2nd Monthly Minions' Choice for Challenge XII

  

For our second Monthly Minions' Choice for Challenge XII the nominees are:


MikeP’s Frankenstein 

AlanD's Covenanters 

JohnB’s Home Cast Figures 

DarrellH’s Spanish Sword and Buckler Men

BenF’s 15mm Persian Guard and Commanders

PaulSS Star Wars Adventurers

Jasper’s Armoured Car

Samuli’s Beetroot Zouaves 

___________________________________________________

The Minion Collective has cast their votes, and the JohnB, with his wonderful 40mm homemade toy soldiers, is the Monthly Minions' Choice. Congratulations John!!

John, I'm delighted to award you with a gift certificate from our friends at Comic Readers Regina. Enjoy and let's see some more of your homecast creations! 

- Curt

From DallasE: 28mm Kubelwagens, Perry DAK tanker (Arrakis) (75 points)

Back into the mists of time for a couple of vehicles that had been sitting in a box for 10 years or more... two 28mm German Kubelwagens from Black Tree Design. These are all-metal models and fitted together pretty much how you'd expect - poorly. Lots of greenstuff required to make 'em presentable but some egregious mold lines didn't get entirely cleaned up. Sue me :-)

Anyway, I decided to do one as a DAK vehicle for my upcoming Western Desert project, and one in typical NW Europe livery. This is the Afrikakorps vehicle.

The models were built from the kits, except that I added shovels from an ancient 1/48 Bandai kit of some kind and the license plates. The DAK vehicle was painted GW XV-88 with Agrax Earthshade. Unfortunately the officer and driver are outfitted in European uniforms (as opposed to DAK tropical kit) but I painted the driver's tunic a sickly off-green to replicate the Afrika jacket. The officer I gave tan breeches.

Made the license plates out of plasticard. A bit too big but what the hell.

The NW Europe Kubel was painted GW Zandri Dust and given a subtle camouflage of Doombull Brown and Castellan Green, again with Agrax wash. 

Driver and passenger were painted in European service uniforms.

A bit of muddy weathering was added.

Turned out acceptably well for an old model.

Next up was a Perry German DAK tank commander. He painted up quickly and looks pretty nice I think. 

Here he is in a Pzkpfw IV painted by A.N. Other. This was actually the genesis of the upcoming project - I had a few 1/48 models that I'd gotten as part of a trade, all painted in Western Desert colours. Several times I'd considered repainting them, but a Western Desert project was always percolating in the back of my head... so now it's on - Perry plastic Afrikakorps and 8th Army boxes are on their way.

Having completed at least 4 planet challenges in the Outer Ring, I'm off to the middle with this one - Arrakis, the desert planet. I figure these DAK models will be a shoo-in...

Points:

2x 28mm vehicles = 40 points

4x crew = 10 points

1x 28mm DAK tanker = 5 points

Planet bonus (Arrakis) = 20 points

Total = 75 points

Until next week!

DAK vs sand worms, I'd play that for a dollar. Good work on resurrecting these kits- multi-part metal models are a real heart-sink. Your Citadel paints ambush scheme has come out well. I do think some painters get far too worked up about precise colour matches- there are so many variables and yours look spot-on.

Barks

From SamuliS: Artillery and Star Players (46 points)

Back from a short hiatus in entries! After a fairly quiet start of the year at work it's been quite hectic the last couple of weeks with limited free time available. And that free time was quite often taken by painting up a large batch of Flames of War terrain for our club that I promised to do sometime last summer, but never properly got around to it until now that I was pressured into finishing them for a tournament that is coming up in a few weeks. I had painted some of the grey details before so didn't count for the challenge sadly.

 4 sets of Battlefronts Stalingrad ruins painted up for our gaming club.

The minis I did paint for the challenge are a continuation from the last couple of subjects with yet more Team Yankee West Germans and some Star Players for Bloodbowl. For Bundeswehr we have three MLRS tracked rocket launchers and an M113 observer vehicle. The Observer vehicle was a 3D file that I found on Thingiverse and printed out to give some variety to the army compared to regular M113 that I planned for a reservist formation.

For Bloodbowl we have a couple of Star Players with Akhorne the Squirrel, Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill making a showing as well as another little lizard to function as a token. I also painted up a ball token to place under the base of the ball carrier. Akhorne and Karla were painted to match my Amazons, but I decided to paint Helmut differently as he will probably be the most common star player  to use in the game so a more traditional chaosy theme suited him well. All minis from Greebo games. I'm especially fond of Akhorne. Lovely sculpt and the foaming mouth really suits the lore of the crazed (possibly Khornate) squirrel causing havoc on the field. A frenzied squirrel with sharpened claws is probably something you would not want to face. In game he is bit of a glass cannon, with nearly everything in the game being able to hit him with three dice, but he does pack bit of a punch when he is the one doing the tackling. And being cheaper than many of the positionals in the game you can get him as an inducement fairly easily. 

