From AndrewG: The Last of the cultists and other bits (69 points)

 

To paraphrase a famous oil painter, my Frostgrave Cultist warband project this past winter turned out to be a ‘happy little accident’ of this year’s AHPC. It was never on my deliberate list of things to get through, but after painting the first few over the holidays I was simply hooked on these figures for some reason and really enjoyed getting them all done.

With these ten new additions I have now built the entire box, bolstering them with a necromancer and apprentice from the Frostgrave wizard’s set to give me several options for getting them on the wargames table.

Pretty much everything was built straight out of the Cultists 1 box, with the odd bit from the bits box here and there to give them some variety. The crusty rusty shield on the champion, for example, is a very old plastic Warhammer chaos shield which I augmented with a boss made from greenstuff. After priming I hit it with some AK corrosive texture and Army Painter dark rust effect, then let it dry before adding a wash of Warpaints Verdigris. I was very happy with the final result, and imagine this is some cursed item that has welded itself to its current bearer.

And here is the whole group, 22 baddies ready to spoil some do-gooder adventurer hero’s plans to make the world a better place.

With the Cultists done and dusted, I had just enough time left to finish off a couple of other miniatures for other games. First up, a couple more gunfighters to join the cowboys I had been posting at the beginning of this year’s challenge. These two Vaqueros are Copplestone castings metal miniatures and will eventually be joined by 3-4 others I am halfway through getting done.

Next up, I got roped into playing in a friend’s D&D campaign in which we were to play unconventional characters, so I opted to play a Dwarven Rogue (IYKYK). Thankfully, Reaper miniatures had produced a couple of these in their metal figure line, so I bought one from a second hand dealer and gave it a quick paint job.

Last but not least, I wanted some cool objective markers for my games of Frostgave and Five Leagues from the Borderlands and found these in an old Warhammer Black Skull Pass starter box set I had sitting in storage. If I recall these were originally Troll skull markers for the Goblin army, but they’ll do just fine for any number of fantasy skirmish games. I painted the cloth on each one a different colour so they can be distinct on the table as needed.

All in all, some good progress this week. Thus, we’re looking at:

13x 28mm figures = 65 points

4x 28mm objective markers = 4 points

Great work here Andrew.  Loving those despite desperados and your Dwarves rogue. However, ,my favourite is the Cultist with his book of forbidden lore.  Well done.

[From AndrewG: More Folks I Wouldn't Invite to Dinner (25 points)

 

As I blew past my original AHPC project and points objective rather early in the season, I’ve been forced a bit to create a two-track production line going back and forth between historical and other projects while I wait for one or the other to dry or get to its next stage. This week I did do a bit of both; this first entry being more Frostgrave baddies for what I’m now calling the Cult of the Double Scar.

I have to say I really do like these Northstar/Osprey plastic sculpts. They have an old school vibe about them and are nicely detailed without going too overboard. They are also very kit bashable, which is a huge plus for me. This group is made mostly from the Cultist 1 box, with some arm and head swaps from sets 2 and 3. I noted, however, in the Five Leagues from the Borderlands rules the initial enemy encounters often include a couple of slingers - so I incorporated one using some bits from a Wargames Atlantic peasant sprue.

Frostgrave and WGA kits mix well in conversions.

Frostgrave kits offers an excellent selection of belt gear

Apparently evil doers need loose fitting pants

 

I used more or less the same palette as last time and being pretty basic figures, these paint up relatively quickly. The application of some AK corrosive texture effects to the warrior’s shield was something new for me though. I had never tried this product before, and I have to say I really like how it works, especially with a bit of Army painter rust effects added in to give it the final look.

AK corrosive effects with Army Painter rust added in

And here they are with the first five figures I painted. I’ll probably do one more batch and give them a couple of leader/character types to round out the warband, then they’ll be ready to challenge our adventuring heroes in due course.

 

Thus, in this batch:

5x 28mm figures = 25 

Very nice figures Andrew.  They’re a nasty looking bunch and I won’t be sharing a table with them either.

From Barks: Yuletide Cultists (15 points)

Hello all, season's greetings! Here are three terrifying cultists. They're 3D prints from Imitation of Life. I'm trying out Army Painter Speedpaints 2.0 for this Challenge, and they're doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I haven't got to grips with a consistent le slapchop technique for better shading and highlights; these are just on white. I'm trying Jon Hodgson's background art book.

Her candy cane axe snapped. Midsommar vibes.

Absolution Green is a really nice paint.

3x 28mm (15 points)

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What a wonderful trio of Christmas lunatics, Barks. I particularly like the fellow with the garland and candles on his head - that takes good balance, baby. May have to pick up some Absolution Green...

Welcome back and prepare to count skulls!

- Curt

From TashaH: An Evil Cultist [Coruscant] (25 points)

After a close call on Vogsphere, we are off to Coruscant for a quick pit stop. 

