From SimonM: "Knight Models" Black Manta (5 Points)

This 35mm scale metal miniature of the Black Manta is produced by "Knight Models" for their "Batman Miniature Game", and can be purchased as either part of the DC Universe/Batman Miniature Game: Secret Society of Super-villains set, along with Killer Frost and Professor Zoom, or as a single blistered figure. Sculpted to depict the "ruthless and murderous underwater-based mercenary" wearing his infamous "nigh-invulnerable battle-suit", the archenemy of Aquaman was created by Bob Haney and artist Nick Cardy, and made his first appearance in the September 1967 issue of "Aquaman" by "DC Comics".

"Currently in the New Suicide Squad under the command of Amanda Waller" this four-piece model was carefully assembled and primed using a double layer of "Citadel" Abaddon Black. The "expert in mechanical engineering and military tactics" was then enthusiastically dry-brushed with "Vallejo" Heavy Charcoal before being drenched in "Citadel" Nuln Oil.

I 'picked out' Black Manta's advanced technological suit, his jet pack propulsion system, wrist-mounted speargun, diving helmet and hand-weapon with a combination of "Citadel" Ironbreaker and Nuln Oil. Later I dry-brushed both the helmet, jet pack and Death Ray with (more) "Citadel" Ironbreaker. As a final touch I layered his eye lenses with Vallejo" Heavy Red, and shaded them in "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson.

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Black is a very hard colour to pull off and look right, but I think this one looks good.  Maybe a bit more edge shade with a grey to pull a bit of detail out, but then again maybe not as the gloss to make him look wet may just make it pop too much.

Either way, your recipie sounds pretty close to mine, so it might just be the closs covering it in the pictures.  Don't we all wish pictures were easier to take that match what the figures look like in real life???

Keep them coming Simon, I love all the Knight Models, and the game.

-ByronM

From DaveS: I'm Batman (110 points)

So, I recently got a demo of the Batman miniatures game and fell in love.  I've painted some of the models before, both for fun, and as commissions, but I've never played the game very much.  I was put off by the huge number of keywords, and the pricey rulebooks.  Second edition seems to be better written, with a more reasonably priced rulebook, and so I've taken the plunge.

First model I painted, as befits the games was Batman.

He's been painted in the colour scheme from the box, which means he has the classic blue and grey with the yellow belt.  I worked quite hard on the cape, and I'm pleased with the result.

I then proceeded to paint the Arkham Guards that came with him.  These are the cheapest and most disposable models in a Batman crew, and so they got a quick and dirty paint job, but they look OK to me.

One of the "quirks" of the Batman rules, is that all of the Arkham guards are able to arrest enemy models.  The Arkham police, who I painted next however, apparently aren't.

Finally, you need some way to actually see the enemy in the dark back streets of Gotham.  So some lamp posts.

And something to see, in the TTCombat Apartment A, with added extension level.  That makes it about 10"x6"x10".  It really is huge looking, and I've included a previously painted Harley Quinn for scale.

So thats 7x35mm models (and I just noticed that the photos were taken before I put the final black on all of the base edges), plus whatever the Lamps and building are worth.

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As I luxure with a rather cheeky little Spanish red (always drink Spanish reds, the whites are ok, and save the beer for when you have to torture the terrorists to find the location of the nukes and/or the kidnapped Robin), DaveS presents BATMAN!

And, while the cape prevents the gratuitous butt shot we've come to expect from many a Batman film, Dave's Batman and Arkham guards are quite gritty. 

The apartment block is spectacular, and HUGE. It's something you'd expect to see in a Lardy special. Very fab.

So, let's see. We don't have 35mm figures in Millsy's spreadsheet of DOOM, but 35 is closer by a hair to 40mm than 28mm, so we'll go with that. 7 40mm figures gives you 49 points. Now, the apartment building is 600 cubic inches; normalizing that into 216 cubic inch increments gives us 2.7 repeating. Punching that into the Spreadsheet of DOOM gives 55.5 repeating points. We'll be kind to the poor souls who don't run statistical models for a living and round that to 2.8 and 56, respectively. Throw in another 5 points for the lampposts, and call it an even 110. 

