From David V - 6mm Ogre Miniatures tanks and artillery (Cybertron) (42 points)

Additions to my growing forces for Ogre Miniatures, the 6mm scale miniatures wargame based upon Steve Jackson's Games' 45-year-old board game.

"Ajax" Missile Tanks (MSL) are another popular Paneuropean armour unit. Their missiles hit hard and at a longer range than their fellow Paneuropean G.E.V.s and Heavy Tanks. However, the Missile Tank's amour is lackluster, and they are slow. This entry includes a couple of platoons of Ajax's. 

The "Arquebus" Howitzer (HWZ) is the heaviest hitter in the Paneuropean arsenal, excepting only their own Ogres and actual nuclear cruise missiles. Long ranged, but immobile, there was a time when Ogre players tried to devise the perfect "4-Howitzer Defense". A combined arms force of various tanks, G.E.V.'s, and infantry is probably a better bet. I have included a battery of 4 artillery pieces.

The Paneuropean "Thor" Superheavy Tank (SHVY) is almost like a miniature Ogre. Dual main armament that can be combined or fired separately, and some point defense anti-personnel batteries give it a lot of firepower. However, it's human crew is still subject to disablement with a non-fatal hit. I painted up a platoon of two of these beasts.

In the basic game of Ogre, the objective of the Ogre player is to destroy the Paneuropean Command Post (CP). To the Combine, destroying the centralized Command, Control, and Communication at such a brigade or divisional level is worth the loss of an Ogre. What the Ogres think of that is anyone's guess.  

After assembly, I primed all the units with GW Chaos Black, and laid in flat white zenithal highlighting with an airbrush. I used a couple of different tones for the base blue, glazing with washes of GW Drakenhoff Nightshade or Indigo oil paint. I then laid in highlights and details with oil paints, and did some light weathering with oils and powders. 

The relative size of the various units is shown against a Galahad G.E.V. 

(9 x 2) points of 6mm or 1:300 scale amour units (6 MSL, 2 SHVY, and 1 CP), plus 4 points for the 4-HWZ battery, makes for 22 points. Add 20 points for Cybertron (Robot(s). In the basic game of Ogre, all the powered armour infantry, various tanks, and artillery that the Paneuropean player fields are opposed to a single Combine  robotic supertank. And there is a more than even chance that the Ogre will win.

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Thanks again to Curt, Sarah, and all the Minions for another great Challenge. I fell short of my rather modest goal, mostly due to work commitment. But, I was able to paint up a couple of my favourite Star Wars characters, and I finally finished a bunch of Ogre miniatures that I had assembled back in 2019!

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A great final entry for this year's Challenge, Dave. I really enjoyed following your Ogre posts as they provided for a wonderful stroll down memory lane (I remember marvelling over the Arquebus Howitzers as a teen, loving the models and trying to puzzle out the best Ogre defence with them). It was wonderful to have you with us again this year, and I hope that you can join us for the next edition.

- Curt

From MartijnN: From Cybertron to Lady Sarah's Star Yacht (70 points)

Last week I mentioned that I had not had a clue what to paint for Cybertron. However, on closer inspection I think I have found a figure fitting its theme of "transformative". So, I present to you the impographer!

Impography (or iconography) is sort of the intermediate technology between traditional (portrait ) painting, on canvas or otherwise, and the even more advanced science of photography. Through the almost magical power of impography, it first became possible to capture an event as soon as it occurred, rather than having to paint it afterwards from memory or rough sketches. Very much a transformative technology, therefore, propelling both art and journalism into a new age. We see here a famous impographer with his very talented imp.

A wealthy merchant is offering him a handsome sum to have his portrait imped.

These are both 3d printed figures from Iain Lovecraft's The Frost (I think the merchant bears more than a passing resemblance to Iain himself). What I particularly like about Iain's projects is that he explicitly asks his supporters to suggest figures or models for the stretch goals for his Kickstarter projects. The Frost was a project with something of a Terry Pratchett inspiration to it (in the unlikely event you have not come across Pratchett before I highly recommend checking him out) and I suggested a figure making (moving) pictures. As a result, Iain came up with this fantastic Impographer!

Obviously, impographers can also record landscape impographies. Luckily, I was also able to finish the slopes of The Lonely Mountain from my Battle of Five Armies set. These can be joined in two ways, and with the two pieces of a second set can make up a large hill. I think the hill came out nicely.

 

Leaving Cyberton for Arrakis I rather would use Lady Sarah's excellent Yacht service to get me there rather than planet hop again. I offer this old lady as my fare:

Once again a 3d printed figure and once again designed by Iain Lovecraft. A very simple model but still rather characteristic I think.

So here we are. The figures as printed are nearly 40mm, but I will claim them as 28mm. I will however claim the impograph as a figure as well,  rather than as a crew served weapon or suchlike. The two pieces of the hill are 8" by 15" and 2" at the highest point, perhaps just under 1" on average. I'd suggest half a standard terrain cube for 10 points?

