From StuartL: Even in death, I still serve (20 points)

Hi all,

    Just a short post from me this week. I work part-time teaching junior high school students to speak English here in Japan. I have roughly 300 students at any given time, and this month is when they write essays. So, I have 300 essays to proofread and spell check. Fun. Unfortunately that really eats into my painting time. I had hoped to get more done for today, but even getting this done was a struggle.

    This model is a contemptor dreadnought of the XIII Legion, Ultramarines for my Warhammer 30,000 army. (Well, one of them). It is an older plastic kit from the Betrayal at Calth box set that came out in 2015. The model is very mono-pose, so I used a spare arm from the newer kit to build it's melee arm, complete with a massive chainfist and built-in melta gun.

    I originally had the model done yesterday, except for the decals, but when I went to apply them, I had a number of mishaps. The first few just would not release from the backing paper and wound up disintegrating instead. Once I got a new batch cut and ready, the first one went on fine, but as I moved the model to set up the next one, I touched it and it adhered to my finger. The decal on the kneepad refused to line up where I wanted it. It was.... frustrating.

    Eventually, I got everything in place and varnished, so those pesky things are there for good now.

    One of the differences between Warhammer 30K and 40K is that the 30K models have less skulls on them, a travesty, I know. So I did what any right thinking person would do and added some of my own. There are only 4 skulls, so not an amazing increase. I will take what I can get. It also adds to my Big Stompy Robots count for that side duel. Not enough for a Squirrel point sadly.

    This is a single 28mm scale vehicle, so 20 points for my tally this week. Not a lot, but it keeps my score moving in the right direction.

    My ongoing duels information:

Skulls - 222 (+4)
BSRoD - 17 (+1)
Squirrels - 14 (+0) - D&D Animals, 30K Militia, Plague Clowns, Afghans, Robots, Anglo-Saxons, Medieval Polish, Clan Smoke Jaguar, 81st West Africans, Undead, 10mm FPW French, Daemons of Khorne, Modern Vehicles, Turnip28

    That's it from me for now, back to the proofreading. See you all next week.

From Millsy:

Your line about "right thinking people" and extra skulls made me laugh mate. Clearly you are fully invested and anyone who thinks differently is a heretic and should be purged!

As someone who has been suffering the pain of decals of late I can sympathise. Seems like there is no way to know if a set have degraded until you try to apply them unfortunately. They came out well in the end so kudos for persisting! He looks sweet and the script on his chest is a great touch.

Well done! That's another 20 points added to your tally.

Cheers,

Millsy

From SteveA: Ultramarine Space Marines (30 points)

Sometimes the pile of shame demands attention over the logic of current gaming endeavors.  None of the top 10 miniature war games in my current list of games I am working towards preparing to field and play require any Space Marines, and yet, the Emperor plucks at my frayed spinal nerves like a drunken minstrel bothering an electric lute, reminding me of past passions and oaths almost lost to an aging mind.... 

Since I have been casually playing SPACE MARINE 2 the video game,  the grey and nearly forgotten Marines in my pile o'shame have been calling out "Paint Me!, Display Me!!"  and to Heck with the Armies for games you are actually aiming to play right now!

Thusly, I have thrust my hand deep into the heap of grey and pulled free these 6 mark 7 marines that had gathered naught but dust over 25 years, and here I now have painted as Ultra Marines, in denial of the forces for games I aim to field and play in the near coming years, but none the less welcome within my display shelves, as it was the Space Marines that did pull me into this fine mini painting hobby that both vexes and delights us! 

Perhaps now my mind and brush can be freed to paint more pressingly relevant things..

Total 30 Points:

30 pts = 6x5pts 28mm Foot figure  Space Marines

Squirrel: Switch up from previous post  10mm BlackPowder American Civil War Union to 28mm 40k Space Marines. . ** However, given blue is a predominate uniform color for both current and previous posts  I will endeavor to accept  Squirrel point submissions negated by my failing to escape blue shift between posts..

Skullz:   7  ( 7 human and alien Skullz decorating bases, I totally added skulls to these bases for ticking points on the AHPC skullz challege)

Well! These are some pretty nice Space Marines Steve. I've never painted Ultramarines myself but it looks to me like you've really nailed the blue armour here. It's always great to see models whose existence is measured in decades get that lick of paint to finish them!

Thirty points for you!