HerrRobert, Friday Follies Phantasmical, Over

From Steve B - Arena Rex, BMG (15 points)

After the last few minis.  I slowed down a bit slow I could work on this guy. The Arena Rex game puts out some amazing minis. So I thought I should put some extra effort in to them. He is big more like 40k terminator size.

I did manage to get a few more Joker gang members done, more as a change of pace from the gladiator.

So 3 more minis towards my goal.

Only 3 figures this week, but so colourful and so powerful. I would not mess with any of these guys if I were to meet them on the street. The metal on the gladiator is very well rendered and the make-up on the face of the villains really adds to the spookiness. Excellent job!

KyleC - Green Arrow Gang and Hollywood Tiger! (45 Points)

More Batman game models here.. just for some reason many of them were poor for photo taking :(

Lot number 3 here is the Green Arrow gang, along with some new henchmen for Penguin it seems.

First up, and who I would assume to be the leader is the TV Series Green Arrow. Very hard to paint up a model that is primarily one color! So it was all in the texture on the painting for him to get it finished!

A right pain to put together however, and to clean the mold lines off of that bow of his. So bendy there as well!

Now I don't know much of the game so I am not sure if you can have 2 versions of Green Arrow within a single gang if they come from different timelines in the genre. But this is more of the comic book Green Arrow version. I were more yellow into this one, less dark, and have fun painting him up.

Again the mold lines and assembly caused me to spout a few sailor phrases, and that bow is going to be bent and broken if not cared for well enough by the owner... and the arms didn't quite line up properly to the body but with paint it all worked out.

I have no idea who this guy is aside that his name is Speedy on the box. Never seen him but then again Green Arrow was not a huge super hero that I kept up with. Box art was red, so this was a struggle to keep it red without going into Pink. So more oranges and yellows were used over white highlights. Slight issue with the arrow placement as the glue didn't set until the arrow dropped past the bow hand. So it looks a bit off, but still plausible ( I mean he is a super hero, so maybe that is his way of shooting? ).

TV star here again. Diggle is the name.. running around cleaning up Green Arrow's messes is his game. Never watched the show past the first few episodes so don't know much about him. Again just copied the box here for colors.. Tried to do some variations to the browns, but looking back I think I failed in that here.

Captain Cold. Apparently also a TV character? Though which I do not know. The boxart has him much older, but somehow my painting of his face made him look like a small kid on an adult body. Maybe his power has frozen him in time? I dunno.. but he was a lot of fun to paint up all things aside. Comes out as a henchment for the Penguin crew as far as the website states.

Heat Wave! Another villain from the TV series.. and someone else I have no idea who or what he does. Just painted him in a suit of olive green colors like the boxart.. and tried some basic OSL on the gun there. Though his face came out more like Vin Diesel than whomever he was supposed to be.. Again can be used by Penguin, so that crew is quite large now for the client.

And then from this above painting, I received what was told to me to be a Tiger tank to paint up for another club mates German forces. Though looking at it we found that this is not a real Tiger, but the Hollywood Tiger tank instead. In any case it was a fun little exercise to play around with, and something that gave me ideas on how to paint up the rest of my personal German tanks for my DAK/regular German forces.

And that is that.. 6 28mm figures and a 28mm tank! Am slowing down now, and will be more so in the coming weeks due to life.. and lack of major units/armies put together to work on as well ( I hate assembly.. but am alright with painting ).

ByronM: Great work Kyle, I especially like the red guy, although I am in the same boat as you not really knowing much about him.  I just like the shading on the red a lot, it shows depth and highlights without going into either black at the low end or getting pinky at the high end, good stuff there.  The others are nice as well, he is just my favourite.  

