From MIkeW: 28mm Apocalypse Survivors, Renaissance Foot & Horse plus 40k Orks (321 Points)

Left over from last week, as I ran out of time to complete and a batch of 3D 28mm Renaissance Cavalry, these are nominally Spanish but I have repurposed them to be able to be used as any nationality by swapping out the standard. A common trick I use to reduce the number of figures required to stave various battle scenarios.

Finally completed the Renaissance Spanish Cavalry

These figures were supplied with the riders and horses as one piece with their right arms separate to be glue din place using super glue. Assembly was simple - although two horses arrived with broken legs, one could be fixed the second is missing its lower leg but I have tried to disguise this by appropriate scenics on the base.

These are D printed with a huge amount of detail, best of all reasonably priced

All figures were given a lances lowered stance, except for the officer that had a sword hand from the spares box added and the standard bearer who simply has the lance pointing upwards.

Another view

Figures came without bases but were glued to appropriate cavalry bases and then undercoated white before various horse flesh colours were applied, followed by the horses' leatherwork and furniture. The riders were 'dressed' with various colours and Oily Steel was used for armour, then washed in watered down Dark Tone ink. Other appropriate ink washes were applied to horses and riders before the figures were bases with Sand, electrostatic grass and various tufts.

Close-up of the Standard Bearer, flag is a generic cavalry standard from the period,
taken from the internet and recreated in Windows Paint.

Next is a group of ten 28mm Apocalypse Survivors, these are from a frame of plastic 28mm Warlord Games figures (ex Wargames Factory), built with the aim to provide some additional opposition to the Zombie Horde that I created during last year's challenge.

A motley group of Warlord Games survivors

I'm a little disappointed with the build of some of these figures, maybe its my fault but I found issues with the interchangeability of the arms and heads on these guys and this left a couple of the models looking a little 'odd'. 

Left to right: A guy with two pistols, a juvenile with an Uzi
and an office worker with a crowbar.

That said, I'm reasonably pleased with the paint jobs on these guys, you'll note that they are all male survivors. All figures were sprayed white from a rattle can to undercoat, and the 'dressed' according to my whim. I have a frame of female survivors to work on next and these will hopefully provide me with a number of figures to 'power' Sarah's Limo around the Cinema Lots in coming posts!

Two more survivors, left a 'Matrix' like guy with a long leather coat and pistol
and right a gangster or government agent with an M16 

The weapons available on the frame were pretty limited, so the group is a motley bunch of nine adults and a juvenile. Six of the guys have firearms whilst the remainder have a selection of 'ad hoc' weapons. Of this smaller group I particularly like the guy with the chainsaw and the Office Worker with a crowbar and rather randomly a bow and arrows! 

Guy with Chainsaw and a 'Dad' with a baseball bat

The Cricketer, carrying a Bat & Molitov Cocktail, is one of the figures that I'm not overly happy with the pose it has, similarly with the 'Dad' figure carrying a Baseball Bat, the arm joints at the shoulders is not a great fit.

Final group, left a guy in combat trousers and tee-shirt with an automatic rifle, centre the cricketer with a Molotov cocktail and right a cop with an M16

Of the armed group, we have a guy in a long black leather coat, carrying a pistol, a mafia or maybe Government Operative in a grey suit carrying an M16 Rifle, both pretty nice figures in my opinion. I did a policeman, again with an M6 and a holstered pistol plus a juvenile and another guy both with some type automatic weapon. Finally there is a guy with two automatic pistols and wearing jeans and an orange vest. Unfortunately on this figure the right arm/shoulder joint isn't that great. 

The bases on these figures are simply painted grey to represent concrete, black lines added to show the cracks between the slabs and then a wash of sepia ink is run along each black line to indicate dirt. When dry I varnish and sprinkle a mix of grey and black flock to represent detritus on the uncleaned streets and finally a few small tufts of grass between the paving slabs to further drive home the uncared for look of a post apocalypse city!

Then we get on to the Orks! Part of the reason I ran out of time on the Spanish Horse was due to having two batches of Orks on the go, they're just such fun to paint. So this is actually two batches that have merged together to be completed this week, 18 figures in all.

The Warboss 'Goldtooth', named for obvious reasons.

There are 10 x Boyz almost all with Choppa and hand Blasta, plus 5 Boyz with Heavier Blasta plus 2 new Grechin and a mighty Warboss.

