From MikeF - Imperial Arsonist (Sarah's Star Yacht) & Imperial Grey Knight Terminators (Coruscant) - 70 points

 One final Friday post before the mad scramble that usually occurs last week of the challenge! This first entry is bittersweet. The Imperial Arsonist! It was fun to paint and the colors came out better than I had hoped. The bitter part is that the model is from Wargame Exclusive which is a fantastic miniature company based in Ukraine. Hopefully they are all safe and remain so for the duration of the conflict. I won't delve further into this as for some the challenge may be a welcome reprieve from our real world issues. 

The "Imperial Arsonist" is for Sarah's Star Yacht for transport to Coruscant.

I included this picture to prove she is in fact, a female figure!

For Coruscant I painted 5 Grey Knight Terminators. They represent both Imperial and good vs evil. I know it's the wrong "Imperial", but I've developed a strong disinterest in Star Wars over the years (I've probably just earned -200 points for that. Thank God DaveV isn't a minion!). These Grey Knights are the original metal from the early 2000's. I've had them about the same amount of time. The challenge is always a good excuse for tackling these old miniatures.

6 28mm figures + yacht and planet = 70 points

Thanks for visiting.

From DaveD - I am not unsympathetic no interest in Star Wars - tried it - does'nt do it. Always good to clear out the lead - good stuff !

AdamC: Royal Navy Visit Coruscant (120 Points)

Well its been a long time since I had a post possibly my longest time between posts in any challenge.  First my wife and then my daughter and I came down with covid killing my painting time (and painting ambition even when I had time).

I return with 4 Royal Navy three decker's 2nd rates in the Royal Navy terms.

The first three are Simon Mann's generic 92 gun ship of the line. It's a fine model I only needed to add some figure heads. 

HMS Queen with the blue ensign

HMS Prince George flying a Red Ensign

HMS Prince of Whales with the White Ensign.

The last ship is Henry Turner's 98 gun London the model isn't quite as sharp but with some leftover pieces from the Warlord 3rd rates it looks pretty good.  

Ok so how do Royal Navy ships count as "Imperial" well I have two strings to that bow. First the Royal Navy was obviously the keystone of the British Empire. People respected the British Empire because even if you managed a short term victory on land the Navy would come sailing over the horizon at some point and bring in more troops and firepower than you could handle. Second the Imperial Navy of Star Wars was clearly modeled after the Royal Navy. This is clear from the upper crust vaguely English accents and mannerisms of it's officer's. 

Okay points four 2nd Rates ships of the line should be 25 points each for 100 points plus another 20 for Corascant (if Peter agrees). This should add another squirrel point.  It's good to be back in the game. 

Take note Ray, Adam got pre-approval on the location.  He's pushing it  bait on Imperial, since Victoria didn't formally become Empress until 1858.  However, I'll totally buy the Royal Navy as the ultimate instrument of Imperial might.  My personal fave example is the fleet of ironclads that forced the Dardanelles in 1878 and stopped the Russian army in its tracks outside Constantinople.

Glad to heat that you are on the road to recovery from COVID, I concur on its ability to kill both painting time and painting willpower.

Fine work on the second rates, they are more than fit to hold their place in the battle line.  

From MartijnN: Cruisers and Cossacks (Perelandra and back to Corsucant) (78 points)

Having left Corsucant we make our way to Perelandra. Its Oceanic theme gave me the perfect excuse to paint some of my backlog of WW1 1/3000 ships by Navwar (actually, there are not very many left now). Here are 8 Royal Navy destroyers. Six are M class (Magic, Marne, Minion (!), Mystic, Nestor, and Obdurate), one is I (or Acheron) class (Badger), and one K (or Acasta) class (Owl). All saw service at Jutland.

Magic, Marne, Minion, Mystic, Nestor and Obdurate

Badger and Owl

HMS Badger picked survivors from HMS Invincible when she exploded after a direct hit from the German Battlecruisers Lützow and Derfflinger.

Next there are five German Light Cruisers. These are Augsburg, Kolberg, Karlsruhe, Rostock and Regensburg. Two of the Kolberg class (Cöln and Mainz) were sunk at the Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1914, where the British destroyers also served, while Kolberg took part in the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915. Karlsruhe was in the Carribean when the war broke out and did some raiding, causing quite some concern, if not actual damage, before being destroyed by an accidental internal explosion. Rostock and Regensburg saw heavy action at Jutland, where they were leader of torpedo boats; Rostock was scuttled by her crew after the battle to avoid capture. 