As for the one with Vin Diesel's face, wow.  Not sure someone could sculpt it on purpose to look more like him if they tried.

KyleC - Frank "The Train" Wilson and Commissioner Gordon (37 Points)

Will bring in Commissioner Gordon and his band of blue here to counter the Penguin's crew from last week.

I didn't paint these up to a massive high degree, but I did try to add some more extreme highlights to them while copying for the most part the box art colors of them.

Had a lot of fun painting up Gordon after the bolt action tournament on Sunday. Quick hits of browns, with some reds/blues tossed in, but more washes of different GW washes over it to give some better tonal differences. The extreme highlights on the white really came out, and I tried the same for the pants and jacket before washing it back down with browns.

The plain clothes police officers. I really liked how they came out with a minimal of colors. But the extreme white placements really shine through on them! Compared to the duller pants/trousers they are wearing.

The SWAT I am less happy with, only because they are supposed to be dark,and they came out dark. But maybe too dark?

But they are done and they were pigs to put together ( much carving into metal here ). But good as a group all the same!

Frank 'The Train" Wilson.. ready to join the Human Blood Bowl team. Originally an apoc fighter found in Savage Forged Miniatures line up, but now recruited and re purposed for the Averland Avengers!

Quick swap out of his bat and shield for some hands that are far too large, but work all the same. I thought they would have been better for him as his scale is a bit larger also ( 40mm tall ).. but seems even heroic Skaven hands are too large for this scale!

Just need to find one more blitzer ( which is what he will be until I get proper ones ) to complete the team.

6 28mm figures and a 40mm scale piece. A slow week for me it seems.. but lots of building has been done in the background for 2 more Blood Bowl teams, and a new release from Mr Lee's Minis! ;)

ByronM: Excellent stuff here Kyle.  It is nice to see other groups out there playing (or at least painting) Batman stuff.  Around here it is just SteveB and myself playing it that we know of, so nice to see others with it.  I really like the hard contrasts on the police, as you say they really pop with the harsh white, and that will really make them show well on the table.  I also really like how the jacket and pants are essentially the same blue, but due to highlighting differently you make them look the same yet different, its a very nice look.  

On the brown on Gordon, using other colours is exactly the right way to make it look more interesting and something I am just learning to do as well.  In addition to the blues and reds you used you can skip the mix and go straight to the resultant purples instead if you want, and you can even try some greens and oranges (both in small quantities), blacks, and greys as well. For "The Train", the hands may be big, but I think it works.  Have you seen some players hand sizes? Or some boxers how their hands swell after years of abuse and damage?  I think it works well and I like him.

From KyleC - Scum.. and Penguin... (230 Points)

So it has been a quiet weekend for me ( and an even quieter week ).. but the first ( of unfortunately many ) units for my Parliament English Civil Wars army is ready.. finally! I normally am not so down on the painting, and quite enjoy it, but for some reason this unit took me far more effort to get completed than I thought humanly possible. 

I believe it to be a combination of the sculpts and the lack of knowledge in the period to throw me off in the end. But I did in the end begin to organise a method for painting them up quickly. So hopefully future units will not take as much time. 

The way in which they hold the pikes differs from model to model, so have to plan that out much better next time around.. ugh.. learning curves suck!

I also do not like that they are in batches of 4 for basing, which made me have to go about a different route for getting them painted before bringing them on here. As I do want them to be a bit nicer. 

Also, before others mention it.. I am aware that I had painted some of the armor sections blue instead of metal. My reasoning is that they colored it for this unit, but future units were more lazy and left them silver ( maybe ). 

The biggest pain of the unit of course is the pikes themselves though. Something that I had to have a think on how to paint them up. In the end, you can see that I used a larger socket, blutac'd them on, and went to town on them with sprays and airbrush work. Before coating them, and the figures, in multiple coats of gloss, and then matte varnish for protection. 

Smaller batches moving forward for this lot will be required, and some better thinking on how to attach them prior to painting will also help. 

