From RayR: 28mm Great War British Early War Infantry (220 points)

Okay, where's the French guys on nags with the funny hats and yards of lace (the guys not the nags)?  Ray pretty much sums it up below:

Faint in amazement Ray enters something other than 15mm Nine Years War figures!

Only because I've painted these up for a fellow gamer Matt. They're more of his WWI British. There are 40 Infantry and a 2 man Machine Gun crew. 

Most of the figures are from Musketeer Miniatures and a few are the rarely seen (or so I'm led to believe) Battlehonours. This should get me up the table a little!!

Excellent work Ray! I'm sure Matt will be delighted with these figures. I've not tried any of the figures from Battle Honours but I think I'll give them a go after seeing these.

These 42 men from Britain's Contemptible Little Army will give Ray 220 points, enough for him to break through his original Challenge goal of 600 points. Nice one Mr. R!

From KevinH: WWII German, Soviet and American Infantry; FIW Indians, ACW and a Grey (290 points)

Kevin is a veteran Conscript from Winnipeg  (one of the 'Originals') and has a well-deserved reputation for knowing his way around a brush. He's certainly not one of the fastest painters off the block, but you can always rely on him to make it for Last Call with some lovely stuff to admire.

From Kevin:

Hello fellow Challengers.

Well, I'm pretty much down to the wire for my submissions! I don't expect to win the Challenge (obviously), but at least these entries will get me out of the basement!

Most of my entries are 28mm.  Paints used are 'various' but mainly Vallejo "Game Colour" and Privateer paints, with a few GW's thrown in here and there.

First off, a German Mortar from the old Bolt Action Miniatures line (pre-Warlord). Nothing too fancy here, except I use Vallejo's "German Uniform" for the German uniforms.  It looks best to me, for the German uniform colour.

This piece, a German HMG team, also from BAM, took a good bit of time! I don't care to do German camo, as it's pretty fiddly, but sometimes you have no choice. In the end, I think the camo smocks turned out pretty good.

Below is a Battle Honors Russian squad.

Back when Curt was still living in these parts, we started playing Easy Eight's "Battleground WWII" rules.  I bought a bunch of Battle Honors Russians for the game.  Well, the rules weren't quite what we were looking for, and the WWII figs got "shelved" for a time.  When the Bolt Action rules showed up recently, it looked like we might have need of WWII figures again!  I dug through my "lead mountain" to see if I had anything I could put together for Bolt Action forces.  My old Battle Honors figs turned up, and I found I still had a squad's worth of unpainted infantry. So I knocked these out pretty quick - they won't win any painting contests, but that's OK - they're painted and ready to play!

Something a bit different here - two British 8th Army Command Stands by Battlefront. The pack had been sitting on my work table for a while now, and I just decided to paint up the two stands for the Challenge.  I don't expect I'll ever do a full 8th Army force for Flames of War, but you never know...

Like the German HMG team, these guys also took a bit of time!  Five US Airborne figs from Bolt Action Miniatures.  I'd guess most of you will probably agree, "Band of Brothers" was a great series - I know I certainly enjoyed it.  

As such, I wanted to lavish some time on these guys and do them justice.  I really like how they turned out, and I look forward to getting more of these guys painted and having some games with them!  I think these might be the best 28mm US Airborne figures on the market.

A friend of mine and I are (slowly) working on figures for War of 1812.  Those of you who are familiar with the Fawcett blog, can check for keyword "1812" and you'll see some of the other figs I've already painted.

I'd already done six of these Conquest Miniatures North American Indians and posted them on the Fawcett blog, but I wanted to get more finished, so I painted another six to add to the group.  These are great figures - very detailed!  Sadly, I think I'm being a bit too "precious" with my War of 1812 figures, and I'm taking too long to get things finished, but when you have such great figures, you want to do a paint job worthy of the quality of the sculpts!

