From SidneyR: OldHammer Undead for "Graveyard Beach" (30 points)

 

Coming into the final evening of Challenge XI, I had just one final Chamber to visit - "Graveyard Beach".

I wasn't sure if I was going to quickly paint a couple of miniatures for the Chamber, or just leave the Challenge after the "Altar of the Snowlord" post.  I was in two minds.  But, in the end, I thought - I really should just finish the last room.

So here they are - two quickly painted OldHammer undead skeletons, slightly angry that my photos of them (on my phone) does not look as smooth as some other photography.  Ah well, I guess that's just what happens when you're the restless undead - you're kind of at the end of the guest-list.

I've had these OldHammer Citadel Miniatures for a few years (possibly more like a few decades!).  They did paint up easily - they're lovely sculpts - and they'll see service with my kids when we break out a game of Dungeons & Dragons for an Easter treat.  I doubt that the kids will mind that my eyesight at 1am isn't really as clear as it might be when applying the paint!

So, my final entry, in the final Chamber, for Challenge XI.  Two 28mm undead, for 10 points and 20 points for "Graveyard Beach", giving a total of my final 30 points for Challenge XI.  

Phew...I'm done!  Thank you so much to Curt, Sarah, All the Minions, Miles, Tamsin, all my fellow Challengers, and everyone who read, commented and chatted about not only my posts, but everyone's posts.  See you for the after-Challenge party and, of course for Challenge XII!!

******* 

From JonathanO: Skeletons - Graveyard Beach (80 points)

 I had been busy finishing off a few figures to complete my journey to the Altar of the Snowlord.  The next location I was heading to was by retracing the route back to the Adventurer's Landing and on to the Graveyard Beach.  I needed something that I could paint quickly and that would also gain a few points as time was running out!

So I clipped the parts off the sprues of some Mantic Games skeletons and stuck 12 figures together then slapped some paint on the models and here they are:

I had pre-primed the sprues with Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray before the challenge, but I had not planned to complete these during the challenge so I had not assembled the figures.  After assembly, I touched up the undercoat with more Skeleton Bone, this time with a brush.  I wanted a dark colour scheme for the theme of this unit - the first in my Undead army for Dragon Rampant.  

I used mainly Citadel contrast paints as follows: 

Skeleton Horde - bones

Black Templar - shields and undercoat for armour and metal weapons

Stylish Purple  - tunic rags

Snakebite Leather for the belts and scabbards etc.

Wyldwood - wooden axe shafts

The armour and metal was drybrushed with Army Painter Plate Metal Mail.

Then a splash of dark magic potion (aka Nuln Oil) on the armour and weapons.

Some sand on the bases painted with Craft paint Burnt Umber and a drybrush of Skeleton Bone.  Finished off with a few Deadland tufts from Army Painter.

Done.

Isn't the Painting Challenge great for getting you to make progress on new projects?  In this case my Undead Dragon Rampant army has come to life!  I am quite pleased with how these turned out considering the quick paint job.  I will try to do some more units in the spring.

12 x 5 = 60 points plus 20 for the location = 80 points.

Next stop coming up soon....

From TeemuL: The Ghosts are coming, Graveyard Beach (90 points)

Uggla was a bit dizzy after the drinks and mirrors with Galanniel and it took him a while, until he realizes, that what he was actually seeing was actually happening. The dizzyness disappeared hastily when adrenaline kicked in to the old man's body and he started running. It was some kind of beach and there was fresh air, but this was the most nightmarish scene he had seen since he got himself lost in to the Chambers. "I'm not a hero enough for this...", he muttered while gasping for air during his sprint to the next Chamber.

My entry for the Graveyard Beach is 14 Dead of Dunharrow, 10 regular warriors, 1 with banner, 2 heralds and 1 king. Ten regulars are from the Pelennor Fields box, banner bearer is a metal blister and the latter 3 came in the box, which was released some time ago to give some hero oprions for the Dunharrow force.

I painted these in the same bluish grey color as the other 20, which I painted two Challenges ago. I had an old Blue Ink from Miniature Paints range, but it seems that it has gone bad. So I had to take almost as old Blue Ink from Citadel and thin it down a lot to get the similar effect. Some of these are more blue than other, because of my mixing during the process. The paint job is very simple, just two colors and he basing, so I guess they would not qualify for a GW event, but they should be ok for this Challenge.

That's 14 ghosts in 28mm for 70 points.

20 points for the room. In the movie there is a strong nautical theme, but that doesn't really follow to these miniatures, so I'm not claiming any bonus points.

