Ah.... Mondays

Mondays. The gift that keeps on giving. My time is extremely limited today so please accept my apologies for the "succinct" nature of my feedback this week.

Thankfully MY Mondays are also full of woot thanks to the Monday Crew who continue to produce exceptional work in large quantities. Ten entries in total! And some from daredevils who like to tempt the Snowlord's wrath and leave posting until the final few days before the cut. What more could a minion want?

This week the Antipodeans and hangers on have uploaded for your viewing pleasure a fine array including...

• Darth Vader AND Rincewind
• Enough Roundhead horse to give even THIS Royalist pause for thought
• More Border Reivers
• Weird WW1
• Pirates AND vending machines AND things with too many limbs
• Napoleonic Russians in pointy hats
• Sassanid knights
• And some Mork Borg weirdness from the Snowlord himself!

Stay tuned...

Monday Minion Millsy

From TeemuL: Imaginatives (40 points)

During the previous Challenge I encountered a ruleset called "Wars of Insurgency" and the simplicity, openness, inbuilt campaign mode and multiplayer possibilities inspired me. Not wanting to scare away any players frightened by too modern conflicts, I created an imaginative conflict. You can read more from my rather slow progress blog: Delmonteland.

In short there are several factions to fight over the power vacuum in a former colonized country somewhere warm some time after WW2. The country is called Delmonteland and the main export is blood oranges. I have already painted some forces for a strong military faction, possible mercenaries whose loyalty to anything else but money and gold is not very clear or strong, and internation peace keeper faction called United Federation of Kindness. I have started a third force, consisting of natives of the country, whose part has been being the work force of the blood orange plantations. With this post I'm adding couple of warriors for that faction and some civilians.

These all are slightly converted Afghan Tribesmen from Perry Miniatures plastic range painted in imaginative blue-purple-pink. The unarmed people are civilians and they have some off-white in their colours, to give some hint about their neutrality, but mainly trying to create intended chaos on the table. If opponent isn't paying attention and mistakes a civilian to freedom fighter or vice versa, then it just adds to the story.

Like I wrote, these are natives of the country, forced under a colony rule some time ago, but now when the system is collapsing, they are eager to make their voice heard. And like every one else, they are ready to use some weapons to make themselves heard. These four warriors have WW2-era weapons from my bitzbox (originally German) making a strong contrast to previous warriors, which were armed with weapons from Tribesmen box (dating them to the previous century). So the bulk is using the old weapons inherited from their great-grandfathers, but these are most likely leaders, who have acquired some modern weapons.

These are the unarmed civilians. Play close attention, they are unarmed - do not make the mistake and take that sophisticated blood orange gathering tool as a machete, sword or knife, it is a tool. A bit of clipping and cutting here, there were not enough empty hands in the box. So they are the natives of imaginated country, or imaginatives. The brushwork here is bit sloppy, lots of washes, not that many highlights or details, no eyes, but that is somewhat intentional. They are not real historical forces, but they are not really fantasy either, they are a bit blurry, suggesting that they are just gaming pieces of a game. And I wanted to finish these guys quickly. :)

Points wise this is rather simple, there are 8 28mm minis, which should make 40 points in total. I really need to focus on the Dante theme next...

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Hey Teemu

I just got home form work and was delighted to see this post in the drafts.

I love the pink/purple colour choices for your civilians of Delmonteland  and also your creative raiding  of the bitzbox. You say the brushwork is sloppy but I think it works well ... Afterall, it is imagination-land!

40 points added to your total

- Sarah

The Cut is Approaching

 

Hi All!

Just a quick reminder to those who have not posted an entry yet - the Challenge Cut is Tuesday January 21st. It's coming up quick so if you are amongst those 16 souls please get your work in to your Minion to avoid the 'Big Shave' (and more importantly we all want to see what you've been working on)!

Thanks

- Curt

From JeremyM 15mm Winter War Russians [Limbo] [130 points]

Hi all, I am starting off the challenge this year by going back to a stalled project from several years ago. I had painted up a whole whack of 15mm Winter War Finns several years ago but have no Russians to face off against them.

This is a Strelkovy Company from Flames of War for early war Russians that fought against the Finns in the Winter War. I struggled to figure out what colour to paint them. I’ve seen photos mostly of re-enactors and drawings from various books  as well as the box art for the figures that use 3 different colours, a dark grey, a khaki, and a light green. Unfortunately, those black and white photos of the war, don’t shed much light on which one to pick! For now this company will have light green as the predominant colour but I may decide to mix it up for future infantry which is always a nice way to help differentiate different formations. I’ve never been one to focus too heavily on historical accuracy when painting anyway, as long as its playable all I care about. And since in various theatres of this war the Russians had a massive numerical superiority (12 to 1 in some cases) I got a lot more of these fellows to paint up in the future.

15mm Winter War Soviets

For the photos you primarily see flames of war stands with 4-5 infantry with rifles, complete with those great early war hats with the nice big red star on them. There are also a couple of command stands with flags, a mortar stand and a lmg stand. Decent variety to make up the company.

I really got inspired to undertake this after living in Thunder Bay Canada. There is a large population of Finnish immigrants and I was actually a member of their historical society when I lived there a decade ago. I heard a few stories of Finnish history and the winter war ‘david and goliath’ fight was pretty inspiring how so few could hold out against so many. The other really interesting thing about the Finns during this period was how they went from being beloved by the western allies, to a hated opponent as they later joined with Germany against the Russians. Very interesting reading some of the accounts of Finns in Thunder Bay during this period and how public opinion swung so quickly against them after all the support.

