From TomL: Olson's Raiders (20 points)

This BattleTech unit is another lance painted in Olson's Raiders colors using the disc camouflage stencil.   

 

 

Base colors were Vallejo Model Air, the weathering and weapons were done with Vallejo model colors. The cockpits were finished with Tamiya clear. 

Score:
20 points for 4 figures
4 points for the Stompy robots of death duel. 

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Sylvain: Robots! Big and small! I love robots and I'm always happy to see more of them! 

 

From QuinnM: 2 weeks worth of models (190points)

 I missed getting my post up last week as things happen. But I did paint a last week. 

So the Models I painted last week are an entire Malifaux crew. They are Nephilim vampires. I am not much of a fan of the models (why is every single one that has a pair of wings different sized) but their rules are really fun. 

and this week I did some more work on finishing up my AOS Sylvaneth Army. We have some Kurnoth hunters with great swords and a bunch of dryads. I did get these guys second hand so a couple of parts are missing. Not that you'll really be able to tell. 

With These guys I did follow up with the cherry blossom theme. I still have not received my Cherry flock to fully complete these guys along with their basing medium. But the stage of painting is done so I'm going to claim points on them now.

So for points. 

36x28mm footman@5 points = 180 points

(10 malifaux models. 20 dryads and 6 kurnoth)

I found two more dry bottles I painted that I'd left out of the group shot. So instead of setting them all up again you get this. So you can see that all 20 are there

 

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Sylvain: Another great demonstration of your talent for blending colors nicely. The brownish color of the vampire really evoke a sombre ambiance, while the purple on the Sylvaneth makes you travel to a world of fantasy. Bravo!

 

 

From GregB: Thousand Sons Detachment for Epic 30k (60 points)

A detachment of Thousand Sons Space Marines ready to deploy to an Epic30k gaming table

For this submission we have more Space Marines - again from the XV Legion Astartes - but we leave 28nm behind - these are little 6mm chaps! All of these are plastic figures from Games Workshop's "Legions Imperialis" game range. The assorted elements portrayed here include a high-command stand, two units of tactical marines, a small group of tactical support marines, and Rhino APCs to haul the lot of them. They are supported by a group of "Tarantula"-type automated weapon turrets and some assorted dreadnoughts. 

High-command base with a hero, flunkies - and their own Rhino to ride around in.

Sylvain, our Wednesday Minion, is quite the master of 6mm painting and basing, and each Painting Challenge I enjoy seeing the material expansions to his massive historical 6mm collections. Inspired by Sylvain's tremendous small-scale work I thought it would be good to continue with efforts to expand my own 6mm Horus Heresy collection during this edition of the AHPC. 

A tactical squad - 20 little marines and a pair of APCs to transport them.

These miniatures are for "Legions Imperialis", a specialist-type game released by GW a couple of year ago. It is meant to be a re-boot of the old-time "Epic" game, a truly classic and fun set of rules from GWs older 1990s/early 2000s era. Indeed, the GW studio has often demonstrated an ability to release some really outstanding rules over the years. The state of the 40k rules has ranged from "difficult" to today's "unplayable", but games like Epic/Space Marine, Battlefleet Gothic, Warmaster, Space Hulk and others were creative, fun, engaging and fantastic. The more recent re-boot of "Adeptus Titanicus" had a few issues, but was, in general, outstanding! I had high hope for this game when it was (at last) re-released...

Tactical squad number two...looking a lot like the other one because...well...they have the same kit and same ride :)

Sadly, "Legions Imperialis" did not live up to the legacy of the 90s/2000s specialist games studio. The rollout of the game was a complete fiasco. The "Legions Imperialis" rules themselves are deeply disappointing and highly excremental. They are poorly written and generally very bad even once you "understand" them. One run through the game will be more than enough for most folks.  

Tactical support Marines sporting plasma guns - and, naturally, their own APC!

Yet, even while the rules are trash, the miniatures for the game are just excellent! Small, of course, and with a number of fiddly bits that will easily disappear into ANY carpet...but they are just great! Wonderful little tributes to the Horus Heresy, each of them! These things are just great IMO. 

Was it a bit of a process to get there with the models? Yes. At first, I was concerned that there had been a "re-scaling"...but the effect, especially for the infantry, has been slight-to-nothing. There are also some tricky models...some of the infantry bits are two-piece kits, and all of the vehicles have very small components. I struggle with this...but odds are, you won't. I am not a very good model-builder - have always been "average" at best. My frustration with that aspect is an outlier...I might suck with these, but you'll do fine.

"Tarantula" automated turrets - these can be left to cover objectives etc. while the Marines themselves head to deal with matters requiring personal attention...