Two Grechin to add to the army

I won't go through the painting methodology of these guys as I've described elsewhere, I'll leave you with the photos and commentary to see what I have done with these figures. By some fluke I have a number (4) of Ork Heads in this batch that have all got scars on them, so I have painted this regular (pinkish) flesh colour and then run over this with a line of red ink, to make it slightly more vivid than their lips.

Five Ork Boyz with Heavy Blastas

The gretchin with the sword is clearly cut out to be some kind of leader, he is an old metal figure and I gave him distinctive red hair for the fun of it.

Five Boyz with Choppa and Hand Blasta

And another Five Boyz with Choppa and Hand Blasta

All of the new batch together

And maybe a slightly better view

Finally the two Boyz with skulls on their Choppas for this week's Side Duel

Last but not least we have a group of 13 (unlucky for some) Landsknechts, six pikemen, 4 two handed swordsmen, two more handgunners and a crossbowman. Seemingly a random lot but really I wanted to add 2 handgunner's to last week's batch - allowing me to field these are 2 x 6 figure wings to a pike block. Additionally I wanted to add another rank of pikemen to a pike block of 20 figures I completed last May, see <here>. Then I just wanted to see what the Two Handed swordsmen would look like, deployed in a forlorn hope in front of the pike block, chopping away enemy pike heads as they advance. The crossbowman was just for good measure and again to see what it looked like.

Thirteen completed this week Landsknechts

Painting technique was exactly as described last week, adapted for crossbowman and swordsmen. The two handed swordsmen, musketeers & handgunners come in only two poses, albeit you can swap arms and heads about to your whim. Again I'm pleased with the results.

Two Handgunners plus a Crossbowman

with a rear view!

Four Two-Handed Swordsmen

and their rear view...

Six Pikemen, five of these are Warlord Games figures,
one is a Wargames Atlantic Conquistador, pressed into German Service!!

Wargames Atlantic figure is front right

Why am I showing the rear of all these guys?

Here is a photo of the new 25 man pike block, with flanking handgunners and wo handed swordsmen out front.

My first completed pike block and supporting arms,
I'm now thinking that I need to increase the hand gunner wings to eight figures each

Another view, bulk of the pike men were panted earlier in the year
but supplemented by this week's and last weeks Landsknecht figures

Final view

So to the points tally, bit of a points bomb today...

... Next week more Orks, hopefully a Marian Wars Scots Pike block and some more survivors - fingers crossed!

POINTS

10 x 28mm Renaissance Horse  @10Pts ea                        100 Points

10 x 28mm Survivors                  @ 5 Pts ea                        50 Points

18 x 40k Orks & Grechin            @ 5 Pts ea                        90 Points

13 x Landsknecht                         @ 5 Pts ea                        65 Points

TOTAL                                                                                305 Points

SIDE DUELS

+1 Squirrel Point

+165 Codpiece & Feather Points Assuming I can count the Cavalry in this section!

+2  Skull Points

From TeemuL: This definitely counts as a points bomb, lots of points from four different sources. Is that a points grape bomb then? The Landsknecht look very good and I really like the light green skin of gretchins. The Orks are a bit tall to count as 28mm minis, so I'll give you couple of extra points from them.

From Mike W - 28mm Zombies #4 and Survivors (130 Points)

At the risk of getting boring, I'm still plugging away at my zombie horde, but light is at the end of the tunnel, this week sees the end of my collection of Zombicide figures. 

A cross section of the latest Zombies in the horde, centre is a ballerina,
flanked by two walkers on the left and two runners on the right

Next week I'll move on to the first of some Warlords Project Z figures and some other generic odds and ends figures in my collection waiting to be painted, another 50+ figures, that I'll split these into a couple of posts, then hopefully I'm done. Well maybe - I'll still keep an eye out for a few character figures as they become available

Another group with a Zombie bride, second from left

By way of variety this post also includes a few Survivors, again these are Zombicide figures. Now whilst I love their Zombie figures, in my opinion the jury is still out on their Survivors. Mainly because I have very few of them and their expense is discouraging me from getting more. What I do like is that for most Survivors you can also get a Zombie version of the figure, in case they fall to the deathly curse....

The third set of zombies, just four here! Second left is an old lady with her cats.
Both lady and cats are now zombies

So this Zombie batch has a number of Fatties in it that by their nature are bigger models and I have thus been spending more time on completing these to a standard that I'm happy with. There is also the Abomination group of five individual figures, on one base - any resemblance to a well known 1970s Disco group is purely intentional!

