From JamesL: First entry, Dacian 28mm DBA3.0 element and Sd.Kfz.7 Tow (30 points)

Finally the holiday festivities are over and I can start the challenge. My first very modest entry is the first element for a DBA 3.0 slow grow league, a Dacian Blade element from Warlord, and a German Sd.Kfz.7 halftrack tow for my developing Late war German Bolt Action army.

The Dacians are painted with a combination of Vallejo and GW paints, with the blood effect on the signature falx being GW Blood for the Blood God technical paint.

The halftrack will be joined shortly by its towee, an 88mm Flak/ATG which will be the central focus of my BA force.

The grass tufts on the Dacians are actually hand made by a mutual friend of mine and PaulOG, who very generously donated a veritable horde of different coloured and sized tufts completely free of charge. As thanks I will be incorporating the tufts in as many projects as I possibly can, as they look amazing and work exceptionally well on any base surface.

I think this is a modest 30pts to get me on the scoreboard.....

Paul and Alan: Good to see you get some runs on the board mate - it was like watching England bat in an Ashes test match...

Lovely Dacians and they are certainly in action packed poses.  The tractor is nice too but I fear what it might be towing in future games! That is indeed 30 points lodged.

Paul & Alan

From ReillyOG: Sons of the Silver Sword (30 points)

To go with my Legion of the Bronzed Hammer unit (submitted for the Armour bonus round) is my second Heavy foot unit of Dwarf warriors: The Sons of the Silver Sword!  Finished just in time for this week's entry (the bases are still wet!)

Again these are old Chronopia figures for use with Dragon Rampant. I have mostly used dry brushing over a black undercoat, using GW Dwarf Bronze and Boltgun Metal colours.  For the Blue features I used Vallejo Prussian Blue and Prussian Dark Blue. Thats 6 x 28mm figures for a total of 30 points.

Alan and Paul: Great work Reilly! I love these Chronopia dwarves with their pig-snout helmets. The combination of the silver armour with the blue and yellow looks really good. It will be a genuine pleasure to crush them on the battlefield and hear the lamentations of their women.

From Barks: A Star Wars big bonus beast (35 points)

We interrupt our Star Wars spaceships with this massive rancor. I got her last week, and couldn't resist painting her straight away. I think she's the best miniature FFG has ever done. She's bloody huge, over 10cm tall.

I also painted Luke for a sense of scale- I used Vallejo Yellow Green on the saber blending as it has a fluorescent quality.

Alan and Paul: That rancor is awesome! what a beast. You really have the Star Wars bug this year, Barks. I'm guessing you liked Rogue One? I've scored the beast as a 54 mm vehicle, so that's another 35 points for you.

From Barks: The Imperial fleet has Emerged from Hyperspace (90 points)

More Star Wars: Rebellion! Today I complete the Empire forces with their naval contingent. Again, a mix of scales- let's work our way up.

At ~1: 1 000, 24 TIE fighters. Each TIE has 24 triangular panels on its wings, making a mind-numbing 576 panels.

At ~1: 2 000, 8 Gozanti Cruisers.

At ~1: 25 000, 8 Star Destroyers.

At ~1: 200 000, 2 Super Star Destroyers.

And at ~1: 4 000 000, not one, not two, but 2.5 Death Stars! In the game, you start with one and can build a second (in the improbable event of misplacing or losing the first one). Whilst it is being built you mark its location with the 'under construction' model.

These were all grey-undercoated, then blackwashed, then drybrushed several shades of grey. The last layer was a very light white, which really helps these 'pop' on the board. They are all a bit darker than they appear in the photos.

Again, I leave it to the minions to allocate points!

Next week: the rebels.

Alan and Paul: Wow Barks! This is turning out to be a truly impressive Imperial fleet you have. The Rebels had really better start producing ships if they are going to stand any sort of chance. The Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers look particularly good, the detail really popping with your painting style. The size of these ships is pretty similar to most 6mm vehicles. so your 45 Imperial ships this week earn you 90 points.

