From RayR - Gaelic Horse & Wagoneers (78 Points)

For my 2nd entry I've a few figures painted up for the Evil Gamesmaster extraordinaire Postie!!

Firstly we have 7 x 25mm Wargames Foundry Gaelic Horse for Posties Roman v Celt armies.

Postie did have decals that he wanted me to stick on, now me and decals just don't get on.

Its something to do with my sausage fingers....

SO I had to paint the shields as well, I'm quite happy with how they turned out, especially the blue and red one, third from the right.

Now I only painted the figures, Postie based them, so I expect Gremlin Lee to take 

a few points off for that, boo hiss!!! They should earn me 70 points normally.

And keeping to Ancients we have 12 x 15mm Essex figures

They're actually artillerymen but Postie wants them as wagonneers.

Pack RO44 to be precise.

Gotta admit they were a doddle to paint up.....as you can see!

So 12 wagoneers should get me 24 points, but once again I didn't base them, so Its down 

to Lee to knock off a few points.

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I suppose I'm going to have to begrudgingly admit I like this lot! Postie told me he'd sent a load of his work next door to you. I have just one question. Why? When your own unpainted lead mountain is now so massive and so dense that one more pack of models in the shed and the whole lot is likely to crumple under its own mass, form a black hole and swallow Gravesend without so much as a burp! 

OK the rules say I need to knock off 25% for unbased models but I'll throw in a few bonus points for those lovely hand painted shields. So I'll award 60 points for the Cavalry and 18 for the wagoneers giving you a total of 78 points for this entry. 

From EdwinK - Dungeon Delvers (40 points)

Late to the game, I know, but I break my duck with half a dozen Dungeon Delvers, and some of the creatures they'll find there.

I particularly like the bald guy, who reminds me of Colonel Blimp

The D&D game I've been involved with over the last eight months is decidedly Old School:  no fancy classes or multi-classes; a trap is more likely to be a pit with spikes in the bottom than a portal to another plane; and you're much more likely to meet rats that flying eyeball monsters.  That being so, the guy with the ten-foot pole is probably the most usefully kitted-out!

All the figures are 28mm,  The humans are plastics (a mix of manufactures and bits from odd sprues, including Mantic, Northstar's Oathmark and a Frostgrave Cultist); the dwarf is a metal Oathmark champion; and the giant rats some second-hand lead I picked up.

Six 28mm figures:  30pt
Four 28mm animals: 10pts?? - over to Lee...

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A group of intrepid dungeon delvers and some rats...all quite normal in some households! I have a few rat models myself from my D&D days. I sold a lot of my other monster figures, but the rats remained...I wonder what that says about my mental state? Or maybe its just that the Giant Rats were so cool in The Princess Bride that I suddenly realised they weren't a joke monster after all. 

Six 28mm foot will earn you 30 points. The Rats probably ought to be scored as 15mm figures but I'll throw in a couple of bonus points (I'm giving them away like sweets today) to bring them up to 10. So a total of 30 points for this entry. 

From ArthurS - Presenting Ranger and Shooter (14 points)

Hi,

My name is Arthur and I am 7 years old. My dad has this intrigueing hobby called wargaming and I like to play Heroquest and Necromunda with him and this has caused me to paint my own figures.

Two years back I had the honour of meeting the Snowlord in Antwerp and this resulted in me entering the Challenge last year, so off course I wanted to tag along for this year's event as well. I have already entered a Primaris Space Marine some time ago and here are his two friends. Since making up decent English sounding names is difficult for a Dutch 7 year old I have given them callsigns derived from their purpose or pose. So here are Ranger and  Shooter.

Ranger:

Shooter:

The 3 of them together.

These two chaps will earn me 10 points if my maths is correct. Curt; a picture of me painting is sure to come along next week!

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Wonderful painting Arthur, these two Marines look excellent. I have a soft spot for Space Marines (we go back a loooong way). Your guys remind me of a Space Marine army my friend painted years ago that were a particular shade of greenish blue. He wasn't very happy when we dubbed them 'The Turquoise Death', but he was much happier when he won his next battle with them. Two more victories later and the name stuck. Ahhh nostagia... worth a couple of bonus points each, just for that trip down memory lane. I'm awarding a total of 14 points for this entry. 