Dallas

From SanderS: Titus has arrived! ( 55 points)

 Hoi,

A very persistent and nasty stomach flu that pestered all of the family and the security settings of my computer keep interfering with me participating here for real. Both Arthur and myself would like to thank everyone that replied to our posts form last week and we will answer them in time and try to reply to as many posts you guys put up here from now on. 

Last week I told you guys I was working on a post for the Limbo circle of hell, but of course I chose some Bretonnians for this who are a lot more work than I had bargained for. So I am still painting them, they are not yet finished, but I have found a little time to paint up some simple Tyranids and a Space Marine character. 

These miniatures, Space Marine hero Titus (the main character from the hugely popular Online game Space Marine II) and 10 Tyranids are part of the Limited Recruit Edition of the WH40K introduction boxed set. No, I do not play the aforementioned game, but I do play the Tacticus game on my cell with Arthur and Titus does feature there too and I really wanted to try to paint him. 

The Nids are painted in the scheme I use for my Space Hulk Genestealers as well and I like the yellow and black contrast. In between nicer paintjobs I am also painting Tyranids for a demonstration army for the club which are blue and black and I will probably paint some during the Challenge as well. But these are my personal ones.  

11 miniatures in 28mm scale is 55 points unless I am mistaken. See you all next week!

Cheers Sander

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

Hi Sander

So sorry you, Arthur and the rest of the family have had a stomach bug ... that can be quite nasty! Hope you are all feeling better.

I really know nothing about Space Marines, or the Nids ... but I do like your colour choices, especially on Titus. What a great shade of blue. :)

11 28mm figures = 55 points for you

See you in Limbo next week??

- Sarah

From StuartL - No Squirrels were harmed in the making of this movie - Director's Chair - 270 Points

Hi everyone,

Last week I cleared the last stage of the studio, so it is time for my Director's Chair challenge. I emailed our most esteemed Show Lord about my goal for this area and got this response:

 "Now, what do you have in your collection that you’ve been avoiding, or have had all the intentions to getting done, but have not yet grappled with? Let’s see if we can get something like this off your to-do list."

I replied that I had a bunch of Space Marines that I had been meaning to work on, but got distracted chasing Squirrels, so I hadn't touched them. I got no reply back after that, so I am taking the silence as tacit approval of my plan.

For various reasons I have a gajillion* Space Marine for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer 30,000, and there is always something that I need to paint. Last summer I rebased a bunch of figures and started sorting and organising them with the plan to get them painted. Ages ago, I bought the Badab War books from Forge World and so I decided to start working on some armies for that conflict, as it mainly involves Space Marines Vs. Space Marines. 

*I counted. 

One of the factions in the Badab War is the Mantis Warriors chapter of Space Marines. Technically they are one of the 'bad guys' in the war, looking to secede from the Imperium, but their story is a little deeper than that. They were goaded into the secession by the real antagonist of the story, Lufgt Huron, Chapter Master of the Astral Claws and a bit of a tyrant. It didn't help that one of the protagonist factions picked a fight with them and forced them into the conflict on Huron's side. But enough waffling about the lore, let's look at some minis.

First up we have a captain to lead the army. I switched out the original head with a Mk.III helmet, obviously a relic of the chapter due to its age.

To take and hold ground, two full tactical squads equipped with a multi-melta and a flamer.

When you need to take the fight to the enemy, you need some assault marines, so here we have ten equipped with jump packs and ten without.

And to help deal with enemy armour, we have a devastator demi-squad with three las-cannons.

As I didn't much fancy hand painting the chapter logo on these models, I managed to find some transfers from a company called The Mighty Brush. Both the chapter logo and the squad markings are from there and they were really, really good. They took a while to come off the backing paper, but were very durable when I messed up sticking them in place, they conformed to the shape of the shoulder pads well and had almost no visible marks when they were done. Top quality decals. Sadly the web-store no longer sells chapter specific transfers, but they do have the squad icons and some other cool looking bits and pieces. I thoroughly recommend them.

All of the models are from Games Workshop, but they are of many different vintages. The model on the left below is from 2004, the one on the right is from 2022. Quality and design has come a long way. Of course, the prices have come a long way too.

And here is a shot of the force in its entirety. 

At some point I am going to have to get some vehicles for these fellows. 

Speaking of vehicles, I have also painted up a Damocles Command Rhino for my Warhammer 30K Ultramarines Legion. It is kind of a pre-requisite for the Ultramarines unique formation in the game, so I will probably need it sooner rather than later. I bought the kit from Forge World years ago and it has sat at the bottom of my box for well over a decade. When the new version of 30K was released, I dusted it off, cleaned it up a bit and stuck on a few 30K specific guns.