These are all GW miniatures, so 70 points on that duel. I counted 8 skulls from the banners and heralds. There are 14 skull-like faces/heads, but some of them are bit ghoulish, so I don't know how to count them.. I'll leave that to Barks.

From PeterD Graveyard Beach (30 points)

It's getting to the last three weeks so I've got to get my skates laced up to make it to the Snowlord's altar in time.  Luckily I've managed to finish up anther bits and pieces to skate through some rooms on the third level.

First up is two Wizkids Zombies from my FLGS for Graveyard Beach.  I'll point out that I grew up in a town with a Hangman's Beach and misspent some of youth lounging on said beach.  I went with a monotone grey/brown effect on the zombies to represent sorta dead bodies that spent a long time in water and added some water effects to the bases to give the ideas of them shambling out of the shallows.

 

Two 28mm figures plus the room bonus gives me 30 points. I'm not sure if there is enough flesh come off of these guys to register on the Skull-o-meter(TM).

Well, if people will insist on burying the dead on sandy shorelines, this is exactly what you can expect!

Tamsin

From StuartL - A Miscellany at Graveyard Beach - 251 Points

Hello all,

Recently work has been irregular, unpredictable and generally taking up far too much time that could be spent on more valuable things like painting minis. Between working online, meetings and other such time consuming things, actually being able to sit down and paint for any length of time has become a bit of a novelty. Similarly, since I have been spending too much time in front of my PC for work, I haven't really felt like sitting down and typing out comments for every post on the challenge recently. My apologies to everyone. I do try to look at everyone's work, there have been some great entries in the past few weeks. So if I didn't comment on your submission, I apologise. 

Which brings me to this post. Rather than submit several entries over a couple of days, I have put them all together into one submission to save some time and effort.

First of all, here are some Weird World War II US Rocket Infantry.

The models are from the Dust Tactics game. I bought into the game heavily when Fantasy Flight was running it, as it was available from Amazon here in Japan at a reasonable price. Sadly, FF decided to drop the game, and then there were a series of debacles with Battlefront and the designer of the game running a kickstarter. The models are that soft kind of plastic that a lot of board game makers favour, but they look pretty good when given a lick of paint.

For five 28mm minis, these should add 25 Points to my total. And, as WWW2 is a new genre from me for this challenge, they add a Squirrel point to my tally too.

Earlier in the challenge, I painted up 5 old GW Lizardmen Skinks. Since then I dug out a bunch more of them from the hobby stash and painted them up too.

Here we have 42 of the old minis, still on their square bases. On the minis posted earlier, I had used a green wash on the skin, but on this batch I went with brown. After comparing the two, I find that the brown gives a much nicer shading to the figures and makes them look more natural. (As far as fictional sentient lizard folk go). I'll probably revisit the first batch at some point with a brown wash.

For 42x 28mm minis, these add 210 Points to my total and to my GW side duel as well.

When visiting my local dollar (100 yen actually, but it's roughly the same) store a week or so ago, I found some bags of plastic palm trees that looked like they were a reasonable size. I picked up five bags and brought them home to see how they would look as terrain.

They are a still a little on the small side perhaps and a bit rough around the edges, but good enough for the gaming table. The pirate figure in the picture is just there to give a sense of scale. I have since gone back to the shop and bought up the rest of their stock, so I should have enough of these to make a reasonable amount of scatter terrain.

The trees fill a roughly 3" by 3" by 4" area of the table, or roughly 1/6th of a terrain cube, so should score me 3 Points.

Finally, the part of my entry related to the Graveyard Beach section of the Chambers of Challenge. Some Pirate Ghosts.

These five spooky scoundrels are from Reaper's Bones line of minis and are cast in a translucent green plastic. I quite liked the look of it as it was, so I painted up the scenic bases and weaponry on the figures, but left the bodies and clothing more or less untouched.

To try to give them a bit more definition, I added a thin coat of Vallejo Transparent Green to the 'skin' areas of the figure. It doesn't show up in the pictures very well, but I think it helps.

Each of these undead pirates has a skull on their base (their own perhaps?) as well as a mix of flotsam and wreckage. 

As for points, I am not sure how to score these. As 28mm minis, they should come in at 25 points, but large parts of them are deliberately unpainted. So perhaps scoring them at half the usual rate? That should get me 13 Points, rounded up. If one of the minions disagrees, they can alter my score as necessary. I believe there was some mention of bonus points for the chamber if the undead had a nautical theme? There are also 5 Skullz for my side duel.

