From DennisC: Napoleonic Prussians 18mm (AB) (136 points)

Greetings everyone, I've decided to use the challenge to get my 18mm Prussian army done (or get close)  I've done some infantry up (32 x 2 points) then some Fusiliers (another 32 x 2 points) and some guns (2x 4 points) but most importantly was able to get them onto the table at the club last night!  Vs the French.     These are 18mm AB figures mostly, some Eureka as well I think

If the editor will allow, I was using the points above for 15mm infantry and didn't feel right using 20mm points, but as these are 18mm, I am asking if for the infantry I can claim 3 points per foot? (Minion says: sorry no, AB figures are 15mm and are scored as such)

                              

Great looking models here Dennis, really nice work. AB models still set the standard for 15mm (yes 15mm) Napoleonics and you've done them justice with your work. The bases look really nice too. I hope they punished the French last night at the club! (I also added some labels and please be sure to at least add your own name as a label on future posts)

136 points added to your tally!

Dallas

From ChrisW 15mm Hammers Slammers [190 points]

 

So, fresh from last weeks single vehicle success I decided to continue with the remaining 23 Fifth Foreign legion vehicles that were sitting on my painting table. Therefore, of course, I wound up painting a bunch of Hammers Slammers vehicles instead!

They are a mix of mostly Brigade Models, with some GZG APCs. I did do some work on the 5th Foreign Legion vehicles throughout the week and started prepping a batch of 28 vehicles for the opponents of the Legion but it was only these Slammers that were done by weeks end. On the positive side I guess I am somewhat over the hump that had been blocking my painting.

Here is the group en masse.

There is a total of 20 vehicles in this unit and so far 15 infantry riding in vehicles. So far I have not yet decided which infantry figures to use for the unit. The 6 larger APCs are by GZG and are metal while the rest are resin models by Brigade models.

I have yet to read the books, but have recently tried to get into them, so I based the paint jobs on pics from the web. Up first is the 1st tank squadron.

In the Crucible rule book they state that the tanks are polished for parades but in the field they are allowed to be less shiny. I was aiming for a patina so I went with a few different layers of various metal colours over a black prime and gun metal base coat. I washed the tanks with Agrax earthshade then burnished the surface with GW Necron dry compound.

Second squadron

The blower tanks are really big, I mean really big! They dwarf any of my other 15mm sci-fi tanks, hell they dwarf any of my 20mm WWII tanks! 

Then there is the infantry transports

and the fast attack vehicles

Two versions of the same vehicle: I prefer the larger version, easier to get the troops into them

and finally the main command vehicle and some local air defense.

So a quick note about the lack of decals. When I bought these figures I planned to use some decals that I already have. However in researching how to paint these figures I became enamoured with the proper decals, so rather than using any old decals I have instead placed an order for decals from Brigade Models.

So that is it for this week

• 160 points for 20 x 15mm vehicles
•   30 points for 15 x 15mm infantry figures

Total of 190 points 

Thank you

No, THANK YOU Chris! Loving these blowers and transports, your work on them is outstanding. I also did a GZG Hammers Slammers project years ago, in 28mm, but your 15mm models look the business. The steel hulls look awesome and really do the models justice. And I do recommend the books although it's been awhile since I read them, you can get them in a two-volume omnibus edition. I'm stoked to add 190 points to your tally!

Dallas

From SebastianR: Sandy when wet [Maritime] (28 Points)

A quick dirty post for a quick dirty pair of paint jobs. Well mostly.

An uncontroversially maritime miniature; a German Type 1934 Destroyer lent by a friend to bridge this gap.

I painted the base rather than fuss with the toilet paper ocean method; it will be returning to it's owner, so he can create one of his 3D bases if he wishes.

 

Secondly, a trio of... unidentified military hovercraft of unknown provenance.

Post in the comments about how they're Zubr Class LCACs. They're not LCACs. Look closer.

Weird colour scheme though right? I have no use for them, and they're kinda janky models. I got them in a bag of similarly janky WARPAC sculpts, from a defunct producer.

I decided that I was going to paint them in desert colours in order to fit them in with my friends ongoing desert planet sci-fi setting.

The disruptive camo scheme was an opportunity to play with new techniques, specifically masking and painting by rattlecan. I'm not entirely sure that I gained anything over painting freehand and they were looking pretty gloopy by the time I had finished, but here we are.

