From JamieM - Aliens, Elementals and Weird Monsters (158 points)

Something of a selection box today, starting with some more Grey aliens (even though some of them aren’t grey) to go alongside the starting war and I painted a few weeks ago.

These are once again from the Watchers faction for the Wild West Exodus game. Not sure I’ll get around to playing them in that game, but my plan to use them as invaders against some post apocalyptic humans is intact, probably using the Xenos Rampant rules. No idea why there is a human in the box, but in the box she was and so she got painted.

The same paint scheme as my last ones.

Next up are some tree elementals/dryads for Kings of War for the, perhaps unsurprisingly, Forces of Nature army. They’ll go alongside the water and fire elementals I painted last week as an army mainly made up of big fellas who go “Smash” instead of pesky small infantry is really rather appealing.

There’s also a Tree Herder with them, who is the big Ent looking fella at the back. He will most definitely go Smash.

Nice and simple painting with dry brushing doing most of the heavy lifting and I thought I’d add some basing flock and underbrush to their tops to give them some foliage.

Last up are a couple of big monsters and a little fella. In order to finish my Conquest Spires army, I needed to finish a standard bearer and two monsters, delightfully known as “Abominations”

They’re too big for my Photo Booth so I had to improvise! The little fella is 40mm, which shows how huge these lads are…..

Contrast paint doing some heavy lifting as there’s plenty of surface detail and it was great for the flesh.

As you can see, they’re a little bit disturbing… horrible to build though as the leg joints were all ball and socket, which sounds great in theory, but trying to hold four ball and socket joints together simultaneously was an absolute nightmare.

So, for scores then:

Aliens are 2 x 40mm and 5 x 28mm for 39 points.

Wood dryads are 6 x 40mm and 1 x 28mm vehicle for 62 points.

Conquest miniatures are 1 x 40mm infantry and 2 x 40mm vehicles for 57 points

Which I make 158 points in total.

***

Well now Jamie, 158 points WITHOUT resorting to any sort of Naval Nonsense (TM) - that's more like it!

This is a tremendous assortment you have gathered here. Remember, even if all of the aliens are not grey in look, they are probably grey in motive, so "grey alien" is the perfect term to apply to all of them. The Ents look smashing - as well as able to smash. And as for the "Abomninations" well...they sure seem to do what it says on the tin! And I expect all those ball socket joints were quite the nightmare to assemble...

158 points well-earned! We look forward to your further progress on multiple fronts!

GregB

From BartekR: Charging Conquest knights beating the cut in Limbo (155 points)

Greetings all, and glad you can join me for my first post of this, AHPC XV, which is my third attempt at the Snowlord’s dance-through-hell-and-heaven obstacle course of paint and banter.

If this was a sports documentary, there would be some line in this about how I have something to prove. After a decent first outing (AHPC XIII), I aimed high and dropped low and hard in AHPC XIV. So, this year, I’m aiming for a relatively modest 750 points.

With a busy work year, I haven’t much time preparing and indeed planning miniatures. Frankly, with a pile of plastic sitting dormant since last Challenge (and some from the one before), I expect I will be  spending a *lot* of time in limbo. That said, I’m hoping to get a few new things out there – maybe have a swing at some of Dante’s circles, and get out at least one bespoke piece before we wrap up.

So, first up, to get me out of the doghouse of the 21 Jan cut off: Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings Hundred Kingdoms Household Knights. 

In AHPC XIII, I started painting my brother’s Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings Hundred Kingdoms army. Two years on, I’m still going (well, to be fair, my brother has to downsize his armies – so this is an older sibling helping out with pre-sale prep!).

What to say about these? 38mm knights on horses. The figures are large (see comparison with a GW chaos warrior). Since my brother bought his Conquest army secondhand, a number of them were already  block painted using Citadel contrast or similar. While this, I believe, qualifies as putting me in Limbo, these were a focus of a lot of touching up. 

