From Millsy: 28mm Republican Romans (300 points)

Hi All,

Time to start cranking out some points as I return to work on Monday morning [sob!]. Once that happens painting time will be much curtailed so I needed to make a decent dent in the prepped mini pile beforehand.

This is the start of an army for both SAGA: Age of Hannibal and To the Strongest! These two (in progress) consular legions will eventually be joined by at least one, probably two, allied Italian legions. These fine fellows are Victrix plastics and are based singly for Age of Hannibal, however will be supplied with movement trays for To the Strongest! in future to preserve my sanity. The Allied legions will be multi-based only as I won't need them for Age of Hannibal.

Each consular legion will ultimately have the typical organisation of 1 x triarii, 2 x hastati and 2 x principes, plus an allocation of velites. The red legion is currently missing only the principes, whilst the yellow and missing both the principes and the velites. I'm waiting on more miniatures to arrive (the ones in pectoral armour) to build the missing blocks for these two legions. Finally, there will also be some equites romani and equites latini to and maybe a ballistae round things out.

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice 72 miniatures, however 12  of the velites were painted prior to the Challenge starting as a test. That means in total this submission is 60 miniatures for a tidy 300 points.

Hope you like them!

Cheers,
Millsy

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Wow! What a terrific paint bomb Millsy! Such nice, clean brushwork. Those vibrant shields just shout out, 'Look, we're Romans, just come try and stomp on us with your big elephants, you nasty Carthaginians!' Well, that's what they shout in my mind anyway. 

I look forward to seeing this legion grow with your coming reinforcements, Millsy!  Happy belated birthday and I hope you have an easy first-day back at work.

- Curt

From SimonG: A One Eyed Giant plus my first trip on Sarah's Star Yacht (60 points)

A little bit of a mixed bag this week with two very different sets of figures. Firstly landing adjacent to Caprica we arrive at Arda and deliver something fantastic and Tolkeinish -- Bronte the Cycolopean Norse giant!

Bronwen is a Black Rose Wars figure from the Stator expansion set (I've used a lot of these figures last year) and is a 50mm or so plastic sculpt. Quality is pretty good with plenty of interesting detail to work with.

I especially liked how the flames and glowing effects came out this time, I'm continuing to work on this sort of thing. Plus eyes which really pull a figure together.

Leaving Arda we hitch our first trip on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht courtesy of these two medieval sisters -- you can almost hear the conversation with the younger "lady in red" insisting that yes she is going to go off on Lady Sarah's caravan to the stars despite her elder sister wanting to stay and help look after her cousin!

These are Wargames Foundry figures -- a smallish 28mm but work well as table decoration for my Hundred Year War project. Nice work on the hair this time, plus my first time painting on nostrils (somehow they seemed necessary although not sure how many will be inspecting the figures from below)

Anyway I hope this carries me on to my next stop Glorantha where we should find some of Muninn's brothers and sisters!

Points wise I make this 10 points for Bronwen (54mm size figure) plus 20 points for the stop on Arda, then two 28mm figures makes another 10 points and 20 for Sarah's Star Yacht for a total of 60.

[For those that take an interest in these things many of these photos are focus stacked macro shots, I use Focus Stacker on a Mac plus a Nikkor AFS 105 1:28G mounted on a D750]

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Lovely work Simon. The Cyclops/One-Eyed Giant looks very imposing with his single gazing eye (and two scary hammers!), but I have to say that the two sisters are my favourite of this submission. The grouping is spot on for their sibling conversation and I really like the groundwork as well. As hobbyists, we spend countless hours trying to perfect camouflage, heraldry and uniforms, but we rarely consider the importance of nostrils. I think you're onto something here, Simon. :)

Great work!

- Curt

From PeterD: Female Goblin for Sarah's Star Yacht (24 points)

This female goblin archer wishes to book a trip on the Star Yacht arriving at planet Arda.

This is another pointy eared goblin figure from Wizkids.  There are lots of little details packed into these little sculpts.  This figure was being photographed last week to go live when I realized that she had a mail shoulder cape and needed to go back to the work bench.  It turns out that my iPad camera has sharper eyes than I do. 

I kept with the same muted tones and stony basing as with the other goblins.  Challengers in the know might have figured out that Wizkids packs these figures two per blister and that there may be another female goblin looking for passage late on..

That's 4 points for the 20mm figure plus 20 bonus points for the Star Yacht.  The 4 base points counts towards the fantasy duel not that it's going to help against Curt's paint bombs.  My journey through the system looks like this so far.