From MartinC - Quite a Lot of Indians (386 pts)

The Christmas holiday has ended and I've had a very restful week of shopping and painting. I've been charging through the Christmas Classical Indians.

First up are 3 units of cavalry.

Another basic paint job but more colourful loincloths and tunics - I assumed these guys were richer.

The streamer banner is cut from a 28mm Numidian standard. The writing on the shield says horse in Sandskrit. Makes them look a bit arabic but I've been practicing my Sandskrit. OK I've been using an online translator and finding the word that was easiest to paint.

Another unit

Still says horse. I have to say Sandskrit looks beautiful and IF I was a lingusit I would learn it. As it is I can barely master English

And another one. 

There are 4 main types of troops in an Indian army, Infantry (archers and warriors), Cavalry, Chariots and Elephants.

The 4 horse chariots have a crew of 6. More a cart than a chariot

This one is on a double sized base and like last weeks elephants more of a practice. The Sandskirt says chariot - my verbal imagination is kinda thingy

I have 4 more of these to paint

 Obviously the elephants are the coolest and I have painted may

These 4 have javelin armed crew. The painting is better than on last weeks

Again a went for the Sandskrit - my freehand designs weren't fab sand I was running out of ideas. This side says Elephant 

This side say various things like huge, massive and fat 

2 more elephants with bow armed crew and a king with a howdah

More slightly insulting elephant size descriptions and the king's one says king!

Finally a load of javelin/spear armed infantry with 5 to a base. Boring to paint

Another bit of a Numidian banner

So I have painted loads.

36 cavalry @ 4pts each = 144 

7 elephants - these were 15pts each = 105

50 infantry@2pts each = 100

1 x 4 horse chariot with 6 crew = 8+4x2+6x2 = 28ish

Grand total = 377.

I more week and I've done the Indians, although I need to buy 9 more figures - which is annoying

With the bonus round that takes me past my 1000 pt target so lets up it to 3000.

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Crikey Martin, your really testing my maths skilz (of which I have  none!). What a whopper of an entry. I'm really looking forward to seeing this army arrayed for battle at the end of the Challenge. 

So Points wise... I concur with your calculation on the Cavalry and Infantry, but I think your selling yourself short on the Nellies. I'm scoring these as 112 points (7x8pts treating the elephants as Vehicles, plus 21 crew for 42 points and I'm adding another 14 for the hand decorated blankets, 1 per side). Finally the Chariot, I can't fault your logic on the points for these but I'm throwing in a couple extra because this must have been a beast to assemble! 

If my mathmagics adds up that comes to a grand total of 386 points! Well done. 

Tuesday Fiesta!

Works for me....

We are a few weeks into the Challenge now and it’s been fascinating to see participant’s early entries. The seeds of some very interesting projects have been sown and it’s going to be great fun to see these develop over the remainder of the competition. Actually, personally, I don't like the word 'competition' to describe this event, because I don’t think it adequately describes the full Technicolor variety and complexity of ‘The Challenge’. 

When I describe the Painting Challenge to outsiders I usually refer to it as "a painting festival" although I'm not sure even that does this amazing event justice. (Celebration? Gala? Tournament?) However we decide to describe it one thing is obvious, everyone is having a great time and the standard of entries as high as it’s always been... OK that's two things, but you know what I mean! 

Talking of great times we have a wonderfully eclectic selection of entries to show off today. So far we have Indians and Nellies; Space Marines; Dungeon Delvers; Gaelic Horsemen; Weird Wild West; Donnybrook; Near future sci-fi; Ogres and Dutch Rebels; WWII Aussies and a Flotilla of D-Day LCA's. There is still time for the Tuesday gang to get some more last minute entries in. I'm sitting patiently by my computer waiting for more painted loveliness to appear. So heads down and get those brushes working folks!

From SamuliS: Maximum Firepower! (25 points)

My third and last Imperial entry to the challenge (at least until I buy more!). The final two miniatures to bring my Imperial force to roughly 1000 points which should be plenty enough as the standard game size is 800. Following on from the fast moving Scout Speeders it's time for the slow and lumbering AT-ST and General Maximillian Veers of the Assault Armor Division though without his AT-AT walker.

