From StephenS - 28mm Imperial Assault Figures (25 points)

For this weeks entry I've gone back in time, to a galaxy far, far away... That's right, I'm bringing some pew pew to the challenge!

These five figures are from expansions to the 'Imperial Assault' board/miniatures game from Fantasy Flight Games. This will leave me with only two more figures to paint, to ensure I have everything needed to play the campaigns from the core box, which I've kicked off with a few friends.

First up are three Rebel Troopers. For what is essentially a board game, the figures are beautiful with plenty of detail.

Next I have IG-88 and a Royal Guard Champion, who will both add a bit of punch to my Imperials, if I can unlock them during a mission. 

So, five 'big' 28 mm figures should be 25 points. However, I've only given them a glossy black base to simulate the deck of a spaceship, as they will be doing the rounds as board game pieces. So I'm happy if a few points need to be docked as a result.

Cheers,

Steve

Another Thursday crew member returns to the fray with something a little different and rather topical! I love what you've done with these Steve, especially the Royal Guard Champion who looks mighty fine in red and black. There's no requirement for you to base outside what would be appropriate for the miniatures in question so you've certainly earned your 25 points. Looking forward to seeing the remaining miniatures to complete the set... Cheers, Millsy

From KeithS: 28mm Warg Cavalry and Dwarves - 68 points

Despite power outages and a lingering (and an ongoing) internet outage, I bring you the following through my tiny phone screen and a quickly downloaded Blogger app (at least the lights are on to paint and take photos!)

First up are the last three Goblins, these ones mounted on Wargs. Not much new to say on our Gobbling friends -- they're clearly the same line as my previous ones. The Wargs, however, I really, really like. They have a tremendous amount of personality (and personality go a long way).  I did them in grey tones (I did three dozen Warg cav by Alliance in browns last year and wanted something new).

From the side:

This guy with the high back saddle I decided was the boss wolf. I gave him more grey around the muzzle and blue eyes instead of green. I wanted the rider in mail with the raised sword to be on him as he looked like a boss Gobbo but he had so many packs he literally was to fat for the saddle. Alas.

Next up are eight Dwarves (7 plus a bonus I guess) scaled for 25mm. I just got them in the mail as part of a Ral Partha Kickstarter using molds from ancient days (i.e. The 80s). They were pretty straightforward and I rather liked their look. 

The gang:

An axeman:

Swordsman:

I like to hand paint shields from time to time though I'm not at all very good at it!  These are supposed to be a red dragon and a white cockatrice which ended up wyvernish.  Meh. I've done better (and worse). Behind them is an interesting standard. For almost every figure I use tarnished bronze for anything gold or brass. But for Dwarves and Elves I go full shiny. 

Looking forward to a weekend of heavy painting (and hopefully restored Internet)!

Aah the perils of technology, I share your pain. Excellent work on the shields I have give them an extra 3 points. I thought the dwarfs looked at bit old school , but classic never the less , interesting to see them from the 80's. Hope your power returns shortly

From AlanD - 28mm SAGA Scots (103 points)

My Scots warband for SAGA needed a few reinforcements, So today's entry consists of a unit of warriors and one of levies (20 figures in total, so worth a nice hefty 100 points). All the figures are Gripping Beast. Here they all are.

First up, the warriors. As always, the shields are all hand painted, because that is how I roll. Decals schmecals. I also tried to do tart up their tunics with checks and stripes, stopping just on this side of sanity.

Here's one of my favourite figures of all time, photographed from Odin's point of view.

Then there are the 12 levy archers, but nobody cares about them, right?

Finally, and not for points, here's a Chronomancer and Apprentice for Frostgrave. As a few other Challengers have pointed out, one of the nice things about the Challenge is getting our kids interested and involved. My 9 year-old Valkyrie is pretty interested in Frostgrave, and painted up these lovely figures from Northstar. She did the basic block painting, I tidied them up, did some detail and made the bases.

