From GregB - 40K/30K Solar Auxilia Lasrifle Section (100 points)

The Solar Auxilia, 28mm figures from GW's Forge World

This submission is a Solar Auxilia Lasrifle section.  These are 28mm resin figures from Forge World, the small subsidiary (or division or whatever it is these days) of Games Workshop. These figures are some of the most recent releases from Forge World's every-expanding (for now, at least) Horus Heresy range of figures.

I call this groundwork combination "Autumn on Rijel 7"

For those folks who are not into the Warhammer 40K/30K setting, the Horus Heresy was essentially a giant interstellar civil war. Horus was a top Imperial Commander, with his own Space Marine Legion, and he was promoted to "Warmaster" by the Emperor, given control of nearly all the Space Marine forces during the tail end of a massive military expansion called the "Great Crusade". This was not a great hire by the Emperor - Horus turned against the Imperium and nearly half the armed forces, including the Marine Legions, followed him into a massive rebellion.  Ooops - maybe Horus was the wrong one to elevate... 

Section command - officer in front, comms trooper at the back on the right, and vexilla at the back on the left

Comms trooper with helmet raised - that doesn't seem like a good idea in the Warhammer 40k universe, but I like to have one or two open helmets when the figure options allow, and you get a couple of these types of head in the package

Still a bit of a bend in a couple of the laser rifles...oh well...

Needless to say this worked out poorly for all sides.  But it is a richly popular setting and it has been interesting to see GW finally exploring it with their 28mm figures in the past few years.  And while "star players" in this setting are still the big, scary, tough, genetically modified, heavily armoured and slightly soulless Space Marines, there are other forces involved. The "Solar Auxilia" is one of them.

Volley fire in the grim darkness of the far future...

Introduced in the most recent Forge World Horus Heresy book, the Solar Auxilia are meant to represent impressive soldiers who are nonetheless still well short of the strength of ability of the Marines.  In this sense they are the precursors to the Imperial Army, the standing force that would represent the bulk of the Imperial armed forces. The Marines would do the rough work, taking out whatever recedivist/alien/heretic/democratically elected regime was in the way, and forces like the Solar Auxilia would follow and take up garrison and patrol duties, and defend in any attack, holding out until Marines came to help. 

The fellow on the front right is reloading his rifle

The Imperial Army/Imperial Guard of Warhammer 40k is a long time favourite collection of mine in this hobby going back to the Rogue Trader days.  As I worked on my Legion project, I was waiting and watching to see when the "army" might appear in Forge World's Horus Heresy efforts. I have to say I was quite excited as soon as I saw these - a total dork about it, in fact. 

I love the bonkers back packs on these figures

The designer, Edgar Skomorowski, hit these out of the park in my opinion.  They seem part Victorian Sci-Fi, part Dr. Who, part Captain Nemo shock troop, and of course part Imperial Guardsman, all in the right balance.  They are armoured and impressive, but still appear slightly awkward.  They are futuristic and baroque. The laser rifles have a flintlock-style cut to the stocks.  The backpacks have some manner of bonkers pulley/bellows/system.  I love these figures!

Another shot of the packs...you can sort of make out the pulley/bellows thing on the back - ridiculous - I love it!

The rules call for them to deploy in sections of 20 models (!), so they are sold in packs of 20.  This submission is a single pack, and is often the case with Forge World the quality of the casting is hit and miss, but fortunately more "hit" than "miss" in this case (I only had to straighten about five of the rifles under hot water).  There is one officer figure (with a sidearm and a sword), a figure with a comms-set on his back pack, and a fellow mounting a "vexilla".

Example of a single trooper - you can hopefully see the grenade dangling from his left hip.  The uniform is a sort of space suit with padded/quilted sections, and armour plates hanging over

You can kind of see the elegant, baroque curves on the laser weapon - very lovely

 

The backpack has some manner of pulley-bellows contraption - I love the look of it.  Respirator maybe? Who knows...

"Hey, those Space Marine guys can't be that tough, right?"

