From KyleC - Warp tribute for Sarah - 75pts

So I need to get to the tomb as I have quite a few skulls that are in need of painting.. And I mean.. A lot... 😂 😂 😂

Right and now the tribute.. And their followers.. 

Triple threat here of bad ass take no prisoner ladies here.. All of these are the resin mercs by Forgeworld that I have painted up for a local mate here in exchange for a shed load of terrain for the home gaming... Which was really cool to get!

Quite a few followers.. From what I am told its almost the entire merc force for Necromunda.. So each got to be painted slightly differently and freely in the end. 

Both sets were painted separately but figured I would post them together here. And no idea why the first photos are so hazy.. Probably muggy lens on my cell phone again.. 

But yeah... So 10 28mm figures for 50 pts and a 40mm dog(?) for 7 pts and Sarah's tribute for 20 pts. Giving me 77 pts to finish January... And I say that as I hadn't know how well January was for me for painting until I was chatting with some mates about it.. Seems I have painted a "few" models this month let alone in the comp so far... 

So I lined them all up together on the display counter and was pretty impressed.. Only the Fowls were missing as they are being used for playtesting Honk with my buddies kids.. 

But then there you would see a full 170 models painted for January... Like.. Um.. 😂 😂 Yeah.. And February I am planning another few large projects.. Let's get crazy here yah??? 🤔 😂 

From KyleC - Teleportation Gift - 25 pts

Wait.. More? Let's get in on this!

So actually I had. A really good painting session last night with some contrast paint, a large drybrush, and the odd wash to speed things up. 

For this my first gift to the witches to help bypass the pendulum chamber. Although I tried a few ideas none really worked for me. So here is the first (of many) female sculpts that I have planned out. And planned for this challenge I have!

This is an amazonian warrior by Bad Squiddo games in the UK. With her fierce Hampster riding mini me in front!

A really fun little sculpt and another easy 5 pts plus 20 for the challenge. Netting another 25pts?

Bit the Dungeon Crawl continues! 

From Curt: 'The Vengeful Spirit' - Flagship of Horus Lupercal - for Burch's Bluff (50 Points)

First, I apologize in advance for the rambling intro. Nonetheless, I think it perhaps helps to 'set up' the submission, but if its too geeky for you feel free to skip to the bottom for the moneysh... the final pics. :)

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Greg and I share a love of the 40K setting that extends back to the original 1st edition 'Rogue Trader'. While my interest in the 40K core game has waxed and waned over the years, I've always remained a big fan of  the whole operatic 'grim dark' feel of the setting, especially when done through its boutique periphery games like Epic, Titanicus, Necromunda, and the various role playing titles.

In 2006 Dan Abnett wrote 'Horus Rising', a novel which tapped into fans' interest in the 'Horus Heresy' and the early history of the Imperium - stuff that until then had only been peripherally alluded to in the margins of the rulebooks. Forge World, sensing an opportunity from the interest, began to issue a series of related figures, rule books and vehicles focused specifically on the Horus Heresy. It's turned out to be a great success for them. Now, with over 60 novels in print and a separate division created exclusively for this 'early period', the Horus Heresy now stands as its own unique entity in the GW stable. 

Mark Strong as Horus. Art from 'The Emperor and His Primarchs' by Miguel Iglesias

In a nutshell the Horus Heresy charts the fall of Horus Luprecal, 'The Warmaster,' chosen son of the Emperor. Horus is one of  20 genetically engineered 'sons' of the Emperor, called Primarchs. Each of these Primarchs controlled a legion of Astartes (Space Marines), huge formations which were far larger and more powerful than the later Chapters found in 40K. 

The Emperor utilized his sons and their forces to conduct a 200 year long Great Crusade to reunify the areas of space previously controlled by mankind. After this huge campaign, the Emperor decided to relinquish control of the Crusade to his chosen son Horus and return to Terra to attend to other duties - activities which, for his own reasons, he kept secret from his sons. Though Horus and the other Primarchs initially embraced this new mission and Horus' role within it, they began to feel abandoned and betrayed by their father's decision to keep them out of his confidence and seemingly left to whither on the vine. 

Horus's ego and plaguing doubts to his father's intentions were preyed upon by eldritch powers within the Warp and he, along with eight other Primarchs, turned against their father. Under the direction of Horus, they rebelled against the Emperor, beginning a galaxy-spanning civil war to install a new Imperium of Mankind where these newfound powers would take up a central role. Thus the Horus Heresy was born. 

The campaigns of the Heresy stretched over 9 years, killing billions, burning out numerous planetary systems and culminating in the cataclysmic Siege of Terra. The siege reached it's  endgame when the Emperor himself teleported aboard Horus' flagship, 'The Vengeful Spirit' to face his wayward son...

