From TamsinP - All the SYW Russians (not for points)

A few people asked if I'd do a post to show off all the 15mm SYW Russians I've painted up during this Challenge, so I decided to do a quick pics post.


The stuff painted during this Challenge:

Just under 3 foot wide!

Discounting the 6 figures painted before the Challenge, that was 160 foot, 100 mounted, 2 limbers and 4 wagons. That has given me a very convincing lead in the side-duel (although AdamC, IanW and KenR could still overtake me if they've been frantically painting up a huge sandbag of figures). So, I've decided that I will paint up command stands for each of them.


Having got those figures out, I thought "why not take some pics of the whole army so far?". So I did:

Just under 4 foot wide!

Horse grenadiers, Cossacks, 1/3 of the infantry

Cuirassiers and 1/3 of the infantry

Final 1/3 of the infantry

Hussars and Dragoons

The army currently stands at:
14 general bases
4 grenadier regiments
20 line infantry regiments
5 cuirassier regiments
5 horse grenadier regiments
3 dragoon regiments
10 hussar regiments
6 Cossack regiments
6 artillery batteries (plus limbers and 2 spare guns - 1 light, 1 howitzer)
6 wagons

...and plans to keep growing it (as you do!).

ByronM: I am always amazed at how people can stay on task and get that much of one thing done.  I get a lot done, but always have issues getting a lot of one thing done, I find it far easier to bounce between things.  More power to you Tamsin for staying on target, and better yet they look awesome!

From ScottM: War of 1812 54mm US Troops (160 pts)

My submission this week is two units of 54mm War of 1812 US figures. These figures are metal figures from All The King's Men. First up is an artillery unit.

Next is a unit of light infantry.

And a couple closer shots.

These figs will be added to my 200 odd figures that are already painted up. Still need a few more to fight Lundy's Lane! And that should put me over my goal!

ByronM: Nice work Scott, and very interesting to see 54mm gaming pieces, most 54mm pieces I see are only for painting competitions.  Painting Napoleonics in 54mm would likely be a whole lot easier as the uniforms would be bigger and easier to deal with.  I assume these are for skirmish games? Or do you use them to each represent large numbers of men?  Either way, very well done.

Michael D. - 12 Mounted Italian Crossbows and CurtGeld (145 Points)

Well, as my first year in the challenge winds down, it's obvious I'll come up a little short of the 500 pts I had pledged. If I only knew then what I know now.... Clearly more specific planning and prep probably would have taken me where I'd hoped to be. But it's been great to be able to share with everyone, and I'm always learning more about the hobby.


Like my last post, this is part of my WAB Burgundian Ordonnance Army I'm taking to play at Cold Wars this weekend (instead of trying to finish the 100 or so points I need to meet my pledge.)

The figures are Perrys:

Finally, for Curt here's a young senorita doing here part to stop fascism:

I'm submitting this figure along with a number of other of Wednesday's Children.

The Italian Crossbows are 10 each for a total of 120 and then another 20 for the Curtgeld.

Again thanks to everyone for all the great feedback, and special thanks to Minion Byron for all his help.

ByronM: Nice work Michael with everything you did manage to get done.  The challenge is all about getting things done, while there are prizes and awards, that's not really what its all about.  So, if you missed your goal, no big issue, just try again next time, and as long as your happy with how much you got done and what quality you did, then its all good.  Oh and actually you get 145 points (you still get points for the figure for Curt itself, as well as the bonus).

From IannickM : Rule #8: Get five Kick Ass Partners (30 Points)

We don't have enough ammunition to shoot them all in the head. The time to have done that would have been in the beginning. No, we let them overrun us. We are in the minority now, something like 400,000 to one by my calculation.

