From Barks: Sci-fi ups and downs (40 points)

First, some 'Volucrix Reavers' from Descent, painted to match the boardgame's art. I think they would make good porigotas for Stargrave. They are mostly Contrast Ultramarines Blue over white.

Second, a post-apoc girl from Tagged Events. The arms didn't print properly so I greenstuffed on some some new ones from the bitz box. I like how she came out; I'm cautiously anticipating GW's Necromunda: Ash Wastes that was recently announced.

Third, a zoat. This is one of the least enjoyable models I have ever painted- and I've painted a lot. It's an over-engineered push-fit model, such that when you glue it there is no room for the glue and it doesn't fit together well. So there was a lot of dodgy greenstuffing going on. Next, I struggled to interpret its inscrutable alien technology. I had no image in my head of what I wanted it to look like; what bits would be which colours and where I would like to draw the eye. It's a bit of a hot rainbow mess, and some parts have ben repainted multiple times to try and save it. I could bring it up a notch with some fancy effects and a lot of edge highlighting, but it isn't worth it and barely reaches the standard I set myself. Does not spark joy.

It has some redeeming features:

• I like the skin
• I don't have any more of them to paint
• It gets me 8 points to my challenge
• It fills a good slot on Slowpainter's ABC

5x 28mm figures: 25 points

1x big guy: 8 points

Slowpainter's ABC: Z is for Zoat

If anyone's got any suggestions for a quick fix, colour theory, spot colours, consolation etc.- let me know.

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Great post Barks. Your Reavers kind of make me laugh as, when grouped in your photo, they have a wonderful K-Pop, boy-band, music-move look to them. 'Ladies and gentlemen! Please, give a big hand for 'Volucrix and the Reavers'!! :)

My favourite is the post apoc gal with the yellow autogun and great blu doo. I've heard about the new 'Ash Wastes', but have not researched it yet, being somewhat overcautious with GW's releases of late. I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

Funny, I had the opposite experience with the Zoat, as I quite liked the model and had a lot of fun painting it. That being said, I can understand your aggravation with puzzling out all the grafted tech amongst his flaps and folds. I remember I had to do a bit of Google-Fu to figure it all out before painting it. Since you asked, here are my efforts with the arcane critter (along with his pal, the Ambull) - funny, as a bit of foreshadowing, you commented on it saying you were planning to tackle yours in the near future. As a small consolation, I'm scoring the Zoat as a 40mm cavalry figure for 15 points as I remember him being a rather large lad. 

- Curt

From PeterD: Coruscant Good vs Evil Encounters (75 points)

Second post for me today and I will be hopping from Perelandra to Coruscant with my take on good and evil RPG encounters.

Wizkids Bhuer Hag on the left and Stag on the right.

On an earlier post, my stag got some positive comments.  I obviously liked the sculpt so much I bought two of them, so I went with a white stag on the second.  

I am not as thrilled by my results as with stag #1, but it'll do.  In my experience white animals are actually various shades of off-white which is the effect that I went for.

The White Stag has a place deep in Celtic Mythology and appears in any number of stories, including Arthurian legends, Harry Potter and Call the Midwife!  In my Beowulf RPG campaign he might be a Noble Beast that can provide assistance to my heroes if they prove worthy.

I won't be accepting any treats from this old dear!  She's got a lovely Disney villainness  vibe to her.

I'll share my best hag related story, which actually came from real life.  While visiting my dad, he and my step mum took me to Chichester Theatre with their octogenarian friends to see a production of MacBeth.  It turned out to star Patrick Stewart, who none of my elders had heard of!  It was in the round and we were in the front row at stage level six feet from the action.

A set of 5 Oathmark Revenants, not nearly as nicely done as Millsy's

My adventurers had an epic graveyard fight with a super-revenant plus two regular ones.   Two of the party were saved from death by followers (a nifty Beowulf second chance mechanism) and the other two were almost in the boat.  

I really like the ancient Celtic vibe to these sculpts, they fit into my Beowulf setting as tomb guardians and the like very nicely.

