From MartinN: 3rd Century AD Roman Legionaries/ Limbo (70 points)

This week too I'm running with the Middle Imperial/ Late Roman theme from last week. This time I've brought with me a base of Legionaries, which can clearly be dated to the first half of the 3rd century by their old style semi-cylindrical shield. Also the broad leather balteus, from which the Spatha was suspended, which had by then superseded the earlier Gladius short sword. Most of the Legionaries are sporting the -in my humble opinion- rather fashionable Niederbieber type helmet, also dating to the 2nd to 3rd century. As for armour they're wearing a hodgepodge of Lorica Squamata (scales), Lorica Hamata (chainmail) and the rather famous Lorica Segmental (banded metal strips), that is featured in so many Hollywood movies.

The figures themselves are a mix of Armorum & Aquila Miniatures, which by now are rather dated but almost the only commercially available figures for the 3rd century. Then there's a single Wargames Atlantic miniature from their Late Roman Legionaries set. The set fits the 3rd century almost perfectly with the inclusion of the Niederbieber helmet, but I find the details on the plastic rather soft and the Spathae much too large. That said they paint up OK. Also included are three heavily converted figures from Victrix Limited' Late Romans. To make them suitable I gave them heads from Aventine Miniatures, sculpted on the broader Balteus and designed and 3D printed  Spathae/ appropriate scabbards and Pugiones, the famous Roman daggers. Despite being noticeably larger than the other figures I do think they work together rather well. Shields are a mix of Aventine and A&A.

Painting wise I tried to give them a somewhat uniform appearance by using broadly the same colours, without painting them all the same. Personally I find it highly doubtful that Roman Legionaries ever wore anything approaching a uniform. For the shields I went with free hands and frankly, I had a blast. While at first I found it a rather daunting undertaking, I quickly realized I quite liked the look. So much so that by now I have more of those shields already painted than Legionaries waiting in the painting queue. First world problems I guess.

As some of the figures were already started before the challenge, in fact they had lain partly painted in my cupboard for a few years already, I'm claiming the Limbo bonus for this bunch.

So what do we have here?

Eight 28mm infantry plus the Limbo Bonus should give me 60 points plus whatever our dear minion is prepared to throw in for the hand painted shields and conversions.

***

Well Nick, I have no doubt that I speak for all Challengers when I say "holy crap, this looks f**king amazing!" Your brushwork is, as ever, top shelf stuff. The conversions are amazing - and you know this because, absent you telling me/us about the conversions, we would not realize they were present, so seamless and smooth does everything look. 

In particular I am impressed that you managed to squeeze Victrix models in there. While I appreciate the quality of the Victrix sculpts, their giant size has turned me away from making purchases as they seem to loom of every other type of sculpt out there. 

Seeing your Romans always inspires me to say "one, day, I'll paint some Romans!". One day...

I award 10 bonus points for hand painting shields (!!), conversions and general amazing-ness. 

70 points for you in total!

GregB

From JamesM: 15mm De-frocked Priests, passengers and RE trucks [Limbo] (250 points)

Hi folks,

This entry represents the culmination of years of planning, collecting, and stalled effort - and several months' worth of distracted painting.

The original focus of my 15mm WW2 collection was the 1st Canadian Army's Operation Totalize in August 1944, so these early 'Kangaroos' or 'De-frocked Priests' have been on my to-do list for a long time. Unfortunately, I painted my first few when I started my collection, and they took ages - a feature of my inexperience at that time. The vehicles were fine; the issue was the passengers. 

This then tainted my thoughts about painting more of the bloody things. To make matters worse, my collection grew from a mere infantry company to an entire battalion. Which meant I needed to collect and paint more of the buggers. 

Earlier last year, before being distracted by 40k models, I dug out my selection of FoW blister packs and started on this clergy, hoping to have them done by summer. The plans of mice and men, eh? 

Thankfully, the challenge gave me the impetus to push on and get these all done. 

In total, I've painted 14 of these early tracked APCs. These are Battlefront resin and metal 15mm kits. 

