From MattW: This is the way (10 points)

 This Is The Way

Of the recent pieces of the Star Wars Universe the Mandolorian saying “This is the Way” has entered my vocabulary, in much annoyance to Vanessa my wife, and my children. 

This is a great little 1/144 kit by Bandai, a easy wet afternoon build, a gunmetal undercoat, ink wash, then dry brush, painted the windows and paint on the markings which I copied as best I could. (The kit supplied ones were stickers !)  really happy with my result. 

1/114 model  @ 6 Points 

Total 6 points 

Cheers

Matt

TeemuL: That looks excellent! The backdrop creates awesome athmosphere here! Your method might be simple, but is effective. This is the way, indeed. This one is tricky to score, since even you give the scale, this looks much bigger vehicle than a tank for example. I'll throw in additional 4 points to give you a nice 10 points for this.

From FrederickC: Early Panzerkampfwagen VI 'Tiger I' [Death Star] (40 points)

This is my first submission for the Challenge XII Quadrant, and I will be starting at the Death Star with a Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H, also called the Tiger I, of the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion. The battalion was the first unit to receive and field the Tiger I in August 1942, and it was one of the most successful German heavy tank battalions, claiming the destruction of 1,400 tanks and 2,000 guns.

The model is a 1/48 scale Bandai kit that I picked up on eBay when I first started doing 25-28mm World War Two gaming. Apparently this is a big 'can of worms' among participants in the painting challenge, but back then there were very few vehicles available in 1/56 scale, so most of our group members gravitated to either 1/48 plastic kits or 1/50 diecast models.

The Death Star connection is the 'Of Questionable Design', specifically that the Tiger I is considered to be over-engineered, using expensive materials and labour-intensive production methods. In the early period it was prone to certain types of track failures and breakdowns and was in general limited in range by its high fuel consumption. It was expensive to maintain, but generally mechanically reliable. However, it was difficult to transport and vulnerable to immobilisation when mud, ice, and snow froze between its overlapping and interleaved Schachtellaufwerk-pattern road wheels, often jamming them solid.

The validity of the problem of the overlapping road wheels was proven when the kit arrived from the seller. It was obviously a second hand kit as it had already been started, but what the original owner had done was glue both the inner and outer road wheels on all the odd numbered axles before realizing their mistake. I contacted the seller about the problem, who refunded my money without wanting me to send the kit back. It languished for many years in my pile of unfinished projects until I thought that a repair was possible. I used a fine saw blade to cut off all the outer wheels from the odd numbered axles. Now all the inner wheels could glued onto the even numbered axles. I drilled holes into the axles and the back of the wheels I had removed with a pin vice to take a short piece of florist wire to provide strength to the joint when I glued them back in place with a little bit of epoxy putty to fill the slight gap. Once all that was done, the rest of the kit was assembled as per the instructions.

Prior to this, I had already acquired a Solido 1/50 diecast Tiger I in grey. It is visible in the background of the pics below, but not part of the submission. Other than a bit of tweaking, new decals, and adding a muzzle break, the Solido model is as I bought it. Since it was already painted in Panzer grey, I wanted to use the same paint scheme with the Bandai model to make them part of the same unit. After priming it with black, I used AK Interactive acrylic 704 Dunkelgrau, and then drybrushed the raised areas and corners with a lighter grey. Special parts like the tools and tow cables were painted appropriate colours, and a few parts got either a black or a dark brown wash. Once the tracks were on, I hit the lower areas with AK Splattereffects Dry Mud. 

 

The points being claimed are as follows:

1 x 28mm vehicle @ 20 points

Quadrant Challenge 'Death Star' - 'Of Questionable Design' - 20 Points

Great work on the Tiger Frederick.  I was amused how your issues with the partly made kit mirrored the real life issue with this beast.  Nice weathering over the grey pain work.  I love the results people get from their WW2 vehicles but am warded off by terms such as "kit assembly", "decals" and "weathering".

A minor editing point - Curt prefers that we use Helvetica font for our posts.

You are quite right that there is some debate over the "correct" vehicle scale for 28mm war-games.  There are actually three factions "1/56 or die", "1/48 or die" and "whatever, they're just toy tanks".  Being of the third school I'll leave the field of battle to the other two factions.

