From TeemuL: Alien [LV426] (55 points)

We quickly move to LV426, a much rumoured place, but we are disappointed. More of these black and green aliens...

This is Broodlord, largish genestealerish alien beast, painted with familiar colours. Not much to say, anything new, at least.

Happily we encounter a Dame with no Name, who helps us aboard the Sarah's Star Yacht and our way back to Great Abyssal, from where we travel inwards and step to the nearby planet Krypton. Dame with no name is a metal miniature from Knuckleduster Miniatures. I got her from YourModelBox some time ago. I like the mini, but of course she might have more practical clothes.

I'd like to score this monster as a 54mm miniature, so 10 points and 20 for planet LV426. Western girl is 28mm so 5 points and another 20 for Star Yacht. 55 in total.

From Millsy:

Another wonderful addition to your collection of not-Tyranids Teemu. The more I see of this black/green/yellow scheme the more I like it.

Large and horrifying as it is, it doesn't seem to be phasing the Dame with no Name in the slightest. She's suitably dusty, weathered and has clearly seen some stuff so, this is probably just another opponent who thinks it is more badass than it really is. I suspect this particular Broodlord is about to get a swift introduction to messers Smith and Wesson. Nice work!

From TobiasK: Carts and witchcraft (80 points)

I painted up more medieval / fantasy miniatures for this week's entry.

As an addition to Piers the Ploughman, I chose two carts from 1st Corps. Lovely miniatures, which can be used as mission objectives or simply as scatter terrain.

Because I was in the mood to paint, I added some witchcraft to this week's entry. Witches Coven by Warmonger Miniatures, to be precise.

Group shot:

That's it for this week. I hope everybody has a great time painting!

Bookkeeping:

2 x vehicle (28mm) = 40 pts (@Millsy: I assume a cart counts as a vehicle.)

8 x miniatures (28mm) = 40 pts

Total: 80 pts

From Millsy:

Great looking carts and livestock you have here Tobias, but for me the pick of the bunch are the witches and the cauldron. Fit to grace the stage in a certain Scottish play, these will do equally well on the table I'm sure. Warmonger do some great stuff and I'm pleased to see their kit getting some love.

I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but I like the way you've carried the purple and green from the witches' garb into the colour of their brew. I can only imagine what kind of punch that must pack given the colour!

80 points it is. Nice work mate!

From DarrellH, Spanish Sword and Buckler/Rodeleros - Army of Gonzalo de Córdoba, "El Gran Capitán" (130 points)

Apologies to everyone for the delay in getting this, my second post together. Things at my end have been tough of late and I'm going through some quite severe mental health problems. Not dissimilar to last year only more intense. Mental Health struggles combined with the great varnishing disaster (see my previous post) which saw me switching from a prepped and primed Late Roman army back to raw metal has delayed me somewhat. It's been slow going.....

The Sword and Buckler/Rodeleros are actually the first four bases of Sword and buckler that will sit at the front of a rather large pike block! (Ken aka Yarkshire Gamer would be proud!) 

Yep, I have quite a way to go before that comes into being so for now I've plonked them all together as one unit. A unit that, for the time being, could be used for Swordpoint, Hail Caesar etc.

24 x 5 would be a whopping 120 points by my calculation.

From Millsy:

Oh man, I don't know where to start with these Darrell. Everything about them absolutely floats my boat from the choice of subject matter, to the colour palette and the wonderfully smooth blends and transitions.

I know you are struggling mate, but if this is what you are capable of when not at your best then serious kudos to you! Thanks for sharing that you are in a hard place at the moment, it takes guts to say it and I can only hope that being open about it and knowing that the whole Challenge crew is behind you makes some small positive impact on your state of mind and path to recovery.

120 points by your calculation plus 5 for the flag and another 5 for the wonderful shields from me. Amazing. Just utterly amazing work. More please!

From TeemuL: Iona Starkiller meets DAK halftracks [Sarah's Star Yacht] [Arrakis] (85 points)

After clearing Terra, we feel we have some unfinished businesses and decide to make a stop on Arrakis, a bit of desert spice to our journey.  We first climb up to the middle ring using the nearby Great Abyssal and then Iona Starkiller (moving away from the Challenge Star?) offers us ride on Sarah's Star Yacht.