Between them, these models have 125 skulls on them, a welcome addition to my total.

The rhino only has one skull (on the side of the radar), how can the Ultramarines live with this shame?

Sadly, I have already scored a Squirrel point for Space Marines, so I get zero Squirrels here, hence the post title.

So for the scoreboard:

46x 28mm minis @5 points = 230 Points.

1x 28mm vehicle @20 points = 20 Points.

Director's Chair @20 points = 20 Points.

Total = 270 Points.

And that means that I have finished all of the different sets, stages and areas in the studio and cleared my points goal for the challenge with a week to spare. Just a few bits and pieces to clear off my painting desk now.

My Side Duels.

Squirrels - 40

Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Dwarves, Fire Giants, WW2 Polish, Daemons, Viridians, Vasa, Junkers, Turnips, Necrons, Tau, Genestealers, WW2 Japanese, Teutonics, Lizardmen, Gnolls, Arabs, Space Marines, Kung Fu Chinese, Wolf's Dragoons, Merfolk, Fishmen, Fish, Mummies, Greek Myth, Peasants, Desert Terrain, Guild, WW2 Africans, WW2 French, WW2 Germans, WW2 Russians, DKoK, Sengoku Fantasy, Fantasy Zombies, Undead Pirates, Blood Bowl Orcs, AWI British, Modern Zombies

Skullz +126 = 359

Turnips - 115 Points

Lovely submission, sure the Director will be happy. Love the Rhino

From StuartL - The Boys in Blue at The Hall of Heroes (277 Points)

Hello again everyone.

Today I'm submitting my entry for the final Chamber of Challenge on my to do list, The Hall of Heroes. Unlike some of the other chamber themes where it was tricky to find something that fits, I actually had a lot of options here. When I considered that this was likely to be the last stop on my journey, and what I wanted to achieve in terms of models painted, I decided that the best option was to go big for this one.

A while back I posted up a bunch of Warhammer 30,000 World Eaters and explained at the time about how I enjoyed the setting and how I got started with it. I'm not going to go back over that here and just jump straight in to posting up the minis I painted. One of my targets for this challenge was to get the core of my 30K collection finished up so that I can start to play more games once social contact becomes a thing again. As I had started my World Eaters, I needed suitable opponents for them on the table. With the title of the post, it should come as little surprise that I have painted up Ultramarines.

As the starting point for the army, I painted up 20 Tactical marines, or two squads in game terms. To support them I added a 5-man Tactical Support Squad and a 5-man Heavy Support Squad, armed with Melta-guns and Missile Launchers respectively.

To add a little more punch to the force, I added a squad of Seekers, a specialist team of Snipers/Assassins with the role of hunting down the enemy commanders and eliminating them. For those of you familiar with 40K, you may notice that these guys are in different armour to the other figures. I have used a mix of Mk.V torsos with Mk.VI armour to make them stand out a bit more on the table.

Finally, I built some close combat troops. The Ultramarines list allows them to field a unique unit called the Locutarus Storm Squad. While I prefer to use all plastic minis, these guys needed some extra bits and pieces such as resin jump packs, though I used the cheaper options from Spellcrow, rather than the official Forge World models.

I don't have a lot of vehicles for the setting yet, but I did get an old Rhino APC from eBay ages ago. The front of the Rhino had a lot of junk stuck to it, and when I tried to remove it most of the front hull went with it. A raid on my bits box later and I had enough to repair it after a fashion. By adding some guns to the front along with some extra armour, I cobbled together a tank hunter. A dreadnought was also added to the pile for extra fire support.

Finally, any force needs some officers to lead it, so I painted up a Tech-marine and a Captain. The Tech-marine is covered in Ultramarine Icons, so I could either use him for this army, or spend hours grinding down the metal details. The Captain has a resin torso, (also Spellcrow) and a plastic Jump Pack from a Blood Angels kit. 

All of the minis had transfers applied where necessary. Unlike the issue I had previously with the decals for the World Eaters, I had some suitable sheets in my collection for these guys. Luckily their insignia don't change much between 30K and 40K, and there are some 30K insignia available for them in the boxed sets I bought. 