From DallasE - Nazgul on Fellbeast and 1/48 Pzkpfw III Ausf M [Caprica] [70 points]

Last year (related to the Challenge!) I picked up the Battle of Pelennor Fields box set from Games Workshop, with the intention of painting this Ringwraith on a Fellbeast. And less than a year later, here it is already!

The paint scheme is pretty straightforward - tones of grey with the leathery bits washed (repeatedly) with GW Reikland Shade. The clever bit about this ain't the painting though - it was the construction of the model...

See?!? The kit comes with two "necks" for the Fellbeast, as well as two riders - both a standard (!) Ringwraith and the Witch King!

Here's the Witch King with his flaming sword. I used magnets to facilitate easy back-and-forth swappery. 

I countersunk a pretty big magnet into the body of the Fellbeast. Not too hard to do.

Then, I cut off the pins on the necks and superglued on 5mm magnets. They hold the necks on pretty securely and I'm happy with that. Nice of GW to provide two different necks as well as riders.

Next up was a Bandai 1/48 Pzkpfw. III Ausf M. While still equipped with the venerable KwK39 L/60 main gun, there were 250 examples of the Ausf M produced between October 1942 and February 1943, and they were deployed mainly to replace frontline losses - including at Kursk.

I painted the tank in an early-'43 camo scheme taken from the Panzer Colors book - yellow over dark grey. The grey is Mechanicus Standard Grey and Dawnstone washed with Nuln Oil, with Zandri Dust as the yellow overcoat. Decals are from Pedinghaus and the decal folder.

The Ausf M had a modified exhaust valve to facilitate deep wading, as well as the triple smoke dischargers. 

I did a bit more weathering on this model than I did on the previous Pzkpfw I models... some sponge chipping and dust application with Steel Legion Drab drybrush. 

I like how the yellow and grey camo turned out on this one. It'll be a good addition for mid-war gaming and it's in the correct 1/48 scale :-)

So that's it for this post:

    Ringwraith and Witch King on Fellbeast (30 points: 20 for the beast, I'll take 10 for the two riders        and necks)

    Pzkpfw IIIM (20 points for a 28mm vehicle)

    20 point bonus for Caprica (Doomed, Ambush: Of course, the Men of Rohan ambushed the forces of     Mordor (including the Witch King) by using the secret road through the Druadan Forest... so the            Witch King essentially perished in an ambush. Certainly you might consider that the Witch King was     "Doomed" to perish at the hand of Eowyn!)

Happy New Year!

____________________________________

Great work Dallas. This is a wonderfully varied entry, with models from two completely different genres of the hobby. Eaaxcellent.

That Fellbeast and rider(s) is brilliant. I remember Barks doing something similar with magnets a year or so back, and I think it's such a great way to get additional variations to an already terrific model. You've done a brilliant job on him, especially the leathery wings. I'll have to mark down that paint recipe when I tackle mine in the future. 

I also really admire that 1/48 scale PzIII, especially the yellow and grey camo - it's very distinctive and striking. This variant was a real workhorse for the German army, so I'm sure you'll get a lot of use out of it in future Bolt Action scenarios. 

Wonderful stuff Mr. Dallas! More please. :)

- Curt

From TomM: the Oldest of Rivalries (10 pts)

 If there is one long lasting rivalry in anime, it is without a doubt the one between Amuro Ray and Char Aznable.

Ever since the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime aired back in 1979, the two have been protagonists, and Char is actually a very complex, highly liked villain.

Char is one of the most charismatic and loved bad guys around, and with a record service of 44 years and counting at the moment, one that remains incredibly popular even with new generations, as could be seen by the OVA series Char's Origin the past year.

For this entry, I went up and painted two 1/400 scale gasaphon, whic I plan to use in MechaTop, a kickstarter I`m eagerly awaiting delivery for (should be march btw).  I like this scale the best to game, as the models are the size of a 28mm figure (I scored them as such below), and work really well with 1/300 scale infantry, vehicles and buildings without towering TO much over them.  Even though your average Gundam stands at about 18 metres... as could be seen in the news as Japan is working on a functional RX-78-2 recently.

To that end, of course I need the famous RX-78-2 (it's also the Gundam appearing in the excellent Ready Player One movie btw), and one of Char's mobile suits in which he duelled with Amuro, the aquatic MSM-07S Z'Gok in his typical red colour scheme as he is "The Red Comet" for a reason.