More Scots Alan? There's an ongoing theme here and it isn't camels thankfully! These are nae so wee as we've seen before from you but every bit as good. Hand painted shields and tartans are indeed enough to drive a man to the edge of madness but it's more than worth the effort. I was going to suggest you receive a few extra points for the that but I'm more impressed by your use of the word "schmecals", an ancient Gallic term which roughly translates as "Argh, my mind canna handle this!". 100 points of minis and another 3 for the schmecals. Well done! Cheers, Millsy.

PS. Your little Valkyrie is clearly a lady of some talent. A wonderfully deep red matched with contrasting whites is a bold and effective choice!

From Barks - 15mm WW1 Tommies (102 points)

Here are some WW1 Tommies from Plastic Soldier Company's The Great War. These are plastic, and I've individually based them on 15mm washers.

I'm not yet sold on the basing colour. The Great War has quite a red-brown mud colour on the game board, which I haven't quite matched. However, I always see WW1 as a grey-brown muddy hell, so I may yet re-do these.

There's 51 figures here, and more to come before the challenge ends!

Aha, it seems we have a first entry for the estimable Mr Barks! Knocking out 51 miniatures in one batch is a great start and I like very much how you've painted them. To my relatively untutored WWI eye the colours are spot on and despite the limited palette you've managed to get in loads of contrast to keep them interesting. 102 points for your total mate, and welcome to the scoreboard! Cheers, Millsy.

From EricMc - 28mm Mixed Bag of WWI Germans (120 points)

One mixed unit of infantry with a captured Lewis gun

This week I finished up the last of the WW1 Germans I have on hand.  More are on the way.  Its a sickness.

I also finished a late war anti tank rifle.   I didn't realize anti tank rifles were used that early until I opened a pack of Great War Miniatures and saw this beauty.   I will have to find a way to work this in.  But it will only make sense if I have TANKS!!!  There's my perfect excuse to buy TANKS!!! 

Next up are two heavy minenwerfer from Old Glory and one light minenwerfer from Great War Miniatures.  

I really love the sculpts of the Greatwar Games Snipers.

I am planning to use these messengers as part of a scenario.

Here's the whole gang.  Its a mixed bag of odds and ends.

As usual I had to experiment with the basing again.  I think its too bright and reminds me a little too much of the desert basing I used for my Dervish. I am sticking with my mantra that done is done.  No going back only moving forward.   Speaking of forward I am really looking forward to painting some French for next week.

Thanks for looking.

24-28mm figures--120pts.

Another great WW1 submission for today. I think you may be right on the colour of the bases, but certainly - done is done is grand mantra. My personal favourites are the messengers - always good to have some communication options to keep your lads going in the right direction

My name is Millsy and I'll be your minion today

Welcome fellow Antipodeans, both real and honourary. My name is Millsy and I'll be your GIMP Minion for today and hereafter each and every Thursday until the final week of the Challenge. I've been looking forward to this. Oh yes... I have indeed.

They say the best way to bear pain is to accept it and make it your own. We're about to find out if that's really true. The next few weeks will at times seem endless, a high anxiety journey into the deepest, darkest depths of the night with brush in hand.

Mind bleach at the ready Dave...

That's because all the while you're slaving away I'll be here. Lurking in the shadows awaiting your "submissions" to which I will subsequently apply my very own special, tender ministrations. The kind of love and attention which only those of us who have cried "Juliet Bravo" can understand.

Juliet Bravo! Juliet Bravo!

Will your heart be racing while you await my response?
Will my commentary assuage whatever hurt the miserly points awarded inflict?
And will the mind bleach stocks be exhausted before we're finally, irrevocably satiated?

All that remains to be seen. Only one thing is for sure...

The trick, my charges, is not minding that it hurts.

