From TeemuL: Outer Ring [Istvaan V] [Solaris] [Arda] [Caprica] [Death Star] (125 points)

Note to minions: I know it is free fire time, but I really like to have this entry to be posted on Wednesday, you'll understand. Yes, Tamsin, I know you are very efficient, but please leave this one for Wednesday. :)

After a quick visit to Vogspehere, we'll climb back to the Outer Ring, walk through the already visited Klendathu and Glorantha and arrive to...

Istvaan V, something for betrayal, howabout a Ringwraith from Middle-Earth, one of them is even named as Betrayer by Games Workshop for their excellent game Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. Once a king of men, then corrupted by power and Dark Lord, he betrayed his people (willingly or unwillingly).

Babylon 5 and Vulcan are familiar ground, so we move on to...

Solaris, which calls for something "Deception, Illusion". Ringwraiths are corporeal creatures, quite invisible, but often wearing black cloaks to give them form. When wearing the One Ring, they can be seen as they perhaps used to be on earlier days as King of Men. That is of course an illusion, because in "reality" they are invisible. We can of course speculate which is illusion and which is reality, but that could be very deceptive...

Well, we move on and arrive to...

Arda, something Tolkeinesque is asked for an I present one of the Ringwraiths in Twilight mode. Ringwraiths are creature of Middle Earth, created by Tolkien, so I suppose they fit the Tolkeinesque requirement, or at least the Fantasy.

Lots of these Ringwraiths here on the Outer Ring, we quickly depart and jump to...

Caprica, where we are not ambushed by invisible corporeal creatures, but those creatures are doomed to serve their Dark Lord indefinitely (or at least until the One Ring (not related to Outer Ring) is destroyed. Doomed to serve and be slave, they can be banished, but their spirits will stay and they will continue their grim service.

We leave the doomed one and move on to...

Death Star, sound like a home of big guy in black or bunch of recruits in white, but actually it is just hubris. I'm not a native in English, so I had to do some research on that. From wikipedia,  Hubris: describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. 

To me, that fits most of the bad guys in literature and movies, but right now it screams Witch King of Angmar, overconfident and arrogant minion of the Sauron saying "You fool. No man can kill me. Die now." mere seconds before killed by a woman and a hobbit. Arrogant, overconfident, so hubris.

In the movies these are kind of a reversed black-and-white and I tried to do something similar, but more colourful. So I started from white, drybrushed with green, blues and black to get the strange and disturbing look, that something is not right. The colour transitions looked good, but from white to green the leap was too much. I should have started from off white, I guess, but it was too late. I decided to try to add some yellow ink to the white parts to create an effect of transition from white to yellow to green. It helped a lot, but I'm still not 100% satisfied. Of course they don't look "right", but they shouldn't look right, they are corporeal creatures, which you only see when under magical influence (the Ring), so may be they are right. I don't know. They are not exactly what I was aiming for, but at least they look different than my barrowwights (which is good, because these are not basically ghosts) and different to my Army of Dead (which is again good, because these are different kind of magic ghosts). They could be neater, I admit that, being nice metal sculpts, very powerful creatures in the game, they should look more finished, but that would mean to start all over again. I'll get a new set from the next MTO... :)

There are only 3 different sculpts, but I was able to make some variations, since parts of the crowns were separate pieces.

That is 5 metal miniatures by Games Workshop in 28mm scale, 5 points each so total of 25 points. Planet bonuses from Istvaan V, Solaris, Arda, Caprica and Death Star totals to 100 so 125 points. Add one squirrel for MESBG Army of Mordor. I could have done something else, but that would not have been very Wednesday-way to put it, right? This should see me crash my points target, too.

