From ByronM: All Quiet on the Martian Front - Misc Vehicles (72 Points)

Well, after not posting anything last week, I am back this week with three different posts covering three very different scales and periods.  I didn't get a regular submission up last week because of working on two projects which I didn't want to post until they were complete, I was tempted too post partially completed forces but decided to hold off and wait until I had everything done.  Then, I finished them mid-week so figured why not get something else done and banged off these few odd bits for All Quiet on the Martian Front that have been sitting around for over a year with just primer on them.

For those that have not seen it, AQotMF is a cool little 18mm game (closer to 20-22mm as those bases are 60mm rounds!) that is set about 10 years after the War of the Worlds book.  The mechanics and game play are awesome as well, so its worth a try.

Here are some British mono tanks, although they have added training wheels as they were found to be too tippy and required some help at low speed.  They are fast and maneuverable though, and are just too cool looking to not be included!

Next up is a British tank with a rotating tri-barrel!  Bonkers as hell, and ugly as hell too!  However, it is super effective so I had to build one.

Lastly is one of the coolest tanks around (IMHO at least), the Tesla Tank!  This tank shoots out an electrical death ray that bounces around to the next closest unit and keeps bouncing down the line (to friend or foe) until it runs out of power!

All of these were just sitting around, and I kept meaning to get to them but never have.  So, I broke out the airbrush and put a quick and basic colour pattern on then, the added some decals, and some weathering powders and called them done.  They are nothing fancy, but took a total of less than 3 hours to do all 6 of them, and look good enough to serve their purpose on the table.  

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Ahh, it's wonderful to see some 'All's Quiet on the Martian Front' this year, and so wonderfully painted as well. 

I've always liked the whacky design of the British Mono Tanks, but I have to agree with you Byron, that Tesla Tank is the bee's knees. I especially like how you did the porcelain barrel with the copper cabling wrapped around it. And of course, your weathering for all of these jalopies is excellent (and the martian walker 'kill' markings are a great touch).

I'm going to score all these models as 20mm vehicles, with the Tesla counting as two. 72 points for your efforts. Thanks for the fun entry Byron!

From MichaelA: Crimean War Royal Naval Artillery (70 points)

I am delighted to finally have these completed as they were a gift from my Mother in Law, who herself was a proud member of the Senior Service.  The Royal Naval artillery crew and guns are from ‘Wargames Foundry’ and are a tad diminutive in comparison to the more ‘heroically’ scaled miniatures of today.  That said, they are more than serviceable and required very little in the way of preparation.  I was somewhat taken by the officer with his foot resting nonchalantly on a cannonball and was instantly reminded of a truly great Victorian hero, Captain William Peel RN.  Born in 1824 Sir William Peel, son of Sir Robert Peel was an adventurous soul.  He was awarded the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War having been cited three times for acts of conspicuous bravery.  

Incredibly Peel managed to find himself in the thick of the action from the Siege of Sebastopol in 1854, to the Battle of Inkerman the following month and finally leading the assault on the Redan in 1855.  It wasn’t long before Peel had recovered from his wounds and found himself, once again, in action this time during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.  Peel played an important role in the capture of Lucknow, but was badly wounded by a musket ball.  During his evacuation to Cawnpore, Peel contracted smallpox, which would ultimately call time on the astonishing life of this truly amazing man.
  

Finally then to the gun emplacements, which had been a bit of an impulse buy from 'Tabletop Art'.  I had come across these when looking for basing ideas for my crews, initially thinking that I would build something similar myself.  I kept looking at the marvellously painted examples on the company’s website and in the end succumbed and placed my order, justifying the purchase on the basis of saving time.  I have to say that I was incredibly impressed with the customer service and the products arrived in jolly good time and were faultless in the casting of the resin.  I simply painted them to match the examples I had seen, which interestingly led me to base the miniatures on clear Perspex discs from ‘Sally 4th’ purely so that I could use the emplacements with other miniatures in the future.

So a good job done, not least because it will allow me to post about a genuine Victorian hero on my misnomer of a Blog! Seeing them finally painted and with the addition of the gun emplacements, I have to confess to being delighted with the results, certainly some of my favourite work this year.

