From JaccoK - 20mm late war Germans (96 pts)

I took a while to get the first entry ready but here it is.  These are 24 late war Germans form AB figures all in 20mm. These are an addition to my existing German army.

Last year our group started with the Battlegroup Kursk ruleset in 20mm. Our annual Christmas battle this was also with these rules (the Overlord add-on). I've added some pictures of the battle to get a feel. The table and scenario where made by Michael Fisser who did an excellent job as games master and as host.

Welcome aboard Jake! It's great to have one of the Dutch Waterbicycle Detachment in the mix this year. 

AB makes beautiful figures and you've really done them proud Jake. Your paintwork is excellent and I like that you've added little details like aerials to the radio sets. A great touch. 

That Christmas game looks just brilliant. Bravo to Michael! I had the pleasure to game with Jake, Rob and Michael a couple years ago while we were visiting Holland and it was a wonderful experience. Their games are stunning, great fun and you couldn't hope to hang out with a better bunch of guys.

I look forward to your next entry Jake!

From TamsinP - 15mm Righteous Army (194 points)

Five weeks in and here is my 8th entry for this year's Challenge.

Last week I submitted a command stand for the Righteous Army contingent of my 15mm Choson Koreans. Well, a commander needs troops to command so here are 96 Righteous Army infantry as my 8th entry.

In FoGR, the Righteous Army can either be taken as [Warriors, Unarmoured, Average, Bow*, Light Spear, -] at 5 points per base or [Warriors, Unarmoured, Poor, -, Light Spear, -] at 2 points per base. For this batch I've gone with the former - I may in future do a batch of the latter.

Getting in a little closer to each of the battle groups:

And a closer look at the command stands to show off the flags:

The figures are 15mm from Old Glory 15s; the flags are home made - after gluing onto the poles I went over the edges and washed the faces with thinned paint. For the blue and green flags I went back over the slogans with thinned red paint and a 3/0 brush as the wash had obscured them. I probably need to do the same for the orange flag.

I deliberately went for a grubby look as these chaps would have been living rough.

I make this 192 points unless Curt gives extra for the flags, which should put me back comfortably in the top 10.

These are terrific Tamisin. Such nice, clean paintwork and a very fast turnaround! Amazing. I really like the final shots of the flag waving mob (you know, that would look very cool nestled within one unit). I also really like the leaders and drummers. Question: I know you live in a London flat, so where do you store all your painted collections? You must have them squirreled-away all over the place!

194 points for you Tamsin. More than enough to place you back into the top ten. Well done!

From IanH - Age of Sigmar Nurgle, Characters and Sylvaneth (170 points)

Nope I've not fallen off the face of the earth, and yes I've been painting stuff since back before Christmas. Not as much as I had hoped but I was a bit slack in prepping figures for the Challenge and so a lot of the last month has been spent cleaning, gluing and converting miniatures.

I have however managed to knock out a few units for Age of Sigmar over the darkest days of the year. Since it's release I've become a bit of an AoS fan, 10 years ago when I stopped playing GW games I never thought I'd return, I got a little excited in the summer with the rumours of a skirmish game for Fantasy and following it's release and a couple of very good Youtube battle reports I took the opportunity to jump in and picked up the starter set and have gone on to flesh out the Stormcast, Khorne Bloodbound and I'm currently building up a sizable Nurgle Rotbringer force.

So what's taken me so long to post, well back before Christmas various people complained about my photographs, they were generally too dark and with no mancave anymore I had nowhere to set up a quick photo studio, after various conversations online and off I resolved to get something sorted, however with Christmas and my eldest daughters birthday this slipped into January. So come payday I bought a cheapish one from Amazon which arrived finally this week.

So here we are, what have I been up too?

First up are the pride of my Nurgle force, 3 Bile trolls, rot brained and covered in weeping sores and pustulent boils. The miniatures started life as some river trolls from GW, a significant amount of converting and greenstuff later these were the result.

Next up is a Chaos Sorcerer with Mark of Nurgle, again a conversion this time from the Maggoth Lord kit, I rebuilt much of his stomach, a new left arm and loincloth. 

The we go onto the Daemonic Footsoldiers of Nurgle the Plague bearers, these are fantastic miniatures, packed full of details and real character. I've another 10 waiting in the sidelines for when I get some time to build them.

As I've also got a small collection of Beastmen I decided they needed some magical support one day whilst I was in store and on whim I picked up a brayshaman. I've kept the colour scheme fairly neutral on this one so he can fit fairly well into either my main Khorne or Nurgle forces. 

And finally my buddy Charlie has jumped into AoS with me, however he is an achingly slow painter and I really don't like playing with or against unpainted figures so one ebay bargain later I added a few Dryads to help bulk up his starting Sylvaneth force. These were a really quick and dirty paintjob, airbrush base, a wash, a couple of drybrush highlights and a bit of detailing and they were done.

Say what you will about the cost of GW miniatures but they are really well cast, simple to put together and rarely anything more than minor mold lines. With much of their ranges now being in plastic there's plenty of scope for easy conversion work.

So the 3 river trolls I've scored as 54mm miniatures for 30 points, 10 Plague bearers for another 50 points, 2 28mm Characters (well 35mm these days but who's counting) for 10 more points and 12 Dryads for another 60 points I make that around about 150 points, I'll smile sweetly at the admins for any additional points for the conversion work. 

Otherwise that's me off the starting block finally and I believe that puts me ahead of Phyllion, guess I best get painting some more figures to keep that lead.

First, welcome to this year's Challenge, Ian!

