From DallasE: Khorne Bloodletters (25 points)

More on the Khornate 40K project... of course there has to be some daemons right?? Well, I'd painted three Bloodletters for an Idols of Torment game a few years ago and had four left in a Plano case. But Khorne's sacred number is 8, so I had to find another one... which I did, on eBay, a couple weeks ago. So the remaining five Bloodletters went under the brush this weekend.

This is the new one, he looks like a Champion of some kind which is good, he's the only example of this sculpt in the group.

The paint recipe for these guys is easy... the skin is Khorne Red, Mephiston Red, Evil Sunz Scarlet just blended upwards. Horns and claws are Cantor Blue highlighted with Thunderhawk?

Eyes and teeth are Wraithbone, I was reading in the old Slaves to Darkness book that Bloodletters have "milky eyes" so I redid the eyes on the first three as well. The weapons were fun to do, they were painted Corax White and washed twice (heavily) with Biel-Tan Green. I think they look pretty cool and of course red and green are complimentary colours so that works.

 

Can't not post a bare-cheeked rear view of these daemons! ;-)

Counting twenty-five points for five 28mm models here, that will bring me to my goal of 500 points, ta very much. Hopefully I'll be back with another entry later in the week.

Cheers,

Dallas

__________________________________________

You did terrific work on these iconic castings, Dallas. Even though the posing is a bit limited, these are still my favourite Bloodletter designs to-date. I like your blue-black horns and nails, and the Biel-Tan Green swords are the chef's kiss. What a great contrasting colour!

Congrats on meeting your 500 point target and I look forward to seeing a final entry later this week.

- Curt
 

From TeemuL: Orclike creatures (70 points)

Couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about all things green. Today I'm not far off that subject, but this is more a study of orcs rather than of a green. And the "study" is created while typing, after I managed to create a topic which would gather all the models of this week. Orc is a tricky word, I believe, everyone knows what orcs are, but no-one really knows what orcs are or what they look. :) It is a specific but generic term with many different points of view, different lores and different authors/artists.

These are Uruk-Hai from Games Workshop Lord of the Rings range based on the movie trilogy by the same name. In the movies Uruk-Hai are creatures created by Saruman, in the books they come from Mordor, but Saruman just manages to enhance them to not be afraid of daylight.  Tolkien's orcs were originally corrupted elves, Jackson's version is mix of orcs and goblin.

I chose to paint 5 of these, just enough for another squirrel, but they were so quick to paint, that I primed another 5, which might get painted later in the Challenge. I have largish collection of painted Uruk-Hai, but only 3 with pikes before this. Definitely need for more, luckily I have lots to paint. These are 20 years old or so, gathered from here and there over the years. These "orclike creatures" are brown skinned and heavily armoured and have long pikes, which gives them unique fighting abilities in the game. Very quick to paint, like I told. brown skin and armour cover almost everything. The photos are quite bright, but there are two layers of black wash over the plate mail to give them darker and more industrial look. Brown bases to finish them off, green tufts to add some colour to all brown, black and metal.

The next one is a mean, green killing machine, so I'd say an orclike creature. For Toy Story bonus round I painted a Centurion tank for my Delmonteland project, but since Wars of Insurgency rules are not really about tanks, I thought the jungle troops would need another kind of vehicle. The answer came from the box of toy cars I bought Gaslands in mind, but this 4x4 Cherokee is claimed to be 1/64 scale, so the same as the Centurion, so it should be a perfect fit.

I painted the car green, then added lighter green highlights, painted the windows and tires black and bumpers brown. A little bit colour to the lights and then some muddying. The freehand palm tree and slogan on the roof were painted light grey and highlighted with white.

The trunk opens, so I painted the inside yellow, looks quite practical. Some thin lines to windows to mimic reflections. Not necessarily the best effect, but at least something to break the blackness.

In the photo below I have included two jungle warriors I painted before to better show the size and scale. Looks may be a bit big, but probably just big business... "Let's go Bananas" is something I invented tongue in the cheek, something eager mercenaries might think when going to fight in the jungle. Afterwards I learnt that there is a Canadian TV show for children with the same name, so salute to Canadians is included (unintentionally).

Another size comparison, this time with Warlord Games WW2 jeep. Again, looks a bit bigger, but clearly the design is not so Spartan, so not a problem for me. Someone might argue about the correct scale for 25/28 minis, but for me this is close enough - especially when this was supposed to be a cheap side project.

The following 3 photos show the Cherokee before my salvage job. I liked the red paint and "Mad Bull" text, may be I should have stick to that instead of "Let's go Bananas"?