And two passenger stands per vehicle. 

For those not in the know, these vehicles were American M7 Priests, operated by the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division as part of its D-Day assault division organisation. Instead of towed 25-pdr guns, the division was equipped with self-propelled M7s, which fired American 105mm rounds. 

Eventually, in July 1944, the Canadian and British units equipped with the M7s were requested to stop using them and return to British equipment due to ammunition supply issues. 

At the same time, the various allied armies in Normandy were struggling to find a way to advance infantry under armour in a battle dominated by machine guns and mortar fire. A Canadian engineering officer proposed stripping the gun from the M7, welding some steel over the gap, removing the ammo storage and other irrelevant internal fixtures, and using these hulls as armoured personnel carriers. They were used with some success, and later - when the M7s were returned to the Americans, Canadian surplus Ram tanks, with turrets removed, were used in the same role - going on to equip one Canadian and one British regiment. 

As such, my vehicles have been split into groups bearing the markings of 3CID artillery units. 

Alongside these, as a belated part of my preparation for the D-Day games played last year, I painted a pair of cut-down Morris gun tractors. These were primarily used by British airborne forces as tractors for their 17-pdr anti-tank guns, but my research showed they were also used by Royal Engineer units on D-Day as transport off the beaches. 

I've more passengers to paint for these, but they count as painted now!

And because I forget that not everyone is familiar with the scale (and the effects of mobile phone macro photography)... here's a reference for how small those decals are. 

18 x 15mm vehicles = 144 points

2 x drivers = 2 points

28 x passengers = 84 points (counting each strip of three men as 3 points)

'Limbo' = 20 points

Total = 250 points

TeemuL: Just counting my fingers, but your logic on the passengers seems valid and the spreadsheet approves, so I'm quite sure it is okay. That is quite a lot of vehicles, quite a lot passengers and quite a lot of green! Some history lessons, too. I understand that they might have felt overwhelming, especially when more and more is added to the initial project, but these are all done now and lots of points are coming your way!

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!

 

From JamieM - Limbo Ogryn and More Boats (96 points)

It’s been a while since my last post and, perhaps fittingly, it’s the limbo entry on the circles from hell that delayed me. I have a lot of half finished projects (I feel I might be amongst like minded people with that here) so I decided to only do the odd figures that were either left on my painting desk because “I’m sure I’ll pop enough paint on them to finish them in between other projects” ( spoiler: I didn’t do this) or the projects that were within reaching distance of my painting desk, so any slightly larger projects that had been moved to shelves to await their turn (for months….. possibly even a year).

So, firstly, here is a larger project, Ogryn for my Horus heresy militia army

As some may know (especially after the knowledgeable and well informed posts from GregB and Curt on the subject) the Horus heresy occurred in the 31st millennium when fully half of the space marines rebelled against the emperor and threw their lot in with the chaos gods instead (who tricked them into thinking life would be better under them). This resulted in a cataclysmic interstellar war and sowed the seeds for the dystopian 41st millennium that warhammer 40K is set in.

Most of the books and other literature concentrates on the space marines fighting each other (because space marines are rad as hell, obvs) but amongst the huge empire that The Emperor's minions had carved out, there were many, many more “normal” folk, who were forced to throw their lot in with either The Emperor or Horus, often with little information as to what each really stood for. Games Workshop are renowned for getting customers to spend a lot of money on specific infantry, vehicles, etc for each setting, which is fine as a business plan and all that, but does veer away a little from the origins of Gee Dubs when scratch building and converting was the cool thing (roll on deodorant hover tank anyone?). These days, every army entry has to have a specific kit you can buy for it or they remove the entry from games until they’ve made a kit for it.

Now, it seems to me that as the Horus heresy/30k range isn’t one of their most popular ranges, the designers seems to get a little more leeway and so they produced the Militia army list to represent the many and varied standing armies and militias present on any given world. At the start of the army list there is a little bit of blurb telling you that there are no kits specifically for any of the entries and you are encouraged to use the other kits they make and kit so to build your army!