An entry coming out of left field today, with 6 survivors figures from the original Zombicide board game. Zombicide is the only miniature board or wargame that my girlfriend actually enjoys. I think the cooperative nature of the game appeals to her more than the competition style of traditional wargames. It's also much simple. It's quite funny as she really gets into it and becomes a nervous wreck when the Zombies approach us from all sides! So she's been bugging me to paint the miniatures for the game, and I figured I'd give it a go in between batches of other miniatures. They are really nice figures, it's just that I have so many projects to do! 

Anyways, I started these during the Christmas break, and couldn't find the time to finish them. When Curt challenged me to a race to the finish last week-end, I figured it was a good strategy to finish these first! 

For boardgame game pieces they are lovely figures, even though the face details are a bit soft. I'm also not a huge fan of the semi-soft plastic used, but having said that I'm quite pleased with how they came out.

You will notice none of them follow the art from the game. I just don't like being told what colours to use, unless it's historical or accepted canon!

While obviously their main use is Zombicide, I based them the same as my Pulp project, and I can certainly use some of them, the police officer especially, in my Pulp games.

Now, I just have to paint all the Zombies from the game...next challenge, maybe?

And a small 30 pts to add to my total. I've now surpassed 650pts, I'm into uncharted territory (I'm a slow painter)!

ByronM: Cool post Iaanick, I love these Zombicide survivors and am with you on the soft plastic and detail on the faces.  While the figures are really great for board game pieces, with just a little more attention paid to material and facial detail they could have been great miniatures as well.  Regardless, I love your take on them with the softer colours on the chain saw wielding waitress being my favourite.  Her and Amy (the goth) being my two favourite Zombicide characters in the game anyway :-)

TeemuL: Return of the Oddities of the Week (45 points)

A mixed bag again this week. First some Legend of Drizzt minis I almost finished last week. 3 Hunting Drakes and 1 Yochlol, Handmaiden of Lolth.

I gave the drakes a basic lizard look, green scales and red back. Eyes are black with a smallish white dot and teeth are Ushbati Bone. They are all identical and that soft plastic, that they use a lot in the board games. These have nice details though and basically no mold lines.

I tried something new with the bases, I tried to paint some dungeon floor on them. Looks good from the distance, but it is far from perfect. Anyway, I have lots of these miniatures still unpainted, so there are chances for practice.

Yochlol is some kind a shape shifter. Description from Wikipedia:"Yochlols appear as tentacled blobs of melted wax and continually emit a foul stench. They also have the power to change their shapes—usually to a comely drow female or to a spider (usually a black widow). They can also change themselves into a gaseous form, allowing their unknowing victims to inhale them, and then suffocating them."

I used different browns, some yellow and lots of inks to paint her. I'm very happy with the result and the eye - it was sculpted and big, so it was easy to paint. She is filling almost the whole base, but I painted some dungeon floor there as well.

Then something different, 3 Dwarf Longbeards for my WHFB army (notice the square bases). I started painting these in January, but they were buried under Chaos and other models. In general I like dwarfs, but painting these 6th Ed Longbeards is just painful. They are basically all beard and armor, all texture, no surface to paint. Lots of details, but not that much colors. I'm quite happy I have now finished them and I have a full squad of 20 of them now. Something finished again.

Full squad

These didn't end up as neat as I hoped, but they fit nicely in the back rank, no problem there. I used only yellow and blue on these guys and on the same parts, but when they are with others, they don't look that uniformed. The shields are of course red, there was no choice. :)

And finally two elfs from LotR, a banner bearer and an archer. These both are part of the Gil-Galad's King's Guard. I started the 12 elf strong squad in the last challenge and with these two, that group is now finished. They are similar to regular elfs, but they have a better fighting value (which is basically useless, the fight value of normal elfs is usually high enough) and I have used bright green as a color instead of grey/gray.

As I have said before, these plastic elfs are just a joy to paint, especially when compared to those Longbeards... Now the King's Guard is finished, but I still have some regular warriors with bows and swords to paint as well as some heroes, like Elladan and Elrohir. I really would like to have elfs with sword and shield, but they were not made and converting them from these one piece plastics is quite a job...