It can clearly be seen that this toy car has seen lots of action and most likely love. I hope to field it for my games so it can enjoy the new life and love.

And the last photo shows the technical details, 4x4 Cherokee by Majorette, Made in France, 1/64 scale and No 256.

And then some actual orcs, at least the Games Workshop version of them. Games Workshop orcs in the Fantasy (or Grim Dark) setting are greenskinned. They are not evil as such, they just like a good fight and enjoy destruction. Back in the days orcs were considered brave warriors, nowadays they are cowards hiding inside armours, made of metal gone through pigs... This entry shows the more heroic orcs rather than those cowards. These are (or were) called Savage Orcs and as you can see, their equipment and weapons are from the lo-tech end of the technology tree.

Yes, good old metal orcs with goblin green bases and red weapon shafts! I guess I'm bit of a dwarf and savage orc inside me, dirstrusting pretty everything too new and modern...

I added some variety, each one has different coloured skin or fur and there are actually 5 different sculpts here, even though two pairs look quite the same - but not exact. Shields are quite modern, but they are rather rough, so they fit these savages better.

In general they were painted basecoat, highlights and gentle wash, but there are some variations here and there. The bone weapons of the boss guy have severel layers for example where as the red eyes have just the basecoat.

What might surprise you, there savage beasts (as some imperial scholar might call them) have zero skulls on them! Bone and stone weapons, feathers, severed head, all kinds of armbands, bracelets and nose rings, but not a single skull. Well, if you want skulls, you'll have them next week!

"28mm LotR Forces of Evil" squirrel, no robots or skulls, 25 points for 5 minis.

25mm vehicle for 20 points, no skulls or new squirrels.

"28mm Warhammer Fantasy Orcs" squirrel, no robots or skulls... 25 points for 5 minis.

Total 70 points, 2 squirrels.

With all these points I reach the halfway of my target with two weeks to go!

Oh boy Teemu, what a great mix of offerings you have for us today! I do like both the versions of that architypal enemy: the trusty Orc or Ork. Those Uruk Hai really look good, but I like the Savage Orcs better they are goofy and just ooze charakter! That Cherokee is the cream of the crop for me, what a nice rescue job, the banans theme does really work well indeed, so get those brushes started and try to paint some more we sure like to see more of these kinda posts!

Cheers Sander 

From StuartL: Even in death, I still serve (20 points)

Hi all,

    Just a short post from me this week. I work part-time teaching junior high school students to speak English here in Japan. I have roughly 300 students at any given time, and this month is when they write essays. So, I have 300 essays to proofread and spell check. Fun. Unfortunately that really eats into my painting time. I had hoped to get more done for today, but even getting this done was a struggle.

    This model is a contemptor dreadnought of the XIII Legion, Ultramarines for my Warhammer 30,000 army. (Well, one of them). It is an older plastic kit from the Betrayal at Calth box set that came out in 2015. The model is very mono-pose, so I used a spare arm from the newer kit to build it's melee arm, complete with a massive chainfist and built-in melta gun.

    I originally had the model done yesterday, except for the decals, but when I went to apply them, I had a number of mishaps. The first few just would not release from the backing paper and wound up disintegrating instead. Once I got a new batch cut and ready, the first one went on fine, but as I moved the model to set up the next one, I touched it and it adhered to my finger. The decal on the kneepad refused to line up where I wanted it. It was.... frustrating.

    Eventually, I got everything in place and varnished, so those pesky things are there for good now.

    One of the differences between Warhammer 30K and 40K is that the 30K models have less skulls on them, a travesty, I know. So I did what any right thinking person would do and added some of my own. There are only 4 skulls, so not an amazing increase. I will take what I can get. It also adds to my Big Stompy Robots count for that side duel. Not enough for a Squirrel point sadly.

    This is a single 28mm scale vehicle, so 20 points for my tally this week. Not a lot, but it keeps my score moving in the right direction.

    My ongoing duels information:

Skulls - 222 (+4)
BSRoD - 17 (+1)
Squirrels - 14 (+0) - D&D Animals, 30K Militia, Plague Clowns, Afghans, Robots, Anglo-Saxons, Medieval Polish, Clan Smoke Jaguar, 81st West Africans, Undead, 10mm FPW French, Daemons of Khorne, Modern Vehicles, Turnip28

    That's it from me for now, back to the proofreading. See you all next week.

From Millsy:

Your line about "right thinking people" and extra skulls made me laugh mate. Clearly you are fully invested and anyone who thinks differently is a heretic and should be purged!