This means 2 figures at 5 points each, like their equivalent 28mm models as they are the same size and dimensions, good for 10 points onto the account.

Demaz!

From TomM: Sieg Zeon! (52 pts)

In an AHPC where I`m trying to paint up as many 6mm forces to "battle readiness', it`s time for some Science Fiction forces.

Hailing from the Brigade Models Neo-Soviet range, these vehicles will instead double as Zeon forces for my Gundam heavy force in Future War Commander.

Though for game purposes, that is actually the "Cav Open Market" book in the rulebook...

And so 2 Bison Support Tanks, 4 Rosomakha Light Tanks, 3 Molotok SP Guns, 2 Volk Assault Guns, 2 Shershen AA,4 Laska tankettes and 4 Bison MBT's,

Of course, if it's a force made to represent Gundam's, one needs to add a couple of Mobile Suits in the entry, and to that end I painted up three of these 1/400th scale gasaphon prepaint models.  Standing still about the height of 30mm, the Acguy and Zock are general aquatic production suits of the Principality of Zeon, making up the backbone of their forces for war on and in the seas.

To that end, the whole armoured company I painted up this entry consists of 21 armoured vehicles and 2 "28mm scale" infantry models, which makes 21 x 2 points and 2 x 5 points, totalling 52 points.

Sieg Zeon!

***
Being a big Gundam fan, I think this is a very cool idea to mock something up to fight battles in the Gundam universe.  The models themselves look the part and are yet again from a new vendor to me, so very nice to see.

The painting is really nice here too, super neat and clean and everything works colour wise.  The vehicles especially look super cleanly done!  My favourite though is the light green mecha with the claws.  The colour choice looks perfect and looks like a Gundam/RE kit that usually has different than normal colours for Gundams.

I would love to see some pictures of all of these setup in a game at some point, as I think that would make for some interesting views.

-ByronM

From ByronM - 1/144 Bandai X-Wing - Mudry's Mesa (36 Points)

For today's painting challenge entry I will be visiting my own map space, Mudry's Mesa.  The rules for my space are that the model has to be bought after the challenge was announced, or was purchased due to someone else's submission last year. 

This figure was purchased on a whim while doing some last minute Christmas shopping for my sons at my favourite local Gundam store (miHobbies) here in Winnipeg.  I saw that they had a pile of the Bandai Star Wars kits, and they were very reasonably priced.  Since I have loved putting together several Bandai Gundam kits over the last year (much to my wife's annoyance "where are you going to put those..."), so thought, why not try one of their Star Wars kits as well.

I could not help but add a space background to at least one image,
as I think this looks almost good enough to use to create a stop motion movie from!

The kit comes with both a 1/72 and a 1/144 X-wing in the box for a pretty reasonable price, or you can buy just the 1/144th separately.  I picked up the dual pack and got to work over the holidays.

The 1/144th scale kit is super simple to build having maybe 20 parts, but oh boy does it have detail! Oh, and the wings move! The 1/72 scale kit in the box seems to have probably 100 parts and even more amazing detail... hopefully I will get it done sometime later in this challenge.

After assembly, I did a quick pin wash with black oil paint and then cleaned it up with my handy Gaia notes finish master swabs. 

I then painted up the rest of the model and added some of the decals, and was done!  Super fast and simple, but I believe it looks almost perfect as is so didn't really do much else to it.

Unfortunately, I now really want to get a pile of these models and do a game with them, rather than the smaller Fantasy flight versions.  Heck, I may even just want to jump right to the 1/72 scale versions that they do, as those could look amazing mounted on tripods zipping around a gymnasium at a convention playing x-wing using a huge scale!  I know, I am kinda crazy....

Oh, and for scale here is one picture with a standard 28mm figure.  

I am not really sure on what it is worth points wise, so will leave that to my fellow minions to decide on.  Since it is for a map space (my own), I do know it gets a bonus 30 points for that.

***

There was a time when I would have been so excited to see some Star Wars content! After all, is there any cooler fighter out there than the X-Wing? In any scale, a game where I get to zip around in an X-Wing and paste TIE fighters should be pure gold, so I salute your insane plan Byron - we could cover the gymnasium floor with space mats...just saying...