Finally a set of 4 Wizkids woodland critters that have been cluttering my work bench.  I don't like the  regular timber wolves nearly as much as the Winter Wolf I painted earlier, and was disappointed that they are in the same pose.

However, the fox has a good sculpting pose to him/her.  reminds me of my favourite book from childhood, Harlequin the Fox.

Challenge veterans might remember that there was a badger themed location a couple of years ago.

Points wise there are a total of 11 figures of various sizes (the hag and stag are quite large) but all in 28mm scale.  For simplicity I'd suggest averaging them all out to 5 points a head for 55 base points.  If the Snowboard approves, the Coruscant bonus brings this up to 75 points total.

I think that the hag, white stag and 5 revenants could all count towards the Fantasy Side Duel lost cause.

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Great work Peter! I really like all the critters, and that Old Hag is quite the gal, she just needs an apple and be married to George Conway to set the scene. I smiled at your parenthetical Patrick Stewart recollection as I saw him performing in 'The Taming of the Shrew' at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre when touring the UK with my parents - I didn't make the connection until years later when I saw him in 'Dune' and of course playing the iconic Captain Picard.

- Curt

From GregB - Raven Guard Contraption (25 points)

Invictor War Suit for my Raven Guard Space Marines. Plastic model from GW.

Back to my 40k Raven Guard project for this week. Here we have some sort of bonkers contraption known as an "Invictor War Suit". This is a multi-part plastic kit from GW, one of the newer releases for the newer Primaris Space Marine range of figures for their Warhammer 40,000 setting. It's a big walking thing with guns. 

Guns solve problems, right?

The grim darkness of the far future is in fact overrun with big walking things with guns. Some are big. Many are bigger. Some are quite huge. But they walk, and they have guns, and thus this "newer" design takes its place in an august lineup. But it is also a little different, at least for Space Marines...

A view of the carbon-neutral power system...

That is because the pilot of the machine is, well, a Space Marine. Makes sense. But this is still different. You see, usually, Space Marine machines of this sort, called "Dreadnoughts", are 'crewed' by a near-dead Marine, who is essentially entombed in the machine, allowing them to fight for the Emperor for, like, nearly eternity. Lucky them. You don't see the 'pilot', because his remaining bits are plugged into arcane machinery, hidden under slabs of armour. 

So. Many. Guns.

But this thing...well, it just has a roll-cage, and the pilot can hop in and hop back out. Like a kind of regular machine. I mean, still a whacky, far-future, gun-festooned machine...but a pilot that can hop out, check things over, compare notes with fellow pilots...that seems borderline heretical! This design brings to mind the sort of "war-jack" type walker units seen in other sci-fi settings. It also made me think of the "APU Defense Sentinels" from the otherwise un-watchable "Matrix: Revolutions" film.

This kit was certainly a challenge to put together...GW made some heroic assumptions about what bits you might glue, and others you might not, and how the whole thing would work. I had major issues sorting out the cockpit, and a lot of trouble with the legs. Enough trouble that I am confident this will be the only such machine that will be joining my 40k Raven Guard forces...give me a normal dreadnought over this thing any day...

Some unsolicited feedback for the design of this model...

But for all the issues, more guns is more guns, and when you are defending The Emperor, it seems you can never have quite enough guns. This thing delivers - and for added fun, it can punch recalcitrant unbelievers into dust for sport. 

The cage doesn't exactly close, like it says it will in the instructions...but close enough. All aboard for fun!

Points-wise, we have 20 points for the machine, and five points for the fellow driving the thing, making for 25 points. In terms of skullz, there are very few to report on this machine - only three, in fact. Thanks for reading, hope to have more to share next week.  

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I know the assembly was a struggle, but great work on this machine Greg. 

