From PaulS: Random selection of work part 1 - 65 points

This week has been a bit... bitty with the first bonus round coming up, running out of undercoat for terrain and running out of basing materials.

The first selection finished are 10 anti-walker bollard-things. These were collected from multiple sets of DUST tactics and were one of the few things I kept when I sold it all on as they are useful bits of terrain for any game that involves big tanks. You can see the Strawbear ably demonstrating scale once again.

After those, I decided to revisit Imperial Assault. Inspired by Samuli's excellent work on his Vader, here's mine. Not quite as neat, but not bad for 10 minutes work. The 4 guards were also pretty quick, taking another 20 minutes to complete. I forgot to cut them off their bases before painting though, so they are still on their original solid bases. At some point I may go back and try to cut them off, but for now they are on concrete.

Lastly is a little worm from Shadows of Brimstone, which should be useful in a number of different games, especially things like Strange Aeons where Cthulhu monsters are everywhere. The Burrower is a simple little kit with about 5 pieces, including the rockery base that it comes with.Sadly this leads to the typical problem of some of the earlier Brimstone kits in that the detail is a bit soft and there are some obvious joins in there that can't really be covered up without obscuring the detail that *is* there.

To give you a sense of scale on this little worm, the Strawbear had offered to kindly act as a scale point again. This thing is terrifyingly big... I have no idea where I'm going to store it... but should cause carnage whenever it appears in the mines!

The terrain takes up just under one box, s is 20 points. Vader and his minions should be another 25 points... the Burrower? I have no idea! I leave that up to the minions to decide as it is a 28mm monstrous creature about 3.5 times the height of the Strawbear!

From DaveD, stand in grognard minion..or is grognard minion standing in... who knows

A nicely eclectic mix. I do like Vader and his guards , and as for your Burrower , that looks like the stuff of nightmares ... I have done this a 40mm vehicle at 20 points - so a grand total of 65!

From: PaulS : Final, final entry. No really. (65 Points)

Earlier on I did what I thought was going to be the last update of the Challenge. How wrong I was!

This afternoon I managed to settle down and get into the swing of things (where has this been over the last three weeks!) and managed to complete another rather large batch of things. Earlier I posted the armoured support for my Commandos. This time I've got some support for my German forces in the shape of a SdKfz 251/10 and a Tiger I. The figures are just for a sense of action and excitement. Both are Warlord's plastic kits and were really nice to put together. The SdKfz was part of the same kit that spawned the mortar team earlier in the challenge. When offered the choice of a standard 251/10, or a mortar carrying 251/10 kit for the same price, why would you go for the basic one when you can squeeze an extra unit out of the kit?!

Surprised that these two finally got finished, I moved onto finishing a Christmas present for a friend. Zombie Elvis! This is one of the Zombicide Season 3 VIP figures

After Elvis it still seemed to be pretty early in the day, so three undercoated probe droids were painted up, moving Imperial Assault one step closer to being completed. There is still a looooong way to go, but hey. One more group down

And would you believe it? There was *still* loads of time left before I had to start cooking dinner. For those of you that have been following the challenge over the years may remember I started painting up Shadows of Brimstone about 3 years back. It has been a struggle to keep going as the early models are not good. With the first KS finally nearing completion, I felt I should probably sort out some of the remaining figures. Sadly, because this one wasn't planned, I don't have a clear base for it yet. I need to work out what size it should have as he is (as you can see from the soon to be dead fallschirmjager) he is pretty darned big. I have every intention of using him in pulp and weird war games as well. You can never have too many giant demonic monsters!

The pile of uncompleted entries is... quite large. The original intent this year was to paint up all of the marines from both 30k board games as well as a pile of Black Scorpion cowboys. In typical butterfly gamer fashion these were replaced by the shinyshiny of weird war 2 instead.

As it is now about 9pm here, I doubt there will be any more updates for this year's Challenge, even though there are 4 more figures bordering on completed. So to round things off we have two more tanks, 4 28mm figures and whatever the hell the Harbinger counts as. If he stood upright he'd be about the same height as Barbie... but not quite as scary or unrealistic.

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Ha! I always find it amazing what people can do when a deadline looms (so far I think we've cranked off 7,000 points in two days...). These are great Paul, especially so considering you just started them today! The German armour, Elvis and the Demon are very nice but I have a soft spot for those Probe Droids. When I do mine I'm going to use the same clear bases that you always feature. Their minimalism really works well for these minis.