The process

The 'touching up' mostly involved bringing minis into the red/turquoise theme of the army, with a fair bit of work on the red on the cloaks and caparison to gain more depth, and shining up the armour. As it was, the paint work was a dull metallic (heavily washed, probably Nuln Oil). Overall, very dull. Not a bad look but not what I imagined for a resplendent household knight cavalry on the charge. This was fixed by hitting them with metallics again, and then a brushed-on gloss varnish.

Admittedly harder to see in photo, but the difference between dull and touched-up and glossed metal

The new build figures - including the standard bearer - followed the same process. Without the original recipe for the paint work, here the the challenge with was getting a good colour match. Needless to say, Citadel Carroburg Crimson wash was relied on to get the red of the cloaks approximate.

And more horse butts

A last note on the rider with the pennant. The command element for this called for a musician, but there wasn't any option for one on the sprues I had. So, to distinguish the figure, I used an open helmet from an infantry set and added the pennant – metal foil from a wine bottle top!

Process wise the I rediscovered (yet again) that despite having a  generous work space, after a few days of working on the bench the inevitable spread of paint droppers/pots effectively corners me on a hand's width rump of desk space to work on, before I'm pushed off the table completely. Trying to be better about keeping this aspect of the painting process under control! 

The result 

Standard question when I finish painting: am happy with them? Given the Challenge and these prompted me to pick up a brush for the first time in a year, yes. Sure, given their generous scale I would love to be more precise and bring out more of the detail, but happy enough. They were an opportunity to use up more of my legacy Citadel paints (particularly washes), having bought a set of the Army Painter Fanatic range - which i'm quite happy with. One aspect I am keen to try out is a new matt varnish - the brushed-on Vallejo matt (on the cloaks etc) was far too satin for my liking (despite vigorous mixing/shaking) so I will be keen to try out some AK Interactive Ultra Matt when it arrives.

The points

With Monday Minion Millsy's agreement, I have scored these as for 40mm:

9 x 40mm cavalry @15 pts each: 135 pts

Limbo bonus: 20 pts

Total: 155 pts

  ...in the background

Probably like most, music or audiobooks accompany my painting. Through he painting of these I was listening to the Joe Abercrombie First Law trilogy audiobooks, which I highly recommend - English actor Steven Pacey's narration is top notch.

From Millsy:

Lovely brushwork on the knights Bartek! I really like your colour choices and the basing sets them off very nicely indeed.

Great to hear that the Challenge motivated you to pick the brush up again, it's a wonderful motivator and hopefully the enthusiasm will persist beyond the end of March.

155 points to kick start your Challenge!

Cheers,

Millsy

From JamieM: Conquest Brute Drones (80 points)

As my tumble down the “Conquest” rabbit hole continues, I’ve completed some Brute Drones, heavily muscled goons for the Spires army I’m working on.

These are specimens who show promise in ending up looking particularly Swole and they’re fed protein shakes and energy drinks until they get big enough to have whacking great blades strapped to their arms and are sent into battle.

Quite enjoyable to paint, almost all contrast paint to match the earlier force grown drones that I painted.

They’re huge lads, shown with a necromunda figure that I won’t have time to finish today for scale, so they clock in at 8 x 54mm scale androgynous individuals for 10 points each, so 80 in total.

TeemuL: Wow, they are huge! As I am unfamiliar with the game, are these minis just giant 28mm scale minis or are they just big ones in different scale? Nevertheless they are finely painted and they will make a great addition to your force. The colour combination looks great, cyan and purple (or whatever they are called) work together and pale skin and metal compliment them. And nice 80 points to your tally!

From JamieM - Conquest Spires Force Grown Drones (245 points)

I didn’t own these figures when the challenge began. I’m not sure I’d heard of the game “Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings” before the challenge began. But here they are to once again prove that the painting gods laugh at painting plans for the Challenge - some Force Grown Drones for the Spires faction for the game.