Sane hobbyists would just speed paint these things, I suppose. I find I cannot...rather, I paint these little guys in batches of two and three infantry or vehicles at a time, in no particular rush. I amazed at the level of details the sculptors managed to place on them all, and I like to make an effort to catch it (even if that effort often comes up short). The results in a tremendously slow/plodding pace to my accumulation of completed units with which to expand my collection, but that doesn't worry me too much.  

"Contemptor" type dreadnoughts - mix of fire-support and close action help for the Marines.

"Deredeo" type dreadnoughts - lots and lots of firepower here.

So if the rules are hot garbage, why bother with the figures? Well, the good news is that great rules ALREADY existed with which to use these models - namely "Epic: Armageddon" and its fan-made 30k mods. I also understand there is a sci-fi mini-scale game from Mantic that also has excellent rules, and frameworks exist to adapt this to 30k, so that is something I will be looking to try as well. Trust me, if you like the Horus Heresy, you will love "Epic 30k" and you will love these little figures. 

Close up of the supreme command guy with all of this troops...

One last aerial shot of the whole group!

So Sylvain, I hope you like these 6mm fellows!

For scoring we have:

55 x 6mm infantry: 27.5 points

4 x 6mm artillery bits: 4 points

14 x 6mm vehicles: 28 points

That's all for now - cheers!

GregB

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Sylvain: Greg, the old Epic (Space Marines) was my favorite game ever back in the 90s. I still have all my armies... But this post is about your stuff. Obviously, the love of the lore is strong in you and, as you explained, it makes you want to pick up all those little details. It's such a shame than Toronto is 2,683 otherwise I would request to see your minis and play a game with you. I will add a .5 points just to round up the total to 60 points. Bravo!

 

From PeterD: Badass Women of the Nordic Resistance (30 points)

You maybe noticing a theme to my 28mm posts this year...These are a set of 6 28mm female miniatures from Bad Squiddo, five from a WW2 Resistance kickstarter than I bought into.  Lovely figures, well researched, sculpted and cast.

First up, two Norwegians.  Anne Margrethe Bang had no formal nursing training beyond first aid, but served as a volunteer nurse to the defenders of Hegra fortress during a 25 day siege in 1940.   She lost several toes due to wet and cold conditions.  Captured and then released, she joined the Norwegian resistance.  Eva Klovstad joined the underground and from late1944 was leader of a 1,200 strong unit.  Both women survived the war and lived past 90.

Elsa checks out the scene while "fixing her sock", while Hedda makes sure that all it well with her dynamite.

Next two Danes.  Hedda Lundh was an explosive expert who ran an all female unit which included Elsa Marie Pade.  They relied on the Germans not bothering with a bunch of silly drunk girls (they were teenagers in 1940) while they planned sabotage attacks.  Else liked to use pulling her socks up as ruse.  When the group was captured, Hedda and her husband escaped to Sweden.  Later she became a journalist and teacher.  Else became a prisoner but after the war became a prominent electronic music pioneer.  Again they both lived past 90.

I like the pose on Vera, who is checking her compass to make sure that she's got her bearings straight.

The last pair are Vera Laska, A Czech and American photographer Toni Frissell.  Vera joined the underground in 1938 when she was 15, helping jews get out across borders.  She later sabotaged the V-2 program.  After the way she moved to America, got her PHd and became a college professor.  Toni Frissell was a well know fashion photographer who joined the Red Cross in 1941 and later worked for the War Department.  She took well known photos of the London Blitz and the Tuskegee Airmen.  Both survived the war and lived past 80.

For all of these figures I basically followed the colour schemes on the Bad Squiddo website where painted figures were shown.  I tried and bailed on Eva's argyle socks.  Doing the solid green for Toni convinced me never to do WW2 Americans.  Basing wise, Anne Margrethe was in a fortress and the two Danes appeared to be in an urban setting, so I tried representing a gravel ground scape for those three figures.  I'm not sure if I'll try it again. For the other three I used a more typical basing style.

6*28mm figures =30 points

I'll also claim a squirrel for the 5 figures (25 points) or Resistance fighters. 

 

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Sylvain: Again, the quality of your post is outstanding. You provide very lively information that add another layer of interest to your figurines. With your brushwork, you made each of these character unique and I hope you will find a way to integrate them in a game. Bravo!

 

From GregB: Contemptor-Osiron Pattern Dreadnought for 30k-era Thousand Sons (20 points)

"That museum exhibit has armed itself! Run for your life!" - A Thousand Sons Contemptor-Osiron pattern dreadnought.

