From SamuliS: Triad of Doom (15 points)

After a brief Napoleonic interlude I'm back to what I've mostly been painting for the last few years and that being Games Workshop minis and for the last couple of years stuff for The Old World. Like probably most I've originally  got into miniature games through Games Workshop and especially Fantasy Battle starting from the 5th edition. Over the years I moved to mainly historical gaming with some Oldhammer and Bloodbowl thrown in, but in the last maybe three years I've really gotten back into Games Workshop games having painted armies for Horus Heresy, 40k (90s rulesets mind you!) and The Old World. And especially The Old World has really been a big hit for me and also in the gaming scene here in Finland.

Since The Old World came out I've already painted several armies worth of Chaos from both Undivided and some of the gods, but felt like I need something from the good guys side as well and with a completely different playstyle. When the Empire got their own Arcane Journal it wasn't too difficult of a choice and I immediately bought a bunch of them and decided on a Nuln & Wissenland themed army to really focus on the shooting compared to getting into combat as soon as possible like you tend to do with Chaos.

 

Now you might wonder what have a bunch of slayers to do with Nuln, but there is a logical explanation! I've always been a big fan of Slayers in Warhammer, but never really got around to painting them as I always found Dwarves a dull army. Luckily for me by picking a Nuln list I can take Doomseekers into my army and giving me a perfect opportunity to paint a couple of Dwarves that are crazy even by Slayer standards! Three slayers to form the perfect Triad of Doom to go after any monsters that my opponent might want to field!

 

 Slayers in their natural habitat. About to die gloriously while taking down an impossibly large foe!

From a gameplay point of view they are quite interesting as if they manage to get themselves killed during the game your opponent gets 0 points, while if they stay alive they get 100% of the slayers point value. So a perfect speedbump to slow down the enemy and buy time for all the guns in the army to do their work!

 For the next few weeks I'll probably be going back to painting Chaos as we have a large tournament coming at the end of February and I wanted to bring a few new units to play with so need to start working on them soon! 

 Wow these are some excellent Doomseekers indeed Samuli! Those tattoos are something I am quite envious of: they look awesome. As to the lore of Dwarves in a Nuln army: plenty of Dwarves live in that great Empire city due to their affinity with black powder weapons and engineering both which prevail in amongst the forges and arsenals in Nuln. My Dwarf Blood Bowl team isn't called "The Nuln Arsenal Collective" for nothing ;-) 

 I am looking forward to your Chaotic painting next we meet! 

 

From SamuliS: Saxon Cavalry ready to defect from the First French Empire (104 points)

Finally kicking off this painting challenge from my side as well! Back after a few years hiatus to what I think is my 11th challenge after first participating in 2013! And the first entry now is actually part of a project that I started in the 2015-16 challenge so more or less a ten year anniversary for this!

Starting off the challenge this year is a selection of Napoleonics to wrap up my Saxon army for the 1813 campaign. We were originally planning to play the campaign starting around 2016-17, but after years of heavy Napoleonics gaming we started to move to other interests and the army newer saw the gaming table and some units were left unpainted. Moving forward quite a few years there has now been a renewed interest in Napoleonics at the club with a lot of fresh faces so I decided to dig up the remaining miniatures and paint up a few additional units. Nice change of pace as well to return to 18mm scale as I haven't painted smaller scale in several years despite it once being my main scale with Napoleonics, Flames of War and Team Yankee making up much of my gaming. Miniatures are mostly AB Figures 15/18mm Napoleonics and I suspect at least some of the command figures are Campaign Game Miniatures.

Fitting nicely with the Empire theme as the First French Empire was really on it's last legs in 1813 and throughout the campaigns the disillusioned Saxons (as well as some other French allies) started defecting to the Allies speeding up the crumbling of Napoleons forces. The Leib Kürassiere painted here were the last Saxons to desert Napoleon after the Battle of Leipzig signaling the end of Saxonys alliance with France.

 

 

Unit sizes are quite small as with the ruleset we are now using the units are smaller than we used to play with. Personally I'm not the biggest fan as I like the spectacle of massive amounts of minis on the table when playing big battles with larger units, but it has definitely helped get a lot of newer players into Napoleonics as you don't need to paint hundreds of minis to field a Division of your own. And for me of course it helped speed up the process of painting the missing cavalry units into the army. I'll get around to bringing the unit sizes up to the same as the rest of my collection at some point, but for now I'm all set for 1813. 