Regensburg, Karlsruhe, Rostock, Kolberg, Augsburg

After exploring Perelandra we return to Corsucant, in order to proceed to Vogsphere next week. For Corsucant I offer these Imperal Russian soldiers. They are 15mm Minifigs and have that special toy soldier feel to them. They were (and are) sold as Caucasian Lancers. The Minifigs Crimean War range is not very accurate historically, and whether these lancers even existed I don't know; I decided to paint them up as cossacks. The details of their dress are rather obscure, but they are good enough for me.

So there we are.

Points:

13 hulls @ 2 points = 26 points

8 15mm horse @ 4 points = 32 points

Perelandra planet bonus = 20 points

Total: 78 points. And two squirrels!

___________________________________________________

Lovely work Martijn, and what a wonderful juxtaposition in both scale, warfare and period. I quite like your Minifig 'theoretical Cossacks'. They certainly look the business to me, and I quite like the large basing you've used. What system are they set-up for? Of the two groups, my favourites have to be your WWI ships.  I have a real soft-spot for this coal-driven period ever since reading Massie's 'Castles of Steel' years ago.  You've given them such nice definition with your brushwork and, similar to your cossacks, I really admire your basing for these. 

78 points it is, but please remember to label your squirrel submissions. This will avoid the embarrassing scene of Stuart gleefully flashing you a yellow card as he did to me! :)

- Curt

From MartijnN: Of Wargs and Men on Corsucant (116 points)

Finally able and authorized to proceed to the Middle Ring we find ourselves on Corsucant. This planet is hotly contested between Good and Evil. That is why I present to you some perfidious Wargs and some stalwart Men from Laketown.

Besides wargaming, my other great passion is Tolkien. I have been taken by Middle-earth ever since our teacher read us The Hobbit in 6th grade when I was 10 or 11 years old. I have a fair collection of books and games centering on Tolkiens work, and I daresay that every fantasy figure or ruleset I ever bought was ultimately meant to recreate the great battles from the War of the Ring of even from the Great Wars of the First Age. However, I never succeeded in advancing those dreams beyond that - dreams and plans, that is (although that is half the fun in wargaming, isn't it).

Come 2004, and Games Workshop brought out what was meant to be the first in a series of boxed games based on Tolkien's universe: the Battle of Five Armies!

Of course I had to buy it (two sets, even). But then they sat on my shelf for the next 15 years or so. Looking around my hobby room for something to get into for this Challenge I saw the box and decided to finally start painting this set.

The set contains some terrain (representing the slopes of the Lonely Mountain and the ruins of Dale), and two armies: Good, consisting of Men, Elves and Dwarves, and Evil, consisting of Wargs and Goblins. There are also a bunch of characters, like Bilbo, Gandalf, Beorn, and of course there are Eagles. These are nominally 10mm figures, although they are on the small side. The rules for the game are really the Warmaster rules, somewhat adapted, and thus units consist of three stands each. I started by painting up a unit of Wargs and the two units of Men, one each of spearmen and archers. I went for a simple yet recognizable colour scheme, mostly using Contrast paints and finishing off with a heavy wash of Agrax Earthshade. Since there are hundreds more of miniatures to paint I cut corners where I could; I painted the units, not the figures, so don't look too closely! I am moderately satisfied with the end result; they have however turned out a bit darker than I thought, so I may return to them and add some highlights later. For now I consider them done though!

GW did release some metal figures as add-ons to the game, but unfortunately I never acquired any of these. Apparently the game was not a great succes as GW never produced any subsequent titles, and of course they scrapped Warmaster altogether not very much later.

So that is 72 infantry and 12 Wargs. As the Wargs were really simple to paint I will claim them as infantry.

Points therefore:

96 10mm infantry @ 1 points =  96 points

Corsucant planet bonus = 20

Total 116 points. And a squirrel!