So 4x 28mm foot = 20 points

Hills = 10 points

Cybertron planet bonus = 20 points

Lady Sarah's Star Yacht = 20 points

For a total of 70 points. Just short of a squirrel, alas. On to Arrakis!

From DaveD 

I like that interpretation all right . The bright colours somehow seem just right . A good job on the hill to. 70 it is 

From SanderS: Visiting Cybertron via Maelstrom! (40 points)

 Hoi,

With only a few weeks to go, I need to make haste in order to reach my points goal of 1000 points. For that I will now visit two more planets in the Challenge Galaxay Quadrant, let's make landfall on one of my favourites: Cybertron!

Quite some years ago a small Australian firm, aptly called Traders Galaxy, (headed by two nice blokes) had obtained a license to produce a Transformers miniature game. Something went wrong, they fell out with each other and the license was cancelled. Before the line of miniatures was mothballed as well, several sets had been available for purchase for some time and I got my hands on a few of them. Through the last Challenges I have been painting them and have now amassed a small but delightful amount of Transformers; both Autobots as well as Decepticons. 

They are a pain to put together as they are extremely fiddly and I have really fat clumsy fingers as well as detoriating eyesight, oh well I got there in the end.   

Todays offering is a duo I really remember fondly from the old cartoons: Hot Rod (or rather Rodimus Prime)  and Jazz! 

Jazz:

Hot Rod:

The Bots were put on Battletech Hexbases and Arthur has been busy making CBT Rostersheets for them in Heavy Metal Pro (if this all sounds like gibberish to you just have a look at the pretty pictures ;-) so we will be able to use the Bots in games of Battletech as well.

If I understand correctly entering a planet through Maelstrom is 30 points rather than 20 and 2 x 28mm figures is another 10 so 40 points all round. Next stop will be Arrakis!

Cheers Sander

Those robots looks great, sander. And you're right - being dumped out of the Maelstrom scores you 30 points for this planet!

Tamsin

From JohnE - 28mm Sucker Punch Mech and Pilot - [Cybertron] - (45 Points)

I have been holding on to this Maschinen Krieger Melusine (giant robot) for about a decade because I was determined that I would use it as a proxy for the mech in Sucker Punch. Nowadays there are files available to print the actual mech from the film but being stubborn I stuck with the original plan. The figure is Ishio from the Reaper Chronoscope range. She makes a good stand-in for the character Amber which I assume is what Reaper had in mind.

Points Summary: 

1 x 28mm foot @ 5 points = 5 points

1 x 28mm vehicle @ 20 points = 20 points

Cybertron (Middle Ring) bonus = 20 points

Total = 45 points

I love that Mech, and the pilot looks great too!

Tamsin

From MikeF - World Eaters Contemptor Dreadnought - Cybertron - 40 points

 This week I'm backtracking to the Great Abyssal and moving to Cybertron. For the planet I completed a World Eaters Legion Contemptor Dreadnought from Forgeworld. Contemptor dreadnoughts are basically robots, except they have the remains of a space marine floating inside controlling them. There's no coming out after you've been installed so you basically become the operating system. This dreadnought is armed with a heavy flamer and assault cannon.

28mm vehicle + Cybertron = 40 points

Thanks for visiting.

From DaveD 

Now does a marine get any actual choice in that installation I wonder! 

From TashaH: Tiptoe Through The Planets [Cybertron][Krypton][Gethen] (80 points)

 

No special permissions required for this entry on Cybertron! I actually got this one spot on!

 

 

This is Bumblebee, from the WizKids Transformers collection. 

I had great vision for Bumblebee when I ordered him. In my mind he was going to be a glorious yellow with highlights. It was going to be magnificent. 

I realized quite quickly that yellow is an incredibly difficult colour to master. This was further confirmed to me in a Paint and Chat session!

 

 

I further complicated my painting situation by deciding to try a little bit of contrast paint in an inconspicuous spot, to see if I could brighten it up. This figure is too heavy. I set it down to open the pot of paint. Bumblebee decided he wanted to transform and toppled over, dumping a brand new pot of Contrast paint all over my desk, onto myself, but most devastatingly onto Bumblebee. Having to incorporate the contrast paint into the rest of the figure brought it too orange. I threw up my hands and said "enough"! (actually I said a lot of bad words ...shhh) I did some highlights and blending to try and help the situation but I’m not sure there was any coming back at this point! 

He is not magnificent but he is acceptable. My daughter is a gaming streamer online. She took Bumblebee for decor in her streaming background. She’s very particular, so I take it as a compliment!

 

 

From here we are going to take a little zip through the Great Abyssal, into the Inner Ring, landing on Krypton. I just happen to have a superhero at hand! 

 

I am not at all up on any of the Universes. I know the major characters but other than that, I’m clueless. This is the Cannonball Heroclix figure from WizKids. I bought a few of these specifically for the challenge.

 

 

 

I don’t know anything about Cannonball, but he sure looks super fast! 

 

Continuing with our superhero theme, we are going to bounce next door to Gethen. It’s mighty cold here and Emma Frost, another WizKids Heroclix figure, fits right in. 

