From DavidB: Iron Snakes, Blue Bloods, Spiders, and a doctor walk into a bar, scifi, Lady Sarah's Cart (160 points)

 Vengeance- Jack Hempsey(Equalizer)

  I will continue to the sci fi theme in the rotunda....honestly after all these years, I should think it would be more of a shock if I didn't paint sci fi troops.

Some more Iron Snakes are off the desk now. I am a bit ambivalent about these heavy support troops.

the damage output and range are outstanding for the point costs and abilities....but they do look like they are carrying nerf guns 

I think they would have been better as gravis armor and perhaps have the rockets( missiles have miss in them)mounted on their armor. they do look silly like they stole the launchers from a vehicle or something.

I used three shade of cold grey for shaded areas and 3 shades of warm grey for lighted areas. I am able to crank out iron snakes pretty quick now!

the squad and chapter insignia are 3d prints from pop goes the monkey

The Blue Blood Goliath gang has juves now in the group

the arc welders are not as impressive as the cutters

The cutters are the better choice

some powerful stim junkies one with dual rivet cannons and the other with powered axes.

golliath champions of the brute size, they are massive!

nine van saars because I cannot locate the tenth one. I painted them up because I almost lost the bits for the power shield

kind of a neat bit although a big pain to keep neat

I tried to give them turquoise armor and bright orange eye lenses, but I need more paint to do a proper turquoise as all of my citadel paints for that hue are out of production and dried out! 

I painted the bases as if Mars has a delegation in their territory. I do want more and even a box for 5150 New Hope City. The helmets and body armor are really nice scifi and not over the top grimdark.

I also picked up some biker boys for the Blue Bloods as a Buddy is huge in the Necromunda game and wants to war in the ash wastes. I painted them to match the MULE truck from mantic games and kept them shinny to match. I used the airbrush to get that metallic blue used acrylic to clean up and pick out the details. 

I actually wouldn't mind more of them for a world eater army or perhaps for some more ork biker boyz

Finally we have the  doctor. She is an Event exclusive from TT Combat and is a female version of a doctor from the faction. I was drawn to this game from On Tabletop youtube(Beasts of Wars) The Creators have said that the Nobles in Carnevale are sociopaths and the Doctors are psychopaths.

A very Dynamic sculpt full of animation and details. the resin is frail as i have broken a city watch figure several times in just painting, but the game is very fun. I have guild, old ones, vampires, and nobles....I will probably get a doctor gang just so she has company. she will be requiring Lady Sarah's Cart for a different scene.

so the total painted for this post.....

9 VanSaar  5 points a piece for 45 points and 3 skulls

6 goliaths  5 points a piece for 30 points and 18 skulls

2 goliath bikers at 10 points for 20 points and 2 skulls

5 Iron Snake space marines at 5 points each for 25 points and 6 skulls

120 points plus 20 for scifi plus 20 for Lady Sarah's Cart. Next entry the Lady Doctor would like visit the Maritime section to reunite with friends.

140 160 points

legion duel----working

Big Stompy Robots of Death- lucky 13

skulls 27 more for 218

Would you look at the size of that... gun. It's so big the photo had to go landscape style, would fit as portrait! In any event more great Iron Snakes here David and some nice Necromunda models too, the Goliaths are suitably brutish and the Van Saars quite fancy, I like 'em. Nice work.

140 points for your tally.

Dallas 

 

From JimG: Heading to Section 6—Sarah's Library Cart and Oversize Books (125 points)

This week we're starting with a ride on Sarah's Library Cart from the Entrance to Section 6. To get there we're being assisted by Olivia the Female Cleric from Reaper Bones.

Not really much to say about this miniature. She's a Reaper Bones from their second kickstarter, painted up in a pretty basic slap-chop style. 

Once we've made it to Section 6, we have a project I've been working on steadily since this challenge started: Games Workshop's Battlezone Mechanicus – Ferratonic Furnace. 

This thing is huge. The footprint is 12"x12" and the second level sits approximately 6" tall. The chimney pipe thing in the middle then goes up another 6" or so, though there's a lot of space underneath so I'm just counting this as fitting in 4 6"squares for 80 points total.

I've included the Votann mini I painted the other week here for scale. This thing is seriously huge.

Being a piece of terrain in the Grimdark Future, I painted this up using a variety of overbrushes and washes. In my personal headcanon the Mechanicum is not very good with maintenance, and everything is covered either in rust or a thick patina of verdigris. 