I blame my mate. He’s a master at finding bargains on eBay and some of these started as this; just another bargain 2-player starter set that he found. He then gave me the Spires half and kept the human faction half and said “put them on a shelf, we’ll probably never play the game”. And so I did... but… because I had them, I started looking into the game. The rules were free online. There’s a free army builder online. The models are really nice… So I started stalking eBay and found another bargain starter set. One cheeky bid later and I passed the humans from it to him and we now both had big enough forces to get going.

The Spires appear to be an alien race who came to the world of Ea to colonise it. Some vaguely defined catastrophe later and only a few more of the race made it and, as there were so few of them, they started making clones and drones. These ones are apparently “force grown”, which sounds pretty horrible and are the lowest of the low, with terrible stats in game.

Their massive shields will hopefully keep them alive for a little bit whilst their masters do nasty things to their enemies, like release plagues, or have these fellas explode when they die which damages their opponents.

All contrast paints for these androgynous individuals and I didn’t want any of them to stand out, so I gave them the same colour chitinous armour and used slightly different browns for their wraps.

The shields I tried to make look slightly like meat with dry brushes and washes. I used a splash of colour on the loincloths and shields as the colour represents the colour of their owner, but as they’re the lowest of drones, only a little colour would be spent on them.

35 of them done so far. The maker of the game (para bellum) have done that annoying thing of creating their own scale (35mm) and so they’re chunky fellas, but I’ll score them as 28mm for 175 points in total.

It’s not a hugely popular game in the community, but I’m rather enjoying painting (and buying) figures for it, so hopefully we’ll find time for a game at some point. And I’ll be able to get some more figures painted for the Challenge too.

***

"...the Painting Gods laugh at painting plans for the Challenge ..." oh my goodness, do they ever! I had a whole "plan" for some figures that I won't even name again out of shame, and I still hear the mocking laughter of the Painting Gods in my head...

A great submission all around Jamie! While the painting is nice, the best part is the whole "well, hey, I'll just dip my toe into this, what might happen?" approach to this project. I think many of us - and by "many" I mean "99%" - can relate to such projects. But the seeming randomness of the hobby animal spirits are a critical part of what make this a "hobby" in the first place. No need to worry about the stuff you had "planned" for this round...there is always the next...one evening in August, you will turn to them, wonder why you had not painted them, maybe check some painted examples online and suddenly it all begins again!

As to scoring, I too despise the boutique scale creep moving through the hobby (I'm looking at you, Warlord Games, although there are many other offenders - Fantasy Flight Games among others...) but we have some precedent for these larger chaps generating larger scores. On that basis - the "Star Wars Legion Precedent", you shall be awarded 245 points. Well done! 

 GregB 

From BartekR: Stumbling out of the Studios - Conquest Hundred Kingdoms unit [140 points]

[So, just as I was getting this ready to post last Sunday we had an electrical storm that fried my modem - technicians words, not mine -- so,...a few hundred dollars and a week later]

Back after a hiatus (excuses, excuses - a few weeks adjusting to being back at work after a few months off as decompression from finishing up overseas last October). With time ticking down in the Challenge, my planned circumnavigation trip around the Studios was sidetracked: my brother - definitely in the 'gamer, not painter' category and having seen my work on his Chaos Warriors in my first post - asked me to paint his Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings army.

Since he'll always be my little brother, how could I refuse this  'commission'?

So, in today's post, we have - from his 'Hundred Kingdoms' human faction - a unit of fifteen men-at-arms, a veteran, a 'null mage' (a kitbash conversion) plus three objective markers.

For those not familiar with Conquest (like me), its a fantasy rank and file game (although with lowish model count it seems) published by Para Bellum Games. The rules were written by Alessio Cavatore (of Bolt Action, Mordheim, a bunch of other GW stuff...fame). My brother has been very complimentary about it. Worth mentioning (at risk of sounding like I'm spruiking it) that all the rules, army lists and setting background are free on Para Bellum's site. 