Overall, not a huge fan of this paint job, but they received the attention they deserved, both as a "we have LCAC at home" and for the amount of table top time they will receive, i.e. none, given that in my opinion they can only realistically represent off map convoy vehicles.

4 x <2mm vehicles for 8 points

Challenge 20 points

28 points

The models look nice Seastian, I always struggle with the Maritime category as well because I'm not a naval gamer (mostly). But your destroyer fills the bill for the stack and the hovercraft look kinda neat as well. Kudos to you for painting camo on such tiny models (are they really smaller than 2mm?? I've scored them as 6mm) Good job.

28 points for you!

Dallas

From SylvainR: 28mm D&D Adventurers (60 points)

I had to paint these D&D characters because of family pressure. Let me explain.

About a year ago, my daughter and her friends, who are in high school, decided to play Dungeons and Dragons. However, they lacked someone who could be the Dungeon Master and they asked me if I could do it. I said sure, I need to show off my scenery and my miniatures. But my daughter is very creative and in no time she sculpted little characters for the party (see below). My daughter plays the Shroom-person Monk, the fun guy (get it?) on the right.

In the meantime, a few weeks ago, my son expressed an interest in playing D&D as well. I said sure, I need to show off my scenery and my miniatures. So I created what I called an "adapted" version of the rules, so he can fully understand what is going on (he was born with cerebral palsy) and is fully capable of interacting with the game.

And then, a few days ago, my wife said she would like to invite some of her friends and play D&D, since I was "so good" at animating games for our daughter's group of friends. I said sure, I need to show off my scenery and my miniatures. So this week I had to paint a party for D&D with half the characters being female.

Fortunately for me, in a recent miniatures "exchange", I got from JeremyM a box full of 28mm fantasy heroes and monsters. That is way more that he got from me and I am still very thankful for this amazing loot. Miniatures really bring a great visual impact on a game of D&D. By the way, I still have 6 identical boxes full of 6mm armies to "re-organize".

First, I painted a fighter and a cleric. Boy was I rusty! I've been painting almost exclusively 6mm stuff for quite some time. If I had painted some 28mm monsters a few months ago, I haven't painted flesh on a humanoid in the last 8 years. My son wanted to be a fighter, and I should have painted his figurine last instead of first to do a better job. Oh well, a painted mini is a painted mini. On the cleric dwarf, I find hilarious the fact that he's carrying an anvil as his travel gear. All the 8 figurines are from Reaper, I think.

A rogue halfling and a magic user, I like how the clothes turned out on the young wizard as I was re-learning forgotten techniques.

A barbarian fighter and a woman Paladin. I made her with grey hair, I'll have to remind my wife there is no connection between the game and real life...

A druid and a bard. At this point, I was feeling a lot more confident and started to really enjoy painting these figurines. It was a nice break from applying color to hundreds of tiny horsies at 6mm or uniforms/camo patterns that had to be of an exact color. Here I could improvise, experiment and let my imagination go wild. A very nice break. Thanks family!

There might be more D&D figurines from me before the end of the challenge. It all depends on family pressure :-).

Points claimed:

8x 28mm foot figurines at 5 points each = 40 points

Fantasy Stack bonus = 20 points

Total = 60 points

Thanks for reading!

Thanks Sylvain, this was a great read. I think it's super that you are becoming the "go to" DM for your family and friends and I have no doubt that you are staging some great games! Fantasy is certainly a fun subject for the reasons you note - you can paint stuff however you want and aren't locked into "historical" colourways - but that advantage is two-edged as "analysis paralysis" can set in. But you're showing no signs at all of that with your excellent submission here. 

As discussed you can claim the Fantasy stack bonus for this submission so 60 points for you!

Dallas

From SylvainR: Tray 4 - 6mm WW2 Cossacks (part 1 of 3) (129 points)

Why am I painting 6mm WW2 Cossacks?  There are 2 reasons.

I am currently working on the early allies armies of WW2: Norwegian, Dutch, Greek, Belgian and Polish. My plan was to use the French army as proxy and then add whatever heavy weapons and vehicles would be needed. Of course, no Polish army would be complete without cavalry, but it's a lot of work to paint a whole battalion, even (especially?) in 6mm. To save me some work, I decided that I would create only one cavalry battalion for the Axis (coming later in 2024) and only one cavalry battalion for the allies, and the one allies cavalry unit that is most commonly known to operate during WW2 would be the Cossacks. Thus, I am painting this soviet unit now so I can use it as a proxy for Polish Cavalry.