 

I'm counting Akhorne and the lizard as 15mm minis so with 4 15mm vehicles, 2 15mm minis and 2 28mm minis this should end up netting me 46 more points.

Nice work! I'm actually quite taken with the colours on your lizard. You do know Blood Bowl is a way to my heart. As are skullz and hazard stripes, both of which I spy. I haven't seen the squirrel in action, but would like to! Your moderns have come out nicely. I like the dusty weathering. I wouldn't have picked that as a 3D print- good job!

Barks

From DallasE: Roadkill Garage BBQuda for Gaslands (Babylon 5)(37 points)

Presenting... the BBQuda!

There's a bit of a story behind this... one of my other enthusiasms is old cars, and TV shows about them. One of my favourites is "Roadkill Garage", broadcast on the Discovery Velocity channel. Roadkill Garage follows the misadventures of its hosts David Freiburger and Steve Dulcich as they play around fixing up old cars on the cheap, and as they put it, "doing the wrong things the right way."

They give their project cars fun names too - "Stubby Bob" the cut-down wheel-standing pickup; "General Mayhem" the clapped out big-block Dodge Charger; "Crop Duster" the beaten-up old Dodge Duster; "Vanishing Paint" the rusty Dodge Challenger (inspired by classic '70s car movie Vanishing Point); and the subject of this post: a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda called "BBQuda".

The story of BBQuda is rather sad - apparently it was a decent car owned by host Dulcich, who loaned it to a friend who intended to use it to design an engine-swap kit for the car. Unfortunately the friend lived in the way of the California wildfires... and the car burned to the ground. So in true Roadkill fashion, Freiburger and Dulcich decided to fix it back up on the cheap - low-budget fun for sure. 

The project started with trying to find a suitable donor car for the BBQuda. Fortunately Hot Wheels made a "1968 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S" in metallic green and one was duly ordered from an ebay vendor in Saskatchewan.

The car arrived two days ago and I wasted no time in getting to work. First thing was to take the body off the chassis by Dremeling through the melted plastic "rivets" in time-honoured fashion.

Once the body was off I took out the glass, as the BBQuda ran without it.

I also removed the wheels and replaced them with resin "mag wheels" which look so much better.

A driver figure was placed in the car to represent Steve Dulcich, of course wearing a scary skull mask. He doesn't usually do that on the show but... artistic license was exercised. I stuck on a gas can from my spares box - it's from battlefront's 15mm Team Yankee range but I think it looks OK.

At that point the weathering really began. I painted the car body flat black with Krylon spray, followed by a coat of watered-down craft black as the finish was a bit sticky (!) - that solved it.

At that point I stippled soft Mechanicus Standard Grey in various places, and added the lighter parts in light grey. I also traced the panel lines in Nuln Oil. Lots of surface rust was also added with GW Doombull Brown and watered down Rust Effects wash.

To make the car suitable for Gaslands, I added a minigun from the excellent North Star "Implements of Carnage" sprue. Since the car body is non-magnetic, I superglued a magnet to the underside of the hood and that allowed be to magnetize the minigun for the hood top.

Here's what we started with...

Now for some gratuitous burnout pics...

I love the burnout pics... basically half of every show is just the guys doing burnout and donuts... their tire bill must be extravagant.

HOWEVER, I'm submitting this one for Babylon 5 as the Roadkill ethos is really "doing things on the cheap", as any viewer will testify. Hence using used parts, cars from junkyards, and a gas can for a fuel tank.

Points:

20mm vehicle: 15 points

20mm 1/2 figure (driver): 2 points

Planet bonus: 20 points

Total: 37 points

Thanks and have a great week everyone!

That's superb work, Dallas- worth the wait! I really like your rusty burned out weathering, and the comparison shots with the real thing demonstrate how well you have achieved this. There is, however, a noticeable lack of weaponry for survival and victory in Gaslands...

Barks

From Nick: 20mm PaK38 & leIG18 [64 points]

I‘m currently stuck in a lack of mojo, and also I‘m working on several units at once. Thus it’s taken me a while to get todays submission done. 

The PaK38 is a rather nice kit by PSC, but a far cry from Zvezdas offerings. As ever the crew are all AB figures. Frankly the PSC ones, that come with the gun, are utter tosh.

Whenever possible I try to stick with Zvezda with my guns, as they‘re so much nicer than most of what the competitors have on offer. So this leIG 18, leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18, is no exception. The two figures actually manning the gun are als Zvezda figures while the rest, well yes, you guessed it, are AB. Unfortunately AB don’t do a dedicated set of leIG 18 crew, so I had to source these from several different sets. Yet, that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

 Points:

2x 20mm gun = 16

12x 20mm figure = 48

Total: 64

Thanks for treating us to another gorgeous set of WW2 goodness, Nick. The smaller guns were more common than the sexier 88s, but tend to get short shrift from gamers and sculptors. It's a shame the PSC figures are lacking, and I'm surprised AB don't have a dedicated leIG18 set.

Barks

NB: labels, man!