From ScottC: Fellowship and co. 195 pts

 

Long have I wanted to paint up a fellowship to fit on this display base that I have had on my shelf of shame for too many years. I purchased the plastic set of fellowship figures from Gw to go with this base but my goodness these old plastic fellowship figures did not age well. Low and behold one of my LOTR patreons has an excellent set of Fellowship figures!

These are all 3D prints from The Printing Goes Ever On, except Bill the Pony, who is from forgeworld.

I also had a couple of gandalfs to paint as well! Both of these are GW, the horse mount was from an oathmark cav set.

Now to add my miscellaneous LOTR figures that I had planned for creatures of the dark! Gulavhar and Dwellers in the Dark. The 2 dwellers are GW Age of sigmar figures, Gulavhar is a 3d print from Clay Cyanide.

And 2 random pack horses I needed for a scenario.

Points:

9x 28mm infantry = 45

4x 40mm cavalry = 60

4x 60mm cavalry = 80

Resin Display base = 10 points

Total = 195

A great collection of LoTR figures Scott, it's nice to see both the foot and mounted version of some of the figures plus Bill the pony.  I really like Gandalf in the cart.  Very creepy things from the dark side too, they're worth a week of nightmares.

From FrederickC: Scratchbuilt Boilerplate (Altair IV) (40 points)

 

As the poet Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley." The plan was to make to Altair IV by last Monday, but the engine decided to pack it in. It was probably due to those low quality fuel pellets we picked up on Arrakis. As a result, we spent a week sitting in the docks while a lot of the corroded valves were replaced. The extra costs are going to seriously cut into our profit margin for this trip. Aw, well. As my high school Physics teacher used to say, "You win a few, you lose a lot."

How I spent a month on Gethen one week.

Altair IV - the Forbidden Planet. It was visited by the United Planets starship C-57D to determine the fate of an expedition sent there 20 years ago. The theme is 'Old Robots'.

I didn't have any robot miniatures in my 'big box of shame', but I had some wooden figures from the local craft store that were designed to be painted up as nutcrackers. I also had the book 'Boilerplate - History's Mechanical Marvel', by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, and I thought I might be able to do a conversion to make an 'old robot'.

 

An image of Boilerplate from the book

My starting point

I rummaged through my boxes of collected bits and bobs that I use for building terrain features to find the right pieces to convert my nutcracker figure into an old robot. Doweling of various diameters, tubes from dry ink markers, old chopsticks, hollow plastic sucker sticks, thin copper wire, and some epoxy putty were all pressed into service. In the end, the only pieces from the original figure that were incorporated into the build were the arms and legs. The end product stands 80mm tall (pictured below standing on a hockey puck, the Canadian standard for both size and mass). If I were to do another, I would make his head a bit shorter  his helmet a bit wider, and his arms a bit longer, but I am satisfied with the final result.

 

The points being claimed are as follows:

1 x 80mm foot figures @ 15 points = 15 points(?)

Quadrant Challenge 'Altair IV' - 'Old Robots' - 20 Points

That makes 6 Outer Ring, 5 Middle Ring, and 4 Inner Ring locations of the Quadrant Challenge completed. Time to take the deep dive into the central star system.

"Send me in, Coach. I'm ready"

You've taught me something here Frederick as I'd never heard of Boilerplate before.  What a wacky steamy punky robot he is too.  I love the use of a wooden nutcracker for the starting point.  The end result looks great and I've added a few points for the scratch building.  I'll be in touch about your challenge shortly.

From PeteF: Moor Medieval Arabs for SAGA (85 points)

 

One of the reasons I'm way behind the pace is that most of what I've ended up painting is not uniform - rather than easy repeatable brushwork on Minifigs French line infantry I've ended up contributing to smaller, more skirmishy war bands.

These are the last of my Mutataww'ia for SAGA Age of Crusades - just came in under the wire for my SAGA group's game this Sunday. I painted the first four Mutataww'ia on camels two challenges ago - progress has been slow until now.

Here are four hearthguard mounted on horses, four hearthguard on foot and a Warlord on foot. In the future I might expand my options with more camel riders and a warlord on a camel. 

Together with the original camel riders, archers from earlier this month and spear warriors this makes up a full 6 point warband for SAGA. Now that this one is done I'm trying to decide whether to do some some crusading knights, go back and finish my Age of Vikings Normans, or start a new warband in a new SAGA Universe (the Footsore Romano Britons are calling to me for Age of Invasions and Victrix Numidians would look great for Age of Hannibal). So many choices so little time. So much squirrelage.

For SAGA I magnetize the minis' bases - and glue a metal sheet (cut from dollar store baking pans) in these handy carriers - a three layered carrier has space for all the minis, dice and tokens.

All these figures are from Gripping Beast - and they've been great fun to paint. I love the variety of weapons, armour, poses and shields - it makes for a nice warband. I tried to pull it together with a few basic colours. The shield designs were inspired by/borrowed from ones you can get decals for - I wonder if there are any other sources for medieval arab shields - googling doesn't turn up that much.