 Leib Kürassiere

Prinz Clemens Regiment

 

 Hussars

 

16 cavalry figures in 18mm scale coming in at around 64 points  with another 50 added for the Empire theme.

Next up some Fantasy minis with a return to The Old World! 

 It is great to have you back with us Samuli and with such nice and crisply painted Saxons indeed. These do look the part and I really like your colourchoices. Do have a great Challenge and can't wait to see those Fantasy miniatures!

 

Cheers Sander 

From SamuliS: Swamp Hags (14 points)

Time for my final post in the challenge! My output and participation slowed down quite significantly for the last third of the challenge as work has been very busy and fitting the normal family life into that has really proven why here in Finland these are called your "traffic jam years" with your schedule jam packed. It's a shame that I haven't had the time to keep up with all the amazing entries in the last weeks.

Anyways I hadn't really painted anything in the last couple of weeks and with the final day of the challenge coming up I figured I need to come up with one more quick entry as I definitely was not going to be able to finish any of the things that were half painted on my desk. I still had a few unpainted DnD monsters prepped so I picked a couple suitable ones to have a nice speedpainting project that I could finish within my kids naptime. The models are Wizkids Hags that I painted with mostly Contrast paints and a couple of details picked out with regular paints. I gave them a sickly greenish skintone to go for a Swamp Hag aesthetic.

 

The minis are around 50mm tall so 7 points per model netting me a quick 14 points to add to my tally. I ended up doing much better than I anticipated this year. Especially as the first month and a half of the challenge was quite productive for me thanks to a slower start in my new position at work and being able to paint during several online meetings while I was working from home. 853 points is far from my best in the challenge, but still quite a nice tally especially when I originally thought even getting to my goal of 500 might be a bit tricky.

Thanks to Curt for organizing this madness! It's been the highlight of the hobby year for me ever since I participated the first time during the third challenge. And thank you to Barks for keeping us honest in the Thurday crew! And for allowing some of my more liberal interpretations of quadrant goals ;) Can't wait for the next challenge to start!

From Millsy:

A couple of cracking miniatures to finish your Challenge Samuli. I feel like I have a bit of "Swamp Hag aesthetic" going on myself this morning , although my basing is nowhere near as well executed. Well done on a great Challenge effort and thank you for sharing your creative efforts with us mate!

From SamuliS: Za Rodinu (202 points)

Back to what has probably been my most common subject for all the challenges I've taken part in with Flames of War miniatures. I almost got there already with all the Team Yankee stuff, but now to the proper era with some WW2 tanks and infantry!

We had our clubs annual Flames of War tournament which also somewhat doubles as the Finnish Nationals and as usual I just couldn't go there with an existing army, but rather used it as an excuse to paint up some missing units to add to my armies. I've generally played tank armies with Soviets so was lacking on some stationary guns and infantry and also wanted to add some missing tank units to my collection. Hence I came up with an infantry list with some heavy armor to support it in the form of IS-85s and some captured Panthers. As usual these were finished just in time for the tournament with the basing done in the final night before the games.

I did all the tanks with the fairly heavy modulation technique that I've liked to use especially on monotone vehicles to make the flat surfaces pop a bit more.  The bright airbrushed surfaces were then toned down quite heavily with several layers of filters and washes and with a final streaking layer to add in extra variety. I also wanted to do all the Panthers in different colours to really make the unit look a bit gobbled together with some recent acquisitions and some that the crews have had time to paint into more suitable Soviet colours.

 

 

 

 

The infantry section needed a few extra stands to allow me to field 3 companies of infantry in the list. I also added a couple of heavy 120mm mortars to add extra firepower as well as 57mm antitank guns to provide stationary firesupport for the infantry and help them buy time for the reinforcements to arrive.

 

This time around there are 55 foot figures, 7 guns and 8 tanks netting me an extra 202 points to add to my tally.

Lovely colour modulation and basing on these, Samuli. I hope your German opponents spluttered indignantly as Panthers were used against them!

How did your freshly-painted troops fare in the tournament?