Two Fatties, left a girl in a unicorn Onesy - which was really fun to paint and right a Wrestler

Each figure was given a white undercoat, skin tomes applied as previously described and clothing added as appropriate.

Rear view of the Fatties

Various washes were used to add grime, shading and blood splatter for such a gruesome group, before basing  on a relatively plain grey concrete sidewalk.

A good view of the Biker, the Cop, the Cowboy and the Construction Worker

The Soldier with the Construction worker behind

Another view, I assume Felipe Rose (the Native American)had already
'Gone West' when the band fell prey to the Zombie scourge

The 'Greenwich Crew' Abomination was difficult to get completed, the figures are so intertwined and the model is supplied as is, so painting one guy almost always meant causing problems on one of the others. Of course it didn't help that I wanted to be 'Historically Accurate' in their outfits and when I checked the internet for reference material, a lot of it was contradictory...

Five survivors, albeit two are the same model painted differently!
I usually avoid green bases but here they denote living game pieces - easy to spot at a glance

I settled on what can be seen...

I've counted the abomination as 5 individual figures, hopefully everyone will feel that this is fair.

POINTS

26 x 28mm Foot Figures = 130 Points

Just like COVID there appears to be no end to Mike's Zombie hordes.  More wacky figures in this lot.  Personal faves are the Village People, the girl in the Unicorn suit and best of all the Zombie crazy cat lady.

From IannickM : Rule #8: Get five Kick Ass Partners (30 Points)

We don't have enough ammunition to shoot them all in the head. The time to have done that would have been in the beginning. No, we let them overrun us. We are in the minority now, something like 400,000 to one by my calculation.

An entry coming out of left field today, with 6 survivors figures from the original Zombicide board game. Zombicide is the only miniature board or wargame that my girlfriend actually enjoys. I think the cooperative nature of the game appeals to her more than the competition style of traditional wargames. It's also much simple. It's quite funny as she really gets into it and becomes a nervous wreck when the Zombies approach us from all sides! So she's been bugging me to paint the miniatures for the game, and I figured I'd give it a go in between batches of other miniatures. They are really nice figures, it's just that I have so many projects to do! 

Anyways, I started these during the Christmas break, and couldn't find the time to finish them. When Curt challenged me to a race to the finish last week-end, I figured it was a good strategy to finish these first! 

For boardgame game pieces they are lovely figures, even though the face details are a bit soft. I'm also not a huge fan of the semi-soft plastic used, but having said that I'm quite pleased with how they came out.

You will notice none of them follow the art from the game. I just don't like being told what colours to use, unless it's historical or accepted canon!

While obviously their main use is Zombicide, I based them the same as my Pulp project, and I can certainly use some of them, the police officer especially, in my Pulp games.

Now, I just have to paint all the Zombies from the game...next challenge, maybe?

And a small 30 pts to add to my total. I've now surpassed 650pts, I'm into uncharted territory (I'm a slow painter)!

ByronM: Cool post Iaanick, I love these Zombicide survivors and am with you on the soft plastic and detail on the faces.  While the figures are really great for board game pieces, with just a little more attention paid to material and facial detail they could have been great miniatures as well.  Regardless, I love your take on them with the softer colours on the chain saw wielding waitress being my favourite.  Her and Amy (the goth) being my two favourite Zombicide characters in the game anyway :-)

From MartinN - Final Submission (15 Points)

With some stressful days behind and still a few more ahead I call it a day and present to you my final entry for this years challenge.

Mitch

Again these are survivors from the Zombicide board game. As the previous figures they were fun to paint and I'd wish more companies would produce their figures to such a standard.

Angry Mary

My heart felt thanks go out to our dear Mr. Snowman... err, pardon me, Snowlord of course... for organizing this fantastic event (again). I'm pretty sure Mrs. Campbell will be more than happy having your undivided attention again, my friend. Thank you both for making the annual Painting Challenge to my annual hobby highlight. 

Also I want to thank the sponsors and the other participants for making the Challenge to what it actually is: A chummily contest with lots of banter, fun and mutual encouragement.

I really loved to gaze at some great figures, well... in some cases I should probably say armies, over the last few months and I'm pretty sure I'll join in next year again, if possible.

Red Cap Ben

And finally the mandatory group shot:

With 91 painted figures I painted almost half as much over the curse of the last three months than I did during the whole of 2014. So I'm quite satisfied with my progress and hope the remainder of the year will be equally productive.

Over and out!