My personal Squirrel count: 16

• 20mm Napoleonic
• 28mm Sludge
• 28mm Pulp
• 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos
• 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy
• 1:300 Cruel Seas
• 6mm Epic Imperial Fists
• 28mm ADD Boardgame
• 28mm Runewars Waiqar
• 28mm Blood Bowl
• 28mm Simians
• 15mm Mid War Germans
• 28mm Age of Sigmar Sylvaneths
• 28mm Warhammer 40000 Imperium
• 28mm Warhammer Fantasy Orcs & Goblins
• 28mm Lord of the Rings Mordor

Really? Claiming five planets from five very similar figures? Really? That is stretching things somewhat - I think I can see why you wanted this held over for Wednesday, but as Greg has an emergency at his cabin you've got me minioning it after all!

It's definitely a stretch, but I think that you have justified the planets and might have got away with it apart from a slight hitch that you seem to have overlooked - to get from Istvaan V to Solaris would require a trip on Lady Sarah's Star Yacht and there's no female figure (or Yacht trip claim) in this post.

Tamsin

Edit to Update: I'd missed Curt's reply to a query on the Quadrant Map post saying that you can skip planets that you've already visited. Points for the other four planets have now been added.

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 Barks: The Lair of the Fell Beast (50 points)

And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil.

JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King (1955)

And behold! I have painted a fell beast.

The Lord of the Nazgûl

Armoured Fell Beast

I did some dark magic with magnets which allows a choice of rider. I also made a base with four 25mm washers buried within, for added heft and to drop the centre of gravity.

Alternative Nazgûl

I snapped the clear flight stand during priming- some rather colourful Australian colloquialisms were voiced- and had to trim it shorter and angled down more. Taking advantage of your advice a few weeks ago I repainted it flat black.

I started from a pale grey undercoat and added thin coats of dark greyish browns to taste. I'm not entirely happy with the wings- I'd prefer them to be a bit more tan.

Now to work out how to store and transport this...

Théoden and Snowmane for scale

I'm claiming this as 25 points for a large 28mm mount with two riders.

+20 points for The Lair of the Beast

GW Side Challenge: +25

Onwards, to defile the Snowlord's Altar!

From StuartL - Free Immortality, no stRINGs attached - 25 Points

 Well, here we are with my first post for Challenge Eleven.

To introduce myself to any newcomers and to re-introduce myself to existing Challengers, my name is Stuart and I am originally from the UK. I've been living in Japan for about 16 years now and I have more minis in my small hobby room than I know what to do with. This is my third Challenge (the 4th if you include the Quarantine Challenge earlier this year) and it's my favourite time of the year. 

This year I have set myself a lot of goals. 1750 points is my first target, with a top ten finish being the ideal. I have entered side duels for painting the most GW minis, painting the most Skulls and painting the most genres of mini. (Squirrel!!). I also aim to reach the Altar of the Snowlord and see what fiendish things our gracious host has cooked up for me.

The first step on the path to the Altar is the Hall of Traps, which has the theme of a figure which is trapped, stuck in a trap, snared or lying in wait. This was quite a tricky one and I spent ages rummaging through figure boxes until I found something suitable. In this case a Ringwraith from Lord of the Rings.

As any true scholar will tell you, the Ringwraiths, or Nazgul were once mortal kings and powerful men. The Dark Lord Sauron gave each of them a ring of power, which made them all but immortal, but at the same time bound them to Sauron's will. For future reference, don't accept gifts from people with the title 'Dark Lord', it never ends well.

So in a sense, (and the one I'm using to justify this figure as my entry to the Hall of Traps), the Ringwraiths were ensnared by Sauron and his magic, destined to become dark spectres of terror and Sauron's most feared servants. 

This figure is a metal model of a Ringwraith from GW's Lord of the Rings game series that I bought years ago. I never really played much of the LotR game, mainly due to a lack of local interest. The rules seemed okay so long as you never used the more powerful named characters. One game I did play saw Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas murder the Balrog for the loss of only Merry and Pippin, something that would have changed the trilogy immensely if it had been included in the original story.

So there we have my first entry. This should score me 5 points for the figure, 20 for the Hall of Traps and it puts 5 points towards my Games Workshop side duel. Just to round things off, I'll also offer this mini up as my Curtgeld, as I am sure there are a few LotR fans among my fellow challengers.

Now, on to the Pit of the Pendulum.