Regular High Elf on the left, King's Guard on the right

High King Gil-Galad with King's Guard

These 9 25mm miniatures should give me nice 45 points. As my Curtgeld entry (25 points) is going to be released later today, my point total should be a nice 750 after that - exactly my target. But, I have still some unfinished business and I will create one more post before the deadline.

ByronM: Another good post for the my last day Teemu!  A great ecclectic group of figures, but I really like the elves and think the green, while very different than normal LotR elves, really works and makes them shine.  

BillA - Age of Sigmar and Miscellaneous (120 points)

Well, we're in the home stretch, and those three weeks of painter's block mean I'm a bit below where I'd hoped to be in the points count, but I'm not going to stop, shrug my shoulders, and let that stand.  No, as Mr. Kipling put it, I'm going to fill an unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run.  I've been painting up a storm, and while it's a tad bit disappointing not to complete my Warhammer Historical/Kings of War army this challenge, I have got something else to show for my labors that I'm more than pleased with.

I've been lured into Games Workshop's Age of Sigmar, and a local Warhammer affiliate store is running an escalation league - in March, we play with 500-point armies, in April we boost them to 750, in May to 1000, etc.  So here is the first five hundred points of the "Sons of Flux," a Chaos warband swearing allegiance to Tzeentch, the dark god of Change, Magic and Mutation.  We have two units of ten Chaos Warriors, armed with handweapons and "Chaos Runeshields," complete with a full command, and leading them into battle is a Chaos Sorcerer Lord.

I've gone for a predominantly "cool" color scheme, with armor and cloaks in blues, and even blue-gray skin on those showing flesh.  The furs draped over their shoulders were painted up as polar bear furs, and the bulk of the metalwork is in silver.  I replaced the silver with "Antique Gold" for the Sorcerer Lord to really make him pop on the battlefield.  Here are a few close-ups:

Standard Bearer #1

Average Warrior

Chaos Sorcerer Lord, complete with heterochromia

Next up is Reaper's "D'kuhl M'Broon," a member of the "Bathalian" race, a stand-in for Dungeons and Dragons' iconic (and legally-restricted) Mind Flayers.  I've painted this fellow up (and this is in fact the third time I've painted this figure over the years) for a painting contest at my FLGS towards the end of March; I'm quite pleased with how he's come out, especially the red of the cloak and the highlighting of the folds on his black robe; with the red and gold cloak, and the bluish tint to the robe, I've jokingly begun calling him "Dr. Stranger," since his colors match those of Marvel comics' Sorcerer Supreme.

The skulls on the base are extras from the sprues the Chaos Warriors above came on, to disguise the fact that D'kuhl here is on a slotta base - he had a big chunk of excess metal stuck to the bottom of his integral base that I didn't have the tools to deal with, but it fit into the slot perfectly.

And finally, my last model for this year's painting challenge: Reaper's "Eldritch Demon," from their Bones line - who are we kidding? This is good old Cthulhu himself, in a convenient size - I have him glued here to a 50mm round base.  I decided to change up my color palette from my usual for Cthulhu-critters; while D'kuhl above was painted with Reaper's Ghoul Skin triad, the Eldritch Demon was basecoated in Reaper's "Olive Drab" and highlighted with "Worn Olive," before being given a final highlight of a 50-50 mix of Worn Olive and Yellowed Bone.

I opted to make the integral base a tiny spit of land projecting from the sea, with the base painted in Reaper's "Deep Ocean" and drybrushed with "Marine Teal" and "Surf Aqua." The base will be getting a few coats of high gloss varnish as soon as I can stop by the store and pick some up - by the time this post goes live we'll be in the throes of a massive late-season snowstorm, so we'll see how soon I can make it to the store.

And that's it for me this year.  This will be my last entry for the 7th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and I think between these and my Curtgeld I should juuuuuust squeak over my goal of 500 points.  Cheers everyone on another great Challenge, especially to Curt for wrangling us all together and the Minions for keeping us in line!