Barks

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: 71st Beetroot Zouaves (61 points)

My next unit for Turnip28 is ready and this time it's a slightly bigger one with a unit of Fodder, or basic infantry, in the game. These will form the rank and file of my regiment the 71st Beetroot Zouaves. 

 

I was trying to think about a suitable root vegetable for my forces to worship and in the end decided on beetroot as it matched the red pants of the units and seems to be quite a divisive vegetable which doesn't really seem to have much middle ground. Either it seems people hate it or love it. Part of it probably has to do with how it's generally served here in Finland. You get exposed to it as some cold grated salad side in school or then it's served during christmas as a weird salad of cold potatoes, beetroot and carrots that is covered with a beetroot flavored whipped cream. I used to hate it as a kid, but growing older I've actually taken a liking to beetroot especially in soups, stews etc.

This time the conversions were a bit more involved with the legs of Zouaves used with 3D printed armored bodies and a mix of Zouave and Afgan Tribesmen parts for the rest. The armor sculpts are from the official Turnip28 patreon site, but are freely available to anyone. Really amazing and characterful sculpts and sized to fit Perry sculpts perfectly. Again painted with contrast paints over a Sepia shaded zenithal and then additional depth and weathering done with oil paints and enamel mud effects.

I wanted to have a full command team for my unit with a sword armed officer, drummer and flag bearer. Not surprisingly there aren't too many beetroot themed wargaming flags available so I ended up painting one myself. I did a quick sketch of the outlines with a pencil and then painted it with super thinned down inks to have sort of a watercolour style. In the end quite fast and easy to do with plenty of control coming from doing it in multiple thin layers to vary shading in different areas. The two sides didn't come out exactly identical, but doesn't really matter as you'll never see them at the same time ;) When the basic colours were down I just framed the details with a dark brown ink line and then made it look a bit dirtier with brownish splatters.

And with my second post for the week this should add me another 60 points from the 12 28mm minis present.

I love beetroot. I love your conversions and paintjobs. I love this flag (have a bonus point).

Barks

From SamuliS: Panzerhaubitze rolling into Vogsphere (44 points)

Back to a scale that I've probably submitted more minis in than in any other, though this time with a new era for me in the challenge. I've played Flames of War for quite a while now and it's probably been my most played single game for the last 10 years or so. So naturally when Team Yankee originally came out I was intrigued, but sort of figured that while the setting interested me the ground scale maybe looked a bit odd and I was more interested in larger scale battles of battalion sized forces or larger due to that being closer to what I've dealt with as a reservist in the last years. But last autumn a Team Yankee bug really bit our club and with most of my gaming friends picking up armies I succumbed as well. I was on the fence between picking up a French wheeled recon force or starting a West German armored unit, but looking at store availabilities I finally ended up with the Germans. I have most of the base units already done and I'm now starting to round out the different support options to add some variety.

Having lived in Germany and done quite a lot of business with Germans I can vouch for the cliches about their bureaucracy levels being true. I think I'm probably still marked as a resident in Aachen as you had to report moving out at the city hall and they only allowed you to do it a few days before your departure. When I tried to do it about a week in advance the lady complained that I should come back later which I declined to do so I'm pretty sure I'm somehow still marked as living there. Now another area which is well known for bureaucracy is the military and this applies to any sort of company manufacturing military materials. I'd imagine the discussions related to Germans buying American military gear during the Cold War and not too long after the end of WW2 would have been quite a bureaucratic nightmare for the ordinary person so with that slightly long winded explanation I'd think these are a suitable example for my next planet on the Quadrant map with a landing on Vogsphere ;)

 

Three 15mm vehicles and the next landing point come to around 44 points if my count is correct!

That's a cheeky explantion for Vogsphere, but I'll allow it as you're still a resident of Aachen. I really feel these should be off-board, but they look great.

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

From SamuliS: Spanish monster hunters (Sarah's Star Yacht & Babylon 5) (80 points)

Time for my next entry to what  is shaping up to be quite a trendy subject in this years challenge with my first band of monster hunters for Silver Bayonet. Here is my version of the Spanish starter warband that has already been painted a few times for the challenge by other talented participants! Decided to start with them as I've always kind of wanted to collect some Spanish Napoleonics, but never really got around to it as our clubs games have mostly focused on other campaigns than the Peninsular. And white uniforms always look so dashing (and horribly impractical).