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These two gun emplacements are just superb, Michael.  


Even though they are a little small by today's standards I find the Foundry's ranges still have so much to offer, especially after such excellent brushwork as we see here. I've not looked at anything from Tabletop Art, but will be giving their catalogue a perusal today. The gabions and planking are wonderfully rendered. I also really like the clear perspex bases you've used for these figures as they give such a nice clean look and would allow you to potentially use them in many different settings (though I'm not sure if I could turn away from the fun of doing groundwork). Finally, I very much enjoyed being introduced to the remarkable career of Sir William Peel - truly a Victorian hero writ large!

This fine work will net you 70 points, which includes a bit extra for the excellent gun emplacements. Bravo Michael!

Crash Land into Saturday

Alright. Saturday is finally here. 

Thank. Goodness. I feel like my work-week ended with my engines on fire and the landing gear only partially down. But, hey, a landing is a landing, right?!

Okay folks, let's get a drink, turn up the music and enjoy this weekend's entries!

From SanderS: Fred's Saga - the Plot thickens... (90 Points)

Hoi,

Before I present you with the next instalment of the saga of the Fred's, I feel I owe you guys an apology. "Real life" has played one of it's great tricks and lack of time prevents me from replying/ commenting to all of the excellent posts on this blog. I would like to take time each day to peruse all the eye-candy and comment on it but find myself in bed late almost every single night without having seen either a brush or this blog... Therefore I now am also way behind on my schedule and in fear I will never reach my target of 1500 points. If I would be painting in my usual 1:72 scale, I would have been halfway by now but painting almost entirely in 28mm is taking a lot longer... Anyway, I have been able to do a little painting in between work and family-life and here are the results of that.

Meet Fred, this is not the same Fred as last time mind you this is another one of the Fred brothers, listening to CGAG-03.

He has been sent to mid '80s Springfield, USA to rouse rebels and chaos all over. Following are citizens of that poor city who find themselves more and more in the grip of a sinister organisation that has taken hold of most of public and some private services. Arming themselves, some of the citizens have started to fight the new regime, others are willingly aiding the new management. This management is manifesting itself in the form of the CEO's of the ARBCO company a pair of identical twins in fancy suits and fast cars. Miniatures of the latter will follow eventually but the citizens are down below.

All these figures are from the plastic sets of Project Z survivors made by Warlord Games. I seriously mismanaged these figures because I thought I could make the combinations of arms and bodies that I wanted. Turns out one can only combine a certain two arms with certain bodies... Now I have some very strange "mutant-like" figures in amongst them.

I tried to make most of them regular people rather then heavily armed apocalypse survivors, but specially with the women that's hard due to the arm options you get.

There is a boy in the Male Survivors set and a girl in the Female set. I refused to give them the weapons provided in the boxes. The boy I gave a baseball bat and the girl I have provided with flowers. Here she is to finish this post.

This leaves me with 18 figures in 28mm and thus 90 points.

Gosh Sander, another Fred to join the ranks - how many Fred brothers are there? Or is it some kind of nom de guerre? 'I'm Fred'.....'No, I'm Fred!' And what will be the name of their sister? This Pulp adventure is taking a rather sinister turn, these Fred characters clearly aren't a very good influence, trying to overthrow a democratically elected government by force.  

While I see you've tried to avoid kitting out these ladies and gents with big guns - The bunch of flowers is a neat touch. A standard issue tennis racket there, a good crowbar, and some semi-automatic 'hunting' weapons, but do I spy a larger lady carrying an RPG? I'm not sure that's appropriate for an untrained civilian.

Nice work on these Warlord plastics Sander, and a respectable 90 points to your tally. Well, you're nearly a third of the way to your 1500 target!  

Phil

 

From KeithS: The Last of the Adventurers...for now (152 points)



At long last, I've pretty much run out of 25mm adventurer figures (well, at least ones that are prepped and don't suck).  This week I managed to finish off thirty of the buggers, in two batches of 15.  They are a total mix - Ral Partha, GW, Asgard, some Grenadier, Reaper, Minifigs, and who knows what else.  But, hey, that's how I roll. 