22x 28mm figures = 110 points
1x 28mm monster = 10 points

ByronM: A great post Bill, I especially like the red on your reaper figure it is very well shaded and looks great.  The other figures look good as well, but that one really stands out.  On the chaos warriors, may I suggest a wash of something dark over the gold?  It looks a little too shiny and clean to me, but maybe that's just me.  I like the painting on them it is just the gold that looks a little too shiny.  Lastly that Cthulhu looking figure is very good, I really like the aesthetic and the paint job on him.

Oh, and congrats on reaching your goal for the year!

StephenS: Looters separated by centuries (30 points)

First up is my portion of the Curtgeld that a group of us here in Australia are putting together. A Landsknecht caught in the act of appropriating some loot after a hard day of pillaging. The Dux will be basing all of these together and presenting the finished 'masterpiece'. The figure is a 28 mm model from Artizan, and hopefully I've not made it too colourful or cartoony. It is a troop type I have very little knowledge of.

The second figure is a 28 mm figure from Warlord games and represents a Nazi party official who has been called up (no doubt unwillingly) to lead a unit of Volkssturm as part of my slowly growing 'Fall of Berlin' force. His portly figure in a period of such shortages suggests he has been requisitioning more than his fair share of supplies. Food is probably not the only thing he has stolen, so he can wear the label of looter too. Tying  the two mini's neatly together, in a not at all contrived way! Oh wait, it has just occurred to me that they're both German in origin, I could have probably done something with that...

You will have to excuse the photos, I'm running a bit short of time to try and take something more professional, some sort of deadline is approaching :)

Hopefully that is 30 points all up, though perhaps a deduction is needed for the temporary lack of basing on the Curtgeld?

I'd like to take the time to thank my minion, Byron, for all his efforts in keeping the rag tag Wednesday group in some semblance of order ;) In all seriousness, thanks for giving up your time to help Curt make this challenge happen. It has been much appreciated mate!

Cheers.

Steve

ByronM: Great work Stephen, I especially like the nazi official. He looks like he has been enjoying the spoils of war a little more than he has been participating in the war so far. I am with you on the not knowing the period well for your other figure, but it looks good as well to me, and I like the facial expression.  Hope to see you back next year!

KyleC - 65mm Samurai (12 Points)

So here is a new release from Mr Lee's Minis, but also my latest paint job. The Big Haired Samurai.. smoking a reefer, and ready for a fight if one happens to come near him.

The socket will get painted black along with the other showcase pieces coming up for shows soon, but in the meantime he is sitting on a nice and easy base to show off the painting of the figure more so than the basing works.

Really had fun painting this piece up which was Sculpted by Oleksandr Bilibov from Ukraine.

I look forward to painting up another version of this in the near future here. Might do a bit more atmospheric work on him in that case and a slight conversion on it as well.. but it should be fun all the same.


Now to see what else might get painted in the next few days :D

ByronM - Wow, excellent work Kyle!  Now I want one!!!!  I love afro samurai, the show had such character, and this figure and your painting captures it so excellently! Damn, now I have to track this down.  Truly great work on painting this guy, the shading on the jeans and shirt especially look great, as does the flesh tone.   

Since he is bigger than a 54mm I am going to give a few more points than that, so 12 points for this guy. 

Wednesday Minion's Last Shift.... You're Welcome :-)

Well, today is my last shift as the Wednesday minion.  I would like to say thank you to all of the Wednesday crew for making this a fun winter with a lot of cool painted miniatures having been submitted. Probably even more importantly, thanks for putting up with me, then again, not like you had a choice! :-)

I hope everyone had fun and that you got done what you wanted over the winter, I know I did, and that you come back next year.

With that, I leave you with my last Hump Day meme, one I have been saving since day one, and no, it doesn't have a camel or a minion!