From Curt:

Fantastic work Nick! Those three survivors really look the part. The tattoo on Mitch's elbow, Mary's camo and the great textures on Ben's clothes are just brilliant. So smooth - it's quite astonishing.

I also LOVE the final 'Nick's Challenge' image. I think it would be brilliant if other participants could do the same as we come into our closing days with this year's event as it really defines what they got done over the past three months. Wonderful. 

As before and as I'm sure it will be again: it's been a pleasure Nick.

From SeanS - 40mm Survivors (28pts)

Hi All,

This'll be short and sweet. I've rushed these because, frankly, I've been dragging my feet of late.

Sorry about the blurry second picture. I also apparently didn't sit the same distance from the table.

We have here Jethro, who seemed to be living the apocalypse lifestyle before it all went south. Three guesses what his favorite beer is. Hint, Dennis Hopper loved it in Blue Velvet. Next to him is Deputy Hogg. A law man before society collapsed, justice is now delivered at the end of his shotgun. Next we have a member of the Campbell clan. Is it Bruce, Curt? Even he doesn't know, as in his amnesia he's even forgotten his shoes, but not how to kick zombie ass. And lastly we have SWAT officer Figueroa, why Figueroa? Because that's what came to me as I was writing this. After watching the rest of his team get feasted on he's gone solo. You will never see him coming.

The only thing new is that, on the ones with visible eyes, I painted their eyes. I used the 0.1mm pen technique. I'm pleased with the results.

Wish me luck on the hot round, I've got one part primed and the other is in desperate need of pinning and green stuff. Now where did I leave that stupid pin vice?


From Curt:

Nice entry Sean. Who makes these figures? Great job on Jethro's camo and his ball cap. Campbell looks like he should be holding a popped umbrella instead of an axe (which, knowing my luck, is probably what I'd  be armed with in any zombie-apocalypse). I dunno, I don't think I hold out much hope for these guys, except perhaps the mysterious 'Figueroa'.

 Good luck on your pinning - I hope to see your 'Hot' submission for Sunday!

From MartinN - Zombicide Survivors (30 Points)

Doing some necessary renovation work at home the last week left me with little to no time to paint. But as today is a holiday in this part of Germany I made good use of the free time and finished the six survivors from the 'Zombicide Season 1' game.

Phil, The Cop

I had my eyes on this game for quite some time but only recently gave in to the desire to get hold of it after a mate at the club invited me for a test game. And so my resolve crumbled...

They're lovely cast and well detailed miniatures with little to no flash. The figures measure about 32mm from foot to eye but feature more realistic proportions than the usual 28mm wargaming figure.

Goth Amy

The miniatures are made from coloured plastics which unfortunately is a little bendy so no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get Amy's Katana straight. Also I'm not really happy how the skin on her and Wandas' faces turned out. Painting female skin is something I haven't done all that often yet...

Wanda, The Waitress

 

 

Even if I definitely prefer the oversized proportions of the standard 28mm  figure the Survivors were a joy to paint. On all but Wanda I kept more or less to the original Zombicide artworks. But as she's my missus' favourite character and swmbho had something 'punkier' in mind for her I went for a traditional black housemaid uniform but gave her red/ blue hair to meet my ladies' demands.

Crazy Ned

Crazy Ned probably is my favourite character of this set. He's meant to be one of those more or less mentally instable persons which dedicate all their time and efforts to prepare for the Apocalypse they think is coming. Well, now Ned knows he was right all the time... if he only hadn't misplaced the keys to his bunker.

Doug, The Salaryman

Is there anything more relaxing after a hard day at work as to give some nasty zombies some serious beating while searching and looting the shattered remains of what was once called 'civilisation'? Imagine it might be your boss or some other 'dear' fellow human being shambling towards you...

Josh, The Thug

My lady and me enjoy Zombicide quite a lot and it may well be one of our most favourite boardgames over the past few years. So when you get the chance I recommend you to give it a try.

And before I forget, a quick snap shot of my hobby corner for Curt:

Any guesses for what's on my table currently?

This illustrious bunch of survivors should give me a stunning total of 30 points to add to my roster.

From Curt: 

Wow, fantastic job Nick! These are absolutely brilliant. I have a hard time picking a favourite as they are all so good.  I must say that I'm really blown away by the pale buff colour of the teen's hoodie. Perhaps its how it sets off his face so nicely. Wonderful. 

I know this will sound cheeky, but I know with your brushwork that you can pull it off: 'Wanda the Waitress' NEEDS torn fishnet stockings.  :) 

Again, great work Nick.