Now, I’ve always been a massive kitbasher and this was music to my ears! Even better, as a child who grew up with the first edition of war hammer 40K (aka "Rogue Trader") I’ve always had a massive soft spot for the Ogryns, who are the sci fi equivalent of the ogre. Large of body and small of thinking (“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”) ogryn have always been taken advantage of by the imperial forces to get them to do what they say the emperor commands (“a small mind is easily filled with faith”). The militia force allows you to field big units of ogryn as your basic troops! And I could kitbash away to make them happen!

So here they are. They languished in limbo as our club played 30k for about a year and then moved onto other games and that coincided with me getting partway through them. The options for a militia force are many and varied, but I chose to have my ogryn toting shields (some official, some converted from half of a dozer blade meant for the front of fighting vehicles) and chain axes. In order to get enough chain axes, I converted them from Ork choppas and spare chain swords. I’m really pleased with the result and have 12 more to do to give me my two big units of ten. I still don’t think ogryn will stand up to the best that space marines have to offer, but they are ogryns and that’s plenty good enough for me.

Next are three more boats painted up as ghosts for Mantic’s Armada game (and warmaster naval too). Nice and simple and give me more options when added to the ones painted earlier in the challenge.

And from the other side…..

In summary then:

8 x 40mm figures = 56

Limbo bonus = 20

Three boats (worth 10, 5, 5 I think?) = 20

96 total points.

***

"I have a lot of half finished projects"

While I loathe the tiresome babble of progressivism, let me assure you: this is a SAFE SPACE for you! I am confident many/most Challengers will relate to the approach and sentiment which left your Ogryn unit to wait - and wait, and wait some more - before finally getting under the brush. And they look tremendous, and as you say, part of what makes 30k so fun is the lingering residual hobby spirit of GW's elder age where participants were encouraged to experiment and come up with their own kits. While Horus Heresy fans like myself are certainly excited to see the huge volume of kits now being released in plastic, 30k still retains things like the Militias which allow for creative folk like you to have some fun. The dozer blades...that is perfect as a shield for them! Can totally see a Commissar pointing at some in a yard and saying to the Ogryn "hey, just use these" and their perfectly small, loyal minds obeying immediately...

And also some naval stuff. Sigh. Whatever. At least they are spooky-looking ghost ships. 

96 points for you Jaimie! May the Hobby Gods infuse you with sufficient will to finish another project from the half-started pile...I mean...nothing new or cool being released? Right? Right?

Greg B

From Sarah: Two Sweet Wee Buildings Started Last Year (Limbo) (20 Points)

Hello Everyone

These two buildings have been primed and patiently waiting for colour since at least last Challenge. Me thinks they are "seasoned' and now ready for their close up!

My foray into painting  buildings in an "Impressionistic Style" a la Monet continues with these two slightly eccentric villas. 

I've chosen a coastal colour palette of muted earth tones -  to reflect the windswept environs of the Holiday Beach Villas. I think the lavender and pale blue shutters add both a whimsical touch and a holiday vibe.

Here is a group shot with some buildings from last years Challenge. I really like the sense of whimsy and fairy-tale quality of the wee buildings. I've had a lot of fun with these and I hope Curt will indulge me and let me paint more buildings for him. :

I know that buildings/terrain have no Challenge points, so I'll be claiming the 20 bonus points for fulfilling 'Limbo'  and this entry will start my descent into the Abyss. 

Next week ... Lust! 

20  more points for me!

- Sarah

***

Hello again Sarah - so nice to see more work from you! 

Ah, terrain...you are so fortunate to enjoy painting it! Personally, I struggle with painting terrain. Not that I never do it, but rather that it always finds a way to sit at the very, very bottom of whatever painting queue I might have in my mind. 

But enough about my hobby-mental-hangups! This is about your work, and your work here is tremendous - at once warm, whimsical, and tuned to just-the-right sense of otherwordliness. Such is the power of well-painted terrain, it helps us set the mood and adds so much more not only to a display, but to a great game!