Really nice sculpts with well defined detail and minimal cleanup required. These were quite a breeze to paint and really left me itching for some more. Might have to buy a blister or two of different spaniards to enlarge the group a bit for some other game systems as well.

With this entry I'm going for a double on the quadrant map with first a short voyage on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht with a landing at Babylon 5 for some low budget fun. The whole setting of Silver Bayonet seems to be like a storyline for some penny dreadfuls with supernatural horrors besieging our heroes. Seems fitting as cheap horror and adventure fiction got their start not long after the Napoleonic period where Silver Bayonet takes place.

 

8 figures in 28mm scale and two stops on the star quadrant comes in at a nice 80 points extra for my tally. I seem to be doing a lot better in the challenge than I originally anticipated, though gathering points from the star quadrant has certainly helped in the effort!

I am enjoying all this Silver Bayonet action much more than I had anticipated! You've done these Spaniards proud.

Barks

From SamuliS: The Pestilent Horde (Death Star) (132 points)

A short hiatus from painting for the challenge and finishing up quite a lot of half painted minis I had lying around, but I'm back and with somewhat of a horde. Our club has been bitten by a Warmaster bug last year and new armies have been popping up everywhere since the start of last year. There's quite a big hype going around with us and also elsewhere in Finland and we've actually had some Warmaster events with around 20 players playing in a single mega battle. Probably more than there ever were when Warmaster was actually being produced by Games Workshop.

 

A lot of the hype has been coming from the vast quantity of quality 3D files for Warmaster that starting popping up in the wake of Forest Dragons popularity. The first army I did when we started building armies was Forest Dragons Vampire Counts. Lovely models, but it was quite a chore building that up. I wanted to do another army, but this time instead of hordes of skeletons and zombies something much more elite. When I saw the first pictures of Varus Miniatures Demons I immediately knew that I wanted to paint them. Nurgle has always been my favorite of the Chaos  Gods and these models really look the part and are pretty faithful to the GW originals (some could even say almost direct copies...) The copying ties nicely into the Death Star quadrant theme of Hubris. With the inspiration being so clear it is only a matter of time before GW lawyers strike with a cease & desist letter like actually happened with Forest Dragon at the start. And of course you could argue that Nurgle's cures are of quite a questionable design at least if you are not a demon yourself. It might cure your pains, but there are quite a few side effects.

Before the challenge I had mostly tackled the elite part with cavalry, monsters and greater demons so now it was time to start building up the bulk of the army. This is the first three units of  Plaguebearers to the army. Three basic demonic infantry units are needed per 1000 points so I still need to do another  set to bring the army up to full size. I also painted up some more heroes in the form of a Demon Overlord to act as a general and two sorcerers to spice up the magic game. 

These are quite fast to paint with a violet brown and white zenithal followed by mostly contrast paints and some tactical highlights to bring out certain details. I find that the coloured zenithal basecoat really helps define the details as it forces some shadows and increases contrast between different areas. Really makes the contrast paints function much better.

Taking photos was a pain as I my mobile phone just doesn't seem to be capable of getting any decent photos of such tiny models. I really need to get my DSLR back in use so I can take better pictures. I'm unfortunately just unable to locate the battery and charger after our house move. Probably have to just give up soon and go buy a new set.

I also got around to building a proper gaming table for myself at our newish house. I have the attic mostly for my hobby and remote working space so there was plenty of room for gaming. I ended up building a slightly larger table with storage space below. Coming in at 240cm x 120cm it allows for plenty of space on the sides for beers and snacks when playing on a regular sized gaming area and I can extend it at least a bit for larger games. My joinery won't win any contests, but the goal was anyways more to do a sturdy table that would be fairly fast to put together. My wife has already taken over one end for puzzle building, but luckily there is still enough space to game on the other end!

Overall there are 108 Plaguebearers, two sorcerers and one larger demon. I'm going to count the big guy as a mounted figure so 112 points for them and a further 20 points for the Death Star quadrant "planet"

Those are lovely purulent prints! I'm enjoying this resurgence of 10mm fantasy and am sensing I will have to resist the siren call myself... I haven't mastered a consistent zenithal application myself, but yours works very well. I like your take on 'hubris' as the rebels take on the evil empire...

Barks