From PaulS: Beware the dark (155 Points)

It has now been a few weeks since the last update and my work air miles have gone up a fair chunk, so it is nice to finally be able to put a few more bits and pieces up on the blog towards the weirdest of weird war.

On the sane end of the spectrum we have a few more german infantry. Most of these are plastics from Warlord's fallschirmjager and Grenadier kits mixed up for a late war/reduced resources look. There is one metal minelayer in there too. I can't remember if he is in this group or in the Fallschirmjagers.

And a nice selection of Fallshirmjager specialists and officers to drop behind enemy lines. These are a combination of the Bolt Action plastics and metals. Much as I like the options available in the plastics, the metal figures have a lot more personality to the sculpts, even if some of the faces are wonky at times.

In the first step towards weirdness is a full squad of Black Sun infantry from Modiphius' Achtung! Cthulhu range. These lot are multipart metals with some very delicate parts. Scale wise they are mych finer than  Black coats, black helmets and black uniforms... dear god. The photo really isn't doing them justice as it is bringing some of the highlights to the surface... but I swear... never again. These may well be going on the repaint pile later and getting a different colour or another three layers of black wash :/

In addition to the Black Sun troops, we've got three Nightgaunts for Black Sun to summon and use to terrorise the poor allies. Again, these are form the Modiphius range and... once again. NEVER AGAIN! Each of these is about 7 parts. Yep, 7 parts for each of those 28mm figures. Each horn and wing is separate as well as some arms and legs... all of which are far too fragile to pin, so it is a frustrating exercise of losing bits to the floor-god, gluing bits to fingers and fingers to each other. After all that frustration, now it turns out that the paint job looks awful on camera too. What is going on this week?

The final addition to the crowd is yet another Modiphius model. This time it is one of their newer one piece resin characters, which is a much nicer sculpt. I can't for the life of me remember who it is supposed to be, or even if it is Axis or Allied. It isn't even up for sale yet, so I can't go and check :/

The last picture for this week doesn't count towards the score as it is a clearer picture of the zombies from last time around. Bits and pieces from the various Warlord plastics combined with some of Mantic's zombie parts.

This week totals to 31 28mm figures to add to the score. Lets hope that the next batch of figures is a little less frustrating and a little quicker in coming.

ByronM: Great collection of models here Paul!  I really enjoy how you mix and match parts from different kits to make some of your figures work for what you want.  All of these are great paint jobs, and I feel your pain about doing black figs, they never turn out as we would like them do they?  They look good from here though, they just lack contrast, but that is part of the point of them, right?  

Keep up the good work and I hope you get some more time around the house to paint rather than gallivanting about for work, I know how that gets old fast.  Anyway, 155 points are added to your total.

[Wednesday] From PaulS: Wednesday Madness (Ready)

Much like previous weeks, we're going for another very mixed batch of games and manufacturers in this entry with no thought to consistency of theme, other than "That's weird..." and I suspect that will be your response to the selection too.

Starting with some bits that very nearly got finished for the last entry, but didn't quite pip the post. These are all for Bolt Action/Konflict '47 or the Achtung! Cthulhu skirmish. The first two figures are a german super  soldier and Canon from the A!C skirmish game from Modiphius. The figures are more true scale than Warlord's which makes the Canon a little small, hence him being on a thicker base than the other guy.

When I picked up the plastics for the last batch of Germans, it included some tanks (in the queue). One of which was a choice of SD.KFZ 251 kits. Rather than grabbing the normal one, I opted for the mortar carrier... but opted to build it as a normal 251 and made the mortar into a medium mortar team instead

There is also a lone flamethrower from the Pioneer box set. I still need to make his partner in crime to complete the team, but that involves getting out the green stuff, so rather than delay things further with more modelling, I'll leave that until after the challenge. For now a generic rifleman will have to do.

Next up we have two characters from the Pulp Alley range. These are some of the nicest models I've painted in a while. I think it is the clean sculpts and just enough detail to make them characterful, but not over the top so that it takes forever to pick out the bits and pieces

Pulp Girl has been done up as a German super soldier or mystic with a powered/magical gauntlet... not quite decided which she will be.

The other figure in the pack has been painted up as Lobster Johnson from the BPRD comics. What pulp/weird war setting would be complete without his appearance?!

