From SamuliS: Artillery and Star Players (46 points)

Back from a short hiatus in entries! After a fairly quiet start of the year at work it's been quite hectic the last couple of weeks with limited free time available. And that free time was quite often taken by painting up a large batch of Flames of War terrain for our club that I promised to do sometime last summer, but never properly got around to it until now that I was pressured into finishing them for a tournament that is coming up in a few weeks. I had painted some of the grey details before so didn't count for the challenge sadly.

 4 sets of Battlefronts Stalingrad ruins painted up for our gaming club.

The minis I did paint for the challenge are a continuation from the last couple of subjects with yet more Team Yankee West Germans and some Star Players for Bloodbowl. For Bundeswehr we have three MLRS tracked rocket launchers and an M113 observer vehicle. The Observer vehicle was a 3D file that I found on Thingiverse and printed out to give some variety to the army compared to regular M113 that I planned for a reservist formation.

For Bloodbowl we have a couple of Star Players with Akhorne the Squirrel, Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill making a showing as well as another little lizard to function as a token. I also painted up a ball token to place under the base of the ball carrier. Akhorne and Karla were painted to match my Amazons, but I decided to paint Helmut differently as he will probably be the most common star player  to use in the game so a more traditional chaosy theme suited him well. All minis from Greebo games. I'm especially fond of Akhorne. Lovely sculpt and the foaming mouth really suits the lore of the crazed (possibly Khornate) squirrel causing havoc on the field. A frenzied squirrel with sharpened claws is probably something you would not want to face. In game he is bit of a glass cannon, with nearly everything in the game being able to hit him with three dice, but he does pack bit of a punch when he is the one doing the tackling. And being cheaper than many of the positionals in the game you can get him as an inducement fairly easily. 

 

I'm counting Akhorne and the lizard as 15mm minis so with 4 15mm vehicles, 2 15mm minis and 2 28mm minis this should end up netting me 46 more points.

Nice work! I'm actually quite taken with the colours on your lizard. You do know Blood Bowl is a way to my heart. As are skullz and hazard stripes, both of which I spy. I haven't seen the squirrel in action, but would like to! Your moderns have come out nicely. I like the dusty weathering. I wouldn't have picked that as a 3D print- good job!

Barks

From SamuliS: Amazons and Turnips (Cybertron) (115 points)

This week I have a double whammy for you guys with fairly varied subjects. 

First up a new Bloodbowl team for our clubs league that starts next weekend. These are actually some of the first minis that I started for the challenge, but after rushing them to a level with all surfaces having some paint on them I played a few practice games with them and they got left in a carry case for a while. Now with the league start looming it was time to paint all the highlights and do some proper bases for them.

The team is from Greebo Games and was released through their Kickstarter a couple of years back. Great sculpts and what I especially like is that there are varied body types and not just the "hot bikini blonde" archetype that seems to be fairly common with Amazon models. They also made several extra sets that fit into the theme and allow you to expand the same team to play Norse and Human teams as well which is really nice. Let's see if I get around to painting some of them still during this challenge.

 

 

Pretty standard starter team setup with the maximum Blitzers and 7 linewomen to back them up. I painted up one extra linewoman to add to the team later and to act as a substitute if one of the positionals gets hurt early in the league. Also a couple of markers for the team to count as reroll and turn markers. Especially the little dragon hoarding his Bloodbowl balls is just adorable.

 

 

My next entry takes me to planet Cybertron with some Perry plastics experiencing a transformation into something totally different. I present you the first unit for my coming Turnip28 warband. The world of Turnip hasn't been very actively showcased here (yet), but it is basically Weird Napoleonics with the world having succumbed to worshipping various root vegetables and going at it while covered in mud and all sorts of plant life growing on the battered soldiers. Extremely bizarre and very heavily inspired by the Blanchitsu style.

https://www.patreon.com/Turnip28

My first warband is actually going to be fairly clean compared to the "official" Turnip lore with example models having grass growing on them etc. Technically they would probably be a better match for another new game in a similar style called Sludge. Still I wanted to keep this more as an exercise for making funky looking kitbashes to have what I'd consider great exotic uniforms. My next units will be more modified, but kicking off with a unit of Chaff (or skirmishers) I figured they would be more lightly equipped to be able to move through the mud at a quicker pace.

I've always loved Zouave uniforms, but never really had a suitable project where to paint them as I'm not too interested in any of the periods where they actually appear. So Turnip provided an excellent opportunity to use the Perry ACW Zouave box as a basis for my units. The skirmishers here have weapon arms from the Perry Afgan kit and heads from some of the medieval kits. The jezzails give a really nice archaic feel to them and the helmeted heads really reinforce the idea. For the paint scheme I decided to go with actually a fairly bright uniform as I think that is one of the main appeals of Napoleonics and Weird Napoleonics shouldn't be any different! Though the colours are slightly muted as I did a zenithal basecoat with a sepia ink preshading and painted with very thin layers to allow the undercoat to shine through a little. The next units will see a bit darker overall look as they will have more rusty armor to offset the colourful uniform underneath.

 

The Amazons will provide me with a ticket to Lady Sarah's Star Yacht that will take me to the middle circle after visiting 4 destinations on the outer one. The Turnip soldiers should fit nicely in on planet Cybertron with the transformation theme. With 19 28mm minis (counting the tokens in) and a new planet conquered it should net me 115 more points to my tally bringing me close to my goal of 500 points! I didn't really expect to be able to paint this much at the start of the challenge so it's a pleasant surprise. But the challenge really has got my painting mojo going again and it's really been a joy to put paint on models once again!

I'm always heartened to hear how the Challenge inspires us to Get Stuff Done. Nice basing on both these projects. The red headgear accents on your Zouaves really go well with the pants. Great work on the 'zons! Their Blitzers are hard to put down, but the team can be a little slow. Don't hesitate to up your points target! It's a long bow for Cybertron, but I'll allow it.

Barks