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Wonderfully characterful gobbo lass, Peter.  I really like these Wizkids goblins as they very much have a fun, Jim Henson look about them (I love that her quiver is pretty much as large as she is). I totally forgot about the Fantasy Duel until you mentioned it. Sorry about the fantasy blitzkrieg, mate, I've got swords & sorcery on the brain this year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have a great flight to Arda!

From Barks: Ruffians [Arda] (145 points)

 I've started thinking of these wuffians as wascally wapscallions and it is hard to stop...

Ruffians

Being a LotR tragic, I really like the Scouring of the Shire. For the uninitiated (spoiler)- having returned lost jewellery, Frodo et al. return to The Shire only to find it has been taken over by bands of thugs. The stage is set for conflict between ordinary hobbits and these brutes.

These are eBay rescues. I was pleasantly surprised to find some Forgeworld characters thrown in, as well as two nicely converted Wildmen of Dunland. I really like the browns in the Contrast range, which did most of the work. It is no small effort to ensure no two figures are alike. I used Vallejo rattlecan matt varnish for the first time, and I'm pleased to find it is really good (but smells awful). Testors Dullcote is hard to source, and this will replace it for me. It is almost too good, as it dulls metallics to a grey.

Thugs

Blackguards

Scum

Villainy

Converted Wildmen

Forgeworld characters

25x 28mm figures: 125 points

Location Bonus (Arda): 20 points

Slowpainter's ABC: V for Villains

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Ah yes, I love those last few chapters of LotR, and it's great to see a skilled hobbyist such as yourself, Barks, to bring it to (miniature) life. 

Great eBay score, especially with those Forge World 'specials', and you've done an excellent job in making theme into a fine mob of rapscallions. I agree, the browns in the Contrast range are brilliant and thanks for the Vallejo matt spray endorsement. I still have a few cans of Dullcote left, but I will be needing to look for an alternative if I can't find a resupply. 

Again, excellent villains, Barks, but I'm sure our Hobbit heroes can handle them.

- Curt

Sunday's Thought for the Day: 'You Must Whip It'

 Hi All!

Now that we're into the close of the week, I get to treat you to the fine work of some of our new folk, along with our wonderful minions. I guarantee you, the day is going to be epic.

As a gentle reminder to all those who have not yet submitted an entry, you have until the end of January 21st (12 days hence!) to pose one before the 'Cull of the First Month' (TM). Bwahaha!!

Seriously, I want to see all 101 of us at the end of the Challenge in March, so open your paint pots, give your brushes a lick and get lashing. 

Now, on to our Sunday programme.

- Curt

From ScottM: Skaro, Klendathu and a Trip (75 pts)

My first foray into the Quadrant system finds me at Skaro (strange doctors and weird robots). For this location I went with a Stargrave Medic. This 28mm metal fig is from North Star Military Figures.

From there, we went to Klendathu, the bug world. For this I went with a Wizkids Ankheg. This 28mm plastic fig is from their extensive Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures range. This figure will go nicely with the giant red ants I painted in last year's challenge.

And finally we take book a trip on Sarah's Star Yacht to the planet Vulcan. Our toll for the trip is this Stargrave Hacker. This 28mm metal fig is another in the North Star Military Figures' Stargrave range.

Next week, we'll continue our journey around the Outer Ring.

So that should be:

3 - 28mm foot figs = 15 points

3 locations (Skaro, Klendathu, Star Yacht) = 60 points

Total = 75 points

From Millsy

What a great collection of characters Scott! Stargrave is on my radar to try at some point and you're not helping my resistance unfortunately. The medic is brilliant, looking like he's balancing his options - scan negative, you get treated vs. scan positive, you get TREATED. Using an Ankheg as an alien bug is a moment of pure genius too and he (she?) is the perfect counterpart for your red ants.

75 points added to your tally mate and well done!

From ByronM - Kings of War Undead Army in 10mm - Part 1 (212 Points)

I used to love Warmaster and Fantasy Battle, but over time got tired of the look of Warmaster being 2 thin rows of models or removing individual models in Fantasy Battle. So, I went looking for something else and came across Kings of War.  Its an awesome simple and fast fantasy mass battle game that focuses more on units and positioning rather than individual heroes.  It's a fun game but at 28mm it just always looked wrong to me, as it is almost impossible to get the look of a mass battle game in 28mm on a 6x4 or even 8x4 table.  So, a couple friends and I decided, why not do it in 10mm, its cheap (as you can 3d print everything), super fast to paint (to a simple tabletop standard), and looks great ranked up!