Alas, the appalling combination of Disney's Korporate Klowns and the various directors, marketing buffoons et al have so thoroughly and completely mucked up and wh***d out this once beloved franchise, I find myself trying to find the Nissan logo on the X-Wing model in your submission.  Here in Canada we see Star Wars now being used to assure us that Bell Internet is "hyperspace fast".  And did you know the Force is actually Bell's 4G network? F*ck off. 

But none of my grouchyness has anything to do with the quality of the submission here! The X-Wing model looks fantastic, and your efforts with the oil paints and swab serve only to enhance it.  One hopes it can make the kill shot on a space station full of marketing f*cks while they are signing a naming rights agreement...

Points? Well, I think this should count this as a couple of 10mm vehicles (I think 1/144scale  is not too far from 10mm). So that should give you 36 points.  Well done Byron - I look forward to the 1/72 version :)

GregB

From ByronM - Gundam in 1/144 scale (15 Points)

Hey everyone,  I am just posting this to show off a cool model I built, I wasn't going to post it at all, but a couple people suggested I show it off even though it gets no points, as it is likely that some others on here would be interested in it.  It also goes to explain a lack of production lately, as even with the wife getting in on building this kit with me, it took roughly 20 hours to build.

It's also a great thing to show off model / kit wise as what is possible in a kit and leaves me wondering why other companies kits (looking at you Games Workshop!) cost so much! Like we need another reason to despise their pricing structure...

I have always loved Gundam (anime robots) and always meant to build a model kit of one at some point. So I picked one up to do on vacation a few weeks (a cabin in the woods in a prairie winter , so we spent the time inside drinking wine, listening to music, playing games, and painting figs with friends) and OMG!

This is a Bandai RG (Real Grade) 1/144 Gundam kit of the Sazabi.  live joints! Meaning you clip the part from the sprue and it them is movable without any assembly!  To me from an engineering perspective was just amazing!  The wife laughed like crazy about me talking about how cool with was that you cut a part out of a sprue and it had 9 joints that you could immediately mend and move.  I got called a complete geek several times while building the kit.

What?  The part comes out of the sprue and can move???

Yup!  It holds the various skirt pieces in place!  Amazing!

The kit was $50, has 17 sprues of plastic, including 2 that are very cool... 1 is 4 different colours of plastic on one sprue!! The other is only 2 colours BUT are different materials that form

That's a lot of plastic for $50!

HOWEVER, even the wife (who generally dislikes miniatures) thought it was extremely cool and helped clip parts, file and sand, and even applied all the decals on it (lots of super tiny silver foil decals in hidden spaces that open up). 

Even better the kit is made so that it essentially makes an action figure that is completely moveable and transformable, right down to weapons, hands, opening panels and more!! Every single part moves on the kit, heck each foot has 7 points of movement!   Better even than that it it comes in about 9 different colours (including 3 shades of red and 3 of grey/black) and you essentially clip the parts, clean them, use a marker to do the panel lines, and then snap them together and you are done!!!

Each of those little missile pods come out of the backpack and open up with 4 wings!

That‘s right no painting required (they do each part in the right colour) and no glue either it‘s all press fit!  Hence me not expecting any points for this kit.  All I had to do was paint in the panel lines with a pigment pen, then clear coat it when done.

So, 200+ parts, movable, snap together, 100+ decals.... $50!

How much would something like this be from GW??? $200? $300? The single sprue ork vehicle I just got was $55.....

If Bandai can do this level of tech in a kit that likely sells 1/10th or 1/50th or even 1/1000th of the numbers that a GW kit sells and they can do it for less than 1/4 what GW would sell it for....... sigh.... This kit is at least 4x as good as a Riptide, about the same size (at about 7" tall), and 1/2 the cost.....

If anyone is looking for a cool and challenging model kit to build, I strongly suggest looking at a Bandai Gundam figure!  It was a lot of fun to build, and being a 1/144 this is a simple one for movable parts, the 1/100 and 1/60 get even more parts and details!  I have already gotten a 1/100 to play around with.

______________________________

Whoah! Now, I know virtually nothing about the impenetrably obtuse Gundam universe, BUT that bad boy one very cool big, stompy robot. 

As you say Byron, it's completely bewildering that Bandai can produce a kit of this quality and relatively low-cost and we still manage to get rogered senseless by GW's pricing structure. It's astounding.

Even thought it comes pre-coloured, I'm going to award 15 points for the complex build and extra detailing.

Thanks for showing this guy to us Byron!

- Curt