45 Points for you Paul. You're cut off now - go to bed. ;P

[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 : Painting did occur after all... (104 points)

Given the lack of updates over the last few weeks, I was worried I wouldn't get anything done this week either (you can blame Lego Dimensions for that!), but it turns out I did manage to get a few bits completed after all!

To kick start things this week we have 4 new heroes from Dungeon Saga. Left to Right we have the enhanced version of the wizard, the enhanced version of the halfling thief, Valendor (a spirit of magic... or some such thing) and finally the standard version of the halfling thief.

From the group shot you can clearly see the size differences between the halflings. The standard version is almost a quarterling instead she's so small!

Next up we have a selection of cultists made using the Frostgrave cultists pack. I absolutely adore these plastics... cultists are always useful in many different settings. These guys have been painted up in the same colours as my pulp cultists (which I'll put into a group shot on my blog later in the week)

After the cultists, we have two creatures from Shadows of Brimstone. Handily, if you paint them white, they work nicely as some of the snow creatures in Frostgrave too. Here you can see them in scale with poor Helga, who is penned in by the giant spiders too (see further down!)

 

They have strange crystal growths coming out of their backs. No wonder they are cranky!

 

The spiders are from Mantic's dungeon critters set. Along with the rats and bats from last time, these are the nicest Mantic kit I've seen. Ever. Each spider is slightly different. some are black with red markings; others are furry brown

 

 

For a week that I thought was going to be pretty quiet, that turned into 10 28mm heroes/villains, two giant monsters and 8 giant spiders.  

It's posts like these that make me appreciate Curt's adjudication over the last few Challenges - deciding how to score "off-size" critters fairly is not an easy job. I think I'll score the two snow monsters as 40mm and count the spiders as 28mm. That comes to 104 points for this submission.

Nice painting on all of these Paul - especially the death's head on that spider :)

From PaulS - Pulp and horror model selection (35 Points)

Due to one thing and another, I missed last week's deadline, so you get a few more bits this week. With the first batch of tentacles you saw being based upon Purple Tentacle, it was time for some Green Tentacles. We've only got one green/yellow combination as it didn't really work that well. Still.. you have to have one right?

Besides the tentacles, I've also started a little 7TV cast based on the tv series Life on Mars, with some fantastic police from Crooked Dice. I've got some detectives and a police woman still to paint up.

To go with these, I also picked up some of the Crooked Dice Weeping Angel... Oh no! It looks like the Police have stumbled into an area inhabited by the Weeping Angels (talk about a crossover!) Those coppers better not blink...

Oh dear... we did warn them.

Quickly, keep staring at them and back away slowly. What ever you do, don't blink...

I said DON'T BLINK!

Oh sh...

From Curt:

I'm always a sucker for seeing a new tentacle added to the family. (I know, that could have been better...) I like the Bobbies, especially the one warding off with his baton while reaching for his whistle. Again, the Dr. Who reference goes right over my head, but these Weeping Angels look suitably creepy. I really like the verdigris you've added, but perhaps they could use some pigeon guano as well?  (Hmm, do pigeons blink?)

Fun stuff!

From PaulS - I feel like I could take on... (30 Points)

This is a bit of a last minute entry this week, after the massive upload of WotR figures earlier, but I couldn't resist trying to squeeze them in as well.

Shadows of Brimstone comes with 6 tentacles in each box and, as I got both boxes, this week I present the first six... carefully themed after one of my favourite games ever. Take a guess ;)

And as there are only so many ways you can take photos of tentacles, here are a couple of shots of them savaging some mythos explorers from last year's entries to the Painting Challenge. These last two also give you some sense of scale on these things.

Thankfully what you can't seein the photos are some of the overly soft details around the edges, where the poor sprue layout caused some of the suckers to merge into weird blobby messes and for others to become MASSIVE lumps that are easy to mistake for rocks... Like plenty of other people, I took a scalpel to these and tried to clean them up as best I could, but there's only so much you can do to rescue the suckers without cutting them off completely and making new ones... which is probably what I'll do to tentacles 13-24 when they arrive later in the year.

They aren't on bases as they come with them built in and I didn't really see the point in adding clear bases to something that could already stand up!

They may be tall, but they are simple to paint... so these should add another 30 points to the slowly growing total.


From Curt:

Ooh, sweet! I definitely want some of these tentacle, they're totally awesome! The purple skin with green suckers give that wonderfully whacky mythos look about them. Brilliant models for Pulp adventures like 'Strange Aeons'... Great job!