From Jonathan O: Mighty with Word and Sword at O'Grady's Gulch (35 points)

There were other travelers on the path to O'Grady's Gulch, but I tried to keep my distance.  One way or another, this priest was making sure no one else approached Snow Lord's Peak.

 

With my path to the Peak again blocked and me being totally unprepared for the challenge at Benito's Brook, I have decided that I need a flight out of here.  Now, where did I put my flares for calling Lady Sarah's Balloon service?

******

This is a Warlord 28mm figure from the Fire and Brimstone collection.  This will be a gift for my good friend, Terry.  Many of you may know his excellent Miniature Mayhem blog.

http://miniature-mayhem.blogspot.com/

It could be a while before Terry gets this given the current troubles.  

Take care everyone.

That's a fantastic figure for your second entry of the final day Jonathan!

TamsinP

From ArthurS: Going to O'Grady's Gulch for me mum! (35 points)

Hoi,

Apart from the great Challenge X Review post next week, this will be our/ Arthur's last post. I myself really tried to finish some Sisters of Battle for Sander's Sand Dunes but they will have to wait till after the Challenge since the Lock-down, managing a household, Arthur's homeschooling and the digitalisation of my own work is taking a lot of energy out of me...

The lad really wanted to paint something for his mum, she asked him what figures he had left in his pile and basically that's more Space Marines and some historical figures. Mum dislikes Space Marines (anything Sci-Fi really) so a WW2 Brit it would be.

Arthur give this (25/28mm) cheap plastic Brit his usual unusual paint scheme. But he liked painting it a lot and that's fine with me. His mum actually let drop that if we could arrange for a pink, blue, purple unicorn (uuurgh I feel awful where's the booze?!) she would actually accept to play a game of Heroquest with us.

So off to Impact miniatures we went and ordered a pack of my little ponies from them... oh dear oh dear, this is going to be a long lock-down indeed.

Well Arthur's tour of Challenge Island is finished and he'll be heading for the next best ship to set out for fresher waters. We'll see you in the Last Post next week!

Smashing work Arthur! Thanks for joining us for another Challenge!

TamsinP

ps Sander - I feel for you about the unicorns!

From StephenS: The Colonel Arrives At O'Grady's Gulch (40 points)

My offering to O'Grady's Gulch is a nice way to finish off the challenge as the said O'Grady is a member of our little gaming club (and is as generous as his island location suggests). I know Paul will  agree with me that our fellow club mate and friend, John, is also someone who gives just as selflessly.

This little offering of mine is a small way of saying thank you for all the times John (and his lovely wife, Robyn) have put into hosting our club members since our inception. His stories and culinary skills keep us heartily entertained, and his generosity is always apparent, whether putting on a gaming day or organising festive meet-ups.

I know John has been enjoying playing games of Sharpe Practice set in the Napoleonic Peninsula War, so my offering is a British Colonel on campaign there. Whether he gets a run with his fellow Redcoats, is attached to the Spanish irregulars John has been painting or used as a target for his newly acquired French, I hope he will find a place on the table somewhere.

The Colonel is a 28 mm metal figure from Warlord Games, and along with the bonus points, should be 40 points.

Cheers,

Steve

That's a very nice looking officer Stephen; I'm sure John will be pleased to add him to his collection.

From Bill A - The King in Yellow arrives in O'Grady's Gulch (37 points)

I had struggled quite a bit with O'Grady's Gulch, trying to find the right figure and the right person to gift it to.  When I pulled this figure (Reaper's "Crimson Herald," produced in Bones as part of the Bones 4 Kickstarter) I knew what to do with it instantly.  I'm not the first to see parallels between this figure and the mysterious, robed "King in Yellow" of the Cthulhu Mythos, but I'm quite pleased with how mine came out.

I'll be shortly sending him along to Oscar Rios, an author and publisher of scenarios and supplements for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.  Over the past few years, Oscar has taken me under his wing and taught me a great deal about writing for publication in the RPG industry, and has helped me enter the field for myself as I've transitioned from Oscar's apprentice to his colleague.  Appropriately, Oscar himself entered the field with a scenario relating to the King in Yellow.

He's 28mm scale, but 40mm-ish tall, and I've affixed him to a 40mm round base.  I kept him very simple, with a solid yellow robe, black-green skin with a minimum of highlighting, and only a little freehand, to draw the ominous and sinuous "Yellow Sign" into his book.  I'm thinking he should work out to 35 points?

MilesR:  Ahh maybe a bit more points wise 'cause he's a large lad - and scares me a bit - lets rate him as a 40mm!

From SanderS: Gloomhaven at O' Grady's Gulch (75pts)

Hoi,

Yeah I know: how did I paint so many figures so fast?! Truth be told: I didn't, these figures I finished shortly after painting the Crisis Protocol figures early on in the Challenge but kept for this particular location.

My oldest gaming buddy in town Mark has bought the huge Gloomhaven game together with some other people. If you haven't heard of this game it is an immensely immersive dungencrawler with a enormous amount of background and depth to it. The box and it's contents are very high quality and make for an enticing story. The players fight, puzzle and talk themselves through the campaign and while doing so "play new characters free". The characters come as a miniature with it's own cards, abilities and spells. Mark decided to keep all the figures in their respective boxes and not have a peak up front.