Cheers,
Millsy

From MartinC - German Sailors (45 points)

"Won't somebody stop that man!"  - not content with parking his Impi on MichaelA's lawn , and raising the undead , Martin crashes through his first 1000pts on day 17!

 So now that I have got the painting mania out of my system, for the moment, I'm back to painting at my usual rate.
These are German Red Sailors from Tsuba Miniatures and comprise a command squad and an assualt squad, I have another HMG to complete.

The sculpts are by Paul Hicks and and utterly brilliant and I hope that I have done them justice. I do have a problem with the way he does eyes but it's a minor gripe. 

They will form part of my German intervention force for my VBCW collection.

Oh i really like the crouching figures here Martin - can just see them sneaking up on some little village green in merry old England.  You so need to up your target!

ByronM - French WW1 rifle sections (95 points)

As part of my initial entry to Curt's painting challenge two years ago, I started a project focusing on the Great War and Canada's involvement in it.  Having completed a good number of both Canadian and German troops I thought I should expand just a bit to cover some of the other allies that would have been involved near the Canadians.  The first and most obvious choice would be British, but since the Canadians were part of the British contingent and in the same basic uniforms I decided to go with the French for something a bit different.

The Canadians fought near the French on several occasions starting right from their first battles at the 2nd Battle of Ypres. This makes it easy for me to justify adding in small units of French to many of the games that I run.

The figures here are Renegade figures and therefore a bit chunky compared to other manufactures out there, but are none the less very good figures, it is just hard to mix them with others as they look huge next to everything else.  There are 2 rifle sections each made up of 8 men and a leader as well as a big man to lead them all.  This adds up to a total of 19 figures.

I was not sure on exact colour schemes so I referred to Mr. Roundwood's excellent guide here: The Verdun Project: Painting Late War French Infantry – Part 2. Knowing the colours to use made things very simple and I airbrushed the figured with the base coat for the blue coats and then highlighted them with airbrush as well. From that point I went in and painted everything else following the colour guide. 

When it came to basing, I wanted to use something that would both match my German and Canadian basing, yet be distinctive to the French so that you can tell at a glance that they are a different force.  All of my WW1 figures are done with a dark brown earth base, the Germans then have bits of metal and wood added to show they are in trenches or prepared positions and the Canadians have grass and flowers showing that they are marching up from the rear lines across undamaged land. I decided to base the French with yellow and brown grasses and flowers to represent the dead nature of everything the gas touched after the first attacks.  Hopefully it works as distinctive enough.

The last touch was creating some cards to use this force in my Through the Mud and the Blood games.  Sticking with the same theme of my other cards I looked up some French WW1 posters online and used them as backgrounds.

 

Aaah the delights of "horizon bleu" - what a fine rendition you have done - to my eye it is always more blue than grey - I really like what you have done with these. Great that you picked up on Sidneys experience with it to - more power to the blog-o-sphere. I do think the French add that nice bit of colour to Mud and Blood - so good choice I say. You can almost smell the garlic looking a them. The contaminated grasses I think really work , its a good way of bringing everything together. Really good idea on the cards too.

From SeanS - The Merchant of Venus XII and his bots HU-E, DU-E and LU-E (11 or 8 points)

Hi All,

So my first entry since the free for all sees me doing a weird mix of size and manufacturer.

The Merchant of Venus XII is a wonderful sculpt from John Boyce and his Colony 87 line. I have more waiting in the wings, but just wanted to get something done. I rested on my laurels after week one and then got too busy once I got back home.

As you can see he has all sorts of odd gear. I tried to make his space suit look like a shuttle astronaut flight suit. I had all sorts of ideas for his poncho thing, in the end what stuck was the idea of a re-purposed tarp, you know the blue kind.

The bots are minion bots from Bombshell Miniatures Counterblast line. The robot menace. The aerial on the merchant's helmet and the bits heads made me think they needed to go together. I also channeled a little bit of Silent Running in coloring and naming the bots HU-E, DU-E and LU-E.