In between cursing this lot of infantry though, I did manage to paint up a small gang for Arkham City skirmish. Penguin and 5 of his goons for one of the local players. A lot more fun than I thought, and I also got to have a bit more freedom in how I did it. Although I did copy the boxart for a majority of it, I did get to choose how to get there in the end. 

There will be a few more of these coming soon, and if I can figure out how it works, I might even go and get in a game of it!

So all in, I got a total of 46 models painted up in the 28mm scale. I am not sure what else I will have for next week as there is a bolt action tournament coming up which I will get to use some of the rangers and American vehicles in.. but also means less painting time. Curious what I might get done, and in what scale. Have one project that is in 1:1 scale! :D 

ByronM: Good stuff here Kyle! I am completely with you on painting block infantry they always seem to be a slog for me as well.  Others around this site seem to bang them off with no issue, but I don't know the secret either, so maybe someone will share and we can learn something?  Unless the answer is skip details, then that's a no go (for me at least).

You ECW guys look really good though, despite your issues. I like the subtle things, like the pants being a slightly different shade of blue to make them appear separate yet still part of the whole (if that makes an sense).  All the details are nice and clean as well.  Pikes are always a pain for everyone though, so welcome to the club!  As for basing and painting, while it takes a bit more effort to be careful, what I do is paint them all on sticks, then fit them all together after so that you don't need to deal with painting around other figures. It sounds (and I could be wrong) that you based them then painted them, that makes it a lot more difficult, although many do it that way.

I would have liked to see some more pics of your Penguin gang as they look awesome.  I really like the shading you did on the "white" parkas.  You went far darker in the shades than I would have thought possible, far starker contrast lines, yet they still instantly look white.  I really like the effect.

From JamesL: Tractors true love and friends, and something completely different (187 points)

I've recently had a few days off work which has enabled me to get some good headway in the painting queue. This time around I present the Tractors True Love, the 88mm Flak/ATG from Warlord Games, that will be towed by the Sdkfz 7 I presented previously, and 21 infantry that make up my Bolt Action (and Chain of Command) army. And for something completely different, I've also included 7 of the 35mm scale Jokers Crew from the Knights Models range for their Batman Miniatures game.

The gun is 28mm scale with 6 crew, painted with predominantly Vallejo paints and Army Painter wash. I went for a grey scheme rather than Dunkelgelb (yellow) as I wanted it to blend in a little better with the field grey infantry that will make up the rest of my force.

The infantry, all Warlord figures from their excellent German Grenadiers box, comprise 3 squads, two Heer infantry and one Waffen SS in Oak Leaf camo. This was my first crack at painting Oak Leaf, or any SS camo scheme for that matter and I'm fairly pleased with the results.

5 Strafbattalion (Penal Unit) and Leutnant

8 Heer Grenadiers 

8 Waffen SS in Oak Leaf 

The Joker Crew is a real departure for me, both for being 35mm and the genre. I mainly paint historical or fantasy, so painting a guy in a giant Panda suit holding an assault rifle provided endless amusement. The BMG itself is a surprisingly tactical game, and although I'm not usually a DC comics fan I have enjoyed using these guys in their first outing the other night. 

Joker,Harley Quinn and the Cosplay Crew...Pandas with assault rifles,what's not to love ?! 

The Eyeball guy gets a bonus if he focuses fire on a single target...given he only has one eye and all.....

I'll leave it to the minions to decide the points value of 35mm figures :-), but this is 27 figs at 28mm, a 28mm arty piece and 7 at 35mm.

Alan And Paul: A panda with an assault rifle? That's taking Open Carry to surreal new levels (although Open Carry is pretty surreal already). But I do support the right to arm bears (thank you!) I worry a bit about the eyeball guy's depth perception... Nice entry James! The tooled up cosplay crew is cool, but the 88 is my favourite. An impressive looking beast, and I love the basing. I've given the cosplayers 6 points each to reflect the larger scale.