From DaveD

"I had to buy two sets" - right out my playbook alright :-)  . Great to see these well seasoned lads get some TLC. Though i think the oldest in the lead pile record was something like 38 years IIRC

From ByronM - Kingdom Death Good vs Evil on Corsucant (64 Points)

This is a submission LONG in the making, I originally primed these up about 4 challenges ago and then never got around to them.  I kept putting them off as I was not quite sure how to deal with 2 of them and didn't want to screw up such expensive models.  Well, this year it was time to bite the bullet and do them anyway, and I think I nailed it on one and screwed the pooch on the other, but you be the judge.

First up the one I think I nailed, and the one I was most worried about, the Watcher.  This enigmatic entity is your saviour and killer in Kingdom Death.  In this bleak world there is no sky, no sun, just endless darkness and evil, when you wake up in the world though you find magic lanterns that keep the darkness and monsters at bay and let you survive.  [SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT KD SPOILERS!] What you don't realize up front is that Watchers provide and power these lanterns as a way to gather groups of humans into settlements.  Then after a while (25 years/games) they come out from their underground lairs to devour the now hopefully highly populated grown up settlement.  Yeah Kingdom Death is an evil evil place.

The Watchers are supposed to both create and devour light (and hopefully I am getting all this lore correct as its pieced all over the books and cards and not clear on purpose) so I wanted to try and paint something both dark and light.  I went with black but didn't want a pure black so it is actually a deep blue then shaded down to black in the crevasses and up to a slightly lighter blue at the highlights.  I then painted his sash in a bone colour to provide some kind of colour contrast (going black/white but not true colours at either side of the spectrum) and lastly painted the lanterns and some OSL light effects from them, but kept them muted on purpose to show that the light is fading around him.  I am super happy with the result, and I am almost NEVER happy with my own painting, which makes it even better!

Next up is the one I don't like how he came out, the Manhunter.  This is another super cheery monster in Kingdom Death who comes to settlements and demands you sacrifice people to him.  If you don't he likes toying with you in the fight breaking arms, legs, and backs as he breaks you down and then hauls you away.  It never says what he does with the people he takes, but it can't be pleasant.

He is dressed pretty mono-chromatically as he is supposed to be wearing leather made from animals and people, so I tried to use various browns, tans, and skin tones to make up some division in his outfit, but I am just not happy with the overall result.  I struggled with thinking about what to do with him for the last few weeks, but just couldn't come up with a solution, so am submitting him as is, as he is at least usable for the game even though he is not great.

Next up are two survivors to add some extra weapon options to my collection of figures.  The female figure is a Savior figure holding what could be a great sword or twilight sword in game, either a very useful option (even though the twilight sword makes you super powerful for about 8 games then kills you).  

The male is just a random fighter with an axe.  I fell in love with this figure due to the fish head he is wearing as a helmet, so I had to make sure it stood out so painted it a bright green and refer to him as the Fisherman. He kinda suffers from the same monochromatic issue that the Manhunter does though with all his leather items, but again, I wasn't sure where to go from there.

 

 

Overall, I really like the Watcher and the Saviour figures and the Manhunter and Fisherman may need a revisit at some point for more contrast of a few colour changes.  If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As for points, I am not sure so leave it at your discretion Millsy.  Kingdom Death is a 40mm game, so the 2 heroes are easy (2 @ 7 = 14 points), but I am not sure how you want to count the monsters.  Normally monsters are equal to vehicles, but these don't seem quite big enough to count as 25 points each, but they are also not cavalry, but I think it would be more reasonable points wise to count them as such and 15 points each instead of the 25?  Your call completely.  Whatever you come up with, I also get the bonus 20 points for completing a good vs evil post for the planet of Corsucant.  

Oh, and I almost forgot, this will also be my 4th squirrel point! So far my topics for Squirrel points include:

1. 15mm Eldar
2. 10mm Undead
3. 30k Marines
4. Kingdom Death Monsters and Heroes
   

From Millsy:

This is the best of your three entries today Byron IMHO. I love everything about these, the painting style, the colour choices, the glowing light, etc. all just gorgeous. The Manhunter is absolutely ripped with 66% more six pack than the rest of the human race!

I know what you mean about not wanting to paint something for fear of screwing up. I prefer to think of it as letting the resin or the undercoat cure properly [insert eyeroll]. Sometimes you just have to start and see where it takes you. Mistakes are just a part of the process. FWIW I think you nailed it.

I'm happy with 15 points per monster so that's 2 x 7 (14) points + 2 x 15 (30) points + 20 points = 64 points. Well done on three great entries in one week!