No squirrel point for Moor SAGA Arabs. Here's the points breakdown:

4x28mm Cav = 40 points

5x28mm Foot = 25 points

+20 points for Arakis - desert planet = 85 points TOTAL

Squirrel +0 (total 6)

Skulz +0 (total 1)

I am always a big fan of Medieval Arabs Pete, and this is bunch with a lot of colour and movement.  There is a trade off with the uniforms vs variety of dress, I find it works to alternate between them from time to time to keep the brain limber.  Love the basing too.

From StuartL - Strange Statuary - 9 Points

Hello everyone,

As I now have my personal challenge for the Challenge Sector Star assigned, I am mainly working on that. However, I wanted to get something painted and posted for this week, so here it is. 

In an effort to build some cheap scatter terrain for fantasy skirmish games, I went through my Reaper Bones and D&D miniatures piles and selected some figures that I either had a duplicate of, or just could never picture myself actually using. I then stuck these on top of some wooden blocks I picked up at the local dollar (100 yen) store and decorated them with some old square GW bases. A few coats of various grey paints and a black wash, and I had some quick and easy statues.

This one is a little out of focus, sorry.

To add a bit of colour to the statues, I mixed some green flock with PVA glue and stuck it on in random places. Once it was dry, I dry-brushed it with a bright green to finish it off.

Each statue is roughly 2" by 2" by 3", so that gives me a total of 96 cubic inches, or about 45% of one terrain cube. So, these should score me 9 points.

There are also two skulls on these figures, which will add to my skull side duel.

Skullz Total: 110

 
Quick and easy statuary Stuart, and very effective.  I like the repurposed Reaper figures and your DIY plinths.  Looking forward to your Final Challenge.

From Mike W - Warhammer LIzardmen (150 Points)

The first of my delayed post from last week is a continuation of the Lizardmen mini project, this time I am presenting 30 x Skinks Archers formed into two units of 15 figures.

The completed units of Skinks, each 15 strong

I decided on two units to give a additional variety in the colours of the models in the various units in the army, to date all have been a variant of Yellowish and Green or green and blue. I have done one Skink unit as a dark green and the second as a yellowish hue, if I get together enough figures for a third Skink unit these will be blue.

Unit #1, yellowish Skinks

Unlike their bigger brethren these little guys do not have armoured scales and so I have kept them mono-tone but with a red 'fin' on the back of all their heads to give then some unity.

Unit #21, green Skinks

The figures were given either a dark green or light ochre base and then washed with either blue ink (green figures) or Mid Brown Wash (light Ochre figures), light blue Loincloths, leather straps, quivers and arrows were coloured appropriately and the bows were painted brown.

Close-up of the first unit,

I diverged form the black ebony weaponry of their large colleagues as the logic was that he bow would need to be made of a different wood as some flexibility was required when pulling the bow - where as clubs, axes and spears etc were all naturally more rigid in construction.

And close-up of the second unit

Bases were again finished with fine sand and electrostatic grass.

POINTS 

30 x 28mm Foot Figures = 150 Points

Classic old skool Lizardfolk here Mike.  Your work on time delay is still way faster than the rest of us on fast forward!  Really appreciate the close up of the basing.  I've been curious about using a static grass applicator, if I can manage not zapping myself with it.

And you continue with your odd uint sizes.  Ok 15 is better than the prime numbers that you gone with before, but 12-16 would work way better on table.  Base 4 man, use Base 4.

Last Monday of February

Yes the clock is ticking down ...

But the Monday crew is working hard to score points.  MikeW has his normal 2 billion posts but everyone else seems to have something lined up too.

A Squirrel Here, A Squirrel There - Side Duel Update #4

Hello fellow Squirrel Enthusiasts, and welcome to the 4th Squirrel Side Duel update. This will be the last such update before the end of the challenge, and there are still a lot more furry critters to be claimed before we are through.

Now, you may notice that this fellow above is looking a little grumpy. "Why would a squirrel be grumpy?" you may ask, "They just get to climb trees all day and run around without a care in the world." 

This Squirrel is grumpy because he has found not one, not two, but multiple Squirrel points that didn't have a label. This caused him a lot of confusion when the culprit made a list of all of his points and a bunch of them didn't show up in the search. So, it is with a heavy heart that I have to bring out the penalty card again.

Mike W, who has been painting up a storm only labelled one of the SIX points he tried to claim. 

The evidence for the prosecution:  https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/search/label/Mike%20W+Squirrel

Now, in his defence, he may have just been a little inattentive due to rushing back to his workbench to churn out even more models, so only 1 of those missing labels will be docked from his score... this time. I will let Mike W decide which point he has lost, and he may even regain the point by painting up some more figures for it.

This does however, make the scores for first place neck and neck between Mike W and TeemuL. Who will take the lead over the last few weeks? It is still anybody's game. KerryT is only just behind and ChrisW has taken a flying leap into the middle of the scoreboard from out of nowhere.

And if this has escaped your notice, please, please label your posts. Going back through everything you have posted trying to figure out how many points you should have is not a fun thing to do after a day at work. Likewise, keeping a record of your entries makes my job a lot easier. If you want to see the best way to lay out your posts, I suggest checking out TeemuL and SteveM's entries. 

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/search/label/Squirrel+TeemuL

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/search/label/Squirrel+SteveM

Have fun with the remaining Squirrel hunt. I look forward to seeing you all at the finish line.