The second reason is because among the 6mm armies I have to paint, there was already a good amount of unpainted Cossacks, and this happened to be a project I abandoned about 40 years ago. Let me explain. In the mid 80s, I was introduced to a group of people who were playing 6mm WW2 "micro-armor" as we used to call it. My friend MarcV and I paired up to build a Soviet army and we shared the cost and the painting. After a few years, the group started to play 6mm Modern, and we started new armies. Since we were not playing WW2 "anymore", MarcV and I gifted our Soviet army to RobertR. The last project I was working on, before giving away that army, was a company of Cossacks. A couple of years ago, RobertR, who still had my Soviet army, offered to give me all his 6mm WW2 miniatures and scenery, among which I found my Cossacks, still unpainted after nearly 40 years. Talk about an overdue project!

Before I present the tray, I want to say a few words about the scale. For that purpose, I chose cavalry models at 3 different scales but mounted on bases of the exact same size. Below, you have a stand of WW2 Cossacks at 6mm in front of "massive" 15mm riders, WW2 Cossacks as well. You can see there is still room for good details at 15mm, like the red line on the blue pants, or the cross on top the Ushanka hats. At 6mm, I don't have the patience to do that, so I paint more in an "impressionist" manner. Here's a spot of blue, that's for the pants. Here's some beige for the hands, etc. You can see that the 6mm minis look a bit fuzzier while the 15mm ones look a lot crispier.

In the picture below, 6mm horses are trying to keep up with a colossal 28mm destrier. This is to show that, to me, there is a lot more "room" on the base to be filled at 6mm, to make it look a bit realistic. Since the area covered in real life would be a lot bigger with the 6mm, I try to make the terrain more varied with different sizes of rocks, different colors of grass and a variety of bushes. For the Cossacks, I tried to reproduce grassland/steppe type of terrain with mostly dried grass. I also want the base to look interesting and varied between squads, so I apply the patches of grasses as if it was a camo pattern. It's fun and I'm very happy with the result.

Now on to tray number 4! Below, you can see 2 companies of Cossacks. There will be more in the next 2 weeks, since this is part 1 of 3.

First, a family picture of one of the 2 companies. For 6mm WW2 foot infantry, I usually put 9 men per base, but here I decided to use only 7 horses. Even if the base is twice as big, I wanted to leave enough room between the riders to give the feeling that they are galloping (toward victory, for sure). I also wanted to test what "double flocking" the base would look like, as I explained earlier. The miniatures are a mix of models from H&R WW2 Russian cavalry, H&R WW2 Cossack cavalry and GHQ WW2 Cossack cavalry. Each pack has only one pose, but mixing them works great for variety. GHQ's horses are slightly smaller, but not by that much and the difference is hardly noticeable. As usual, the details on GHQ's miniatures details are better defined and easier to paint. Each pack came with pack horses and I mixed them with the cavalrymen for more variety.

In this close up, you can see that I used two different kinds of material on the bases: burnt grass fine turf and harvest gold static grass flock, both products from Woodland Scenics. When I was working on my French army bases, I mixed turf and flock together, but it did not look anything special. This time, I decided to apply each one at a time and I'm very happy with the result. It looks more natural. I also make sure to let some small rocks and dirt peak through the grass.

Here is a close up on a company HQ with a pack horse. The captain is showing the direction with his saber. Even if there are fewer miniatures on the base, I opted for a large one, for consistency.

Each company of Cossacks would have a detachment of anti-tank rifles. Here they are in action, hiding in tall grass, forgetting that their supply horse is a deadly give-away.

Points claimed:

18 foot troops at 1/2 point each = 9

120 mounted at 1 points each = 120 points

Total = 129 points

This will also count towards the "Really Little Guys" duel.

Thanks for reading!

Cracking work here on your little guys, Sylvain! I like the groundwork. Woodland Scenics products have always been good to me as well. Kudos to you for getting back at this project after literally decades. Great production and looking forward to more!

129 points for you!

Dallas