From Barks: Forest Knights (Babylon 5)(51 points)

Low budget fun at Babylon 5! These chaps are from Hungry Troll and were able to be knocked over in a day. They complement AHPC X’s grail knights.

They're pretty tall, on 25mm bases...

... and the leader is a little taller.

Is he unarmed?

A herring!!!

4x 28/ 35mm: 20 points

Babylon 5: 20 points

Slowpainter’s ABC: K is for Knights

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The blue tide continues with these wonderfully characterful figures that somehow remind me of some film who's name escapes me right now. Ni matter. Great job on the weathered helmets and the manky cloaks. Love the antlers. Remember, don't say 'it'.

Oh, and points have been adjusted to reflect their taller size.

- Curt

From GregB - Plague Marine Hero (1 point)

The final remains of Larpdouche McPus, great Plague Lord of Nurgle.

I know fellow Minion and veteran Painting Challenge participant Millsy has been putting some of his considerable painting skills and valuable time towards work on some of GW's "Plague Marines", their vehicles and allies - all followers of the Chaos God "Nurgle". I wanted to recognize his efforts by painting up this tribute figure, a Plague Marine hero known as Larpdouche McPus, a noted Plague Marine Commander in the 40k setting.

Just think how scary this guy would have been if he had not joined a cult that rewards its followers with exotic, fatal diseases!

What do we know of McPus? Well, Imperial records offer several clues. Prior to joining in with the Nurgle cult, McPus was a medical sales rep, selling ivermectin and anabolic steroids to the population of Catachan. As with many deluded cult members, he worked his way into the Nurgle cult by volunteering with the local Green Party on that world, demonstrating the requisite mental acumen one would need to be an active part of a warp cult that rewards you with fatal disease.

Larpdouche McPus was all set to be the greatest Chaos Lord seen in the segmentum - the Raven Guard were even called in to bolster defences! But of course, as we have already established, Nurgle rewards his moronic followers with fatal disease. McPus and his dread company were last seen dissolving into their component atoms following a religious ceremony. This backpack from his armour is all that remained. The segmentum was safe, and the remains of this Nurgle cult were managed by fourth class waste servitors, while Raven Guard were rerouted to deal with actual problems elsewhere elsewhere in the Imperium.

I hope Millsy will enjoy this! It would make a fine religious relic for his Nurgle plague collection...maybe? For scoring, this remnant of a Plague Marine should fetch maybe 1 point? It will be up to Curt. Cheers!  

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Hahaha! Too good, Greg. I knew as soon as Millsy submitted the entry with the backhand to the Raven Guard that Mr. Burch would have an appropriate, and measured riposte.

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2022/01/from-millsy-28mm-erin-celtic-myth-sarah.html

I wonder if this will begin the war of 'The Backpack Smack'? 

In the healthy spirit of escalation, I'm going to raise Greg's point estimate to 5. :)

Now, back to you Millsy...

- Curt

From Barks: Eldar Rangers (Vulcan) (65 points)

I've always liked these classic Jes Goodwin sculpts, and found these on eBay. I like the lime green and white scheme of the Biel-Tan craftworld, and painted their coats as reversible. I'm sure they've been dwarfed by scale-creep since they were first produced in 1989!

I was googling for inspiration and found fellow-Challenger Nick's rangers. When the tears cleared from my eyes and the despair lifted I copied his wraithbone weapons.

9x 28mm: 45 points

Vulcan: 20 points

Slowpainter's ABC: J for Jes Goodwin

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Yup, I'm of that vintage that when I think Eldar, I think of Jes Goodwin's brilliant sculpts of the late 80s. Excellent work Barks. I love the multi-cam cloaks with the winding, thorny vines, and how they wonderfully set off the Rangers' wraithbone weapons (great gems too!). 

But not a skull in sight, buddy - that makes me a sad panda. :(  You. Must. Try. Harder.  I suspect a skull bomb is in our future, folks.