Whew! Well, with that little bit of background behind us, I can now show you what I've done for Burch's Bluff. Here is the flagship of Horus Lupercal, 'The Vengeful Spirit' in the livery of his personal legion, 'The Luna Wolves' before they became 'The Sons of Horus'.

When we fanboys think of 'The Vengeful Spirit' we often imagine it as the evil, hulking chaos-ridden flagship of the Arch-Traitor; the place where Horus and the Emperor finally meet their tragic destinies. So I thought it might be interesting to depict the ship just before Horus' fall from grace, when his beloved Luna Wolves were the Emperor's finest, when they were the first before their fellow brother Legions. 

This model was sourced as a print file from Thingiverse and generated on my Photon DLP printer. It's a nice multi-part model. I found there were a few small issues with deflection, but they were easily corrected - otherwise it printed and assembled quite well.

The prow fresh from the printer.

It's a pretty neat model, with magnet slots built into its design to allow one to swap around the weapons modules and prow configurations. I have it here with docking bays, gun batteries and a nasty Nova Cannon on the prow. 

For inspiration to the colours I referred to popular artwork depicting the Luna Wolves in their bone white armour. As a contrast to the white, I decided to 'gild' the weapon points and command areas on the hull. 

It's a fairly simple painjob, where most of the effort was in edge-highlighting the various nooks and cranies.

It's all ready for its voyage to the Isstvan system and points beyond.

Speaking of points, as the ship has the same mass as a 28mm vehicle let's go with 50 total (20 points with another 30 added in for Greg's location).

I hope you like her Greg. She was great fun to work on.

Curt

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Wow dude, she's a beauty! What a wonderful submission.  This is really, really cool. I must say I have been really anticipating what you might bring forward for this particular "Challenge Island" location, trying to guess what you might have come up with. You have not disappointed - creative, unique, perfectly on theme and well-executed.  It invokes Horus' Legion in its early times, kicking @ss and taking names in the name of The Emperor, all united in a long-term vision of galactic order...what could go wrong?

"Battlefleet Gothic" was another fabulous rule set unfortunately left to whither by the clown car inhabitants who ran GW for so long.  So to see a model warship that touches both the 30k setting and a long-lost rule set is spot on perfect. 

50 points for you my friend, this is just great!

GregB

Tribute Figure for Ev: Deep One Elder (25 Points)

Anyone who has followed Evan's glorious arc of submissions can easily see that he is a great aficionado of all manner of monsters and beasties. Ev and I also share a (perverse) love of all things Lovecraftian (as illustrated in his Curtgeld this year) and so I thought I'd pay my thanks for his minioning efforts this year by retuning the favour with this Deep One elder. 

This figure is from Uncle Mikes Miniatures who produces the excellent 'Strange Aeons' eldritch skirmish game. I quite like this chap as he looks rather sage and dignified in his rotting robes, hand elegantly draped over his belly. Of course, this just may be the pleasant afterglow of having recently eaten the mayor of Arkham, but you can still sense the gravitas. <Burp. 'Scuse me.>. 

Anyway, I hope you like him Ev. Thank you so much for herding the Wednesday crew with such effortless aplomb. I look forward to seeing you with us again for the next edition of this madness.

Warm Regards,

Curt

From Curt: Pink Horror Daemons and Tribute Figure for Barks' 'Pinkstone Fortress' (45 Points)

Hi All!

Once again, something a little off the beaten path today.

This time it's some Pink Horrors from the Warhammer universe. I did up a batch of these for a few reasons. First, they're wonderfully weird miniatures, with lots of animation and tons of whacky things going on with their constantly morphing bodies - so lots of fun picking out the details with the brush and colour.

Secondly, I needed a few of these for our ongoing Dark Heresy RPG campaign. Next session the adventurers enter an ancient abandoned Imperator Titan and some of these guys pop in from the warp to make things interesting for the party.

Finally, one of these (his choice) will be going to Barks as a big thank you for being such a great minion this year. Barks, I trust it will find a colour-complimentary home among your 'Pinkstone Fortress' collection that you've been treating us to this Challenge.

These five pink loons will give me a base of 25 points with another 20 for the tribute bonus.

Thanks again Barks!

Curt

From Curt: Sisters of Battle Tactical Squad, Immolator and Tribute Figure for Iain (75 Points)

The first 40K army I collected was Sisters of Battle way back in 1997. They were an all-metal range and so quite expensive to create a viable force (though I understand new plastics are now on the horizon). Nonetheless, I slowly amassed a decent sized 'army' and spent many hours painstakingly converting and painting them. 

I had a real soft spot for those gals, even though they almost always got zapped on the tabletop - I think the sculpts are still some of the best GW has produced and they just fit so well with the whole grim-dark 40K backstory.

A few years later, Lady Sarah and I were planning to take our first European vacation together as a married couple. At that time we were poor as church mice and were struggling to save our pennies for the trip. Anyway, some unforeseen expense came up that pretty much ate the piggy bank and threatened to force us to cancel our plans. Well, I did something that I'm sure a few of us have done and that's look at what's in the collection could be let go for fast, ready cash. 