In the actual game these figures will be torn to pieces in no time at all, particularly if they go up against Marines.  But I don't worry much about that. I am very much enjoying painting these and I am planning to have a chunk of them ready to play in some games set during the Horus Heresy.  More have been primed, so I hope to see quite a few more finished during this Challenge.  I think this lot will get me 100 points - hopefully enough to pop back into the top 10, for a few minutes at least!

The Femme Fatale Finale...

Hi Everyone!

We would like to have our final say in the matter of our little side duel.

Sander's Last Words:

As you have surely noticed, the poll on our little side-duel has closed and after a hard fought battle the best Femme Fatale has won. Anne has came forth from the debris as the leading Killer Lady of this Challenge and she will receive the runner-up's model (i.e. mine) through the post.

We have had a huge heap of fun doing this duel and would like to thank you all for your kind comments and votes and of course Lord C. for all the support behind the curtains.
We would also like to make this Femme Fatale Duel a recurring side duel of the Challenge, but open to anyone wanting to participate. So we'll discuss this with Curt and perhaps you yourself could take us on in next year's Challenge!

Anne's Words: 

Here goes.

We had a grand time putting this together and hope you all enjoyed it.  Sander did rather a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen and I must thank him for that. 

The best part of this for me now is that I get to own Momma Cabada. Her bright blue eyes, dewy green skin and those wicked cleavers will bring me pleasure for many a day to come.  

Again, thank you Curt for allowing us to do this.

Greetings from Anne and Sander

AlanD - 28mm Bedouin Cavalry (90 Points)

My Seljuk army continues to grow with these nine Bedouin horsemen from Perry Miniatures. I kept things pretty simple with the colours and robes, although as always painting the tiraz bands on the upper sleeves was fiddly.

This lot should give me 90 points, and the lead over Tamsin until Saturday! :)

From AdamC - 28mm Valkyrie (5 Points)

One more small offering for this week a Valkyrie from Reaper miniatures its 28mm scale.  I had planned on having her as a companion to Thor but didn't have her finished in time for Saturday.  I plan to use her as a legend in a Gods of Mortals army.

 Its a very nice figure and it reminded me of the Heroine from the original Conan.

OK so they aren't that close in but I tried to make this lady as shinny as that one.

 That's the reason for the yellow clothing and gold armor, copper and silver highlights.

The detail on the armor is great far better than my camera can capture but you can get a sense of it in this picture I am really pleased with how the wash worked in this case.

From BenG - Welsh Hearthguard (25 Points)

My attention to this year's Challenge has been limited by lack of time at home. I've been too busy with the family during our summer break, having fun in the sun at the beach most recently!

My Welsh Warlord needed a band of loyal retainers, so these were the next on the painting table. They would have been finished a long time ago, except I had some trouble with the shield designs, especially with the axe-wielding chap. I had drawn a great Celtic wild boar on the shield with a fine-liner style pen, but when I varnished the shield, the ink just smeared all over the place! My blood pressure soared and a few expletives were uttered and after a cooling down period I settled on a trefoil pattern instead, which isn't really up to scratch, but I thought I'd quit while I was ahead :-(

On the other hand, I'm quite pleased with the other shield designs, the tartan patterns on the cloaks, and while the colours are a little plain, I'm pleased with how the knot design turned out on the banner.

From BrianB - Troll Forged Alien Assimilation Grubs (20 Points)

I recently received my rewards for a Kickstarter I pledged for a couple of years ago. These are the grubs from the alien assimilation host made by Troll Forged Miniatures. The grubs are the smallest of the miniatures in the set and infect humans, I believe by crawling inside them, and then grow up into the more insectile adult aliens. The main reason I pledged for this one are these little fellas and I got a big fistful plus an assortment of the other aliens that I'll hopefully get some paint on later.

I decided to paint them up in a pale grey with some purple and pink tones inspired by the Clark Ashton Smith story The Coming of the White Worm.