So, in total this submission should get me 251 Points, which I believe puts me over my target for the challenge with three weeks remaining.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 1016

Skullz - 456

Squirrels - 18

From PeteF: Undead Army Descends Upon Graveyard Beach (160 points)

One of the best things about wargaming conventions is the bring and buy. It's a sort of shame shuffle where you can try and offload one lot of unpainted minis in exchange for the option to paint a different group. Depending on where the new shiny urge is taking me and what is being sold at a bargain I can really end up with anything.

These old school plastic skellies (from the Evil Empire) caught my fancy when I was thinking about building an undead army for SAGA Age of Magic. I've since landed on a different faction - but you never know. Right? Plus - can you really have too many fightin' skeletons? No. No you can't.

At least the skellies have given me something to paint for Graveyard Beach. It felt a bit cheaty using Skeleton Horde (Does exactly what it says on the tin) contrast paint on the main bodies with a little dry brushing, so I went to town on the rust for the weapons. 

Five mounted skellies and 18 foot plus a room bonus for a total of 160 points. This is my fourth room on the third level so it must be time to approach the Snowlord's Altar (dramatic drum roll and sinister base music playing in my head).

Classic GW Bones ahoy! Lovely job on these and while no Cap'n likes to see rust on his ship, youve done a grand job of it.

Cap'n Wednesday

From SimonG: Infiltrators at Graveyard Beach - Soviet Reconnaissance Troops in 10mm (50 points)

Hopefully not stretching the rules too much my offering for the first part of Level III in the Chambers of Challenge is an amphibious landing on Graveyard Beach. The infiltrators in question is a Soviet GSFG recce platoon comprising four amphibious BRDM-2 armoured cars and their crews. 

They also have  AA support from a ZSU-23-4 and BRDM-2 SA-9. The former is also known as the "Shilka" which is of course a river in Russia so continuing the aqueous theme!

One of the key challenges in this case was capturing the essence of a mid 80s camouflage one piece in 10mm -- a few splotches and it seems to have come out ok 👌.

The ZSU-23-4 has always been my favourite piece of Soviet ironmongery and I've modelled these in 6mm, 54mm and pretty much everything in between over the years. I even took a special trip to Bovington for research last time I did one in 1:35 back in the mid 1990s. While all the other models are from Timecast the ZSU-23-4 is from Red3 (as the Timecast model was OOS at the time I ordered). The Red3 models are all metal and have excellent detail, especially in the wheels and tracks, but lose out in other areas to the Timecast -- either are a good choice and you can mix and match although probably not the same vehicle as the Red3 seem a shade smaller in scale.

I think this should be good for another 50 points (12 10mm figures at 1 point each, six vehicles at 3 each and 20 for the challenge) which takes me exactly to my original target! Next up a video game hero for The Hall of Heroes!

Great work on the camo in 10mm - I'll have to take your word for it that the chaps are there! *lol*

Tamsin

From BruceR Chamber of Challenges Graveyard Beach 5 28mm 25 pts + 28mm vehilce 20 pts + Chamber 20pts = 65pts

Muff McGillicutty has returned and assembled his royal marines to venture into the Graveyard Beach.  For this task the royal scoundrels have commandeered a tug and a good thing as well.  What else could you get through this cavernous stream in search of the "Red Casket" for Muff's benefactor.  Not sure what it contains just retrieve it we shall lads.  

The Royal Marines are pulp figures and are really great to paint.  The white uniforms are fun and the faces are great.  I picked these up to go with some pulp British army lads I had used for a Bolt Action force. So while in the subzero painting muse of the Challenge I grabbed the bag and knocked them out.

The tug is an Empress Miniatures Resin model.  I picked it up for those same pulp army brits I did thinking I would use on a show board to indicate my early war brits sat on the  Suez Canal.  Well the army was done but the board got tanks instead of a boat.  Again the Chambers Challenge had me grabbing it of the shelf, break  out the airbrush and go at it.  I base coated it rust brown and a light grey.  From there the brush hit everything else.  Not sure how it will play other than terrain at a dock.   Now to build a dock...............

Here is the crew landing at the Graveyard Beach and retrieving the "Red Casket".  Muff oversees the retrieval, while two sailors cover the other three.  

The Casket is a metal miniature from the lead pile.  Not sure where it came from and it has no markings on the back.  So I have painted the Royal marines, with the intention when purchased to flesh out an early WWII force for flavor.  I saw the water and thought, Royal Marines + Tug + Casket = Graveyard Beach.  So I hope the Chamber god's approve.

5 28mm Royal Marines 25 pts

28mm Tug Boat 20 pts

Chamber "Graveyard Beach" 20 pts

Total 65pts

Thanks for following the perils of Muff.  Thus ends the US 3 day weekend.

Cheers

BruceR