The first half of the first batch.  Nothing too exciting, though the guy on the far right - I had one of those growing up that my dad painted, so it's pretty nostalgic for me.



Group two of batch one.  Again, a mix.  A few of these I've had for decades, while others are recent acquisitions from various cons and larger batches on eBay.

 I liked how this shield turned out, and the figure is pretty nice, too (Asgard, maybe?)

This chap was a bit odd looking.  But it is his shield that caught my eye.  It has a horses head and I originally was just going to do boring old Rohirrim white on green, but then I noticed it looks a lot more like a chess piece.  Thus, I got a little inspiration and did a checkered pattern (with the horse inverted on it)

My first week was the Silent Sisters.  I needed a captain for those lovely ladies and settled on this one.  She looks a lot fancier and better armed, appropriate for their captain; of course, she is sans eyeballs.  There'll be some more related to that sub-project as the challenge goes on.

Some of the troops from the back.  The woman on the far right is the same as the Silent Sisters (Asgard/Viking Forge).  I did this one as a normal adventuress, though.

Batch two I just finished up under the wire.  Once again, a really mixed lot that's all over the map.

These two feisty ladies are from the same line as the Captain above, I think, but I did them as straightforward warriors (i.e. with their eyes intact).

From the back.  They are really simple but I like how they turned out.

These two rather rudimentary figures I decided to use for practice in painting striped pants.  I like how they turned out and will be doing that more often.

Some more from this batch.  I've painted the Ral Partha guy on the left before  But I really liked the Middle Eastern type female in the center a lot.  I need to figure out who makes that one and find some more of a similar style.  I don't know what her weapon was supposed to be (it was missing) so she got a simple spear.

A bard and a Saxon.

And that's it for this week.  I do have more adventurers, but they are either not prepped or are really crummy figures that are almost not worth painting (though I sort of am employing the "no figure left behind" principal in my work - the challenge is wonderful for motivation).  I decided to hold off on my 28mm Scots as I'm considering shield decals (blasphemy?  maybe, but then again maybe I will just hand paint them).  I also have scads of demons screaming to be painted, plus some other monsters, 300 figures from Ral Partha's last Kickstarter in boxes, and who knows what else.

As an aside, I finally started using some of my adventurers in actual play.  Here's my AD&D game of Keep on the Borderlands last weekend, complete with figures for the party (and a bunch of dead Hobgoblins, which I painted a few weeks back).



Ah, it wouldn't be Friday without a big Keith mixed bag of DnD-style fantasy minis. My favourite this week is definitely  the very jolly Middle East-style lady warrior, with her dainty spear. And the red Ral Partha wizard, with the cute dragon familiar on his shoulder. I'm a bit concerned at how skinny those other ladies are: once you factor in the plate, and necessary undergarments and padding, do they even have a waist in there? Nice work on stripy pants - perfect if you've any pirates to do in the future - but those sculpts are pretty rough: boy am I glad the hobby has moved on to this new 'Golden Age'.

This might be the last of you adventurers, but if you're still pondering the Scots, it sounds like we'll have more fantasy minis from you next week? Looking forward to it 

And that's a big AD&D group you have there, bet you have fun keeping all them in line. 

Phil 

From SteveB: Dystopian Wars (45 Points)

So continuing the Dystopian wars theme. I managed some more Covenant of Antarctica stuff done.
 
This time I'm am working on some air power. These models are from the aerial battle group, I am still working on the fighters and tiny flyers.

The bad boy is the Epicurus class sky fortress. I magnetized the top turret for ease of transport.

And what good is a sky fortress without some support. So three Icarus medium flyers provide that.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I am quickly running out of steam. The last Month and a bit I have painted more than I have in the last 2 years. Now to keep plugging away toward the finish line.

With just under 100pts to my goal, I think I might slow down a bit and work on some individual figs for a bit.

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Oh man, Steve, the fact that you're running out of steam means that the Challenge is doing its magic. I'm delighted that you've painted more in the past 7 weeks than you have in the past two years. Mission accomplished. :)

These Dystopian Wars flyers are very cool, like antarctic kinda cool. The green energy blooms are a great touch, as is the blue 'glow' for the portholes and viewports. 