This submission features some more kit for my growing collection of XV Legion Astartes, the Thousand Sons, in GW's Horus Heresy setting. This is a "Contemptor-Osiron pattern" dreadnought, a 28mm multi-part resin kit (with plastic weapons) from Games Workshop's "Age of Darkness" figure range. This was originally a Forge World model, now available from GW at large.

Autocannons, ready for action!

The dreadnoughts of the 30k setting are functionally heavy combat armour suits used by the Space Marines for various battlefield support purposes. There is a "pilot" in there, so to speak, but there is a catch (because of course there is!). This "pilot" is actually near-dead Space Marine, rescued from battlefield wounds that were somehow not quite terrible enough to kill him but still terrible enough to put him near-death. What happens to these fellows? Why they just get plugged into a dreadnought, and, voila! Your existence of endless warfare in The Emperor's name can continue! Lucky you! 

"I'm FINE. Yes. Really.STOP ASKING."

In the case of the Thousand Sons, there is an extra wrinkle. Sometimes this nearly-dead-but-not-totally-dead XV Legion Space Marine is also a capable psyker. What to do then? Why, plug his bits into one of these special "Osiron" dreadnoughts, of course! That way he can wander around the battlefield shooting things, punching things AND leveraging his mastery of mysterious warp powers! It's the best of all worlds! Unless you are the one trapped in this thing...but hey...I think everyone can relax. I mean, it's not like having psychic abilities and visions while trapped inside an armoured sarcophagus for near-eternity would cause any sort of extra mental stress or trauma. Right? I'm sure it's all fine...and we all know everything turned out great for the Thousand Sons in the end.

Also equipped for...close combat? Harvesting grain? Maybe both?

All of the Space Marine Legion collections in the Horus Heresy have custom bits designed for them, capturing the look that makes them "unique". In the case of the Thousand Sons, that "unique" look is generally an answer to the question "what would happen if the local ancient Egyptian history exhibit somehow came alive and armed itself with futuristic science-fiction weapons"? It is more than a little silly, but I love it and I'm here all day for it! 

The Forge World sculptors went to town on this crazy thing. We get a lot of crazy pseudo-ancient-Egypt accents - which are great - on various parts of the armour (mysterious etching, scarabs galore). We get a pile of extra cables and extra connectors near the "helmet", speaking to the extra bits in the armour helping to manage the psychic capabilities of the "pilot". Finally, to make things extra nuts, there is the end-of-days-sized khopesh-style blade affixed to the end of the power fist. 

Like...how does that even work? Do you impale enemies on the blade, and then...punch them...somehow? Or is that not even for combat, but some kind of agriculture-related side gig the dreadnought handles between combat assignments? 

Ah, who cares? The "pilot" will have a near-eternity to figure it out, after all.

Gotta love the vestments on this crazy thing!

And topping it all off, he has VESTMENTS. Because obviously! What kind of near-dead-psychic combat master goes to battle entombed in a battlesuit WITHOUT a prayer cloth? That would be crazy!

Woohoo! Magnets without a total catastrophe!!

Modelling-wise, I was chuffed that I managed to figure out how to install magnets on the ranged-weapon mount of the right arm! Most normal hobbyists are able to make use of magnets with no problem, but I am, at best, a very "average" model-builder, and tend to be a total f*cking disaster with magnets, no matter how careful I am. This time it worked out! I'll paint up some more ranged weapon options for this fellow at a later point - for now, the paired auto-cannons will do. 

Pseudo-Egyptian glyphs etched into the armour.

I hoped to get a bit of an interesting effect with the markings etched into the legs and shoulder. It was a chance to try and make use of the Contrast Paint/Speed Paints at last! I have always found these to be a hobby product that is a solution-looking-for-a-problem sort of tool. The results were...mostly just OK, but in aggregate I still like how the effect came out.

Now THAT is a can-opener...

I also wanted to make the whacky khopesh look a little more dramatic, so I added decals along the blade, and tried to have a little fun with them. Once more, Contrast Paints were applied in the hopes of achieving something of an "effect. Again the result is...OK...I should try and catch a tutorial on how to do cool blade effects sometime...but for now this will do, as the overall model is just so whacky.

Size comparison with "The Axehole", painted earlier during the Challenge. Things will get dramatic when these two hit the town!

As a newly-painted model, I'm confident this fellow will have no problems at all when he makes his battlefield debut! Right?   

Scoring-wise, we have a single 28mm vehicle, worth 20 points. 

Cheers,

GregB

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Sylvain: When the title of the post is about 30k and the author is GregB, I go get a treat before reading because I know it's gonna be good. Another great story and another great model. The level of details  you achieved on this miniature is just ter-hieroglyphic! (yikes!) You make me want to start my own 30k army, but then I know I won't have the same passion to paint all these tiny symbols. Bravo!