From Anthony O - Chaos Cavalry, Crossbowmen and Fallschirmjäger - 155 points

This week I have another mixed bag of subjects for the challenge and I must admit it was not the easiest of weeks. I have been putting off painting these particular units for some weeks as I just could not get the motivation to do them and I would always find excuses to push them to the back of the line up. This challenge however has really motivated me to push through the barriers and just tackle them head on, which is what I did these past few days.

This will put me in excess of my original target of 500 points, in hindsight I see that I woefully underestimated my ability to produce during this period (My first challenge) and it shames me somewhat to say I have met my goal in the first month. I will set myself a new goal of 1250 points and put it down to a learning experience for next year.

Chaos Marauder Cavalry - Games Workshop - 50 points

These guys are really nice miniatures and like many people I cringe at painting cavalry however feel really satisfied when I have completed them. They will fit into my Kings of War evil type army as Abyssal Horsemen and provide my force with some mobile hard hitting firepower.

Kingdoms of Men Crossbowmen Troop - Games Workshop - 50 points

This is the last unit I have prepared for my Kingdoms of Men force for Kings of War. I am not sure the force is complete yet (Can an army ever be finished?) but it is certainly in a shape that I can take it and game with a few options to play with. This small Troop of crossbowmen will provide me with a cheap extra ranged option along with a Troop of Archers and they will support a Horde (40) of Arquebusiers who are my main ranged unit.

Fallschirmjäger - Warlord Games - 55 points

My main love is Bolt Action and I will continue to paint various units as I go along. These are plastics from Warlord Games which I am painting up for a friends son. I am not one for normally painting plastics for WW2 as I much prefer the metals however these ones are of high quality.

This unit has been painted to represent late war Fallschirmjäger operating in the Italian Theater.

That is me for this week, I have a seemingly endless pile of miniatures prepped for next week so I will see what I can come up with.

More fantastic entries there Patch! Love the Chaos champs in particular as I am doing some of my own right now.  Those FSJ are awesome though.  It's great to hear that the Challenge is inspiring you to get your figures painted. That's 155 points to your total (nice to see you have extended your aim point too!)

Paul & Alan

From GregB: Beta Bunch for Alpha Legion (60 points)

More lads from the 20th Legion

Well, my submissions are getting repetitive, but here is - you guessed it - more 30k.  This is a second tactical squad for the 20th Legion, known as the Alpha Legion, for GW's Horus Heresy setting.   There are ten fellows wearing Mark IV power armour, plastic kits from the "Betrayal at Calth" box set.

I painted a white knee plate on this crew to help tell them apart from the first bunch

There are also a pair of Mark VI "beakie" power armour suits in this submission, kits from Forge World.  They are carrying special weapons, and can be swapped into the squad to create a unit of legion veteran troops as opposed to a vanilla tactical squad.

Comms trooper on the left and vexillary on the right

Some examples of the custom Alpha Legion heads from Forge World - nice dabs of character

The embossed shoulder pauldrons, transfers and a few of the helmets are upgrade packs from Forge World.  The helmets are available in packs of 10, and you can sprinkle the heads from one package across several units to add a bit of additional character to the overall force. 

Mark VI armoured troops from Forge World, probably my favourite models...

Love the "shark fin" style missile launcher.!

As I said previously, while the plastic Mark IV armour kits are very nice and fun to work with, the Mark VI armour sets from Forge World are a pure joy, a hidden gem for Space Marine junkies like me.  No skullz...great proportions...beakie helmets...and they mix perfectly with any plastic or resin spares or accessories.  It is everything you get from the old RTB 01 plastic box, but with better proportions and full compatibility with all of the bits out there.  I have a small and declining stash of these models, and I expect I will sprinkle them around the different forces in my collection so each one has a dash of "beakie" look to them.

When I contemplate how much fun the "beakie" models are, I'm surprised Forge World was ever allowed to release the Mark VI armour kits.  After all, they are connected to the heritage and original inspiration of the game, and Space Marine players and collectors love them - in my experience, both of those seem to be deal breakers with GW.  I imagine it all played out as some kind of dysfunctional corporate situation, where the Forge World guys had to sneak the designs online...

