From SidneyR: Lord Ghoda's Limbo of Sorcery (37 points)

 

Shinkurō, the former ronin, had never heard of "toad magic" until the moment that Lord Ghoda mentioned it. The ancient sorcery that Lord Ghoda said he had been studying sounded to Shinkurō like the ramblings of a drunk, at best. Or the ravings of a mad man at worst. 

Sorcery and spells to turn a magician into a toad, and to enable to the spell-caster to weave magic and enchantments?  It sounded almost heretical to voice the thoughts in his own head, Shinkurō warned himself.  What nonsense!

But then, the demon had appeared. A powerful Dai-Oni, armed with a huge war-mallet, javelins and a famous sword stolen many decades before from Lord Ghoda’s grandfather. Against such an adversary, both Shinkurō and his Lord would be helpless. It was just a matter of time before the demon would overwhelm them both.

At least it had all seemed gloomily inevitable until the moment that the magic transformation which had been promised by Lord Ghoda, actually worked. 

It was beyond Shinkurō's belief, but.....it was happening before his eyes.  Lord Ghoda’s webbed feet were starting to cast the spell to banish their adversary. 

Shinkurō just hoped that the incantation didn’t require fingers.

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A small posting to start my entry for Challenge XV. I had a busy December, and was going to paint more figures, but an unpleasant virus ended up with me missing out on bits of Christmas - and as a result, I've only got three figures for this submission.

All that being said, these figures were a lot of fun to do. The demon and rōnin are both Dixon Miniatures sculpts. They’re quite venerable, being first produced in 1984, although I bought them both earlier this year. The gigantic toad is from Crooked Dice, one of a couple of large specimens I purchased last year and hadn’t yet used.

I added some of the GW “Barbed Bracken” to the base of Shinkurō. I admit the spikey leaves do look, if you're a fan of manga, a lot more “Wicked City”, rather than strict Edō-period Japan. But I’ve enjoyed using these plants on various terrain bases, and hopefully I can use more of them as the Challenge progresses. 

They paint up very well, even though they are quite “flexible” (a.k.a. “bendy). I coated the plastic with PVA-glue beforehand, to add a little stability.  But so far, in the games we have played with terrain and bases featuring barded-bracken, the paint hasn’t flaked off the razor-sharp thorns. A minor miracle worthy of Lord Ghoda himself (in toad-form).

I painted the submission as my entry for "Limbo". How else can one describe an indefinite transition to gigantic toad-form? Knowing this is Limbo also allows me to add a totally indulgent in-game character card for Lord Ghoda in his mythical-Japanese fauna-form, with two slightly more sensible cards for Shinkurō and the demon. If, of course, one can ever claim anything to do with demons is ever sensible or simple.

And for the Challenge XV points:  5 points for Shinkurō, 7 points for the demon (who checks in at a dramatic 40mm), and I think 3 points for Lord Ghoda**.   And 20 points for visiting Limbo itself.

Total: 35 points.

** (I had a lengthy debate with myself about the points for Lord Ghoda in toad-form.  Is he prone, or not?  Do we count his toad-form, or the fact he is, in essence, human? I suggest 3 points is sort of right, as it is a “prone figure” - although, I admit, toads are usually on all fours. Who knows? Maybe Lord Ghoda can provide more answers when he returns to his former form.)

********

First, welcome back to the Challenge Sidney! I'm sorry to hear of your illness over the holidays but am delighted to see that you've bounced back and have this wonderful opening post featuring another set of characters from your 'Until the Last Sword is Drawn'. What a treat! 

As is usual, your brushwork is absolutely exquisite with all the precision and vibrant colours that expect from you. I also really like your use of the GW 'Barbed Bracken' to further accent your basework. I'll have to pick some of those up after seeing your work here. And the bespoke game cards. Wow. They look tremendous and packed with character.

It would be churlish not to give the brave Lord Ghoda his full 5 points so we'll go with that. 37 points for your Challenge opener, Sid. Again, welcome back!

- Curt

From PeterB: A Clowder* of Cats and more - Children's Books - 85 points

 So my first post of this week, I have painted a full set of models from Crooked Dice Studio. They are a collection of Mutants from across their range of TV inspired models. After having great fun painting a whole range of characters from the Masters of Universe range from Archon Studios over the last year, I felt these would also be fun to paint, Especially if I painted them to look like characters from one of my favourite cartoons from my younger days, Thundercats.

I chose to paint these in a clear, crisp style. Not too much drybrushing or shading. No inks and colours as accurate as possible. The models are surprisingly detailed and took some effort to get accurate. The fun was in keeping the lines clean and not relying on inks or washes to hide any imperfections.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed painting these. When painting historical miniatures it is surprising how much brown there is, coupled with the painters friend, a brown wash, its amazing how brown miniatures end up looking from a distance. I display some models on a vintage printers tray hanging on my wall, which is also brown. These models were in contrast bright and colourful, even the bad guys.

The big boss bad guy in Thundercats, called Mumm-Ra appeared in one of two forms in most episodes. A tiny mummy that chewed the scenery like The Emperor in Return of the Jedi and then a Japanese animation style transformation occured and he become more muscled than skeletor and with a dramatic up-gust of wind making his cape billow.