So I painted the starting figures for them to play with along with some 3d printed terrain before the Challenge's start.

A while further on, one of the other guys of their gaming group came over and asked if I could paint up the remaining figures as a surprise for Mark as well. So when he'd open up the little box for a newly released figure, it would be already painted. I have no idea what characters or function they're supposed to be so sorry for that.

So I set to work.

Now I said all game content was high quality right? Yeah well there's one exception: the figures! They are basically made in the cheap warping plastic also used for the first Reaper Bones series and I do not like them. The poses are strange and the level of detail and the crispness of the sculpts is horrible. That said they do look rather nice when done even saying so myself.

That's 45 points for 9 figures in 28mm and 30 for the Gulch bonus ergo 75 points for the tally.

On to Benito's Brook we go!

So the figures are weird but interesting and the paint job is fab, Hope Mark loves them

Martin

From PaulSS: O'Grady's Gulch - No Disintegration! (40 points)

Mrs Scrivs is a huge fan of Star Wars and one of her favourite characters is Boba Fett. So much so that this is the photo of us both having a meet and greet with Boba Fett at Disneyland back in 2017:

 This is the version of that photo she has as a screen saver on her phone, I should feel put out!

So, it's our wedding anniversary last week and I noted that there is a Boba Fett available for Star Wars: Legion, so I pinched my nose at paying $12.00 for a single plastic figures and bought him to paint up for her and got him done this past Saturday.

It's actually a very nice model to paint and did not feel like it too me too long at all to do my usual base-coat, wash, highlights. Victoria is delighted with him and he has pride of place on the shelf above her desk.

One 40mm foot figure with the location bonus should be 37 points towards my total.
-------
By Paul:
What a great fig - love the dynamic posing too! But the best bit is the backstory. Any lady who has a favourite bounty hunter and appreciates a miniature for her Anniversary present is definitely in our AHPC inner circle :-)  3 Bonus points for Mrs Scrivs for a total of 40.

From SebastianR: Making basecamp (plus bonus tanks!) (111 points)

The firelight played across my silent companion as he ate his beans straight out of the can. I knew trying to engage him in conversation was wasted effort. Any inquiry about him, the island or even or road ahead was met with monosyllables or grunts. He was a good shot and a sure guide and quite frankly, that was all I was paying him for. I supposed conversation was extra; way beyond my budget. I couldn't help but feel that the other travelers through this land had perhaps raised expectations in terms of pay. The settlement where I had picked up my guide - nestled in the empty cranium of some titanic humanoid war-machine, now long abandoned - had the air of the aftermath of a party. I was here to pick my way through the empties and find the one drunk friend who had drunkenly begged for a lift an hour ago.

Regardless, I had to make the peak, and it had to be soon, the weather was clearing up, and soon the island, and its many colourful inhabitants and visitors would be gone.

My companion froze. His keen senses must have picked up another badger moving at the edge of the firelight. He slowly placed his beans on the ground and worked the action on his leaver action. Following his lead, I drew back the hammer on the badger replant and strained my eyes into the darkness looking for the telltale sinuous shimmer of bunched muscle and pencil long teeth. Even here in this gulch we weren't safe from their predation. Tomorrow, the attempt on the peak would have to begin in earnest.

***

A friend of mine is into... a very specific aesthetic. It's victoriana, meets steampunk, meets post-apocalyptic. If you're thinking Mortal Engines you're on the right path, or hell, you could just check it out yourself. He's not selling anything as far as I'm aware, just constructing a (shared) world.

The recent lead pile culling uncovered a handful of pieces which I think fit in well with his vision; this particular piece of the challenge gives me the opportunity to paint one up and gift him the lot.

There's nothing particularly steampunky about this figure (a more adventurous sculptor than I might decide to glue some gears on it) but the wild west is contemporaneous with the British Victorian period, and there's something about his gaunt aspect and demeanor that says post-apocalyptic to me.

And because I need three photos of the thing, here's Andromeda, a massive floof, wondering why she isn't getting any attention. (Also I solved my lighting setup problem!)

In my first non-challenge bonus points submission, here's a bunch of 6mm British light armour, light armoured vehicles and APCs for Team Yankee.

I've been sitting on a job lot of British late cold war vehicles for some time now, and have finally got around to stripping and painting them (plus supplementing them with a number of fresh GHQ models.

It feels almost unfair to compare the GHQ models to whatever the other ones are, such is the difference in the quality of sculpts.

I've been getting a lot of use out of my airbrush, as I feel that brushing on paint, or even spraying from a can leaves to thick a coat and can obscure details. It's a been a mixed experience.

With one whole formation from the new WWII Team Yankee British book filled out, there's plenty more in the pipeline. The best thing about 6mm is that you have both the space, time and money to do any and all forces you want, at least more so than other scales.

With 2 jeeps (proxies for the Spartan command unit) 16 Scorpions, 8 Scimitars, 4 Fox', 4 Strikers, 4 Spartans (actual spartans for the as yet unmade AT support team) plus my taciturn rifleman and 30 bonus points I make that 111 all in.

Lovely stuff Sebastian. I think it's a good idea to go with 6mm for Team Yankee - it gives a much better look than 15mm.

TamsinP