GW corporate tool: "You are not selling those old 'beakie' Space Marines are you? You KNOW we are not 'in' to that anymore..."

FW designer: "Of course not, Liege - we would never stoop to releasing anything that popular, connected to the collective positive experiences we all shared when we got into this hobby. That is fully against..."

GW corporate tool: "...against the business plan! As it is, this whole 'Horus Hesresy' thing seems dangerously popular, and we may have to give it the ol' 'specialist games treatment' at any minute, before more players start to enjoy it..." [makes throat-slashing gesture]

FW designer: "Not to worry, Liege - ensuring the best prices for the most accessible Horus Heresy models are only found in box games few people are actually interested in playing is doing a trick to ensure it is still harder for a gamer to get into the Horus Heresy than it otherwise might be..."

GW corporate tool: "Right then - get back to designing that new special character, Skully Bonerz McSkullz, King of Kaos Kookiness - he will be a special release, front page of a White Dwarf, etc."

Anyway, I digress...but the Mark VI suits ARE getting harder and harder to find on Forge World's byzantine web site, and I'm sure it is only a matter of time until word reaches GW leadership that these beautiful models are available for sale, and the sculpts are withdrawn from the web store...

Putting the "me" in team - the Alpha Legion...

So a total of 12 models in 28mm, good for another 60 points or so. The completion of this unit provides the absolute bare bones of a force for the tabletop - two troop choices (tactical squads) and an HQ (the chaplain).  This is next to nothing under the current iteration of the 30k/40k rules, but would be plenty for a game of Rogue Trader, or even just enough to wreck things for someone as some "allies" - and with friends like the Alpha Legion, who needs enemies?

This bunch is ready for action, but will require some reinforcements before they have any impact on the table...

Up next? Well, no prize for guessing the setting, but hopefully I might change up the scale...or not...whatever it is, we'll see you next week!

Alan and Paul: Excellent painting, Greg. Your very clean style does justice to those nice Forgeworld sculpts. Like you say, it's very refreshing to see Space Marines without skulls hanging off everywhere. Oh, and great GW rant!

From SeanM: A Little Bit of Everything (105 points)

Let me start with a tale of woe! Last week, on submission day, Eastern Canada was afflicted by some freezing rain. Now, Ottawa was on the edge of the system, but it was still of enough accumulation to deep six my satellite internet. So this week, it is time for some catch up.

First up, is a Blackclad Wayfarer for Hordes (28mm). This is not an overly complicated figure, but I find Privateer Press' (PP) newer figures are almost overburdened with detail. It kind of corresponds to when they adopted CAD sculpting...  Anyways, this druid with his over compensating cloak is not from that era.

Next up is a unit from the sister system, a minimum unit of Idrian Skirmishers. Fluff wise, this is a confused unit; they are like a group of Bedouin converts working as irregular troops for a Counter-Reformation Catholic Church. Oh, well. PP allows you to put either a minimum or maximum size unit on the table, there is no longer the granularity of their 1st ed. rules. The figures are pretty clean to paint, and they took to the "magic wash" much better than my earlier Celts did. I will hopefully have a command attachment painted by the end of the challenge.

This guy is my favourite of the bunch. A much more sensibly dressed chap than the rest, I think I'll order up some more of him when I expand the unit at some later date.

Here is a chestnut from the olden days, BattleTech (6mm). I see in the Armour entries I wasn't the firstest, but maybe I can have the mostest! What I've done here is a combined arms company, using 'mechs, armour and battle armour infantry. To delve into the fluff, there are a unit of the Capellan March Militia from the Federated Suns. This faction was widely regarded as BattleTech's Mary Sue. But this unit, is from a time period when it all started to go wrong for them, the end of the Fed-Com Civil War. This is one of my favourite parts of BattleTech, for the past 30 years, they have advanced the timeline over 120 years, and all of the factions have waxed and waned.