As someone who has been suffering the pain of decals of late I can sympathise. Seems like there is no way to know if a set have degraded until you try to apply them unfortunately. They came out well in the end so kudos for persisting! He looks sweet and the script on his chest is a great touch.

Well done! That's another 20 points added to your tally.

Cheers,

Millsy

From TeemuL: Cocks of War (30 points)

About ten years ago I added two halflings to my project: Pair of Hobbits. In the comments section I pitied myself for not owning more. At some point during the last 10 years I have manage to acquire 6 more of these beauties and this week I managed to finish the paintjob. This year seems to be quite popular Dogs of War / Regiments of Renown year (as usual), so a perfect opportunity to add my offerings on the plate.

There are 4 different sculpts of these, two pairs with almost identical sculpts. I guess there were 4 so GW could sell 3 random minis in one blister and there would be difference. Monsters & Mercenaries Collector's Guide only shows 3 different sculpts, I guess they are so similar that they missed the fourth one... My entry has 6 halflings with only 3 different sculpts, one is there 4 times! I already had all of them before, so I guess I can live with the repetition.

I like to paint these non-uniformed minis, because they don't have uniform! Especially these halflings, because they can use all the crazy colours and still be serious representatives of their race. I used quite a lot of greens and browns, but also some brighter colours here and there. Looking at the photos I seem to chosen quite a lot of blue for these guys, too. The second from the left is painted like part of my British Peninsular Troops. Lots of different colours, but mainly base colour, wash, highlight and second highlight - choose two or four of them. :) Goblin Green bases as usual and self made tufts.

A sneaky or absent minded participant might try to claim squirrel point for these, but that is strictly forbidden in the rules: "If you would expect to see them on the same side of the table during a game, they are NOT a Squirrel Point." As I have earlier painted some Dwarf Slayers, which could easily be on the same side with these Halflings, I can't claim the squirrel. Of course in the world of fantasy (especially if the world was created to sell lots of minis and allow everyone fight everyone with anyone) this is a bit trickier than with historical armies, but since this entry is entirely about mercenaries, I would be a president of the USA if I'd claim a squirrel for these.

So just the plain 30 points for 6 halflings, which have been traditionally scored as full 28 minis for 5 points each. Below you can see the whole dozen, backrow painted in the previous decade...

P.S. My longish sickness has now ended, so I have less time to paint. Thank you all for your support and kind words! Unfortunately I have been bit slow to follow the blog and especially comment all the fabulous entries, I'll try to be more active in the future. I belive this is all from me this week, I need to finish the "Toy" bonus round, too, and I'm away from Friday to Sunday.

 

Great to hear you are restored to full healthpoints Teemu! Those venerable Halflings really are a gorgeous sight indeed, great work! 

Cheers Sander  

From StuartL - Man's Best Friend? - 33 pts

Hi all,

    This week I just have a small post, though I may have something later if I can find time to get some painting done. During the challenge, I often see challengers posting comments about their dogs and their antics. I don't have any pets, but as I didn't want to feel left out, I thought I would see if I had any of our four-legged friends in my to do pile. Luckily, I did, sort of. 

    For those of you unfamiliar with Games Workshop's offerings, these are Flesh Hounds of Khorne, the Chaos God of War, Blood and Skulls. They are demonic entities that hunt down Khorne's enemies (as the god of war, he has a LOT of those). 

    I painted these in exactly the same way as I painted my other Khorne daemons in previous challenges. (For example) A very dark grey base coat, with red drybrushes going lighter at the top of the model. As these are not 'real' creatures, I figured that they didn't have to adhere to 'real' colours and patterns. Their fur is made of the same warp ecto-plasm as their skin after all. I have made their claws, teeth and tongues a different colour, along with any spikes, as a way to break up the red a little. 

    Being the god of skulls, Khorne obviously has a thing for them. He isn't quite at Barks' level of obsession with them, but he does like them a fair bit. As such, there are a few skulls on the bases of these figures, which will add to my side duel total. 

    

    Scoring wise, there are 6x 28mm minis, which will add 30 points to my tally.

    My ongoing duels information:

Skulls - 218 (+12)
BSRoD - 16 (+0)
Squirrels - 12 (+1) - D&D Animals, 30K Militia, Plague Clowns, Afghans, Robots, Anglo-Saxons, Medieval Polish, Clan Smoke Jaguar, 81st West Africans, Undead, 10mm FPW French, Daemons of Khorne

From DaveD. These are some fine looking beasties .. the colour scheme works nicely for me , always like a bit of well done red - 33 it’s is . 

