From MilesR: Chambers Catch Up Submission (359 Points)

 

I've been a little remiss in wandering through the Chambers of Challenge - having posted only a measly 2 chambers to date.  Well this weekend was a catch up weekend for me and now I've got 6 additional rooms to report.

So sit back and prepared to be bored as you follow me on my tortuous logic for meeting the the stated themes of the Challenge.  Where I could, I tried to keep things related to my Stalingrad project.  

Chamber of Darkness:

The first submission is a greyscale version of a ruin for the Stalingrad project.  Now the base isn't fully greyscale as it couldn't use it in the game, but the building is completely greyscale .

The base of the building is a MDF kit from a Polish company called Terrains4Games and I highly recommend them -shipping can take a few weeks but the product is very affordable and of superb quality.  You've seen other versions of this same building and I've got 2 more to build.

It has a dark grey base color and medium grey highlighting for the exterior.  I started with some black paint and just kept adding white to lighten it up as the painting progressed.

The floor is a lighter grey and the ways a white-grey.  Some black and grey weathering powders were added at the end and voila a greyscale building.

The building is a little over 4 inches high so lets go with 10 points plus 20 for the room.

Larder:

Next up is a stroll through the Larder.  Submitted for this room are 2 Soviet Supply Dumps that will be used during the Stalingrad game.  The Soviets were forced to keep stockpiles of ammunition and other supplies along the Volga river banks and these would occasionally blow up due a stray German artillery round - sometimes in spectacular fashion.  The supply dumps are resin casts from JR Miniatures that have been in my lead pile for over 10 years.  These are nice but simple terrain pieces so how about 5 points for the two supply dumps along with the 20 point room bonus.

Hatchery: 

Ok this one is a bit of a stretch - Aviary is pretty close to aviation and these to HS-129's are definitely birds of prey.  These were specialized ground attack aircraft that saw extensive use on the Eastern front.  The model on the right is armed with a 30mm cannon while the one on the left has a 75mm PAK gun.

These models are from Battlefront and, like the supply dumps above, have been in the leadpile for about 10 years.

Technically the one with the 75mm gun was not available until after the Battle of Stalingrad but it was just too cool looking not to build.

Lets score these as 15mm vehicles so 8 points each along with the room bonus.

The Armory:

How about a bunch of 15mm Soviet tanks and rocket truck?  All of the models are from Battlefront

First up 5 KV'1's - these are my favorite tanks from WW2 and I can't wait to see them rumbling through the streets of Stalingrad

4 T-34's to reinforce the 5 I already have painted (pre-Challenge).  These are later model turrest (I messed up) but still will work for the game

4 T-70 light tanks.  Not the most effective of vehicles but they will be useful for searching out spot in the fascist lines.

Lastly 3 BA-10 armored cars and 2 Stalins Organs.

That's a total of 18 Soviet vehicles for the Armory and at 8 points each gets nets 144 points along with the 20 for the room.

Gallery of Ancestors:

How about a break from Stalingrad?  This gallery of ancients submission consists of 14 15mm US Infantry form Vietnam.  My father served in the war along with most of my male relatives of his age.  None of them had a lot of good memories from that conflict and would rarely speak of it.  My father passed at a relatively young age (56) and I always regret not fully understanding what he went through.

It was nice to do something that had a lot of green in the basing.  These miniatures were given to me by Ed from the club and I hope to get them on the table for one of his games soon.  

The Guardroom:

The last stop on my chambers walkabout is the Guardroom and (surprise!) we're going back to Stalingrad with another platoon from the 13th Guards Division.

The basing was done to match the terrain table and I like how it came out.

There are a lot more Soviets to paint up but I could get these 18 chaps done today.  At 2 points each thats 26 points plus another 20 for the room.

Well there you have it.  To help the minions enter all this into the spreadsheet of doom, a summary table of the points is provided below:

Total Number of Chambers: 6 for 120 points

Terrain "Cubes": 0.75 for 15 points

15mm Infantry figures: 32 for 64 points

15mm Vehicles: 20 for 160 points

Total Points: 359

From Jez Todd: Week 6 - AVBCW Character (5 points)

 Hi Everyone, 

So far managing to keep to my own personal challenge of posting once a week with something. This week only a single 5 pointer figure though.

The figure is part of the Wargames Illustrated "Giants in Miniature" range and is the Adrian Carton De Wiart figure that I bought for myself as a Christmas present! Apparently only 500 of these are made and according to the card I got mine was number 247/500. Please check out the website for the figure background as he has a fascinating history - a Belgian aristocrat who fought in WW1 and II. The figure was perfect for me as a character for my AVBCW campaign troops. 