These are scaled at 28mm but smaller than man sized. I'm thinking I could use them both as giant worm creatures with my 15 mm stuff and bigger than average ones with my 28s. I took a picture with both to see the size difference.

From BurkhardS - Warzone Resurrection Imperial Hurricane Walkers (50 Points)

So as promised last week, I am finally going to keep up with new entries for the competition.

And continuing with my Imperial forces for Warzone Resurrection, here are two of their light walkers known as Hurricane Walkers. Now the Walkers themselves (minus the Gun Nests were done last weekend, but the bases and Gun Nests (and the Minotaurus from yesterdays theme round) took another week. The main time drain was the water on the one base which took ages to cast, followed by the gun nests. The later essentially contain there full models, but cast as one, which makes the details somewhat hard and time-consuming to paint. But here are the models.

Now I bought myself two models of these. That is... I did so even though I knew that in all likelihood I would only ever get to play one at any time. Under the OOB my group seems to prefer I am allowed only one light vehicles and these walkers always operate in units of one. But I wanted to see where I could actually take these models so I bought two. Usually those models come with a huge biohazard symbol on they right shoulder, but I felt this was over the top (even though they are fitted with poison gas cannons) and scratched that off. At first I had wanted to paint some freehand there, but I had to find that my skills with freehand have not gotten any better, so they will probably receive some custom decals in the future. But right now I still wanted to paint those areas and with something that could serve as a background for the decals later so I went with Tartan patterns. Since my unit is modeled on a SciFi version of the Black Watch, I picked wo patterns that can be associated with the unit. One got a Government pattern (the units pattern) and the other gor a Stuart pattern (like is was worn by the pipers during for example the Napoleonic Wars).

So up first is "Stuart" which is being depicted at a full charge to wards the enemy lines, dragging some barbed wire defenses through the mud. As one might see, the standard armament is a huge rotary HMG in one arm and a gas cannon in the other. On the back here you see the Radiative Dome. 

Personally I find the Radioactive quite redundant in game terms. It has a huge range (large enough to effect virtually the whole table in most games) and it does not distinguish between friend or foe. To make matters worse, the Hurricane Walker is not allowed to do anything else the turn it uses the dome, wasting all those other nice weapons. But the model comes with the Dome as the standard load out, so I had them and wanted to paint them.

Is there another option? Yes, there is! The Gun Nest. Essentially it is a place for the infantry to ride on the Walkers back, adding their own firepower to its arsenal. And while the range is not as good as that of the main gun, they add a hefty amount of firepower.

I magnetized both the Domes and Nests, so they can be switched around. The parts are actually a good fit, sone I could have done without, but I did not want anything to go flying, if I ever forgot, so better safe than sorry!

And before we move on... here is a detail shot of it dragging the barbed wire along.

Up next is "Government". I wanted him to stand in a huge shell crater with one foot, which was supposed to be somewhat submerged in muddy waters. This gave me some problems, since this was the largest body of water I ever did with Vallejos Still Water. I wanted to lowest layers to look a bit milky , but overdid it a bit, so one can not see through them anymore (which also hides a Bauhaus helmet in the water). The other problems were, that the water somehow drew the masking tape I used as a boundary in, creating a somewhat wavy boundary. And last but not lest, the lower layers had crept up the masking tape preventing the viewer from looking into the water from the side. So I eventually painted the edge over in black. So not quite the effect I wanted, but it can not be helped now.

Otherwise he features the same load out as "Stuart" with both optional Radioactive Dome and Guns Nest.

A word on the paint job here. I wanted these to have a WWI feel and look slightly worn. My first idea was to paint them in a dark brown or dark green, but that would have prevented me from doing chipped paint. So I looked further or rather to WWII. There is a Grant tank at Covington Which features a sand base with green camo edged in white. That is what I went for in the end. Although I went for a light green, to make the camo sublime. After the chipping, they both got two coats of filters to bend it all together. All in all I am very happy with the final looks.

So now I am going to leave you with two group shots in either load out.