From MartinN: Kev Adams Orcs (10 points)

For various reasons I've not found much time for painting lately, so you've got to contend with these two fellows down here for the time being.

These two fine specimens of the Orc race were gifted to me by a friend during one of our semi-regular painting meet ups. I've never had much track with Fantasy, but still I've always had a soft spot for the older, more cartoony Orcs of the late 80's, early 90's. So I had a blast painting up these two fine fellows. I might even have a little look-see if I can acquire some more, who knows?

Figures are sculpted by Kev Adams and available through Ral Partha. The backdrop is available from Handiwork Games and I can only recommend you giving them a try. 

Points wise I'm pretty sure we're looking squarely at a grand total of 10 points.

***

Once more Nick you grace us with a combo of hobby nostalgia and stunning brush work! The posture and proportions of these figures just shout "1990s!" to me, and these renditions look truly stunning here. While they are proper "green", the variations on the skin tone near the eblows, knuckles etc. are amazing! And the "piece de resistance" has to be the checkerboard patterns on the red shields - it just sets the whole thing off! Brilliant work Nick! I'm sure I am not the only Challenger who hopes you will find your way to acquiring a few more of these and painting them up!

GregB

From MartinN: Orc and Orcling (10 points.)

A couple of friends and I spent the last few days together painting miniatures and talking rubbish. A great time was had and as a result of this I came home with something a little unusual for me: An Orc. I'm not quite sure if it's an official GW miniature or not, but it was great fun to paint anyway. 

Roman Lanciarii in for a nasty surprise

For these I claim 5 points for a single 28mm miniature while I'd rate the Orcling as a 15mm miniature for an additional 2 points.

***

Well, that is one crazy-looking Orc you have here Nick! As ever, your brushwork really sets the standard. Quite right...those Lanciarii are in for a rather terrible day at the office, I expect. 

I like to consider myself an old grognard and afficianado of older GW castings, but I cannot say I recognize the provenance of this chap. He certainly has the LOOK of a big scary GW orc...perhaps a Challenger will recognize the casting and its origins.

Just incredible painting as usual Nick. I'm adding three bonus points for the checker pattern on the weapons. Because that is extra awesome and you get to do that kind of thing when you are the minion. 

GregB

From Barks: The Death of Gothmog (Director's Chair)(45 points)

Where has the time gone? I had a bit of a slump in my painting mojo, my lamp gave up the ghost, Captcha is playing up and I haven't been able to comment on all your inspiring posts*, I blinked, and suddenly the end is careering towards me.

Here's my Director's Chair entry for the Snowlord's consideration: The Death of Gothmog. I said Gothmog would be back!

• 1955: Tolkien publishes The Return of the King, and does not specify Gothmog's fate
• 2003: Jackson releases The Return of the King, which also doesn't show Gothmog's end
• 2004: Jackson releases The Return of the King: Extended Edition, which includes the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Death of Gothmog:

• 2008: GW releases a vignette 'The Death of Gothmog'. I like to think this is a Perry.
• 2023: I paint said vignette.

The Death of Gothmog

I got this off eBay, partially painted and broken. I had thoughts of making this into a piece with sabots for the figures, like my Sauron piece, but ultimately decided against it. I've got plenty of Éowyns and recently a plastic Gothmog. I stripped the pieces and reassembled it. I decided to place it on a nice oval MDF base from Knights of Dice. I bulked out a little bit of the groundwork with Milliput so that Éowyn and Gothmog are on solid ground.

Stripped and ready to go

Test fit. Note the narrower metal base before bulking it out a smidge.

I'd thought of doing the miniatures separately, but during a test fitting they got stuck in place so I painted them all together. It wasn't too hard. I started from black and then drybrushed browns and creams in the grisaille fashion, which the French call Le Slapchop.

I could have entered this as Black & White

My favourite part was painting the cloaks. The Rohirrim cloaks are from a Vallejo Russian Uniform base, and the elven ones are built up from German Feldgrau.

I was slightly disappointed with it, but then I flocked it. I used some pretty dry colours to match the film- the Pelennor fields have been somewhat abused by hordes of orcs and stampeding mûmakil- and it really came to life. I haven't varnished it and am pretty afraid to.

