From AaronH: Mordor (and Isengard) Orcs from GW (125 points)

 This week's entry is twenty five GW Mordor orcs. They are a combination of plastic and metal and include two of the ooooold metal orc models from when the line was first started, now re-purposed as captains.

First up, painted as Isengard orcs.

In the movies Saruman has normal orcs in his army as well. They do the grunt work around Isengard, hatching new Uruk Hai, cutting down trees, a little light gardening. Since you can take orcs in the list (at least in the old rules) I am painting up some of my orcs as Isengard. For this lot it's mostly the flag and the shield on the captain, though the two archers with helmets have an S rune on them.

You can see the shield symbol on the captain. This is how they are described in the book, a black circle with a white hand in it.

The captain is one of the two old metal sculpts. They are soooooo much better than these crappy plastics.

This guy is just prime LotR sculpting from back in the day.

Next up are the "heroes" for the Mordor orcs. These are three metals and a plastic Gothmog.

The third guy from the left is another ancient metal orc re-purposed as a captain.

The three metals are some of my favorite GW sculpts. They are just clean, interesting and well detailed. Gothmog is a great example of the current plastic state of the art; very good considering the medium.

I don't usually run the drummer or the whip dude, but you never know what the new rules will lead to.

The last group is 13 archers. These guys are the same as the Isengard ones above, there are only two poses, and they're really the same dolly with a different head. The main difference is that my Isengard army, painted years ago, has brown bases with grass on them and Mordor have grey bases with a single brown tuft.

These are pretty good for plastics of this stage of LotR development, but still not great.

The archers will fill in Mordor, Minas Morgul and Moranon lists and will provide the fire support for the Moranon orcs I painted last year.

These will also serve in other fantasy games like D&D, Pathfinder, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, Rangers of Shadowdeep and Oathmark.

This group means I have enough painted orcs for almost all of my needs, barring Oathmark. So, naturally, I'll be painting up a bunch more of the non-archer ones soon. 

This entry is 25 28mm orcs x 5pts each = 125 points.

Sylvain: I share your passion for metal miniatures. With your paint brush, you flawlessly included these into your plastic minis. When your models are grouped together, the light brown color you chose suggest a horde of rodents. Your heroes are characterful and bring a nice touch to the whole band. Excellent production!

 

 

From Curt: A Trio of Villains for 'Hametsu' (27 Points)

Hey There!

It's been a bit of a stretch since my last post. I blame the Challenge's 'The Squirrel Effect'. My hobby space is currently littered with all manner of stuff, spanning genres and periods. Like Bilbo, I feel like too little butter scraped over too much bread! Fun, silly and always part of the Challenge it seems. 

Nonetheless, I did manage to maintain enough focus to get these three figures across the line.

This trio of villains is for our Hametsu adventures. Two bosses: a Shikigami a Nogitsune, and a Oni Captain. In Hametsu the Bosses enter play when the heroes find enough clues to their whereabouts, and/or when they've dispatched the lower-level minions. As you'd expect, the Bosses are VERY tooled-up and are designed to provide a unique and tough end-game for the players. 

First up is the mysterious, willowy and floaty Shikigami. This is a 3d print from the very talented Cobra Mode. I really like how elegant and otherworldly this model is. Its been sitting on my paint desk for months while I pondered how to approach it. In the end I decided to keep it simple, with just a few bold colours, trying to mimic with its robes opening flower like a tulip. 

For its war fan I used the airbrush to put in an unstructured rising sun motif along with kanji script on each side symbolizing Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. 

The Nogitsune (Spectral Wolf) is from DM Stash on MyMini. Again, another beautiful sculpt. Fairly straightforward paintjob on this guy. Fun to work on with all the deep-set textures, a veritable playground for Contrast paints. 

This fella has already seen action on the tabletop with today's Minion having been its unwilling chew toy. :) 

Finally we have the Oni Captain. Another 3d print from Cobra Mode. He has a sort of a Hell Boy vibe going on which I just ran with. 