Well done - that will be another 20 points for your total. 

GregB

AndrewB Season Opener Inferno Blitz! Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, and Greed! 260pts

Hello folks!   Sorry for the delay, but let’s get to posting!  I decided this year aside from a couple projects I’m working on, I’d blitz through the Inferno Challenge as best I could. Now that I’ve gotten some basing glue, here we go!  

First is Limbo!   These are some Old Glory ‘voodoo’ warriors I acquired many years ago to attempt to play some good James Bond style Baron Zavoodie henchmen.  Alas, they’ve sat unpainted on washers for the better part of a decade, and I ran across them while digging for other projects, so here we go!  They’re quite characterful, despite lacking many different sculpts   

The second circle provided me some trouble as I don’t have many figures which are particularly ‘Lusty’.  That said, I ran across this bundle of cave folk while shuffling through shelves, and here I am.  Not outright lusty, but she’s got her chest out, and the boys seem to be enjoying it, so here we are!  I’ll try and find some relevant 3D prints to come back here maybe.  In the meantime, it makes good sense in that monosyllabic, unshaven way.  

Next, we have gluttony!  While trying to find a suitably rotund model, a four-legged friend knocked me on the knee with a stainless steel bowl, and then proceeded to eat the dog food I put inside with a vigor that would put the Cookie Monster to shame.  Bam! Gluttony!  Not sure where all these doggos are from, but they’re certainly hungry, and will certainly serve my games of 02 hundred well until I get the plastics in the box built and painted.  

Moving right along to Greed, this group of unsavory bootleggers, loan sharks, and bookies along with some of their other flunky buddies   I like to think of these folks as side characters like Forrest Gump at some of history’s most notorious gangster moments, all with the dreams of bags of stolen cash. I even managed to sneak in a dashed my lady gangster for Lady Sarah, so that was fun to find.  We’ll see if crime really pays!  

That’s about all I can get into this post, so look for more next week!  As for my points, I think we’ve got 13 Voodoo warriors for 65pts, four cave people for 20pts, seven puppies for 35pts, and 12 gangsters for 60pts.  There are four circles in the challenge for 80pts, and two women for Lady Sarah at 40pts.  This rounds me to an even 400, which I’ll need to be picking up the pace on!  

See you all next week, and happy painting!

------

A fine opening Salvo there Andrew! I like the variety of figures you've been able to get done

I'm sure it was satisfying to finally get those Voodoo warriors completed too!

Unfortunately, there are no bonus points for female figures in this year's challenge.

65+20+35+60=180 + 80 bonus points = a total of 260

- Paul

From JeremyM 15mm Winter War Russians [Limbo] [130 points]

Hi all, I am starting off the challenge this year by going back to a stalled project from several years ago. I had painted up a whole whack of 15mm Winter War Finns several years ago but have no Russians to face off against them.

This is a Strelkovy Company from Flames of War for early war Russians that fought against the Finns in the Winter War. I struggled to figure out what colour to paint them. I’ve seen photos mostly of re-enactors and drawings from various books  as well as the box art for the figures that use 3 different colours, a dark grey, a khaki, and a light green. Unfortunately, those black and white photos of the war, don’t shed much light on which one to pick! For now this company will have light green as the predominant colour but I may decide to mix it up for future infantry which is always a nice way to help differentiate different formations. I’ve never been one to focus too heavily on historical accuracy when painting anyway, as long as its playable all I care about. And since in various theatres of this war the Russians had a massive numerical superiority (12 to 1 in some cases) I got a lot more of these fellows to paint up in the future.

15mm Winter War Soviets

For the photos you primarily see flames of war stands with 4-5 infantry with rifles, complete with those great early war hats with the nice big red star on them. There are also a couple of command stands with flags, a mortar stand and a lmg stand. Decent variety to make up the company.