Iona Starkiller is a metal 28mm miniature from Hasslefree, I got her through YourModelBox a year or two ago. She is a nice fit for Sarah's Star Yacht, but I could have used her on Lune as well. But Starpriest wouldn't have allowed me to use (maximize my points) Sarah's Yacht. I believe she could be a capable captain or first officer in a Stargrave crew, I just don't have the rules or the crew, but the possibility is here.

I decided to go with bright and nice, which was accomplished with a limited selection of Contrast paints. Jewels here and there are a nice touch, they break the areas and allowed me to go wild with colours. Bright and light blue looks very futuristic as a hair colour, so I chose it. She has an advanced hair dress, but I didn't want to paint it, I would have ruined it. In the far future you can buy hair dress thingies which match your hair colour, I think...

The base is simple sand glued on base, washed with Reikland Flesh Shade and drybrushed with light grey. Generic enough to fit various landscapes or more urbanic areas.

Arrakis is not what we hoped or dreamed, these DAK halftracks are not very welcome sight, so we don't stay for long.

This is another small entry to clear a box. Some time ago there was a discount in my FLGS (they have pretty much always something in discount, making room in the storage and so on) and I picked up these Sfd. Kz. 10/4s with no game purpose, I have found that I rather enjoy painting vehicles in this scale. They are, however, a great entry for desert planet, so I painted them for Arrakis. They are part resin, part metal with quite a lot of parts and no bases. Here they are on mdf base (not glued) to demonstrate their nice camouflage colour. My intensive research on correct colours was limited to box cover, but I'm pretty certain these look exactly the way they were  30th February 1942 just after sunrise, west of Cairo...

I sprayed them Army Painter Fur Brown, then quite heavy overbrush with Citadel XV-88 followed by a heavy drybrush of Kislev Flesh and softer drybrush of Zandri Dust before a final drybrush of Ushabti Bone. The original brown is barely seen, only little areas here and there. Uniforms on the box look greenish, but might be greenish grey. I decided to paint them green using Warboss Green with Moot Green highlights. Greys and black on tires, tracks, guns and windshields. They were painted almost in one evening, but I dropped two of them while painting, had to glue them and continue on next day. Like I said, I really like to paint vehicles in this scale, especially these which have no complex camo pattern. And when these are 8 point a piece, their ROI is rather high compared to 28mm vehicles.

I was thinking of basing them, but since there were no bases on the box, I did not. Scenery base, similar to motor torpedo boats earlier, popped in my mind, but I decided not - there was a small hint of some FoW enthusiasm in our small gaming group, but we of course need to figure out the rules, period, scale and other things, but if I'm lucky, I might be able to use these on games and then base them properly. We will see. They look rather good on that plain mdf...

The voyage so far

Iona is 28mm miniature, 5 points and 20 for the Star Yacht.

Halftracks are 15mm vehicles, so worth 8 points a piece, total of 32. There is also 8 crew members, but each of them is basically a half figure, so worth only 1 point per individual making it 8 points and total of 40, plus 20 for Arrakis.

Total of 85 points.

My personal Squirrel count: 11 or 12?

- 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

- 28mm Simians?

- 15mm Mid War Germans

From Millsy:

Another wonderful entry from you Teemu and a tribute to your ability to switch focus without sacrificing quality of the end result.

I love the dynamic pose of Iona Starkiller and the blue hair you've given her really makes her pop. I'm sure she will stand out in any crowd on the table. Great looking HTs too, the combo of XV-88 followed by Zandri Dust seems pretty popular amongst a lot of YouTube channels I watch and I can understand why.

Another 85 points well earned!

From PeterB: 28mm Zulu war (500 points)

When I first signed up to the challenge I had a great plan. My painting tray has been since the beginning of lockdown, been covered with a large pile of plastics. Built and undercoated, but not painted. Staring at me for the entire of lockdown. Constantly mocking me for not painting them. I refused to pack them away as then they would never be painted. I love painting fantasy and sci fi and I really want to paint historical, but I end up getting intimidated by the need to be accurate. (I know, I don't actually have to be accurate, people like Daniel Mersey have encouraged us now that we just need to do our own thing.) So when the challenge started I decided they would definitely get painted, they would be done. Then I got carried away with the challenge planets and had a whale of a time painting all the fantasy and sci fi. It was Tom G who asked in the Facebook who asked if anyone else had gone off course from their original painting plan. My reply?

"My project has been tossed aside like Superted before Spotty came and rescued him and took him to a magic cloud."