I look forward to seeing you pip over the line with some individual figures. Until next week!

From MartinN: Balbus the Disfigured - Early Roman command stand (18 Points)

Finally I've made it! My first scheduled Friday-submission!

Well, life is rather busy around here with me being away on in-company training for much of the time as well as taking over new responsibilities in my job. Normally I would have planned to have more time for painting this challenge, but alas it was not to be. I'm rather sure most of you know such real live issues only to well so I stop blathering and will come straight to business.

I've always been fascinated by anything Roman. As a kid I loved to dress up as Roman centurion for carnival and birthday parties. Most of my friends preferred the more traditional cowboy or Native-American costumes though. This love continues to the present day and albeit not dressing up as Roman anymore I still read and watch anything vaguely related. So it's certainly of little surprise that I jump at any chance to paint up a few nice miniatures for this period.

The miniatures for this little command stand come from the excellent Aventine range of Early Republican Romans as well as Etruscans. The casualty though is from Armorum & Aquila miniatures and while a little rough in detail, still a very nice and atmospheric sculpt. The decals used are from the more than commendable Little Big Men Studios. What's a little odd about the commanders sculpt though is he's sporting six fingers on his left hand. It took me a while to figure out why I felt there was something odd with this miniature.

I had these cuties sitting in my lead pile for what felt like ages. Initially I had planned to paint them up for use with Impetus, but I prefer using 15's for games with largish formations. To this end I'll probably use these with SAGA or any other skirmish game. I think I'll call him (the commander) Balbus (latin for Stammering One). No idea when I'll come around to paint up some retinue for him though.

I want them to represent Romans from the early Republic, so arund about the time when they freed themselves from Etruscan rule and started to subjugate their immediate neighbours. While in Greece at that time large battles were fought with the well known Phalanxes fighting it out, battles in Italy still were fought at a somewhat smaller scale. Often these battles were nothing more than small skirmishes or kettle raids.

Three standing miniatures and a prone casualty should net me a whopping 17.5 points.

Welcome to the Friday Crew proper Martin! This command stand is stunning, even by the very high standards you've set with past entries. Colourful without being riotous, in your distinctive style, and the composition and basing are sublime. But six-fingered Balbus, now that is a mystery. 

I sympathise entirely on the life limiting hobby time, just look at my tally. Still, there's always the next Challenge, or the one after where we can hope to make better progress. 
17.5 points is not mathematically pleasing: I'm going to exercise my minion rights and call it 18. Let's just hope I've not overstretched my remit so much that judicial intervention is necessary. 

I'd be delighted if you had time to produce some more of the excellent Aventine Romans in this challenge, please?  

Phil

From GrahameH: Still Finishing Armies (320 Points)

A bit slow over the last 2 weeks due to work, but  I have managed to painted up the last of my mounted Battlefront 15mm Cossacks for Rapid Fire WW2. I just have the support weapons to do and that will be two full battalions of Cossacks, both as mounted and dismounted. However, I am now waiting for Battlefront to supply replacements for the wagon drivers. For some reason they supplied normal drivers rather than cossacks - Oh well.

42 15mm Mounted and 6 Dismounted Cossacks

Next Up are some 16th Cent, Spanish (15mm Essex)

Almost finished this army just another Pike block for this Tercio and some Cavalry. Here is the first Pike Block (36 Figures) and 2 small sword and shield units (24 Figures).

Hopefully the Cossack Support weapons will get done at the weekend (if work & Battlefront allow)

Crikey Grahame, that's quite a lot of army finishing for a decent points bomb. Those Cossacks look fantastic en masse: the punchy blue trousers really lifting the drab jackets. do I see that you've painted stripes down the trousers and detailing on the hats and markings on the horses on every single one? That's dedication to your art. The Spanish pike look  menacing too, but that's an era I know little about. 

Sixty-six 15mm infantry and 42 cavalry is a nice 300 points, but I'll ruin the pleasing round number by adding twenty bonus points for the flags on the pike block and the detailing on the Cossacks. 

Hoping you get your Cossack replacements through soon, so you can finish that army off for definite.

Phil