I really got inspired to undertake this after living in Thunder Bay Canada. There is a large population of Finnish immigrants and I was actually a member of their historical society when I lived there a decade ago. I heard a few stories of Finnish history and the winter war ‘david and goliath’ fight was pretty inspiring how so few could hold out against so many. The other really interesting thing about the Finns during this period was how they went from being beloved by the western allies, to a hated opponent as they later joined with Germany against the Russians. Very interesting reading some of the accounts of Finns in Thunder Bay during this period and how public opinion swung so quickly against them after all the support.

I can’t wait to tackle some of the whacky Russian tanks from this period next. And we wonder were 40k got its inspiration from!

55 15mm figures 110 points + 20 points for Limbo = 130 points

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Jeremy

Welcome back to the Challenge! I'm to see you  post before the "dreaded cull" 

As you know, since I'm not really a gamer, the nuances of uniforms  are lost on me BUT I can comment on how f@#$% cold the soviets look and the snow bases do 'look' like snow.

Congrats on 110 points of mini guys and 20 points for Limbo

Looking forward to your next post!

Sarah

From TomC: Back in Blue [Limbo] (220 points)

Hello everybody, belated Happy New Year, very glad to see a lot of great progress so far from fellow contestants, hopefully Santa has been good to you all over the year end! 

As always, thanks to Curt for organising the Challenge, to the Minion team for volunteering and to Tamsin for her helpful instructions (errors in following which being entirely my own fault!).

These will be a familiar sight by now for many challengers - Warlord Games’s Epic American Civil War infantry, certainly it seems I’m not the only one putting paint to these this year! These are from the free sprue attached to Wargames Illustrated a while ago, plenty enough to have kept me going!

I started these before AHPC XIII, for which my first entry was the commander and artillery piece, which also come on the frame. Seems fitting to open another Challenge with the rest! Having given these infantry a once-round of blue, I put them on hold for the duration of the challenge… and then the subsequent two years… still, not the worst offenders in my pile of potential!

I painted these the old-fashioned way and, for my sins, without any metallic paints, so I really didn’t do myself any favours in the planning phase! This was compounded by issues with the recommended paints, Night Blue (glossy, which I realise now I cannot bear!) and Andrea Blue (suspiciously thin), which led to me to redo the blues with various Citadel offerings.

Not content with the problems I’d caused for myself, I continued by being unable to find the paper banners which came with the magazine at the critical juncture. Doubtless, these will resurface at an inopportune moment, but for the meantime I did my best to freehand the stripes on Old Glory and cobble something together for the regimental banner. This was a combination of Games Workshop decals I took apart, reassembled and painted over. I appreciate that whilst this has some of the right elements (eagle, shield, NFL logo), it does perhaps look a little modern… at least there’s something on the flag!

I did some minor work on these before assembly, there are only a couple of variations of ‘strips’ provided by Warlord, so there is a risk of repeating stands quite quickly. I delayed this by cutting some of the strips in half to mix them up, if I recall correctly, there are a couple of points where this can be done with a minimum of grief, and I do think it helps break up the repeated sculpts. Probably not possible with the Epic Waterloo collection alas!

In terms of scoring, there are 100 wee lads in the unit, at 2 points a head being the going rate for Warlord’s ‘Epic scale’ infantry. The commander and gun above are just included for completeness, so 200 points for the submission, with an additional 20 for the ‘Limbo’ bonus category that these sadly neglected Federals hopefully merit! All in, should be 220 points?

As a final note, my laptop has failed and so I have resorted to the mobile for this post - apologies for any issues with it as a consequence!

TeemuL: Yes, Warlord's Epic scale indeed is 15mm or two points a head, so you got yourself a nice haul of points here. You have now accomplished your target of 250 points in just two entries and in less than a month. But don't worry, me, myself and the whole Tuesday crew encourages and expects you to continue painting until end of March.

The models themselves look nice, you have found a nice blue in the end. I hope you find your flags, too. Your cutting the strips and reorganising the troops a bit gives quite natural look on the force. I have to remember that when I make some experiments with that scale and the freebie sprues from WI magazine myself. :) Compiling a post using mobile phone is very painful, I feel you. I forgive you for not adding any labels and added couple of suitable by myself. Feel free to edit, if needed.