I've also taken to using vinyl flooring tiles covered in various sands as basing materials for these larger 40k pieces.

I've got another Ferratonic Furnace kit that I'm currently kitbashing with a few other 40k terrain kits—hoping to have it done for the DIY section some time later in the competition.

POINTS:
28mm footsoldier = 5 points
Sarah's Library Cart = 20 points
4 6" Squares of Terrain  = 80 points
Oversize Books = 20 points
Total = 125 points

 

Sylvain: Your female cleric seems to convey these two message in equal measure: "I can help you", "I can kill you". Very nice work on her clothes. And the piece of scenery is very impressive and appropriately rusty, as required by any WH40k settings. Next time, please, put a little ruler beside your piece of terrain, to help with estimating the size.

 

Now let's see how many lives will be lost defending or storming that structure... 

From MartinN: Schaeffer's Last Chancers finished [50 points]

Having painted Scope for my last entry I thought I might just as well crack on and finish the remaining five Chancers. So after almost five years the whole gang is finally reunited.

To mark the occasion I also took a group shot with all 12 of them. My painting style has evolved over the intervening year but they work together well enough. In fact the Chancers were the first figures I painted using a wet palette instead of painting straight from the pot.

And while I was at it anyway I also dug up a (luckily poor) picture of their previous paint job... I thought them rather smashing back then at the start of the 21st century. 20 years on and I'm not that convinced anymore. Probably all down to the nicer background for my photo shoots ;-)

OK, that's it for today. Hope you all had a good start into the new year!

From DrQ: Sneaky Ninja Traps and an Orkmas Miracle (50 points)

Hello all! I'm new to the main challenge but did participate in the Quarantine Challenge earlier this year. In that competition I painted a fair number of chibi minis (anime style with big heads and small bodies), and I've decided to start with this motif here at the beginning of AHPC.

For the Hall of Traps I present a sneaky kunioichi from the Yamazaru Clan of Ninja All Stars, a game from Ninja Division. These ladies specialize in laying in wait to get that sweet sneak attack to unsuspecting targets—a perfect example of a trap.

Additionally, in the holiday spirit I submit a kit-bashed ork boy as my entry for the challenge, to help all know the true meaning of Orkmas. Is he bringing gifts to good little grots or lootin' from the hoomies? I think we all know the answer...

I've got about a thousand points of 40k Ork Boyz as well as a couple of big sky vessels for the Kharadron Overlords from Age of Sigmar to paint up, so you can expect to see a fair bit of geedubs out of me over the next few months. We'll see if I manage to get it all finished! I set myself the recommended rookie goal of only 300 points in the hobby challenge. 

As for scoring, I'm not great with the maths (my degree is in the liberal arts), so I think this comes to 30 points? (Nope, 50 points. ed)

From MartinN: The Hall of Traps - 25 points

Beat the drums, sound the whistles fine folk! For the first time in my long and inglorious career as a participant of this most illustrious of challenges I've managed to sneak in an entry on day one. Or at least I think that's the case. Frankly I can't be bothered to actually look it up.

Now with that out of the way let us head directly for the formidable Chambers of Challenge and step directly into The Hall of Traps, shall we?

Here we find a sinister fellow called "Scope" waiting patiently for the doughty (or foolhardy?) adventurer to step into the potent sights of his Needler Sniper Rifle. Some of my fellow adventurers may recall AHPC VI back in 2016 when I presented the first six of "Schaeffer's Last Chancers". Now, since then the other six have been sitting undercoated in my mountain of shame (one day we really should do an expedition there) waiting patiently to be re-united with their comrades.

Well, it's not often I do Fantasy, or indeed SciFi as in this case, but what would be more fitting for the Hall of Traps than a sniper with a big and ugly sniper rifle? Right! Two snipers... wait... I only have the one, so you gotta be happy with what you get.

Anyway, as mentioned I don't often do SciFi, but currently reading the Ciaphas Cain novels for the umpteenth time I felt suitably inspired to get back to this long neglected project. I simply love the 40k Universe, well as long as GW don't f***k up the whole fluff again anyway (Astra Militarum? It's the Imperial Guard you Frakheads!) and now and then I feel the urge to paint a figure or two for this setting. None of those new abominations mind, but of those more vintage ones with character and soul.

Not that I was planning on ever again using the figures with one of their systems, but who knows? The figures might one day find use with some other rules. The currently under development "What A Cowboy" by TooFatLardies might be suitably tweak-able to make for a fun "Kill Teams" stand in.