I can’t wait to tackle some of the whacky Russian tanks from this period next. And we wonder were 40k got its inspiration from!

55 15mm figures 110 points + 20 points for Limbo = 130 points

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Hi Jeremy

Welcome back to the Challenge! I'm to see you  post before the "dreaded cull" 

As you know, since I'm not really a gamer, the nuances of uniforms  are lost on me BUT I can comment on how f@#$% cold the soviets look and the snow bases do 'look' like snow.

Congrats on 110 points of mini guys and 20 points for Limbo

Looking forward to your next post!

Sarah

From MartijnN: A Song of Ice and Fire (65 points)

Like many others, I loved the series Game of Thrones (except for the final season's finale of course, just like many others too...). When CMON produced a miniature game set in the world of Westeros, I was immediately intrigued. However, the game was rather pricey, so I held off for a bit. Eventually, however, of course, I caved in and bought the two player starter set. And then a bunch of additional boxes with miniatures. However, just as inevitably, I failed to paint any of them and they sat on a shelf unloved. The Challenge provided the perfect opportunity to finally start painting some of them, so I prepared a lot of miniatures from the starter set to paint in Challenge XV. I have no idea how far I am going to get before boredom sets in, but here is my first unit.

It is a unit of 12 Stark Sworn Swords. Being gaming pieces, and realizing there are a lot  of them, I decide to paint them as quickly and simply as possible. Actually, they are quite nice miniatiures. They are about 28mm tall, made of a sturdy plastic, and have enough detail on them to make them interesting without getting to GW level madness. Also, I find them very well proportioned. I painted the movement tray supplied with the game in the same style.

I am fairly happy with the result. I used Citadel contrast paints, and the Army Painter speedpaint metallics, and applied a wash of Agrax Earthshade over the whole unit to finish it. Although they came out a bit dark, I think that nicely reflects the grim and stern nature of the Northern Starks.

Finally, I painted some 3d printed rats. This was really a very simple paint job. I do not really have any use for them other than as scenic pieces, but who knows when they might come in handy. I think these were designed by Evan Carothers, but I am not entirely sure. They are nice enough sculpts.

So that's it for me this week. As to scoring, I would like to count the sworn swords as 28mm figures, and perhaps 1 point for each of the five bases with rodents? Or whatever Sarah sees fit.

Which means:

12x 28mm foot @ 5 = 60

5 bases x 28mm rats @ 1 = 5

For a possible total of 65 points. And a squirrel for the Starks!

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Hi Martijn

I think EVERYONE had issues with last season GOTR, which in my opinion is 100 percent due to  GRRMartins ego/hubris in thinking he's sooo clever with killing off everyone in Red Wedding and then found himself stuck in a corner and couldn't write himself out of it and no one else really could either! But, that tangent is for another day!

Well done points-wise and another 65points added to your scoreboard

From BenitoM: Warg Riders (40 points)

For my second post in this year's Annual Painting Challenge I continued with more Uruk Hai additions for Midgard, the recently published miniature rules to play in the heroic ages.  In this case, the first batch of warg riders, the mounted component for my army.

These are four mounted archers and will fight as regular light cavalry; I also plan to use them for scouting/recon patrols in campaigns. 

Note that number of models in a unit is irrelevant in Midgard. Units are arranged in square rectangle bases that you can fill with as many models as you want.  The rules suggests using a 12 cm frontage (which I know will annoy some imperial-metric fans like Richard Clarke) but you are free to use whatever size you deem, as long as all units have the same base frontage (note: depth of the base is not relevant).

Given than I'm basing my mounted units on old GW round 40cm diameter individual bases,  I can put three models per unit. But as I said, you can base individually in rectangular bases if you like to accommodate more models per unit.  

These warg riders are 3D printed models in 28mm designed by Medbury Miniatures belonging to its mounted orc range.

Next in the painting line are some GW plastic warg riders, in the painting pile since early 2000s (they were bought at the time when the Peter Jackson's films were released and GW started selling the LOTR range). 

This post adds 40 points to my score this year (4 x 28mm mounted models @10 points each).   

   

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Hello Benito

The Warg Riders look terrifying!  Your Midgard army  project is coming along nicely.

Another 40 points for your Scoresheet

- Sarah

From RhysH - Thorin's company continued (15 points)

 This week's entry is three more members of Thorin's Company, Fili, Kili and Bilbo. Rhys continued with his work on faces and dirt.

Rhys was looking forward to painting the brothers, Fili and Kili.

He went with a darker color of metal on the swords along with the cave bases.

These blades are dark because they are not reflecting the bright light of the sun. You can also see his work on making the jackets dirty along the edge.

He's now five models through the Company, so quite a few left to get done.

This is three 28mm models x 5 = 15 points for the week.

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Hi Rhys

Well done on Fili, Kili and Bilbo! Great job on dirtying their cloaks and your attention to the detail with the colour of the sword blades.

Will we see the whole company before the end of the Challenge?

15 points added to your tally!

- Sarah

Sunday's With Sarah - January 12

 Hello Everyone!

Welcome back to the second Sundays with Sarah!

This week I have discovered music by French artist, Zaho de Sagazan, "les Symphonie des eclairs"... cool indie/techno/post modern sort of vibe. Totally recommend to any of you keen on new music. I think this album may even make it onto Curt's playlist!

Huckleberry and I enjoying the winter sunshine.

Huckleberry has my back while I compose the Sunday missive.

Now, to the business at hand. We have LOTR from RhysH - Fili, Kili and Bilbo, and Benito's Uruk Hai warg riders, and a reminder from MartijnN That Winter is Coming.... Rumour has it Teemu may have a late entry.... stay tuned!

- Sarah