Stay tuned as Barks has another entry in the wings (antlers?).

- Curt

From DaveD: 'Nam - Anzacs, MACV-SOG & M113 APC - 97 Points

Its my 3rd challenge post focussed on my 'Nam project . Moving away from the US forces I have picked up the recently released Anzacs by Full Metal Miniatures plus a radio operator from The Assault Group and these have now been completed . Like all of these recent 'Nam releases from various manufacturers they are very characterful and a joy to paint.

Next up comes my small Military Assistance Command Vietnam - Special Operations Group team - 4 special forces in a more complex striped camouflage - "Light Weight Density pattern" - these are by The Assault group again .

Next is a single M1113 APC with commander and 3 riders - again this is an Assault Group set 

15 x 28mm = 75

1 x 28mm commander - 2 points

1 28mm vehicle - 20 points

97 points 

I think that enough green for a few posts - time for something else next week I think 

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Fabulous work Dave! Those Full Metal and Assault Group sculpts are excellent and you've done an amazing job with them with your talented brushwork. I also quite like that M113. I know it's really hard to sex-up one of these tracked boxes, but you've done a marvellous job with the decals, crew and weathering. All this Vietnam goodness aside, I look forward to your new endeavours. 

- Curt 

The First Cut is the Deepest

Happy Sunday All! 

I would think that few things give you greater clarity than having to look up at one of these. ;)

We have a great roster of talent for all of us to enjoy today. Already I see that Dave, Greg, Kerry, Millsy, Barks and Peter all have submissions sitting in the hopper, and I expect more as the day moves along. I'll post a few before I hit the hay and will resume after I get my beauty sleep (yes, I plan to sleep in a bit).

On an administrative note, we are now have five days until the Challenge Cut. *cue ominous music* Right now, there are 21 people not on the scoreboard, so I'm really hoping that we'll see entries from these folks over the coming days. In order to help things along, we'll open up Friday as a free-fire for those participants who need a little extra time to submit an entry before the 11th hour.

Have a great day!

- Curt

From ByronM - More 15mm Eldar (55 points)

Continuing on with my 15mm (20mm) Warhammer 40k project, I have a few more pieces finished this week.

First up is a unit of Fire Dragons, again these are 6mm models scaled up and printed as roughly 20mm scale (25mm to the top of the crests) from the excellent Lord Chronos on Cults. Even though these were meant to be 6mm scale, so much detail is there that I am pretty sure they would look ok even is scaled up to 28mm (they would be missing some detail, but still very usable).

The unit is made up of 9 Fire Dragons and the Exarch. Once again I kept the character on a different style base so that they are easy to spot at table distance in 15mm.  They are all painted in the traditional very bright yellow and orange paint scheme.

Next up is the transport to go along with them, again a 6mm model scaled up and printed to be huge.  This is done in the same turquoise type colour as the other 2 and features twin link bright lances to keep with the Fire Dragon theme of being able to kill any vehicle or monster type unit dead with heavy firepower.

As per the last submission of these models I am claiming the 10 figures as 4 points each and the tank at 15 points due to pure size and scale of this beast (just as big as most 28mm tanks).  That should put it at 55 points, but Millsy, please feel free to adjust or change at your discretion though as I really could care less about the overall points...

From Millsy:

I'm absolutely loving your small scale 40K stuff Byron. You've made me think about half a dozen different projects already. Stop please!

The transport is a lovely thing but the Fire Dragons take the cake. I know that's the traditional colour scheme but it doesn't matter that it's been seen before. That orange / yellow combo paired with the black weapons is an absolute cracker.

I see no reason to change your points mate. If nothing else, you didn't say "could not care less" which gives me the absolute you-know-whats and which makes you a top bloke in my estimation!