OK, enough blathering for my first submission. Scope should net me a nice and tidy 25 points to start my into the Challenge.

From DavidB - Sarah's Balloon - Sisters of Battle (60 points)

These are the Soritas models from the limited edition set made available just before Christmas. My middle daughter Kolleen has been gaming with a fellow soldier and his Blood angel force and my Cadian 7th Cav force. She has been using my Soritas model, but she is not too fond of the green and brown and ranks of gingers therein. For Christmas she actually asked for Soritas of her own and my wife and I picked up the limited edition set for her big Christmas gift. She spent all night putting them together and pouring over the book.she even made a list of what she wishes to acquire in the future. Even more astounding is we celebrated her birthday today and she had me collect a box of saurris warriors as she wanted something to build and to her dinosaurs are really cool. I'm a bit sad as I wanted the limited edition set for myself, but then out of 4 kids who would've guessed that my girly girl beauty queen, cheerleader, basketball cross country, Honor society daughter would deign to geek out and want a force(s) of her own and war game with her dad. The others are not as keen , but still paint and write on occasion.

The new models blend really well with the old metal castings and do have some extra flair.

The colours were all dictated by Kolleen. She wanted blue grey power armor and blue surcoats with orange interior lining. She has her mother's Germanic blond looks and wanted her troops to have blonde hair with a streak of white that she inherited from me...Kolleen doesn't need the fancy hair highlights as genetics provided that bit for her.

The seraphim are the test models and the other requirement is a simple recipe for her to follow when she completes the rest.

Black undercoat highlighted with a white gloss when the black dries. Space wolves grey contrast paint over the power armor highlighted with Frostbite from P3 paints. The surcoats are painted in P3 Cygnar blue highlight the coated in leviathan blue contrast paint.P3 Arcane blue does edge highlights. The orange is Gryph hound orange Contrast paint with P3 Khador red highlight for cleanup and edge highlights. The wings are frostbite P3 with the Contrast paint Apothecary white followed by White scar white. he flesh is done by taste and the blonde hair is boot strap leather with successive lining from several light browns and tans the white streak is bleachbone. a light wash of Reiksland flesh shade ties the hair and face together. the brown leather is Contrast wildwood over P3 bootstrap leather. p3 blighted gold is used on the gold decorations with a touch of a shiny gold to add detail.

Not too shabby for a small amount a work and worth every minute to make a daughter happy. she will probably be off painting the rest of her force after I head out .

I was saving these to submit for  to O'Grady's Gulch, but I had to pass on Benito's Brook as I just stowed the Peninsular War  French Dragoons and British Infantry. I"m a big fan of Benito's Napoleonic troops and didn't want to rush them with perceived time pressure which for me is becoming not quite so perceived. Instead I will attempt to summon lady Sarah for a lift to Fran's Fjord . I do not have suitable bubbly refreshments and libations of grapes is a bit too cultured for my tastes. It is quite cold in the North this moment and I do admire the firewater for it's ability to warm the belly. When consuming Firewater it is best to consult with the Irish who have mastered  the production. This particular variety is my new favourite as it is really smooth with notes of chocolate and coffee just for being aged in a stout beer barrel. it is a wonderful addition to a mug of coffee on a cold night too!...but it is still best in a five finger glass and served at room temperature.

5 28mm seraphim for 25 points plus another 30 if lady Sarah would be kind enough to provide transport ?

***

Excellent choice on the whiskey there David, I just finished a bottle of that off with my son the other day!  If you are looking for another whiskey to try, I am not onto a bottle of Redbreast Irish whiskey that a friend suggested that I am really enjoying, it is worth checking out.

Anyway, onto your second submission of the day...

I am sure Sarah would be thrilled to provide transport for these religious freedom fighters (or fanatics depending on your view point).   Another great paint job with white, which is such a hard colour to get looking right.  I always have issues with it looking either too bland (all white) or too dirty (too much shade) but these look perfect, great work. I also really like the jump pack design on these models.

Anyway, off you go into the wild blue yonder with Lady Sarah....  Let's hope the snow lord doesn't get jealous of all the trips people are taking with his Lady!

Oh, and maybe it's the whiskey goggles talking, but with the jump packs (and other large assets these ladies bring) they look bigger than normal 28mm models, so I rounded you up to 60 points.

- ByronM