I have a problem - I don't care to get bogged down in one period or one army for too long, so my painting table tends to have ALL SORTS of figs on the go!  (Another reason my War of 1812 stuff is taking so long!)  Case in point, I'm working on some of the Perry Miniatures plastic ACW figures.  Here's a Union Officer from the Cavalry box set.  Again, nothing too  fancy, but he turned out quite nicely, I think.

This is another of those "don't bog me down on one thing" projects!  My buddy Tim gave me this piece a while back, and I finally decided to knock out the piece and get it "table ready!"

I have some of the Copplestone "Grey Aliens"...

...so Tim picked up this item for me to go with the Copplestone figures.  I don't know who the manufacturer is on this piece, and several Google searches failed to turn up a match...

If it isn't clear by now, I really like the Bolt Action Miniatures figure line.  I got in on the "ground floor" so to speak, when they were first starting out.  I think I'm partly responsible for the Brit/Canadian figures having squad leaders with Thompson SMG's! Anyway, here's a BAM Russian Medic and two "Stretcher Bearers"...

...a squad of BAM Russian infantry...

...and a squad of BAM German infantry.

With the release of the Bolt Action rules a while back, I started buying up all the "old style" BAM figures I was interested in, that I could lay my hands on.  I have enough Brit/Canadian, Russian and German (Heer) figures to do about three squads for each force, with  Command and Support figures.  I also have some US Army figs, but only enough for about two squads and Command and Support.

Thanks to the Painting Challenge, I was able to get some of it painted!  Now I just need to keep rolling on the rest of it!

Now I just need to get my Ronin/Samurai figure finished!

Very beautiful assortment of figures Kevin! Though all of it is excellent I have to say that my favourites are the US Paratroopers and the FIW Indian war party - fabulous work.

This fine collection of miniatures will give Kevin 290 points, and with this he achieves his Challenge target in one fell swoop! Well done Kevin!

From MilesR: 28mm WWII Japanese Infantry (30 points)

Just as last year, Miles chips in with one of the first submissions for the Challenge (good lad). Today we see a detachment of six WWII Japanese infantry.

From Miles: 

Well it's the 20th and the sporting world now turns it's eyes to the 3rd Annual Painting Challenge! I added up the individual score level targets and it's roughly 42,675 (I may be off a bit as I just did it in my head - I'm a numbers geek) - that represents 8,535 painted 28mm infantry figures and 910 per ronin!

Ok, Enough with me proving that I'm a multidimensional geek.

Here's my first entry, 6 28mm WWII Japanese infantry from Battle Honors. Think of them as second cousins to your Samurai.

Excellent work Miles (and those are some frightening numbers)! This group will give you 30 points to start your climb on the roster. (Well, I was in first place for at least a few hours...) ;)

A New 'Painting Challenge' Recruit - Paul from Scotland

We have a fresh new volunteer to add to our merry band of hobbists who are in pursuit of the vaunted laurels in the Spring Thaw Painting Challenge. Please welcome PaulP from Scotland (also known as Paulalba in 'blogspace')!

Paul has an excellent blog that documents both the progress of his 15mm Napoleonic collection and the gaming from his local group.  I really recommend you check it out - it can be found here:

http://napoleonicsinminiature.blogspot.com/

I'm quite impressed with Paul's painting style as it is smooth, distinct and clean - very, very nice stuff. We have a couple entries from him featured here. First up is a battery of Bavarian artillery. The castings are AB miniatures 15mm (though often referred to in the hobby as 18mm). Paul uses a mix of acrylics from GW, Vallejo, Humbrol, Foundry, and Coat d' Arms. His bases are MDF sourced from Warbases.

Next up is a late-period Prussian command stand featuring an infantry General and an officer from a Landwehr regiment. The General is a converted Battle Honours figure and the Landwehr officer is from Old Glory.

What I find particularly impressive is that Paul is just 3 years back into the hobby after a long hiatus. Pretty inspiring stuff. These two entries gives Paul a tidy eleven points. I expect we'll see much more from him in the coming weeks! Welcome aboard, Paul!