                                        In front of Stratford Upon Avon Town Hall 

I am building up government forces for a game using Bolt Action rules but set in the mythical campaign of a 1930's British Civil War. Rather than a  squad member I thought I would use the figure as a spy character for some scenarios and added an armband with the British Union Of Fascists symbol. With his eye patch and one arm I think he looks the part!

AVBCW is mythical but if you are interested here's a link from a more academic historical magazine West Midlands History which has some interesting background and gives the BUF insignia. 

West Midlands History Article BUF  

So just a 5 points for me this week ..... have a great week ahead everyone! 

Cheers Jez

From Mike W - Warhammer Beastmen Herd (100 Points)

So after completing work on the Lizardmen and Skeletons in my last posts, I fully intended to return to something more historical. How wrong I was!

Figures waiting to be painted, can you see the red one?

Work turned out to be much busier than expected and so I reached out for a bunch of pre-primed Beastmen figures that were lurking in the same box and the Lizardmen I'd just completed.

Finished figures 

I'd put these to one side as they were primed in black with an over spray of grey, not my current preference but when I finally had time to devote to some painting the chore of cleaning up flash and priming 20-30 figures wasn't very appealing...

Unit from their Right Flank

Thus, I decided to work with the Beastmen, despite the fact that, many years ago,  I'd for some reason painted one of them red, my guess is that they were going to be some sort of Chaos Beastmen horde but this time round I decided to go for some more 'natural' colours.

And the same unit form the Left Flank

Not knowing what the natural colour of a Beastman was, I opted for the obvious, Army Painter Monster Brown!

Monster Brown is a fairly light coloured brown so I also used a bark brown to do all the Beastman fur  and hair. I drybrushed the monster brown with bronzed flesh to give the creatures a kind of semi-human effect,

The eight smaller, thrusting spear armed Beastmen

I opted for a dull red colour for all weapon handles, with steel blades and a brighter red loincloth on each figure.

Some of the larger 'Front Rank' Beastmen

Other details were added as required before using a flesh was on body parts, strong wash on fur and wood etc and dark wash on the weapons.

Close-up of Musician and a couple of the larger Beastmen

The banner was done to represent a Beastman hide with a red logo added. Shields were painted on the sprue and then superglued into place before matt varnishing all.

Command Figures (L to R), Standard Bearer and Champion, plus one other

By wat of change I pre-mixed some fine sand, electrostatic grass, died sawdust ad sponge fragments to apply to the figure bases.

Oddly the set seems to have been marketed as a Beastmen Horde / Herd, this seems t explain why 8 of the 20 figures are significantly smaller than the others. I took this to imply they were 'youths' and I have placed them in the back ranks of the unit armed with small shields and long thrusting spears, so they can join in the fighting from a distance whilst the big guys get in close with two hand weapons each.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it...

POINTS

20 x 28mm Figures @5Pts ea.   =  100 Points

From BruceR 12 Queens Rangers AWI (5 x 12 = 60 pts)

 Did I say I love Sharp Practice SP2?  The locals and I do FIW and now have branched into AWI so being of British ancestry it never bothers to paint and play the Brits.  Most of the gang prefer the colonists.  

I had a section of lights and six grenadiers and need to flesh them out, so Perry Miniatures command section and another group of grenadiers.  This will give me a unit of lights and two of grenadiers with a couple of figures for leaders/big men.  

These Perry figures are wonderful and being a metal lover I enjoy painting them.  

Maj. French

Lt Simco

The lights command (flags on order)

Grenadiers

I do have a section of regular lights and the order from Perry's was Hessians, because why not.   We shall see if I can get to them during the AHPC.  It was below zero the past couple of days.......Great painting weather.

Stay well all.  

From BenitoM: Roman Times Food Delivery Service - The Larder (35 points)

My entry in The Larder Room, the first documented food delivery service dated back to the Roman era.

This is a supply train that I painted initially to be part of Infamy! Infamy! support assets, but it can be used in any game ranging between the Ancient times to the Spanish Civil War. The supply train in Infamy is useful specially for the Romans a means of replenishing some throwing weapons like the pilum (the rules limit to two throws per game unless resupplying); or else it can be used as an objective in a game scenario (for example, Barbarians aiming to disrupt the roman supply lines by capturing the convoy).