Again far better castings than the basic Stormtroopers with Veers having fairly crips detail (at least for a bucket plastic miniature) and the AT-ST being a really nice looking sculpt. The only gripe I really have with them is that a lot of the AT-ST comes preassembled leaving ejector pin marks and seam lines in areas where it's difficult or impossible to fix them.

Fantasy Flight Games has pretty bad assembly instructions so I went about looking at pictures from the internet and put the AT-ST together from that. All went well until in the final weathering stages I noticed there were some "L" and "R" markings on some of the parts and naturally I had them wrong way round (as did quite a few others judging from pictures online). I was contemplating on sticking the mini in a freezer so that the superglue would break and allow me to take them apart, but in the end thought that it would require so much extra work that I just didn't want to bother. Let's see if some Star Wars fan manages to spot the mistake on the model!

I'm continuing with the simple paintjobs here as well. The AT-ST was sprayed overall with light grey and then I added a bit of white to the mix and sprayed some of the larger panels with the lighter version using my airbrush. Finally even more white was added to the mix and a few small panels or raised details were painted with that by brush. Then chipping with an offwhite and dark grey followed by a few different enamel washes that were mostly wiped off. Fairly fast, but pretty effective! General Veers got paint slapped onto him everytime the bigger beast was waiting for something to dry and I mostly got both of them painted during a single day so a pretty efficient job!

The Imperials were a fun little project to do! All of the force was done in roughly 30-35 hours including all assembly and conversions so it was really nice to do something from start to finish so fast! Normally I have a tendency to go overboard with projects that are just a bit too large and take ages to get done, so finishing a whole army in under two weeks was a refreshing change and definitely a major motivation booster for painting!

All in all one 28mm foot figure and one fairly large 28mm vehicle giving me 25 points more to add to my tally.

It isn't Monday unless there's Star Wars! That walker has a lovely paint job. Congratulations on finishing your whole force, white is a challenging colour. Try winning the Ewoks' hearts and minds, things might go smoother...

Barks

From DaveX - 1/300 Ships - Freighter and Kamikaze Boats (32 points)

Well Cruel Seas appears to be quite popular.  I haven't pulled the trigger on the ruleset yet due to that 10 page Errata so I am waiting for a reprint until I do so.

In the meantime why not paint up some ships?

First off I 3D Printed a 1/300 Scale Freighter off Thingiverse.  I wasn't entirely happy with some of the fittings so I trimmed them off and used a paperclip to replace some parts.  I also added 2 paperclip masts that were drilled into the hull to make them nice and secure.  For a FDM (the printer that prints lines) I am pretty pleased with this!

I have never painted a model ship before so I decided to go with a fairly generic paint scheme and I havent flagged the ship so I can keep my options open for game play.

I decided my first fleet being one of the more unpopular fleets would be the Japanese.  Firstly I like unpopular and secondly they have Kamikaze boats! Who wouldn't want to play these?

Also being January, Japanuary is a most suitable and motivating theme.

The Cruel Seas Japanese Navy Fleet gives you 3 x Maru-ni and 3 x Shin'yo Kamikaze Boats.  From what I understand the Maru-ni's had a depth charge attached and would try and flee after deploying it and were operated by the Army.  The Shin'yo boats were operated by the Navy and basically were designed to slam into their target... Banzai!  

The Maru-Ni boats are grey and the Shin'yo boats are green.

Now my apologies for not knowing how many points these should be! The Kamikaze Boats are teeny tiny.  I will be painting up more Japanese Ships for the Challenge and for Japanuary!  This should also give me 7 models total for the SD3 Engage the Enemy More Closely Side Challenge.

I'm really appreciating seeing all this new Cruel Seas stuff. They are very evocative miniatures, and these kamikaze boats especially so. I believe there are sail-powered boats in the Japanese fleet- that takes guts! I think that 3D printing is taking off, and your lovely clean print is proof of this.

I've scored these as 6mm and 28mm vehicles, so that's a solid 32 points.