After some hand-wringing I sold my Sisters collection on eBay. I remember they fetched a fairly decent price, which allowed us to have a wonderful couple of weeks loafing around France. While I wouldn't change my decision for the world, I've keenly missed those figures ever since. 

C'est la vie. 

During Challenge VII DavidB posted a wonderful force of Sisters to which I waxed nostalgia for my long-lost collection. IainW commented on the same post, complimenting Dave and saying that he had a box of unpainted Sisters that had been sitting in storage for years - I  quipped that he was a lucky sod.

Well, to my great surprise, this past summer, out of the blue, I received a large parcel from Iain containing not only his Curtgeld, but also a sizeable collection of unpainted Sisters of Battle and their attendant vehicles. Yeah, I know, wow. Iain refused to take a penny for them - he said he just wanted to see them painted up. As you can imagine I was pretty humbled by his generosity and so was committed to getting some of them done for this Challenge - and so here we are.

Here is a Tactical Squad with an Immolator APC tagging along as support.

When cleaning up these figures for painting I was considering what colours to go with. While perusing the web I found many very interesting and vibrant schemes, but you know, I have to say that I still prefer the bog classic black and red livery. It just seems to work so well with the figures. 

I based the troops on 32mm MDF rounds, with a square base reserved for the Sister Superior (thanks Byron!). I then glopped on some GW texture medium to give the parched ground effect and then coloured and drybrushed to taste.

In order to give the black armour a bit of contrast I did a highlight with P3 Denim and then applied a wash mix of diluted GW Drakenhof Nightshade and Vallejo armour grey wash. 

The Immolator was good fun to put together, but I still find I'm very much hit-and-miss with vehicles, so I'd call this clanker 'functional'.

Finally, as a HUGE THANK YOU to Iain, I painted up another Sister Superior for him to have as a memento of both his minioning this year and as a nod to his generous gesture. Thanks again, Iain! 

Curt

My pleasure and I have to say they look a lot better now than they did in my loft! They're great sculpts and I'm glad to see them in their classic colours ,the immolator is far more than functional and I'm terribly impressed that you've painted them so rapidly, usually I have to lay figures down for at least a year and alright usually more! I can't wait to see what you do with the jet pack squad and all the rest!
Scoring is a 28mm vehicle, 10 28mm figures plus crewman and flag so lets say 75 points for these really delightful Sisters!

All the best Iain 

Tribute to Phil and Sylvain: HP Lovecraft and a Exloding Star Destoyer(!) (20 Points)

The task of coming up with something to present to Phil and Sylvain, our Friday Minions, was fairly simple as I've been friends with them for several years and know some of their favourite things.

Phil and I are both big fans of the pulp genre, especially anything having to do with the Cthulhu mythos. So I thought it fitting to paint for him a rendition of the Great Man himself, Howard Philips Lovecraft.

HP Lovecraft was a bit of a strange cat. From reading biographies of the fellow you get a distinct sense that he considered himself out of step with the rest of society. Much of the horror of Lovecraft's writing is based on a sense of humanity's relative insignificance and powerlessness when juxtaposed against the terrors of the cosmos. Many believe Lovecraft's own feelings of social unease, racism and misanthropy are conveyed directly in his writings. Yes, 'ole HPL may not have been an especially cheery or warm human being, but he certainly had a knack for writing some of the creepiest stuff in English literature.

This figure is from Uncle Mike's Strange Aeon's range of miniatures. It's cast in an odd resin material which makes the detail somewhat soft. Nonetheless, I really like this impressionistic rendition of Lovecraft, with his tall, gaunt frame and his characteristic lantern jaw.  I decided to give him minimal groundwork and to base him a little off-center to give him more of a sense of unbalance and loneliness. 

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For Sylvain, I've made up a critically damaged Victory-class Star Destroyer.

Sylvain is an avid participant in our current Star Wars: Armada campaign, commanding a Rebel fleet in the hotly contested Corellian system. He's tasted both victory and defeat in the campaign and I know he dreams of putting this model down on the tabletop to mark a 'kill' against his Imperial foes (much to Peter's chagrin, I might add).

This model is a 3D design that I've resized to better match the scale of Armada. It's a fairly minimalist model, with not a lot of fine detail, but I think it serves nicely for acting as a casualty/wreck for the game. (I think I may go back and paint-in some running lights on the bridge and superstructure.)

...and check out the wonderfully dorky base I made for it!

Similar to my work on the Nebulon frigate and Corellian corvette, I've used fractal models of  explosions, adding some fire, debris and armoured plate in an effort to add a bit of drama.


I hope you like the figures guys. Thanks very much for taking care of the Friday crew - you did a terrific job.

I'm going to score the Star Destroyer as a 28mm vehicle as it approximates that size, so 20 points total.