Yeeash, that Kanabo he's toting is something else! You're not going to walk it off if he taps you with that thing.

A final shot of the three villains set against some heroes that I painted last year.

As to points, the Oni Captain is around 40mm and the other two are over 54mm so let's call it 27 for the trio?

Aaand another Squirrel point for me...

Thanks for dropping in for a peek!

- Curt

Sylvain: Subarashii! I suspect you got your inspiration for coloring this group from ukiyo-e, (japanese woodblock prints from the Edo period) especially on the Kanabo. It gives the figurines some kind of eerie look, in addition to their sculpt and poses. A great demonstration of your mastery in painting. Keep feeding that squirrel!

From QuinnM: Trench Crusade (New Antioch Red Brigade) - Treachery and Fraud (101 points)

I didn't post anything last week as I was not done with the full unit for my Trench Crusade war band and decided to wait till they were all painted. 

 I spent a lot of time painting each model as I quite enjoy panting in the dark and gritty style. I took a lot of inspiration from the official art when painting them with the darker greens and red accents. 

I like the designs but the models have a few issues. Some of the details are too small or not designed for 3d printing. 

The models I am most proud of are the lieutenant and the combat medic. If they were not for Trench Crusade I would say I did too much blood splatter on the combat medic and I feel I really got the grim and mud right on their dress. 

Now onto the model I painted up for Fraud, we have a “Dragon born” adventurer for DND made by Sordane Publishing. To the untrained eye it may look like this “Dragon born” adventurer is in fact three Kobolds in a trench coat. But that is a lie propagated by the guards. I'm not sold on my color choice. I initially painted the cloak a bright yellow but couldn't get the shading down right and decided to paint over with a thinned out Brown as I was just trying to experiment with actually getting yellow to have any form of Highlights (I hate yellow paints with a passion).

For my last circle of hell treachery, I painted up my two favorite space Marine legions Alpha Legion and the Salamanders and I fit it all in one model. This is actually a paint scheme I have wanted to do since I started painting inspired by a painting video by heresy for heretics. I didn't do mine nearly as well as his but I think if I would paint more models like this I would have a much better plan. I did try layering several glazes to get a green and blue shift effect over metallic so I'm not 100% happy with the final result but it made me do some experimentation and that was good in the end.

 

 

 

 

8x 28mm-footman@ 5 points = 40 points

3x 40mm footman@ 7 points= 21 points 

Fraud 20 points 

Treachery 20 points 

TOTAL = 101

Sylvain: Wow, you were not inactive since two weeks ago. Your Trench Crusade war band looks great and your paint job really brings out the despair and constant suffering of the setting. I wish you could have provided us with close-up pictures of all the miniatures you painted as they look terrific in the group photo. Fraud and Treachery are spot on and the colors you chose are definitely in line with the grimdark ambiance of your whole entry. Great job!

From FrederickC - The Devil's Right Hand - Gunfighters of the Old West and Two Circles of Hell [Greed][Wrath] (145 points)

In the Spring of last year I picked up the rules for 'What A Cowboy' from TooFatLardies. The mechanics of the game has similarities with their 'What A Tanker' rules, which I enjoy playing with the local gang of Fawcett Avenue Conscripts. However I didn't have any appropriate figures to go with the rules. While on my re-enacting travels I came across two sets of multipart plastic figures from Great Escape Games to go with their Dead Man's Hand rules. Each box contains two identical sprues with five sets of legs and torsos, but with enough options of heads, arms, and weapons to build ten unique figures. They have since come out with a box of mounted gunfighters, but the heads, and torsos match those in the first of the two sets. That is definitely a future project of building mounted versions of the gunfighters I have just painted.

In July I attended Historicon and the theme was 'From Hollywood to Historicon". Their 40th Anniversary Mini was a figure of 'The Outlaw Josey Wales', sculpted by Paul Hicks. It will be a useful addition to all the other gunfighters.