Those of you who read my blog may remember that the Merchant's staff arrived broken and had been unsuccessfully repaired at least twice. Well my vacation fix was not only ugly but was still weak. So I cut and bored a plastic tube to make a more solid join, it's the gold band above his had. I thought if it was a problem I should make it a feature.

As for points the Merchant is a straight up 28mm figure, although I didn't measure him. So he should be 5 points. The bots are perhaps a tad problematic. They are 28mm scale, but only about a half inch tall foot to head. I'm not counting the aerial. They are mounted on 20mm bases because I have a bunch and I thought they would look lost on a standard 25mm base. So if we assume their height is 12.5mm do we score them as 10mm or 15mm? Thus my total is either 8 or 11 points. Sorry for a tricky first entry Dave.

Oh and this is my first shot across the bow for the Sci-Fi duel. It's not looking good.

A grand start to your sci-fi duel. I have gone with 6 points for the bots - that Silent Running homage is just too cool. Personally I am always amazed at the range of sci-fi stuff that is out there - its not been an area of painting interest for me - so I always enjoy seeing what appears here. The Merchant certainly looks a character alright, and well done on the repair works its looks just fine - so frustrating when you get figures arrived damaged

From AaronH - 20 28mm ECW Infantry (100 points)

My next entry is 20 28mm ECW infantry from Warlord Games. These are the Green Regiment.

Most of a regiment

These are all Warlord Games plastics. I bought these guys in their half off sprue sale the beginning of Christmas. They are great value at that price, though decent even at full price. My one beef with this set is they come with too few vertical pikes and some horizontal pikes. Horizontal pikes may look nice but they are tough to play with, since pushing two units together is virtually impossible with them.

More pikes from this angle

The models themselves are really very good. They come with bare heads and a choice of head gear. This leads to my second gripe with this set. There are just enough hats if you leave out the bonnets, and not enough bonnets if that is your goal.

The two shotte stands from last year added on picture right.

The picture above includes the two shotte stands I painted with the Blue Regiment during last year's challenge; no points for them this year obviously. I have purchased some Foundry standing pikes to fill out the last pike stand. I finished priming them yesterday, so one for the Blue regiment, one for this one and two more for the other two regiments I plan on painting during this challenge.

I had forgotten how time consuming these are to paint. They have a lot of detail on them, and require a bunch of different colors. Not ideal challenge fodder in that respect.

They even look good up close.

The faces have a lot of character. The details are sharp. There are enough options, especially with head gear, that you can avoid having all of your little men look like twins.

Not sure why I tilted the camera.

These also give me my first twenty models in my competition with Paul. Since he's painting in 3mm I don't see how he has a chance of catching up with this lead in place.

I went with a fife for this unit. 

As I said last year, this unit was a chore until I hit it with the washes. That's when it really came together and started to look good. I did pick up some tricks that should help with the next regiment, but I need a break before I start them.

 Well thats a great start to todays entries. A rather nice green for the regiment I think - what is the recipe Aaron? Pikes are always a challenge to game with - i recall having some hanging from a jumper one game - Pike Paratroopers.. ! Overall these lads work really well as unit you have done a job bringing them to life.

From DaveD - Todays Trolley Dolly

Hi All - Minion Dave at the helm today - or thanks to Tamsin either Nursey or Trolly Dolly.. whatever is your poison.

I think I am playing the tortoise to this years hare's , with not even a point to my name so far..but as its my 5th one of these so far , we will see how things go. Seems to be a distinct lack of camels so far....

At this point in the proceedings I may need to remind you of the uses for Mind Bleach..when that all round ner'do well Millsy decides to "introduce" a special... he did not get his GIMP award last year for nothing you know.

May I also remind challengers we have our own facebook page where side conversations take place - if you are a user of said service you can find the link here Analogue Hobbies Winter Challenge

So to my Wednesday crew - lets see what you got.