Of course, he has to have his cronies.

This is my fourth visit in the library to the section for Childrens books. I'm sure its clear why.

The Points

13 x 28mm miniatures at 5 points each = 65 points

Bonus points for Childrens books = 20 points

Total 85 points

* Yes, I looked it up, a collective noun for cats is a clowder. Every day is a school day.

 

Sylvain: A very colorful submission with pastel tones, as if it was summer somewhere (hint, not in Canada)...  I really like the crazy hairstyles on some of the models as well as the cartoonish design of some other miniatures, which your painting style neatly highlighted.Well done! 

RobinF: Post Apocalyptic Vehicles [85 Points]

This is my first post in any of the challenges and thanks for letting me into the winter event.  This last year has been a drought for me in regard to painting and after a good start last January I rolled through 2022 with 10th Months of zero painting.  I have played games but just not had the willpower to focus on the paint.  So my first issues in the last two weeks were hand eye coordination, painting skill, eyesight quality and a fanatical dedication to the pope.   I dropped my airbrush twice and the first time splashed the recently dicanted paint over the floor and my foot. My airbrush needle had also dried locked into the body of the brush and it serves me right for not having put any lube on the needle when I last used it.   Throughout the airbrushing and painting I could see no detail, even with my strongest painting-specific strength glasses on and had to trust my skill. A visit to the opticians is required because my aging eyes are shriveling up! 

Post-Apocalyptic models were my first choice and I have two quad bikes from Games Workshop in the Orlock Necromunda faction which are plastic kits and one jeep from Crooked dice games which was resin with metal details.  I wanted to really weather these up as a way of avoiding having to do a good paint job and I am relatively happy with the result.  I intend to use these models in both Necromunda and the post apocalyptic game from Crooked Dice games called 7TV. 

Review wise the plastic quads from GW were much better than I expected, the level of fine detail on them is getting close to 1/35th military kits, with tiny hidden details like suspension and connecting areas that surprised me.  For example they add bracket metal (plastic) plates for the spikes on the front and I am sure back in the day they would have just put basic spikes on the model, rather than showing any kind of detail of how the spikes would require a bracket.  The character models on the quads were a little chunky though and I think their legs are actually elephantine in thickness which is a shame but it does match with the rest of their range.  The resin vehicle from 7TV was a little rough cast in areas like the tires (which were easy to disguise) and the actual figure in the driving seat was pretty poor in terms of pose, sculpting and casting quality and I don't think I really salvaged it very well with my basic paint job on it.  Otherwise the resin jeep kit was very nice in regard to looking like it had all the parts it required to drive, with a fan belt, air intake and interesting exhaust setup. 

My technique was a base prime colour airbrushed on all larger surface areas like hull/body, followed by some targeted airbrushing on wheels with a black and the figure bodies.   I weathered with a sponge chipping with a darker brown and then used a brush to add a lighter than base coat chip into a lot of the areas the sponge had touched with the darker brown rusty colour.  I gave the two quad bike riders and gunners the same blue shirt "uniform", which was just to allow them to match the squad I am going to paint for the Orlock faction and will keep them all looking similar.  However, in hindsight I think doing them all in different worn colours would look more post-apocalyptic, rather than just sticking to the GW colour scheme. It did save some time just going for one blue for all the shirts.

I used what is more recently called slap-chop or under shading style on the character models by airbrushing a lighter colour from above and then also dry brushing them white with the excellent new Ammo dio-dry-brush paints.  Where there are lighter shades on the blue cloth and leather trousers, this is typically the under shade showing through because the final coats with made with a glaze style of thin painting with Liquitex acrylic glazing medium being added to colours applied to thin them and allow the undershade to show through. 

Toward the end of the job I used some enamel streaking grime from AK Interactive to weather the hulls/body of the vehicles and that went on really easily with some enamel thinners (perfect over acrylic base coats). Then I also used some AK interactive weathering pencil on the wheels to make it look like sand had dried into the rubber. This did not work as well as I had hoped and in the future I am going to try some buff titanium oil paint which should look a little more subtle on the rubber tires. 

Points wise I read that each vehicle was 20pts each, so 60pts total for the three.   I think they took about 9 hours in total for the three models. 

Airbrush station ready to go. I use Iwata Airbrushes with a Bambi Silent compressor and "Bench" extractor fan. 

Necromunda Orlock Quad Bike. Using a Forgeworld head swap and Forgeworld backpack which are both resin parts glued to the plastic kit.

Just after the main base colour blocked out areas are sprayed on. 

Test use of these new dual exo colours, no primer required and the two shades allow you to do some highlighting of the base colour with the lighter shade. I thought having these browns underneath would help a dusty worn out model because I could leave some showing in some areas. 

After the exo primers have been applied. 

Finished models follow:

   Excellent first post, welcome to the challenge. I love these, we've just started to get into Necromunder and I now want some vehicles. I recomend getting your eyes tested, it's the sports injury that we get. Although these are so good that you shouldn't worry

Can you do a points tally at the end of the post, it helps, and you have miscounted on these. You get 5pts for each of the crew as well.

MartinC