 

We aren’t going to spend too much time on Coruscant. There is a battle waging between good and evil here. Judging by the looks of this Cultist, I’m sensing the scales are tipping towards the evil side.

 

This is another WizKids figure. My 3D printer is still out of commission and I am currently looking at purchasing a new one. Until then, you will be seeing a lot of WizKids from me!

Time to jet off to Perelandra…

Points:

28mm figure: 5 points

Coruscant bonus: 20 points

Total: 25 points

It would seem I underestimated my points when setting my goal, as I didn’t take into account how much fun I would have zooming around the planets. I would like to adjust my goal to 325 points please. 

That chap's red robes look great, Tasha! And another pledge increase? Consider it done!

Tamsin

PaulS: Come join the cult! (30 points)

 I was going to save these for a later Dungeon room, but there is a gap in the flow and I've used one of these in a scale shot in the next entry... so they need to come out to play now :D

These 6 cultists came from a patreon (sadly I forget which one. I'll add it later if I can find it again). They were a fantasy thing, but I had some pistol hands kicking around and wanted a Dagon cult group to face off against my red cultists in a pulp 7TV cast. There are some supporting models coming later in the challenge to round them out a bit.

That should be another 30 points to the total. Technically 2 are women, so could go into Sarah's side challenge :D

From Barks: 40K Chaos Cultists (42 points)

Here are some Chaos Cultists for my Pinkstone Fortress project.

I think I've got flames nailed down. Progressive wetbrushing from yellow through orange to red on a white base.

Cultist Firebrand

Leader

Heavy. Turanga Leela, is that you?

Grenade Launcher

Autoguns. Great poses.

The cult assembles

I'm starting to think I've overdone the pink? Maybe less is more. Help stop me from second-guessing myself!

Skull-o-meter™: 8
Cumulative Skullz: 9

8x 28mm figures: 40 points

I absolutely love these. Pink is such an underusded colour for heavily armed psychopaths. To my mind the excellent flames should count as a standard so an extra couple for you

From BillA: Vampire Cultists (60 points)

I haven't had nearly the free time to paint that I'd anticipated this winter; over the past two years I've also become an author of adventures for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and right after I'd signed on for this year's AHPC, I got commissioned to write a 25,000 word scenario set in Victorian London.  At four cents a word, that's a hard proposition to turn down, and so much of my free time has been devoted to that over the last few months.  I've still made some time to paint, and by sticking closely to the bonus rounds I'll still have hit my goal with this entry.  Hopefully next year a project like this won't hit during the winter months and I can get a bit more painting in.

Anyways, on to this entry.

As mentioned previously, I've begun building a new Dragon Rampant warband for use against my friend Neil's goblin army, with my army consisting of a vampire and the mortal cultists she's bewitched into servitude.  Today's entry is one such unit of cultists, fanatical devotees of the Countess Winterthorn sworn to defend her with their lives.  They've draped themselves in red-dyed robes and hoods and taken up an assortment of rusty blades in her service, and are just itching to hurl themselves at the Countess' foes.

These are constructed from North Star Miniatures' "Cultists" plastic boxed set for Frostgrave which is an absolutely lovely set to work with.  The figures have plenty of animation in their poses, you get a ton of spare heads (including zombie and skeleton ones to make cultists who didn't let death get in the way of servitude) and some fun little accessories to glue on to figures' belts including lengths of chain, various daggers, skulls and potion-bottles.

The figures were primed black, and the robes base coated in Reaper's "Deep Red" before getting a heavy drybrush of "Fresh Blood," while the pantaloons and undershirts were basecoated in "Midnight Blue" and drybrushed "Twilight Blue." Gloves, boots and padded leather jerkins were based with "Ruddy Leather" and highlighted with "Oiled Leather."Any metal bits were given a wash/glaze of GW's "Seraphim Sepia" shade to make them look slightly rusty.  All in all they were a quick paint - probably five hours divided between two sessions.

So that's a dozen 28mm figures at 5 points apiece, netting me another 60 points.

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Part of the fun of plastics is their customizability. Cultists are particularly customizable, seeing as how they work in so many settings, from Ancients to Fantasy to modern Pulp settings and back to sci-fi.

You've got quite a nice little warband going there, Bill. Paint up an apprentice for the countess, and you'll soon be ready to take to the Frozen City.

From ScottM: Frostgrave Cultists (125 points)

For this week I've completed the boxed set of 25 Frostgrave Cultists. These are 28mm plastic figures from Northstar Figures. I went with a more unified paint scheme than the figures on the box as to me they look more cult-like if they're similar with regards to the colour scheme.

From Ray

Terrific painting Scott. Having them all painted the same way does indeed does make them all look part of a dastardly gang up to no good, the dark red works really well. And you had to put the figures together too, which if you're anything like me, was no mean feet at all!
Well done that's a very well deserved 125 points to add to your total!