel behind him that other bugs can then scuttle through - so apart from his personal attacks, it can be a bit of a pain when bugs suddenly erupt amidst your army.

The basing is done to match the rest of the army - I'm not super happy with it yet and will add to it later, but I am literally off to the airport for a work trip now so thats good enough for today.

Game wise, he erupts from the ground in a nasty surprise attack kind of way. He also generates a tunnel behind him that other bugs can then scuttle through - so apart from his personal attacks, it can be a bit of a pain when bugs suddenly erupt amidst your army.

As one who burrows around and comes up from below to destroy everything around him, I figure he is well aligned to the Giant Sand Worms of Arrakis. Indeed, I shall be chanting "Shai-Halud" every time he does so. Bless the coming and going of him...

Noting this fellow is 150mm tall, I would like to propose 25 points for him plus the Arrakis bonus for a 45 point total of biomass consuming goodness.

From Millsy:

Tri- Tri-anti-wonti- Triantiwontigongolope! No, hang on, that's something else altogether although probably no less unpleasant to meet on a dark night.

Well done getting this wee beastie ready for posting 5 minutes before leaving the house today. I've waited a looooooooong time to be able to say the following so thanks for the opportunity mate! [Ahem]

TAXI FOR MR O'GRADY!

Ahhh. That's better. It's the little things that make life worthwhile.

Bollocks aside, this is a cracking miniature Paul. The high contrast style really suits the Tyranid aesthetic and just never gets old. 25 points looks about right for this guy, so that's 45 including the bonus. Noice.

From Codsticker: Mounted Rohirrim (80pts)

 I am continuing on with my salvage project of these second hand LoTR models. 

All 8 these models came to me in some state of disrepair: the spear, one sword and one bow were broken, 3 horses broken off at the fetlock (a serious design flaw in the kit as the models only mount to the base by a single leg) and 4 of the horses and riders primed black.

I went with black for most of the mounts already primed; as I was running out of time I didn't give any of them blazes or socks. The 4 with hand weapons: 

Once I started painting I wished I had re-primed them in grey ( my usual) as I found it a little difficult painting over black and seeing the detail. The 4 with bows:

Only two horse sculpts in the kit; as there are 6 on a sprue a third horse trotting would have been nice, but still very nice models, quite good detail.

As that is 8, 28mm mounted models, I believe that is 80 points, taking me above my goal of a modest 350 pts. Painting some of the LoTR models went faster than I anticipated so I am well leased to have exceeded my target only 2/3 of the way through the campaign.

From Millsy:

There are few things I enjoy more than seeing models getting a new lease of life.

I've seen absolutely mountains of LotR miniatures in horrible states of repair on fleaBay but always been put off by the relative delicacy of the models, figuring maybe they would be too hard to save. Having seen these Rob I am certainly revising my opinion considering how good these look! Broken weapons and even legs they may have had to start with but you'd never know now. These are fit to grace any table mate. Well done indeed!

Congrats on reaching your initial target, it's definitely a satisfying moment. There's still a good few weeks left so would you care to set a new higher target?

Mooned by Jupiter, but at least it wasn't Uranus

BOOM! And just like that it's Saturday all over again. Another week flies by and we're starting to pick up speed on the hill to the finish line in March. Whoosh! Deadlines and all that.

It looks like the Saturday Crew have been preoccupied with world events and/or navel gazing this week, but few have got entries ready to go. Prepare yourselves for...

• Men on horses
• Something big and nasty
• Spacemen and trolls
• Something very technical
• and hopefully more...

Cheers,

Millsy