After the deviation into Pulp, we return to the Weird West with three giant, two headed rat-type things from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the earlier sculpts, the detail is soft, but not as soft as the original sets. There are also less gaps caused by poor casting design and warpage or plastic, so I have some hope that the rest of the KS figures will actually be worth while when it turns up. Lobster Johnson is fighting these off to give you a sense of scale on these things. They are massive...

Last, but definitely not least, is a deviation off into 30K with 5 Custodes from the Prospero box set. These guys make Terminators look small and weedy!

This totals to 16 28mm figures to add to the totals so far. 

ByronM: Another great eclectic post Paul.  Everything here looks great, but my two favourites are the giant rats and the pinup.  The rats I really like as they could be used for so many different games and fit right it, and your neutral / normal paint scheme for them looks great and helps them be universal.

The pinup girl is my other favourite as I love the contrast from the grey uniform to the blue glove and back to the blond hair. Speaking of which blond hair is always so hard to pull off, but it looks spot on with her, and that is what helps sell it.

The rats look big enough to be considered cavalry, so you get 95 points for today's submission. Great work!

From PaulS: The Weirder it gets... (145 Points)

One of my personal goals for this year's painting challenge was to try and build up my WW2/Weird War collection a bit to go with Konflikt '47 and Achtung! Cthulhu to go with the Commandos and Heer that I've done over the last 2 years.

Previously I had:
- 1 Officer with 2 guards
- 1 Medic
- 1 Sniper team
- 7 Heer with 1 MG team and 1 Panzerfaust
- 8 Heer with 1 Panzerfaust

While this isn't bad, it could be bigger, so this year we've got a number of additions to the forces in the shape of some Grenadier and Pioneer models.

The reinforcements have brought an engineer along, with his pet Goliath... though I'm not entirely sure what this is used as in Bolt Action as I can't see any entries for Goliath. All of these are from the Pioneer box set. Some of the metal bits really don't seem to fit the plastics, so I'm confused how to build the control set for the Goliath... I think some hacking and greenstuff is needed in the near future.

The box set also has an anti-tank rifle team for some of those heavy infantry squads that will no doubt appear if I ever get a game in.

We have an MG42 team that can either be put into one of the infantry squads, or take one of the riflemen and turn it into an MMG team for some more static support.

Supporting all of these is one 10 man squad of basic, rifle toting infantry, with one Panzerfaust for a bit of anti-armour if required. these are a combination of bits from the Grenadier and Pioneer kits. I know this gives a bit of a mish-mash of uniform styles that may cause some people to have sleepless nights, but I'm aiming for weird war here, rather than historical accuracy... so it doesn't really bother me much.

And a super assault-y elite infantry squad with an officer, 1 smg/panzerfaust and 6, yes 6, assault rifles. By Konflikt rules, this is fine and dandy. I can even add the MG42 team to this to make it even more obscene. For normal BA games, these would be split across multiple squads to be less *cheese* and more historically correct... In Achtung! Cthulhu these would either count as Black Sun Elite and remain as-is, or be split into pairs and spread across the Wehrmacht squads for a bit of additional kick.

That is the end of the painted German forces... for now. There are plenty more in the backlog, so I'm interested to see what the total point values are for Bolt Action, Konflikt and A!C by the end of the challenge! Full army photo will be added when I can find some space to lay it all out together.

In addition to this the Allies have reinforcements in the shape of three new Achtung! Cthulhu heroes. Well. 2 heroes and her pet winged monster.

That is the end of the WW2 bits, but the painting continued in a very eclectic manner to include a Magos for Shadows of Brimstone.

And everyone's favourite vigilante for his very own miniature game... Batfleck.

Depending on how you class the Goliath, this is 29 28mm figures. Or 28 and a 15mm tank equivalent

ByronM: Another eclectic mix of figures today, and all of them look great. While the WWII stuff is good, my favourite here is the mix at the bottom on the entry.  The Actung Cthulhu stuff looks fabulous in its evil tentacleyness (yeah, I made that word up, but it really should be a word, we need it to describe many things from Lovecraft and many things Japanese).  I like a lot of their figures and the once you painted here are really well done.  

Then onto more tenacleyness (see we really do need it as a real word) for your Magos.  I like how you used high contrast with the blue and red, and then tied the magic items together both having purple/violet colouring.  Lastly, Batfleck, where you did a great job keeping it dark, but still brought enough grey into it to allow you to see details and add depth.  

Since the Goliath is essentially the same size/volume as a normal 28mm figure, I am going to count it all up as 29x 28mm figures for a total of 145 points today.  Well done!