From TeemuL: All are one in Nagash and Nagash is all (10 points)

All are one in Nagash and Nagash is all. All I need for an army is Nagash. I don't need an army, I am one.

The first phrase is a classic line from Warhammer, other two are my own invetions or reinventions based on others. I bought this Nagash couple of years ago, it just looks great and is perfect mini for skull infested (no turnip infestion this year, hurray!) AHPC. I'm not really into Undead armies in any games, but Undead are the only army I have managed to buy for Warmaster and this mini is just great. So he will be my Warhammer Fantasy Battle Undead Army, and I won't need anything more.

I stripped the old paints and started from Brainmatter Beige (GW TM) basecoat. There are lots of skulls, so some colour choices were easy. I also wanted him to wear black, it creates a nice contrast to bone and is in average considered "cool." Dead cool, maybe? I added some purple for royal look, in the end Nagash is quite a narcist. Gold fits there, too, being royal, bright and looks good next to black. Those were the main colours. Skulls were first paited brown, then drybrushed with skin, followed be flesh shade wash and another drybrush of skin, before drybrushing with bone and finally some areas were drybrushed with white. Black robes were highlighted with purple and gold areas with silver. Base is naturally goblin green, Nagash is on a crusade in the Old World, not scheming in the desert.

Jewels were painted red and his book with flesh tones - his book might be covered in human skin? The sword is good old metal with a tint of blue, perhaps some magic? I was thinking about to paint it like a bone sword, but then I would had to have named it "Boner", because it is made of bone and it makes bones of people. But the image of Nagash walking around with a huge Boner in his hand, slashing and hacking here and there with his Boner, people running away in horror, all the moaning and groaning in the background, Nagash hissing "Do you want to have a taste of my Boner? My Boner is thirsty for your flesh! Let's finish this, Boner!" and I just couldn't do it.

Charming face

Nagash is far from a skeleton, you might say and you are correct! However, his skin seems to be very similar colour to the skulls and here I'm hoping to achieve a very old, dry, shrinken, almost bloodless wrinkled skin. I think it looks better than sickly green or pure white or healthy skin, but you may disagree - and be cursed by Nagash for eternity AND forever!

Nagash's book

A very nice mini to paint, it is basically just upscaled 28mm fantasy miniature instead of modern sculpts, which are large and filled with all kinds of details - pouches, trinkets, engravings, purity seals or skulls. In the nice and easy mini to paint, even though a large one and a center piece. But I believe I managed to paint him nicely within my skill limits and not trying something too much and failing.

Regarding scoring and skulls, I refer to a recent post made by a professional mathemagician and curated by respected archivist: https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2022/02/from-millsy-moar-skullz-10-points.html

Millsy regarded Nagash as a 54mm miniature for 10 points and Curt awarded him 5 bonus points. As a humble participant, I'll ask for those same 10 and see how friendly minion Sander handles the situation (I might note that Nagash is pretty much the same size as 40K dreadnoughts, which have been scored as vehicles for 20 points).

But no, I'm not trying to claim him as a big stompy robot, no! And he is not worthy of a squirrel, either, no!

So many skulls

But I'll claim couple of skulls, though. I refer again to Millsy's excellent post to make it easier for me and my minion. Millsy counted 155 skulls on the mini and then 6 more on the base. I believe I have the same number of the skulls on the mini. Following the example of a great man, I decided to add some skulls on the base, too. I grapped my plastic bag of human miniature skulls and there happened to be 7 skulls inside (true story). I decided to glue them all on the base and reuse the plastic bag for something else, so 7 skulls on the base and 162 in total from Nagash. I guess I had 9 before?

Okay Teemu, who am I to question the great Snowlord's judgement? I will award 10 points and comment you on your painting of this great old school WHF character.

Cheers Sander  

From Scott R: Space Aussies playing as Astra Militarum in 10th Edition 40K (100 points)

 Project Astra Militarum or Space Aussies

Last year i was re-introduced to 40K after being absent for well of 20 years.  With 10th Edition being released and the game mechanic looking very different to why i left, i gave it another try.  I pulled out my old eldar (now Aldari) and gave it a bash.  It was fun again.

I also took up 3D printing last year as well and after 8 months, finally have the nut cracked on producing excellent figures, vehicles etc.  I participated in Victoria miniatures Kickstarter for space Aussies, a stand in Guard for 40K.  Using the Cadian background I commenced collecting and printing like a man possessed.  This of course along with the other 50 plus activities i was working on.

So here we are, kicking off the start of the final builds, prints and commencement of painting.  

Just under 3500 points. Still a couple of vehicles to build and a few gaps in the infantry line to print.