 

 

This figure is dreadful. If I were to do it over, I’d forego the clear bits and just prime the whole thing. Actually, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t buy this figure again! The WizKids figures are a convenient option, particularly for someone like me just starting out. Unfortunately, I find that they are hit or miss with detail quality and their pre-priming is iffy.

 

 

 

I’m not sure where we are going next, so we will chill here for a bit!

 

The points:

1 54 mm figure - 10 points

2 28 mm figures - 10 points

3 planet bonuses - 60 points

Total - 80 points

What a delightful set of minis! Yellow is a very difficult colour to paint, as the pigments are very translucent. I'm not sure if we shared our tips with you on chat, but my top one is to paint a different, more opaque colour (eg, yellow ochre, white, flesh, pink, light brown) underneath first.

Tamsin

From ChrisW - Another Mixed bag (535 points)

 We travel from LV-426 to Cybertron via Sarah's yacht...

...and then we plunge into the great Abyssal arriving at Krypton.

 

 Cybertron

Dystopian Wars Prussian medium robots and 2 Canadian Robots

• Medium robots (7) 40mm tall figures 

 

Dominion of Canada robots

Metzger robots (3)

For a long time these were the biggies in the Dystopian Wars universe, supplanted just before Spartan games went belly up. Also Prussian, they are amphibious and come in both land and water versions and I am painting them in pairs. I figured, I already have 2 pairs painted up, so might as well finish up the last of them...(and yes it is an excessive amount of these for anyone to have)

 

 

Waterline versions

Krypton (Super figs)

I have actually had to stop myself from painting these figures over the last couple of weeks. I am trying to keep with the planetary themes and move in some sort of order throughout the rings. So while I have back tracked once, I really only want to use Sarah's yacht to skip over any planets where I just can't match any figure to theme.  

So Krypton means super heroes, and for me that is a good size collection of Old Glory and Reaper figures. Some of the Old Glory figures (5) are quite large topping out at 60mm! Most are listed as 33mm on their site, but really are in keeping with the scale creep of 28mm modern figures. Some of the figures are very primitive, you could not confuse them with the modern DC or Marvel lines. Heck, even some of the Heroclics are better figures. So why was I keen to paint these, dunno! It just got into my mind to do them. I figured contrast paints might work on these as there were some deep details, but my experience with contrast paints told me that contrast alone would not work. Maybe that's just me, I have some luck with contrast, but basically as a base coat, adding highlights after. 

The Big'uns (4)

Exitor, Host leader

 

Triangle man & Major Payne

The rest of the named supers (mostly named by me)

 Teuton, Red Dynamo and Basher. All are from Reaper, the 'twins' are bones while Red Dynamo is metal.  

Red lightning

Blue streak vs Earth Mother

The villains: King Pin, The Magister, Pinhead

Orange Julius, The Proletariat, Green virus

Ultra, Night watch, Guardian

Dynamo, Gladiator Ape

Green Ronin, Mr Hilter, Cyberman

Artemis, Blue Hawk, Blue Angel

The Henchmen

These guys worked out as I envisioned them. I see them as being made out of a super strong, but malleable plastic and can transform themselves into different shapes or even weapons. Well I figured that would mean the plastic would get discolored when it stretches out, hence the change in colour from a deep pink to the light pink shade.

I find the eyes kind of freaky in the pictures. 

 

 Gun toting & sword wielding elite warriors

 They sorta look like Ninjas but I already have lots of Ninjas and just did not want to do more dark outfitted ninjas, besides, this is for a superhero game, so bright colours should be the rule! This is more like the orange that I was trying to achieve with the workers from last weeks post. Would have been a good idea to have paid attention to what I did to paint these guys.

  28mm vehicles (5 cars)

 

The points

• 40 for two planets
• 20 Sarah's yacht (Blue Angel)
• ?? points regular 3 x ? DW Metzger robots 75mm tall
  
• 45 points waterline 3 x DW Metzger robots (treating as 15mm vehicles)
  
• 91 points 13 x 40mm tall DW robots & the 4 big supers
  
• 185 points  37 x 28mm foot
• 100 points 5 x 28mm cars

Total 481 + Big robots

Squirrel 3 points Post apocalypse, Super, Dystopian Wars

 (may be too late this week, but will learn for future posts)

Wow, what a load of robots! And submitted before midnight in the UK too! Lovely stuff, Chris!

You might have avoided causing me some confusion by posting the Supers first and noting that Blue Angel is your fee for taking Lady Sarah's Star Yacht from LV426 to Cybertron, but I got there in the end!

I've scored the regular DW Metzger robots as 40mm vehicles. Just to note, 15mm vehicles are 8 points each not 15 points. You've still got a total of 535 points for this submission.

Tamsin

 

Yep, brain not too good sometimes, thought 15mm figures, saw the 8 points, but '15' stayed in mind, so I of course recorded 15 points each, I am a dufus...!😁

Thanks again for your help, maybe next week I can be before noon your time, baby steps