All the figures came with small oval bases so they got glued onto 25mm round bases, and a layer of fine sand was added to the bases with PVA glue. They were then primed black with a rattle can before being painted with a variety of Vallejo and Army Painter acrylics. All the figures were given a coat of Army Painter Soft Tone Wash. The bases were painted with craft acrylics and a few tufts of dry grass were added. Here is the final result.

21 unique gunfighters of the Old West

Here are some closeups of the figures built from the Gunfighters box. There were two figures where I didn't like the fit of the neck to the torso, so I covered up the area with a bandana sculpted out of epoxy putty. I have arranged the figures in the two photos so that the legs match from left to right. I was able to create ten unique figures from the options available.

Gunfighters - Group A

Gunfighters - Group B

 Here are some closeups of the figures built from the Gunfighters II box. Again I have arranged the figures in the two photos so that the legs match from left to right. It shows the variety that can be created from the options available to once more give ten unique figures.

Lady Gunfighters - Group A

Lady Gunfighters - Group B

 I am going to use the gunfighters with masks, in the act of robbing the town bank, the train from Deadwood, or the Wells-Fargo stagecoach, for fourth Circle of Hell - Greed.

"Hands up," says Bill Miner. "Hands up!" 

"Reach for the sky, sodbusters!"

"Plutus guarding the Fourth Circle of Hell - Greed" by William Blake

Now we come to a tale of murder, hatred, revenge, and retribution with Clint Eastwood as 'The Outlaw Josey Wales'. For those who may not have seen the movie, watch the official trailer on Youtube. I will use this figure to represent the fifth Circle of Hell - Wrath.

"Well, you gonna pull those pistols, or whistle 'Dixie'?"

 

"The Stygian Swamp of the Fifth Circle of Hell - Wrath" by William Blake

The eight female gunfighters not used for ‘Greed’ I will bank for the present to use as succubi or seraphim at a later point in the Divine Comedy. Whether tough and wily Cowboys, stoic Lawmen, ruthless Outlaws and crazy Desperados, they are all member of the cult of 'The Devil's Right Hand'. 

The points being claimed are as follows:

21 x 28mm foot figure @ 5 points =  105 points

2 x Circles of Hell - Greed & Wrath = 40 points 

Thanks for stopping by.

Sylvain: Pilgrim, that's a lot of Colts for a single posting! You did a good job creating diversity with the set you had at hand. And your colors for your figurines really evoke the Far West. Very nice work!

 

 

 

 

SteveM: Rock and Stone (58 points)

The following miniatures are from the Deep Rock Galactic board game based on the video game and have been stuck in limbo on the table since they were primed months ago. These were being painted for someone who played the video game so they needed to be semi-accurate. When looking for reference images online there are many variations and shades for each of the characters which aided delays. It seems the cartoon slant for the game makes all kinds of lighting possible in the drawings and artwork. The fandom wiki assisted with some parts but I ended up taking some liberty with some areas.

The following are the core player characters for the game with their supply pod and sentry gun. The main colors for the characters are yellow, green, red and blue and then orange and green for the two game accessories. For the ground work moon rock colored regolith seemed appropriate as they are deep space mining dwarves.

DRG: Group Shot Front

DRG: Group Shot Top

DRG: Group Shot Back

DRG: Driller Front

DRG: Driller Back

DRG: Gunner Front

DRG: Gunner Back

DRG: Engineer Front

DRG: Engineer Back

DRG: Scout Front

DRG: Scout Back

DRG: Drop Pod and Sentry Gun Front

DRG: Drop Pod and Sentry Gun Back

Genre:  Deep Rock Galactic board game

Mfg: Mood Publishing

Material: plastic

Scale: 40mm

 

 

Points:

4 miniatures * 7 pts = 28 pts

2 miniatures * 5 pts (counting pod and sentry as 28mm)= 10 pts

First Circle: Limbo entry = 20pts

Total: 58 points

 

Sylvain: The primary colors you use on these miniatures suggest that they are board game pieces. Nonetheless, just like cartoon characters, your figurines are brightly colorful and very characterful with their oversize weapons. I'm sure you will enjoy using them. Nice job!