Gothmog (and an errant hair on his head)

Aragorn and Andúril.

Nameless orc #748. He's a dynamic dying sculpt,
his helmet is flying off and his sword leaps
from his open fingers.

Gimli dual wields and has a two-handed axe on his back

Éowyn desperately stretches for her dead comrade's sword.

The reverse of the scene

So, that's my Director's Chair entry.

6x 28mm figures (2 prone): 25 points

Director's Chair: 20 points

*also, my w key is sticky. Éoyn, Snolord, groundork

Great work on this diorama, Barks. I haven't seen the extended edition, so I was ignorant of Gothmog's fate. We're lucky that Peter Jackson felt brave enough to add his own details to the story and not just rely on the books. 

You have done an amazing job repairing and painting this set of figures, I shall have to look into that French painting technique you mentioned.

From Barks: The time of the orc has come (255 points)

I had some mandatory time off work due to COVID, so finished off another 48 orcs to accompany my earlier dozen. I got to join some of the AHPC Zoom chats as well.

I also did their leader, Gothmog, in foot and mounted poses. In the novel, he's not described in any detail as either orc, man or wraith. Peter Jackson made him a memorable and charismatic orc. There's an engaging rumour the prosthetics were based on Harvey Weinstein.

Definitely a boy warg

49x 28mm figures: 245 points

1x mounted 28mm: 10 points

This is not the last we will see of Gothmog!

That last picture is truly horrifying, you should have a warning on that. These orcs look great, Barks. Very grim and gritty, following the 'realistic' look of the movies over the more fantastical styles of other fantasy settings. Your Gothmog figure is really well done and quite a bit more handsome than his real world inspiration.

From TeemuL: Bunch of Sludge and a Hard Rock Orc (50 points)

Here's something from the world of Sludge. I finally received my army commander and painted him with his bodyguards. I also painted three dragoons to get some variety and mobility to my force, there's at least three more to come.

The commander is a metal figure from Warbases, Captain de Travaille from their Mousquetaires range. He is accompanied by two WR foot knights from the Perry plastic box, just their heads taken from the WR light cavalry box to those nice looking feathers.

These three dragoons are plastic Perry WR light cavalry models with musket arms and heads from the ACW Zouaves box. They fitted very well, the poses might not be ultra realistic, but I like their bit uncontrolled look.

On the top picture you can see, that the horse on the left has an army symbol painted on his "head guard", a simple wheat icon. The other horse has a white star on his head (I don't actually like painting horses, but I do like to paint them individually like this to have all kind of details and markings on them).

The army colors are basically yellow and brown, as mentioned in one of my previous posts. There is some green as well, especially on the more senior stuff (and feathers and so on). The brown means dark soil and yellow means golden wheat, while the green is for the grass - the good old times, before the World went Wrong and it is just mud pretty much everywhere.

The commander and bodyguards are the same size, so no problem mixing these. And since this is not a historical game, it is easy to add fancy looking officers and heroes with funny hats and such and get away with it.

All of these are on 40mm round bases, 2mm thick (or thin), which I started to like more than the bulkier 3mm thick ones. It makes the models look bigger, doesn't it? On the bases there are Stirland mud from GW and small stones, cuts of twigs and pieces of vine, useful left overs from eating grapes! And some orange sand from Hasslefree, it can represent rust or fungi or whatever you can think of.

The stripes on the other bodyguard are hand painted (as you can see), small details which make them more life like. I tried to paint eyes to all of them, with varying results, and mustaches on some of them - again with varying results. The rest of my gaming group are having a game night today to try out Sludge (2 has played one game, other 2 none), but I had already booked myself to another group event, cook and eat and probably play some boardgames while drinking wine type of thing. It was a difficult choice, you understand, but first booking is a first booking.

Second part of this posting is this Hard Rock Orc from Widkidz prepainted range.