I really question GW's recent design decisions over these past few years. So many of their new models do nothing but erode the iconic designs (and background) of their established IP. I look at this model and wonder 'Why?' when the Space Marines have something very similar (but infinitely more characterful) in the wonderfully evocative quasi-corpse-piloted Dreadnought. The same goes with the constantly upscaled Knight designs which now begin to rival scout Titans, and the ancillary (and often ridiculous) Titan designs that don't really add anything new to the game, but instead horn-in on existing Engine classes. It all just seems a bit egregious and stoopid. But what am I saying, this is GW we're talking about here - it all makes perfect sense when you're just wanting to make a buck, IP be damned. Please, move along. :)

All this grousing aside this contraption looks suitably shooty, grindy and very stompy (even if it doesn't have airbags, cruise and nav). Well done dude!

 

- Curt

From Millsy: Gaslands Cars, Bikes and a Garbage Truck (195 points)

G'day All,

I really should be doing the squirrel challenge considering how easily distracted I am of late. Two weeks in a row now I have failed to finish the second unit of Oathmark Humans I started at the same time as my first post for those guys.
This week I got my copy of Gaslands Refulled from North Star plus a bunch of cars from fleaBay and, well, the rest is a rusty, top fuelled rabbit hole...

In total I finished 13 vehicles of various types, all appropriately weathered and bashed about. All we disassembled for prep, most were weaponised and modified to some extent (not the bikes) and then all we reassembled for painting. About 50% were painted as single pieces, the rest as sub assemblies to make sure I could keep nice clean lines on some.

The Rizing Sunz

First up we have the Rizing Sunz, sponsored by Miyazaki and sporting some of the worst hand painted kanji ever perpetrated by a gaijin! About 15 minutes after I was finished it occurred to me nail art would have solved that issue. Duh! At least I was smart enough to overpaint the suns beneath the kanji by using 40K decals to give me perfect circles. Miyazaki are all about speed, fancy driving and clean lines...

L to R: Flying Crane, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Finger and Sushi Roller.

Inglorious Five Gear Klan

Next up are a team sponsored by Mishkin, the Russian-inspired faction, so I gave them eagle motifs. I wanted these guys dirtier, but given they are into experimental high tech I figured I'd still go easy overall on the damage and rust effects...

L to R: Red Sonja, Purple People Pulper, Pink Eye and Blue Dragoon.

Russian slogans courtesy of leftover Flames of War decals. Quick, easy and given the hand painted kanji experiment probably a good idea all things considered. 

Lastly we have some unaligned vehicles I can use for any sponsor, as NPCs or just top up wherever needed. I particularly enjoyed bashing the garbage truck, armouring all the weak points and adding a harpoon and mine droppers.

They call me Boomer.

L to R: Lime Slider and Bug Eyes.

Similar to but legally distinguishable from a major movie franchise.

These were crazy addictive and considering I have another thirty vehicles inbound it would be foolish in the extreme to suggest there won't be more in the future.

13 x 20mm vehicles = 195 points.

Zero skulls. Sorry Barks! [sad face]

Cheers,

Millsy

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A diversion, sure, but what a wonderful one. I love these Millsy and I really like how you've made each faction unique in their armaments, aesthetic and even their names ('Hidden Finger' and 'Sushi Roller' crack me up).  Of the NPCs, I especially like the heavily modified dump truck (harpoon?!). I look forward to seeing more of these amongst your upcoming Oathmark entries.

- Curt

Skull Duel Update

The Skull-o-meter's dot-matrix printer has chattered into life with the latest Skull tally to end of 11 February.

• Curt 474
• Millsy 219
• Stuart L 104
• GregB 72
• Sander 25
• Barks 8
• TeemuL 6
• PeteF 1
• DavidB ?

Other notable skullz:

PeterB's gravestones

PeteF's gobbo

TeemuL's skink

StuartL's Nighthaunts

ReillyOG's Broodlord

Jeremy's 10mm Chaos
(It's not too late to enter!)

The skull tally to beat: Curt's 474

Skull of the week:

Of course, it is Millsy's classic Nagash miniature,
helpfully annotated to show where the skullz ain't

The tally is open to all; tag your posts with 'Skull Duel' and give a running total for all the skullz you have painted. Retrospective entries allowed!

Barks