From DarrellH: Spanish Trastámara Italian Wars Ordinance - Army of Gonzalo de Córdoba, "El Gran Capitán" (32 points)

At last! My first post! Hurrah! :>)

Apologies for the slightly serious nature of this post. I've been a difficult time as I'm sure many of us are experiencing to one extent or another. 

Due to a serious medical condition I have been shielding since March 20th 2022! Unable to see in person another human being except when I got my three vaccines. Suffice to say this has been emotionally devastating in so many ways. It had take a heavy toll on my mental health. I was so ill/hyper anxious last year I was unable to take part in the AHPC. I have lived with quite a high background level of anxiety most of my adult life but this was something very new and much more intense than anything I had experienced before. I just couldn't find the strength within to paint anything. 

Gradually over time things did improve with the help of some serious therapeutic interventions etc. Still, there have been times when I have struggled to paint so I made a promise to myself that the AHPC starting in 2021 would be a perfect time to challenge myself, but more than just putting the brush to a miniature; to challenge myself mentally too, to challenge the hyper anxiety. The sense of companionship, humour and sense of community that the challenge provides will hopefully be enough to keep me going.

I started prepping miniatures for a Late Roman army way back in early November of last year  struggling a little through some quite rough castings, mostly pitted, lovingly cleaning them up and filled in the many gaps with ProCreate putty. Then primed. I had all the units ready for the go come December 21st and made a good start with the brush. Starved of the varnish I use all the time during the "Great Windsor and Newton Professional Matt Varnish Drought" I did some shopping around and was assured that a certain matt varnish spray was a "dead flat matt" by the vendor. That is where my troubles started. To cut a long story short, the varnish was far from matt and after spending two weeks painting up my first unit of Cataphracts, ready to make a "bang" with my first post, the final layer of varnish penetrated not only the solid brush on DIY Enamel Humbrol Gloss coat (left a week to fully cure which has never let me down) but down into the paint, blistering and cracking the finish. Along with the extreme frosting the paint cracked, then flaked and all my hard work went down the pan. Devastated does not even begin to describe my feelings. With the first unit of the project now ruined, and only large units to paint, I had no time to paint anything else up to reach the deadline so opted to box up all the Late Romans and save it for another year when I can face stripping the Cataphracts down again. 

Pics of the varnishing disaster can be found at the bottom of my post. Curt suggested to me that I might include a few as a precautionary tale! I am not going to mention any names but the results are plain to see. I have never had such a varnishing disaster anywhere near as bad as this and I'm just shy of painting for three decades.

The composition of of the gun, crew and accoutrements were all worked out in the picture below. I wanted to emphasise the discussion between the Leonardo da Vinci miniature and the chap with the linstock as if discussing the maths of the matter at hand! I think that this was largely achieved. 

Now to the heart of the matter and the pictures of the gun and crew in action:

(Argh! I've just noticed that I've splashed some of the basing colour on one of the sleeves of the guy holding then linstock. I just want to get my fist entry underway at present so that error will be fixed tonight.) - Millsy: I'd never have known if you didn't say!

So, one cannon and four crew is 50 points? Maybe a Brucy Bouns for the vanishing disaster that saw six well painted cavalry models reduced to cracked garbage? ;>)

And the varnishing incident of doom! 

From Millsy:

I'm so glad you took the time to tell us the background to this post and what you've been through the last couple of years Darrell. It's a brave thing to talk so openly about the things that challenge us like this. Well done to you mate for fighting the good fight and getting yourself back to a place where painting is something you feel able to do.

I'm also stoked that you're back painting and sharing with us. I've always loved your smooth style with your absolutely gorgeous metallics. That gun is an absolute masterpiece! The crew are also really evocative of the period, especially that crazy yellow hat and the wonderful earthy tones across the group.

Good to know you were able to fix the varnish disaster. Living in Australia I've never had issues like this but I know plenty who have in the frozen north. Thanks for the warning!

Have an extra couple of points mate, one for the wonderful micro-sized notes and one for the warning :-)