Anyone familiar with the Warhammer setting will probably agree that despite all the stick Ultramarines get for being the poster-boys of the game, the lore does tend to depict them as being heroes, so probably suitable enough for the entry for this chamber. However, I did have one more model that I wanted to add, particularly because I have had it for ages. When I first became interested in the setting, way back when, GW had stated that they would never, ever do anything for the Horus Heresy (except Epic, but that had long since died as a game system anyway), and they especially would never release models or rules for the Primarchs. Luckily for me, other companies could see the value in making models for them and selling them. I spent a fair bit of money with a company called Kabuki Models, a small boutique company that appears to have closed it's doors (some minis are still available from Levelup Hobby). One of the figures I picked up was an unofficial figure for the Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion. The original head was tiny compared to the rest of the figure, so I substituted a standard GW head. Even without the base, the figure is taller than a standard GW marine mini, with the troops above only coming up to his shoulders. 

So, as the submission for the Hall of Heroes I submit The Avenging Son, The Master of Ultramar, The Blade of Unity, The Victorious, Robute Guilliman, (unofficial) Primarch of the 13th Legion Astartes.

By my count, that is 42x 28mm minis, 1x 40mm mini and 2x 28mm vehicles, plus the chamber for a total of 277 points. For my side duels, 250 of those points go towards the GW minis tally and there are 36 skullz painted on the minis. As I have already submitted a Warhammer 30K themed entry for the Squirrel contest, these don't add anything to that count.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 1266

Skullz - 492

Squirrels - 18

Fabulous! A points bomb! Just a few more of these and we'll be on our way to reaching the grand target.

I know very little about the Warhammerverse, but I do understand that your Primarch does have a rather uncharitable nickname.

That's 277 points in your bag for this entry.

Tamsin

From IannickM : Ultramarines at Millsy's Millpond (60 points)

When I first saw the different locations on the map, Millsy's Millpond was high on my list. I'm a nostalgia junkie, and so the idea of painting some old school figure seemed like an obvious stop for me! My first idea was to paint up some classic Oldhammer chaos champions or Ral Partha, but like it happens so often in this challenge my path got diverted. I've been furiously painting some Epic lately and I didn't want to divert my momentum. Luckily, Games Workshop has been at it for a long time and so was Epic, before its untimely demise.

The first wargame *battle* I played was the original Space Marine. Me and my brother got the boxset I believe for Christmas. We already had Warhammer but other than a few skirmishes (we were poor and building armies took forever when you could afford two blisters a month!) never played a big game. This bothered my father and he went to the game store and asked the guys for something "we could play straight out of the box". What we got was Space Marine, a massive box with LOTS of figures and terrain.

The game was great value, and to this day the figures hold up very well. So why not paint some for Millsy's pond? And I know the man is a big fan of Epic, so I'm sure he approves.

As I mentioned in my last post I've been working on an Emperor's Children force to face John's Blood Angels, but I've also been collecting a second force to paint a loyalist side to my traitors. The goal is to have two playable forces, as I'd like to surprise my brother with a classic game when he comes back from Japan, where he's been living for the last few years.

And so here's my first stab at the Emperor's finest, and my brother's favourite, the good ol' Ultramarines.

We start with a classic, with 4 Rhino armoured transport.

These are the original plastic tanks from the 1989 boxset. And when I say original, I mean original, i.e. the plastic tanks I got when I was 10! One of them was already painted an horrible yellow and since stripping these plastics is a real pain I just undercoated over the original paint job. The details were a bit softer but now its not noticeable.

Then 5 Contemptor Dreadnoughts, once again the classic plastic sculpts from way back. To be honest I'm not sure when these guys were released. Early 90s I would assume. They aged gracefully, and were an absolute joy to paint, with crisp details.

And here's the tiny gang together. These are more of a test run if you will, as I intend to go back to my traitors in anticipation of my upcoming game. But I'm happy I found my blue recipe and my colour scheme for the upcoming project.

 So...

• 4 Epic Rhinos : 8 pts
• 5 Epic Dreadnoughts : 5 pts
• Millsy's pond : 30 pts
• Bonus point for figures pre-1990 (1989, thats cutting it close!) : 10pts

Total : 53 points

--------
By Paul

The Blessed God Emperor of Terra approves both your game choice and your army selection. Your faith is strong and with these excellent warriors of humanity you can purge Xenos and Heretic alike!

Ahem. Sorry about that. I 'kinda' like Epic too. I still have my original Dark Angels force from 1992. It now takes up an entire moving carton actually.