I have to start by saying sorry for the image quality on these, I just for the life of me could not get good pictures of these. The camera just wouldn't focus correctly on them and kept washing out all the colours, and Photoshop decided to blow up on me as well, so until I sort that out I had no way to correct the colours or clean them up.

 

All of these models are from the excellent collection offered by Forest Dragon, and the detail is amazing! All the bases are from my company (Northern Lights Terrain) and are the standard Kings of War base sizes as if the units were standard 28mm scale.  I chose to do this as it allowed the game to play exactly the same as if it was being played with 28mm figures, and allowed a lot of space to pack on models to a base.

First up is the really cool looking Vampire Count on Undead Dragon.  He will obviously be my army commander.

 

 

 

Next up, a unit of Vampire Knights.  This is a hard hitting but small unit, only counting as a troop sized unit in KoW.  There are 40 heavily armoured Vampires packed onto that 100mm x 40mm base.

 

 

Next is a big regiment of Skeletons.  While I painted up a ton for the base (64 of them on there!), once I started ranking them up I realized I could have done another 20 or so to completely pack the base, but it still looks good with so many ranks and a bit of space at the front, so I left it.

 

Then come the wraiths, which I tried to paint up as eerie glowing green ghosts.  Not sure it worked, but I am OK with them as they offer a bit of a counter point to the purple I chose for the main colour of the rest of the army.  This is a regiment sized unit of them (100mm x 80mm) and has 60 of them on the base. 

 

As a side note, while printing 10mm strips is cheap and effective, re-basing them once done is NOT.  I learned that leason the hard way.  I had done a unit of these wraiths as a test unit over the summer for this project, and I had wanted to base everything green to blend with many of my play mats.  It looked horrible with green ghosts on a green base, so I figured no problem, pop them off and re-base to grey when I got to the army in the painting challenge... NOPE, every single strip broke when trying to get them off the old base (weapons broke, wraiths broke of the strip, and the strip broke in multiple places)... So had to print and paint all new models...   Oh well at least they paint fast.

Lastly, a unit of Black Coaches, which I based up on a 125mm x 100mm Cavalry Regiment size base and am using them as Revenant Cavalry since Black Coaches do not exist in KoW but I still wanted to use them.  Initially the horses were just painted as undead horses but the models lacked enough contrast, so I switched them over spectral horses to add some more colour.  I think it worked out ok.

As for points, these add up pretty damn fast, which I honestly didn't expect given how fast they paint up.  But there are 164 infantry models for 164 points, then the dragon and rider for 4, and 4 Black Coaches at 6 points each for a total of 24.

I am also claiming these as my entry for the Babylon 5 planet as "low budget fun" as doing an army this way is super cheap and a ton of fun to paint as it is so quick.  So that adds 20 more points to the total, for a grand total of 212 points!

Lastly, this is my second different theme, so my second point in the Squirrel side contest.

As you can tell from the title (Part 1) there will be more of these as the challenge continues.

From Millsy

I was wondering if someone would be painting up Forest Dragon 10mm stuff!

These are absolutely smashing Byron, both the quality of the paintwork and also the way you've gone about utilising the scale vs. 28mm base size to give that mass battle feel. The black coaches in particular look fabulous en masse as opposed to just one vehicle as you'd get at 28mm scale. I'm very much looking forward to the promised next installment mate!

From Codsticker: The First Distraction - 4 28mm ECW (20)

A slow, long running project of mine is a Royalist army for the English Civil War (or War of The Three Kingdoms if you prefer); although my buying and painting for it has slowed down this past year I still occasionally pick up a few figures here and there such as these fellows from Bloody Miniatures, a new range started last year.

This is  the first blister of 16, they are called The Mortuary Men and are meant to represent veteran fighters, possibly having practiced their trade on the continent before returning home.

These are large 28mm figures, meant to fit in with the now defunct Renegade Miniatures ECW line as well the ranges from Redoubt and Bicorne.

Although they would fit in well in a large army, there design is purposefully skirmish intended.

They have great faces and character, my painting really doesn't show the faces in the best light and the details are very easy to pick out.

Although about the size of GW's figures, the lack of bag's, pouches, skulls, etc. means you can paint them up well and quickly. Figures from this range will be constant distraction while I tackle my massive pile of LoTR figures this challenge.

So, a dead simple 4 x 28mm minis @5 pts each = 20 pts.

From Millsy

These are quite something Rob! I'm a big fan of the Renegade / Bicorne ECW ranges and you've certainly done these matching miniatures justice, never mind the beautiful setting. I love the fact you've gone with a range of different hues for the buff coats too.

What rules are you intending to use them for? I've been thinking about some 17thC skirmishing myself of late having been tempted by these minis too.