The 'mechs below are lighter, second line forces at this stage of the timeline. From left to right, these are the Jenner, Centurion, Clint and Javelin. The three on the left are from the latest plastic sculpts, and they have crisp details and very light mold lines. The Javelin is from a metal set, and is of very good quality. The biggest difference you can see in the finished product is the thickness of the cast on bases, with the plastic being much thicker than the metal.

Here are the vehicles, two scout cars and two Drillson hover tanks. The Drillsons are IMW metal sculpts, while the scout cars are from the MechWarrior Dark Age clicky set. They scale nicely, and give off the old "Mad Max scavenger economy" setting from the early '80s BattleTech.

The Battle Armour is all from the clicky-tech set. You might notice the bases are round rather than the traditional B-Tech hexes. Two reasons; first off infantry has 360 arcs, second, I was running out of hex bases. Rules + desperation = success! The larger of the sculpts, the Cavaliers, are actually smaller than the Hauberk assault suits in the game, but the vagaries of the sculpts lead one to use what is available. I was one Cavalier short, so you'll notice an on base victim to fill in the dead space.

Finally, I've been tempted to tip my toe back into 40K with a local gaming group. The Royal Table Top Regiment (RTTR) is holding a Kill-Team league, so I've stepped up and finished another long standing project - Adpetus Arbites.

So I'll admit from the start, four of these guys are not total new paints, but are partial repaints to conform to the weapon options. These guys below had their shotguns swapped out for riot shields and mauls, plus a melta gun for the fourth. They are just there to show the group scheme in full.

Next are the full paint jobs, painted to match the scheme from the guys above. This is a dog's breakfast of GW's models line. There are Rogue Trader Arbites from the 80's, 2nd ed Arbites from the '90s, Necromunda Enforcers from the '00s and the sniper is a converted Space Marine Scout. The first figure on the second picture is an attempt to make a female Arbites using an Eldar Guardian as a base, but I'll have to go back and fix the gorilla arms.

Overall, that is 15 28mm figures, 28 6mm infantry and eight 6mm vehicles. And here is a preview of what I've been working on for the East Challenge...

TTFN,
Sean.

Alan and Paul: Bedouin converts for a counter-Reformation Catholic Church?? The mind boggles! Nice work Sean - this is certainly an eclectic bunch. I like the Idrians, and particularly the kneeling sniper, but my favourites are your Arbites. The ones with riot shields look great, and you have matched their look with your latest painting really well. This little lot earns you 105 points.

Star Wars Armada Rebel Freighters - JohnSe (12 points)

The space battle in the recent Rogue One flick has inflamed my enthusiasm for Star Wars Armada, and reminded me that I have some tiny spaceships that still need to be painted up. I love Fantasy Flight's game pitting Evil Imperial Space Triangles against the noble Fish People Pickles, but the vessels come already painted save for the miniscule starfighters. Still getting the colors and markings on such tiny subjects is a different sort of challenge which is pretty fun.

Han Solo's Millenium Falcon will be recognizable to even casual fans of the Star Wars movies, but the other bugger in the picture is the off-brand knockoff Outrider, created for a story set between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi"

Just as obscure are the freighters and patrol craft from the animated "Rebels" series. They may not look like much, but the hexagonal ships are able to manipulate the various objective points (sensor buoys, targeting beacons, etc.) within the game while the disc-like vessels are fearsome interceptor bombers.

These were quick paints, and being flying garbage scows they hide mistakes easily. I'm sure these are worth only a pittance in points, but  I was happy to get them painted up in preparation for our upcoming Corellian Campaign Armada battles.


MilesR: You just made it in under the wire John, but these are some mighty fine Star Wars Armada paint ups.  I think there about the same size as a 6mm vehicle so thats will net you a total of 12 points for your six ships.  We need to get together for a game seeing how you live in the great state of Maryland!

And with this final entry from a galaxy far, far away Momentous Monday has drawn to a conclusion, let the other days of the week tremble as they gaze upon the Magnificence of Monday.