This is amazing work!  I'm a truculent fan of the Old World of Warhammer, and I have a hard time stomaching the Age of Sigmar, BUT these miniatures are brilliant. Those River Troll conversions are just fantastic, and your paintwork is peerless (those pustulent boils make me want to step back from my monitor).

The rest of the Chaos force is suitably horrific and brilliantly painted, but I have to say you've done beautiful work on those Dryads, especially for a 'quick and dirty paintjob'. Amazing.

One thing I will suggest for the future is to provide us with larger sized pictures (say 800 pixels across the top). These are far too small and we miss much of the wonderful detail you've put into the figures. 

This submission  will give you a base of 150 points, but I'm adding another 20 for the various conversions. Well done Ian, and yes, you've put a shot across Phil's bow (and perhaps one in the waterline). We'll see how he responds...

From ChrisH - A few more Naps (326 Points)

Well as CanCon nears for us in the Antipodes my speed painting is getting into gear so that I can sell the odd mini and well buy more of course. As my preferred miniatures are historical I wanted to do a few more Napoleonics to rush through a few more points. Work is about to recommence and thus I will run out of time to do too many more. So first up another unit of Austrians and a nice little gun to go with them and some single based British from the Peninsular period. Finally another Zombie hunter just for fun and well I had some extra grey paint to use up and not waste.

Campaign style Austrians 2nd battalion for this challenge

Victirx rather than Perry's this time

I used a matt varnish with a dot of black to give them that gritty look

Love the gun the crew were not quite Victirx or Perry

Victrix Brits

Maybe for Sharpes Practice 2nd edition????

zombie Hunter 3

Overhanging grass could do with a mow

So Points wise 36 + 5 + 21 +1 all times by 5 and 10 for the gun should be about 325 I think. Still having fun so thanks for looking.

Okaaay, the Saturday bombing run continues...

Fantastic work Chris. Your Austrian infantry continues to wow and that artillery piece looks the business. I always have a hard time getting enthused about painting artillery so I'm always impressed when I see others do a good job on them. Those British look very smart as well and I agree that they will be great for Sharpe Practice. (2nd Edition? When is this happening?)

Your 'Austrian Zombie Hunter' is excellent (a great use of 'spare paint'), though she somehow seems far too dynamic to be from that race - maybe a huge bicorne, baggage train and a chestful of medals will slow her down. ;P

These 325 points vaults you forward to smash through your initial 500 point target (what were you thinking when you set that target?!). Congratulations Chris! Well done! Now I need you to set a revised goal to keep you dashing to the finish line.

From DaveD - Sudan Camel Corps (495 Points)

Here we have the classic unit for the Sudan, the Camel Corps. This unit was made up of an amalgam of various units and attached to the desert column. Here we have the Guards Camel Regt, Heavy Camel Regt and the Mounted Infantry Camel Regt. I still have the Light Camel Regiment (which was left at Korti guarding supplies) to do. I will do those with scarlet tunics -because I think they will look good!

This is a major unit for the collection with both mounted, dismounted close order and skirmish formations to complete. It was also a major economic investments (have you seen the price of 28mm camels and troopers!)  Fortunately I got a cracking deal on all the castings from James at Bicorne miniatures with 20% off and free postage - well if you don't ask you don't get!

 

3 x 12 figure mounted regiments 

Each camel has been given a slight tweak with the heads and necks bent slightly with variations of left/right/up/down to suggest more movement across the unit. Likewise a number of troopers heads are turned left or right for the same reason. I think 36 figures all the same would look very static do it was worth spending an hour or so sorting them out.

The camels have been painted in a range of colours but generally a darker colour than my Mahdist force ones. The British were forced to buy up as many as they could find to make the corps and a number of these were of poor quality and blood stock which from reading have been described as darker in colour.

Well if you have mounted camels - you also need dismounted camels and troops - see here we have a further 12 dismounted camels, and 3 foot camel holders.

These are all classic Connoisseur Miniatures - still by far my favourite camels.They are bulkier and have more presence the Perry ones and far easier to clean up. 

The dismounted close order troops will be along shortly.

I recently picked up a copy of the classic work "Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan" - its full of primary sources and fantastic line drawings - its been a real inspiration

 

Oh wow, this is just fantastic Dave. What a stonking addition to your collection. I think the time you've put in to simply repose their heads has really paid off when you view the units in their entirety. I have to say the dismounted (reclining? at rest?) camels have to be my favourite. Their poses, with their long necks arching slightly forward, look so wonderful and I love the various muted colours you've given them. What an inspiring (and formidable) entry. Bravo!

This eye-watering 495 points will see you shoot up the roster. Well done sir!

Celebrating our Progress

Well, we're past the 1/3 mark and the Challenge is cracking on at a brisk pace. Thanks again to our Minions who've been keeping the train on the rails. 

Even without counting the current Bonus Round we've collectively painted the equivalent of 4,370 28mm foot figures, and we have five participants who have brought in well over 1000 points each. Amazing stuff. Well done folks!

We also have our first Challengers who have surpassed their initial points targets. Alex and Ian have now broken out to 'the green fields beyond' and will now need to refocus on a new set of targets to take them to the finish line. Great work guys! 

Okay, on to a few administrative announcements:  

As a reminder, today (Saturday) will be the last day for voting for the 'Epic Fail' round so please drop in to make your selections if you haven't already. You have until 11:45 pm CST to cast your votes.

Also, Byron has been very busy keeping the Side Challenges and Duels updated (bless him) so please review the duel scoresheet in the right sidebar to check your progress. Byron has asked that if you find any discrepancies please just drop him a note and he'll make the appropriate corrections.

Finally, keep in mind that next week is the 'Defensive Terrain' theme round, so you just have seven days to get that done and submitted. It should be a corker!

Enjoy the day and have a great weekend!