I also love the background story behind it - I'm awarding bonus points for Gamer dad awesomeness. Please pass them on with a big thumbs up!  60 points 

JamesM: 3mm Ultramarine Terminator Detachment (Burch's Bluff) - 75 points

Hi folks,

Having planned for a little while to do some more work on my 3mm Sci-Fi collection, I thought a great entry for Burch's Bluff's would be some of my Vanguard Miniatures. These are actually 3mm Novan Elite Siege Breakers with 'Striker' heavy AFV's.

I've painted them up as part of my 'Calth' Horus Heresy collection. These are good proxies for Ultramarine Terminators and Spartan Assault Tanks.

The nice thing about this unit is I can also use different transport options such as Vanguard Maulers (Land Raider proxies), drop pods or flyers.

Gaming wise, Vanguard are working on their own system, but I have also been thinking about options for Epic40k or for the new Titanicus rules.

These are obviously small miniatures, but given Vanguard make 'truescale' models, these mini's are about 6mm vehicle size.

The infantry figures themselves are lovely.

Which makes it mental that I spent the time doing shoulder pad edging and knee pad colours. Plus weapons. I also added some Ultramarine decals to the Spartan proxies.

The bases are a mix of using miliput for craters and such, along with some of the interesting GW Agrellan Earth texture paints. I black edged the bases as well, just as they looked a bit cleaner.

Total figures:

6 x 3mm vehicles (which are large 6mm size models): 12 points
65 x 3mm infantry (which are 6mm sized models): 33 (32.5 rounded up) points
Location bonus: 30 points

Total: 75 points

***
This is a superb little entry here JamesM, although I could be playing favourites and be a little biased towards you since my middle name is James, so technically I am a JamesM as well.  Silliness aside....

Firstly, the figures look great and the details super crisp on them for something so small, I have never heard of the company before but will certainly check them out after seeing these!  Secondly, your painting of them is great!  Super clean and clear for such a small scale.  I also really like the little added details on the bases as it brings come character to the larger bases you are using.

I don't know of many rule sets out there for sci-fi in small scale, but I do know of Epic Armageddon (the last version of Epic that GW put out, probably 10+ years ago) and Greg, Curt, and I have had many great games with it.  It is fast, easy, and unlike any of their core rule sets actually a pretty good set of rules!  I would dig up a copy of those and just use them as a starting point.

- ByronM 

From JeremyM: Ultramarines Kill Team (47 Points)

Hi All,

Just made the cut by the skin o' my teeth this year. Some illness and family craziness derailed the best of intentions. But anyway here we go.

So Curt and I and a few other buddies in our group have become hooked on Warhammer 40k Kill Team. I've never really been into GW's stuff, but when the skirmish game hit and our friend Stacy brought it out for a game I was hooked. The first team I created was some Astra Militarium. They've been fun, but are pretty wimpy for the narrative games we've been playing...so I decided to try some heavier troops.

I picked up a few on ebay and one of the 40k starter sets and ended up with 9 Ultramarines, plenty for a kill team. I actually waffled a lot on what chapter to paint, but since the set came with decals for these guys, and I have lots of blue paint and box photos to examine I thought let's keep it simple.

My team (or roster at least as I'm pretty sure I'm over 100 points) includes a leader with a power sword; a veteran with a cool flag; a comms guy with auspex; and a 'heavy' with some nifty big fun I can't recall.


The set I got (I think its called strike first) also included three reivers for close combat. They are supposed to be pretty nasty so hoping to try these guys out soon. I rather liked the skull mask helmet they have.

I also had two generic marines left from the set. The bases were all cork board with a few bits I had to try and resemble an urban battlefield. The photos weren't great but I also tried out some realistic water in spots to see how that product worked. Seems okay, but I wonder if a bunch of gloss varnish would accomplish the same effect.

Anyway thanks for reading and happy painting everyone!

____________________________________

First, welcome back to the Challenge Jeremy!

I love the look of the new Primaris Marines and you've done an excellent job on these Sons of Ultramar, my friend. Did you use an airbrush as the blue looks very smooth - a great choice for Guilliman's spotless Glory Boys. I also like the clean and crisp brushwork on the banner - it provides a nice juxtaposition to the great rubble groundwork you did for the bases. 

I look forward to seeing these guys out for our next Kill Team mission - I'm sure they will be suitably punctilious and nasty. 

47 points for you, sir, including a couple more for the excellent banner. Great work Jeremy!

Curt