 

 

What I found most interesting about these is that they are 38mm scale - bloody massive compared to what I'm used to. The figures themselves: sculpting on the Men-at-Arms is fine though they are apparently a  early release and I think it shows. There were a few places on them where I wasn't sure what I was painting (eg, is it armour or, fabric?) or what was on the front, say, didn't match up to what was on the back (the chainmail neck collars were one example). That said, could have just been me and not a showstopper. All that said about those, there has been a decided evolution in the range: the mini used for the kitbash null mage (a "hunter cadre") is a later release and a lot sharper.

Veteran and null mage

The null mage was also my favourite when finished. Feel like the OSL suceeded after some pucker factor and worry that I was going to mess the figure up and have to redo him. And have to admit I dig the  similarity (coincidental, intentional?) of his facemask to that of SlipKnot guitarist Mick Thomson (though I didn't channel Slipknot; thinking back I spent more time listening to Canadian metal band Woods of Ypres while painting it).

 

When not playing guitar, Mick likes to do battlefield magic...

 

Paints used were the usual mix on my bench (Citadel, Vallejo and Army Painter, including Contrast and Speedpaints). Basing is Army Painter grass and LeadBear's Tufts...tufts and flowers (LeadBear is a one man business from South Australia - strongly recommended for the Aussies here). I also took the opportunity to try out  Dirty Down verdigris and rust effects, bought earlier this year at CanCon, applied on the swords on one of the objective markers. 

The objective markers

 

 

Got to use the Dirty Down verdigris and rust effects paints on the swords - not bad

In terms of painting technique, I intended these to be an experiment in slapchop (cringe at the name) but reverted to more familiar methods to get the level of detail or colour depth I wanted. That said, I do see the potential especially for smaller scales. Even with my obstinate tendency to overdo, my painting is getting incrementally more efficient. More importantly, getting more confident and comfortable with it, and readily picking up the brushes rather than umming and ahhing about it - counting that as a win as it was a major personal aim for this challenge.

Down to hard tacks - given 38mmis closer to 40 than 28mm, I am claiming each as a 40mm foot miniature (scandalously, even the objectives - I need every point I can get at this stage - though will defer to Martin's adjudication): 

16 Men at arms (inc Veteran) (40mm foot)

Null Mage (40mm foot) 

3 objective marker bases (40 foot)

20 x 7pts = 140 points.

Next week - the last dash towards the finish line through a few of the Studios.

Fantastic work on these figures. As for Slipknot  

From AlanD: French Regulars for FIW and Curtgeld (65 Points)

From Curt: This one from Dux came in later Saturday evening, after Dave had signed-off, but I wanted to get it posted so Alan can keep his painting mojo at a keen edge.

Paul O'G and I have started a campaign of Sharp Practice set in the French & Indian Wars. Last Wednesday saw Paul send a probing force of Rangers and Indian allies towards a French outpost, managing to burn a French hut before they were seen off by the arrival of French reinforcements. Needless to say, both sides claimed victory, but this skirmish can only be the prelude to our main forces clashing.

To bolster the French forces, another group of regulars from the La Reine regiment have arrived from Quebec (aka my painting table). The figures are from the Conquest Miniatures range also released by Warlord Games.

Also this week, I have finished my Landsknecht looter for the group Curtgeld submission being put together by the merry men and woman of our gaming group. He is unbased at present until all his friends are finished. Hope you like him, Curt!

And now, back to marking historiography essays...

______________________________________

Your French reinforcements look excellent, Dux. I quite like how your groundwork helps mask the socket marks of the movement trays. I have a bunch of unpainted Minden figures and after seeing yours here I'd like to see how they'd work with the Conquest casting.  I like the thought of Quebec being your painting table, Alan. Just steer clear of the Plains of Abraham - very bad karma for those wearing white. :) 

That Landsknecht looter is marvelous! I like the buff colour peeking out of his slashed doublet and his striped hose falling down around his calves.  By the look on his face, the purple rug he's toting is probably holding a few months wages. I very much look forward to seeing him with the rest of his mates. Thanks so much!