Well, challenge planets completed, I had no more excuse, I had to paint them. So, for the historical grognards (I'm looking at you Ray) I tried my best to do them justice. Then, you know what, I really enjoyed painting them.

Fire at will!

"You mean your only plan is to stand behind a few feet of mealie bags and wait for the attack?"

Thousands of em!

"Can you move your leg?" "If you want me to dance..."

I have worked out by making half size units as per the rules, two boxes from Perry miniatures and a couple of free sprues of Zulus and Brits from the cover of Wargames Illustrated (see if you can spot the odd ones out) you can play a game of The men who would be Kings. I love the blue book rule sets from Osprey and the fact that you can set up a game with pretty much just two boxes of plastic really appeals.

The Zulu's were easier to paint, but the Brits I actually used 15 different paint colours (although the photo's don't show seem to show this) but once I got on a roll painting them in batches of about 12 at a time I really enjoyed it.

So points wise:

• 48 Zulu's in 28mm scale, 48 x 5 = 240
• 51 Brits in 28mm scale (There are 52 pictured but I actually painted one as a tester before the challenge) 51 x 5 = 255
• Millsy: Anything this epic needs rounding up to 500 for cool factor along

Total points = 500

From Millsy:

I love a good points bomb and this one is a corker! Congrats Peter on smashing through your Challenge prep backlog and in some style too. For me this is exactly what modern plastics are all about, the ability to bring hordes of miniatures to the table at a bearable cost but without sacrificing the quality of the end result.

The entire submission is mind blowing but the thing that stands out for me is the balance between variety of shield designs and poses amongst the Zulus. There's a huge temptation when diving into something like this to get a bit lazy and just "get it done" but that's certainly not the case here.

A mahoosive 500 points for your totle. Cracking effort!

It's Saturday Gary. Let's dance!

The roundheads cancelled Christmas (boo!) but at least the Empire were smart enough to leave Saturdays alone. If they had mucked with the natural law of the universe the rebellion they got would have seemed like a tea party by comparison!

If Saturday alone isn't enough to get you up and about, then maybe the merry band of Saturday Challengers will do it instead. This week we have..

• Damned dirty apes
• Carts and witches, both of which float
• Dakka dakka and the DAK
• Gendarmes of the shiny variety
• The Zulu War (or a fair proportion at least)
• Spaniards swashbucklers
• And more...

Time to get it on!

PS. I have a new keyboard. The old one died. I miss it. This new one is the best I could manage at short notice. It is utter sh1t. Apologies in advance for typographical weirdness!

Cheers,

Millsy

From TeemuL: Planet of the Apes [Terra] (45 points)

Going to the always mysterious and surprising Terra, home of the most miniatures in the known universe. Well, we find ourselves again at the wrong end of the shooty things, that Starpriest most likely altered timeline somehow, not a nice surprise...

As soon as I heard of the Challenge Quadrant, I knew there was one planet, which I would have spot on entry. Then I was confused, because I couldn't find the planet on the map. Luckily I realized, that it was there on with it's alternative name, Terra. Yes, the Planet of the Apes, the great source of poor sequels and remakes. Crooked Dice has created a few not-Planet-of-Apes apes, these are Simian Minions, but I think they work quite ok. :)

I had a few of these before, but I bought these mounted versions later with one of the regulars, which was on discount. Rather simple but effective paintjob, Contrast paints.

They are glossy after a gloss varnish, I wanted to varnish these and other stuff today, since the weather was ok. So I was in hurry, varnished them before taking photos - or waiting for the glue to dry.

I will claim the planet points of Terra from this entry, since these apes from the Planet of the Apes are clearly earthbound. I hope everyone knows the story, but I won't make any further spoilers here. So this is two mounted and one metal miniature in 28mm for total of 25 points and 20 points for Terra.

I'm not certain about the Squirrel, but since they are a faction of their own and score nicely 25 points, I think I can do it? I have scored general Pulp Squirrel already, but if these Simian Minions of 7TV qualify, this will be another Squirrel. Let's see what the Squirrelmaster says.

From Millsy:

These are really fun and a bit different from the usual sci-fi stuff. I'm a big fan of the 7TV system and the fact they are making it possible to game so widely in the TV settings we had grown up on and continue to love.

I'm sure one the varnish and glue dries they will look more like the damn dirty apes they are. And I'm not going to comment on which of this year's minions are the most simian :-P

45 points added to your total mate!