Victoria Miniatures and the Kickstarter.

I receive notifications of up coming kickstarters, so when I saw the title Space Aussies, I knew this was going to be great, especially from Victoria Lamb.  It didn't disappoint.

The Infantry and crews:

I was fortunate to pick up the codex from the local brick and mortar and started to read the force composition.  This was the guide to what i needed to print.  The plan was to use prints for as much of my infantry and crews as possible.

WIP.  Printed Shock Troops, Kasrkin, jungle fighters, Ogryns, weapon crews, vehicle crews and command.

A summary of the points claimed for the figures:

[TBA]

=================================================

Sylvain: Scott, this looks like a tremendously fun project! Since today is the deadline for submissions, I'm going to give you 100pts for 20x 28mm figurines (@ 5 points each). I hope you could find a few minutes later on to clarify how many points you are claiming. Excellent travail!

 

From TeemuL: More Slayers! (30 points)

As promised last week, here are the rest of the Slayer group.

POV: Opponent

So six more GW Slayers, one of them is a banner bearer, but since the original banner never came to me (these are all second hand purchases), I needed a replacement. The banner is a piece of Age of Sigmar Magmadroth, in the Old World the skin could be from dragon for example. Very simple solution and even simpler paint job! No fancy heraldy or unit numbers, just clear and brutal annotation that "We Killed A Red Dragon!"

POV: You

I experimented with hair/beard colours again, so here are two oranges again - one of them is familiar from last week (the darker) and one is new one, so there are now three different orange dyes in the group to bring up some variation. Some of the highlights are quite yellow, especially in the photos. In nature they are not that bright, I'm not sure if that is good or bad. The axes look good, there are two layers of different metallic paints, but I guess the lightning and photographing is what matters here more. One more additional detail of my tip last week, using similar colours and then one wash to cover them all helps hide small errors on painting, too. 

Photographing these is a bit annoying since it is difficult to figure out which side is front and which is not. The minis are from different sets, so probably some are meant for diagonal and some for horizontal slotta bases, but I just try to live with it. Yes, the common Old World problem, or is it First World?

My Squirrel mind is fighting my Hoarder mind, because I keep thinking of getting more of these, since they are so nice to paint and I don't have all the differents sculpts yet... Anyway, these six slayers should give me 30 points.

Participation fee: I decided to donate 20 euroes to WWF Finland for Finnish Nature. Our government (quite racist far right - we have gone far from that smart, young, female prime minister we used to have during covid) has decided to cut the benefits of people and destroy the nature "to save the country". I haven't figured out how harming both the land and the people will save anything (expect the personal benefits of the leaders), so I'll try to do something to save the land.

 

 

Another great bunch of Slayers, that vibrant orange for their haircuts really works out well! Good to see you bring something positive to the Wildlife of your country Teemu. 

 

Cheers Sander  

From TeemuL: 5 Slayers (25 points)

I try to keep up my tradition to keep up my Minion busy and post something every week. It got tricky, when this first Saturday was so soon after the Free Fire period. I had to make a compromise, though. There should be 11 slayers, but I had to choose and finish just five of them for today. The rest will come next week.

These are old metal slayers from 1990s or something, very much hair and beard, big axes and minimal amount of legs. Quite nice to paint, there are some details, but not too much. Being single peace casts, there are no hard to reach spots either.

The dwarf in the middle has a different orange on his hair and beard than others, a bit darker. I guess I use that for the rest, because it is more vibrant and easier to highlight than the other. They look bit pale. The bases are 20mm squares, some sand and Goblin Green - as it should be. These diagonal bases are bit tricky, really difficult to know which side is front - if any?

One trick I used with these was choose simple colours (dark skin, orange, red, brown and gold) which would all look good after a Reikland Flesshade wash. These are colours which look good after the wash, for example greens and blues can be used and you get uniform effect, but blue and green would look dirty. The colours I chose are brownish, so they look nice. Feel free to follow my (laziness generated) tip. After painting thousands of minis, one learns something. I haven't learnt how to paint good eyes, but this time luck was on my side and the eyes look quite nice. Of course the maniac look fits these minis well, being some other minis, the eyes would look horrible.

Thank you for this, next week more the same and then a theme entry for Sunday. 5 28mm minis for 25 points and 1 squirrel.

Squirrel total: 2; 28mm Napoleonic British, 28mm Fantasy Dwarfs

What a great bunch of Doom seeking Dwarfs Teemu!  I also like that you share some tricks for us to get the same levell of painting as you have shown here. Can't wait to see what you come up with next week!

Cheers Sander