 

Painting animals is tricky but I found very useful photos googling "mules and donkeys" on Internet. It seems that these animals have very light (many times white) areas in the inner side of legs and the belly, as well around the eyes.

These models belong to the Wargames Foundry Pack Animals series. The scale is closer to 25mm than 28mm as usual with this manufacturer, and the animals come with an assortment of heavy laden packs as you can see in the photos.

The theme I believe perfectly fits in the The Larden room ("vignette themed around food, drink..."). Therefore, with this entry I can add 35 points to my Challenge scoring: 3 x 25mm models @5 points each + 20 points bonus

From TomM: The Shrine: Morgwaeth's Blade-Coven (45 pts)

  As we descend ever further down the Chambers of Challenge, we stumbled upon a shrine, dedicated to the God of Murder, Kaela-Mensha-Khaine.

In all the blood and gore, his priestesses, known as the Daughters of Khaine, where seen bathing to preserve their unearthly beauty...

For this entry, I painted up the Morgwaeth's Blade-Coven from the Warhammer Underworlds range.  I wanted these ladies as my band to go to tournaments, but as it stands with Covid, they will actually be cycling out their generic cards before events pick up again hopefully late 2021.

But heck, it are gorgeous sculpts, and I must say that over the past year or so, it seems GW is pulling out all their stops on fantasy again, as the models imho look way better then their 40k counterpart.

And that goes especially for their small skirmish games, like Underworlds.  While some bands don`t appeal to me (anything Nurgle or Skaven for example), there doesn`t seem to be one ugly sculpt even amongst them.

So that makes 5 models for this entry, which should total 45 points after the inclusion of the location bonus...

From MartinN: Wrapping up the Airborne project [73 points]

I'm sure many of you know the feeling. In the one moment you're happily beavering away on a project when all of a sudden you feel it has run its course. For the moment at least. Now that's exactly what happened here. I got a few more British Airborne for Operation Market Garden done and that'll be it for now. I might get my acts together and add a few things to round out the opposing SS force... or I might not. We'll see.

First off a 6pdr AT-gun with separate Junior Leader. It's really a shame most manufacturers don't give you the full complement for each gun, or at least offer generic figures lugging crates and stuff about to round out the numbers. The 6 Pounder usually had a crew of 6 and thus I added a little dice well to the base to keep track in games of Chain of Command. I might still do a little removable filler to make it less obvious when sat in the cabinet

Next are the Jump Off Points to go with the force. I like doing specific JOP's for each of my Chain of Command forces and try to make them fit in with the theme of the force. 

These are followed by a second PIAT team to add yet a little more AT capability.

I was right in the middle of painting another support squad when I decided I was done with that project. So these six fellas are on their own for the moment. Maybe acting as additional crew for guns.

Points wise I'll claim 8 points for the Jump Off Points reasoning them not really being terrain but more akin to a (large) 6mm vehicle. Added to that a gun at 10 points, 2 prone figures at 5 points and 10 more or less upright figures at 50 points. 

Making for a grand total of 73 points.

AlanD - The first of many Dacians.... (50 points)

My plan for AHPC XI has been to focus on projects related to Rome and her enemies. This entry sees the start of a new Infamy! Infamy! warband of one of Rome's most challenging enemies - the Dacians.

Infamy does not yet actually have rules for Dacians, but I believe in my heart that they will be along at some point....in any case, I really just wanted an excuse to paint some of the truly gorgeous new Victrix figures.

Dacian shield designs are pretty tricky, and I'm not going to attempt to paint them. Hence this entry is all shieldless warriors with bows and the dreaded falx, while I wait for shield decals to arrive.

Dadazi's friends always knew he would get ahead....

So, ten Dacians should give me 50 points. These are great figures to paint - I'm looking forward to doing more!

From TeemuL: Awakened Wyldwood (45 points)

Not in the Chambers this time, but in the woods.

During the Challenge 9 I started to paint an angry Sylvaneth army for Age of Sigmar and last year we started a Path to Glory campaign. Sylvaneth needs Awakened Wyldwoods to move properly, so here are my first trees.

They are following the same colors as my Sylvaneth army, which makes sense to me.

Assembling these was not nice, difficult to get branches in the position. Painting was not nice, difficult to paint between the branches. But in the end they look good, quite nice for plastic trees.

Here you can see the trees with my Treelord. You can see the colors and the size.

I measured 7x12x6 inches, so a bit over 2 cubes. I ask for 45 points.

Nothing for Chambers.

45 for GW side challenge.

I counted 16 skulls.