You might be astonished by the level of the painting, but there is an easy explanation. It is not actually painted by me, but my 6 year old son. During the last autumn (or fall) he started paying more interest on my painting hobby (probably because my painting desk was temporarily located to the living room) and wanted to paint something himself. He first painted some Stormcast Eternals, which I had primer long ago, but he soon finished those. I was running out of primed models I could let go and the weather outside didn't support outdoor spraying. I went to the local game store and bought some of these prepainted plastics for him to paint.

This has been completely painted during the Challenge XII and the flag is a freehand as well. I was creating a flag for my Sludge force and he wanted a flag for his monster as well. The front side says "LORDI ÄRR" and back side "KISS ÄRR", where the "ÄRR" part roughly translates to "ARR" (like pronouncing the letter R like a true pirate. LORDI and KISS are two hard rock bands which my son really likes (he doesn't understand English, so it must be their appearance and show - check out on youtube, if these are unfamiliar to you).

I'd like to claim 5 points from this Orc to my (family) tally, since it is basically my miniature, it has been painted using my brushes and paints and using my time - he needs help opening the Contrast paint pots and cleaning the brushes, fixing mistakes and reaching the tricky parts.

No planets on this post (or new squirrels or skulls), so just basic points:

4 28mm miniatures on foot = 20 points

3 28mm mounted miniatures = 30 points

Total 50 points

From Millsy

Some super kitbashing here on your Sludge miniatures Teemu! They really come together as a cohesive whole and your commander looks suitably imposing backed up by his guards. You colour choices reflecting the background of the world is a great touch too.

It's great to see you supporting your son as he takes his first steps into the world of miniature painting and gaming. The Challenge is slowly growing a cadre of fresh young blood to take over when the rest of us are too arthritic to paint!

From Millsy: Lord of the Rings Bad Guys (271 points)

Hi All,

I've started up a new project for 2021 with the intent of running large sized fantasy games of SAGA using the fan-created A Fantastic Saga rule set. These predated the official SAGA: Age of Magic rules and I actually prefer them. Hopefully I will be running 18-24 points per side games starting at the June long weekend this year. Battle of the Five Armies anyone?

The production quality is superb and the way the writer only added to the original SAGA rules was very clever indeed. Sadly no longer supported with the advent of the official rules, they still more than adequate for my purposes and I am building out army lists and battle boards for all the major and some minor protagonists.

I'm not adhering strictly to the Peter Jackson movie interpretation of the races as some of it has never sat comfortably for me based on my lifelong reading. Rather I am putting my own spin on things and using a mix of official and other miniatures with a focus on plastics, kit bashing and only using metal minis where necessary. So far I have painted up...

Uruk-hai (95 points)

Gorgeous old skool Mark Copplestone half-orcs from the Grenadier stable.
Note the lack of a white hand or red eye until I have enough painted to do both.

Skin tone is P3 Bloodstone thinned to a wash over a white undercoat. Quick and effective.

A few mold lines I was unable to remove unfortunately but hardly noticeable from gaming distance.

Orcs (80 points)

Common garden (should that be cave?) variety orcs using Oathmark plastic Goblins. Most people seem to agree these are too large for goblins and proxy them for orcs.

Skin tone is Vallejo Green Ochre thinned to a wash over a white undercoat.

Goblins (96 points)

Red Box Games plastic Goblin Warriors #2 set roughly 20mm in size. 48 goblins for US$17.95 + shipping is pretty good value. Based in lots of 2 per base and units of 6, these are a new troop type in A Fantastic Saga called "Creature Packs" which can represent anything from swarms of crap troops as in this case to large monsters.

Skin tone is Vallejo Green Ochre thinned to a wash over a white undercoat again.

The 271 point total for these chaps should see me pass my 1,500 point total with a day or two to spare. I hope to get a few more minis in before Challenge end but if not I'm not bothered as I hit my goal. Nice.

Cheers,
Millsy

Thats quite the greenskin bomb there. The mix of figure types works really well and I do like the muted ocre skin tones - works a treat 

Well done on meeting your Challenge target mate, thats an awesome achievement no matter how many times you've done it before. This Cap'n scores that little horde in at 295 points, being that they are all 28mm figs. 

Cap'n W