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 Sander: The Last post? (45 points)

 Hoi,

This might well be my last official entry  for this year's Challenge, I am trying to get one more in, but it will be tricky.

Anyway I have two different subjects for you today. First up are 5 more Stompy Robots or Battlemechs. I have painted these in the colours of the Northwind Hussars who are part of the Northwind Highlanders Mercenary Regiment. 

On the left lower leg I tried to depict the unit's Tartan 

While on the right leg I painted the personal Tartan of the pilots.

The second subject is my proxy for the Warhammer Empire Steamtank; I do not own an official model (yet) but this resin print is a very nice proxy I think. The looks of a wooden landship fits in nicely with the Lustria theme I envisage for my Dogs of War army and hence I have painted it in their reds and yellows. 

My favourite feature is the crew member dangling from the ladder trying to shoot a would-be assailant. I bought this as a secondhand rescue project and it turned out amazing in my opinion. Apart from providing some heavy support I intend to use it as a mobile trophy rack, when gaming. I will try to embellish the tank with shields, banners and heads from spare parts from the enemies it fights and defeats. These will be glued to it's sides after the battles.

A quick count of points says 5 x 28mm is 25 + 1 vehicle in 28mm is another 20 points for a total of 45 points.

I will see you all in the "end-of- Challenge" posts for sure soon! 

Cheers Sander

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Wow, wonderful work Sander! While the mechs are all very cool in their armoured glory and highland regalia, I have to say that your steamtank takes the ribbon here. Lovely brushwork on the hull and its various fittings (the smokestack finial-thingy is awesome). I agree with you that the chef's kiss of the model is the crewman optimistically hanging from the side (great work on his puff and slash uniform). A great basis for your future 'trophy rack'!

Finally, thank you for showing us your hard work over the course of the Challenge. I very much look forward to you and Arthur's round up photos! 

- Curt

From SanderS: "I am Gregarius IV!" (50 points)

 Hoi,

One last Gregarius post as Greg has mightily inspired me to paint up one of my two units of Braganza's Besiegers for my Dogs of War Army. You can gaze at the magnificence of Greg's figures HERE. 

If you hadn't noticed by now I am a major Old World fan, have been since starting out in the hobby and soooo glad the Old World is back. As said elsewhere I have 3 factions I am building armies for (Dwarfs, Bretonnia and the Empire) but I have divided my Empire army in two separate projects: my Middenheim army (which is the vanilla army) and my Lustria themed Dogs of War, mostly featuring Conquistadore/ Italian Renaissance like figures. This unit belongs to the latter army.

While Greg chose to go with the Old Skool "official" GW colourscheme; he nailed the armour way better than the 'Eavy Metal team did back then. Now I want my force, at the least the guys wearing heavy armour, to have dark metal armour which I think is more brooding. 

I also knew I didn't want to depict Braganza's Besiegers themselves and thus had to deviate from the "canon" shield designs, a short Pinterest search came up with these awesome designs which I mostly painted on by hand, there are indeed some decals on there (mostly the animals) and these are from GW and a Roman Republican transfer sheet I had kicking around for my 1:72 troops. They work really well to get in that Italian Renaissance look I find.

The banners are still in the mail on their way over here, but I will make sure to post them here when they arrive and are fitted to the figures!

Points wise 10 figures in 28mm are good for another 50 points and I might yet have one more entry left to post later on... 

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Wonderful to see another Regiment of Renown get some love during the challenge Sander! You've done a great job with them and your diverse pavisse designs really make then pop - great stuff!

- Paul

From SanderS: More Old World Goblins! (100 points)

 Hoi,

Last week I finished the first unit of what is a rather large Orc and Goblin commission. Today I will show you a second unit, this time with a spotcolour of blue. 

These night goblins are not as much fun as the older metal versions but still quite challenging as far as details go. Specially the faces with really small eyes and enormous teeth are great fun to paint. 

Pointswise it's a no-brainer with 20 miniatures in 28mm gaining me another 100 points for the roster.

Cheers Sander

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Hi Sander

Nice goblin horde & I particularly like the blue! Great use of colour to differentiate between units.

100 points to your roster!

Thanks for sharing

Sarah

From SanderS: More Old World stuff... (170 points)

 Hoi,

The Old World is pretty much my main focus this Challenge as I have predicted at the start. While I am beavering away on my own armies (Brettonians, Dwarfs, Middenheim and Dogs of War) and my Mordheim project, I have also accepted another commission for an Orc and Goblin army.

 The first unit for this army is the one you see down below. Personally I love Night Goblins and these newish models are great to work with. The owner has asked me to give each unit one distinctive colour accent to recognize what models go in what unit, as you can see this unit's spot colour is red. 

Now in order to get these done asap I used a lot of tricks learned from this tutorial which I can not reckommend enough: 

Yes yes, I know technically she has more or less slapchopped the figures, but hey it works great! 

For my own Middenheim army I have been painting these handgunners and I really like the way they turned out. 

The blue is far lighter than is usual for Middenheimers but I like it a lot and I will stick with this for most of my more regular Middenheim units. When painting these I took some tricks from this tutorial and I can also assure you it is very helpfull! 

Again, working out the points is not hard on this on: 34 x 5 is 170 points so that means I am well past my 1000 points target for this Challenge and I am very very happy with that, since I did not succeed in scoring my goal for the last 2 Challenges.  

Cheers Sander

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Congratulations on beating your Challenge Goal! Your Old World stuff looks great and the colour choices are aces! The minis look very vibrant and will be fun on the game table

170 points for you

Cheers

- Sarah

From SanderS: A king and a statue! (12 points)

 Hoi,

Remember all those Bretonnians I am painting left right and centre? Well I got them as part of the sweetest deal you have ever heard of: I needed to paint a few miniatures for the former owner of the force and it would all be mine... Now here's the last figure of the lot I needed to paint for the former owner Louen Leoncouer King of Bretonnia.

I won't lie: the figure took me ages to get right and I am mighty proud of the end result. I had several talks with the owner about colours I needed to use and details like his shield. We put that on the ground/ base rather than on the figure because if I would glue it to the figure itself, it would obscure loads of the cool details of the figure. 

Last figure today is a statue I made up to go into my Bretonnian Grail Chappel that I have 3D printed and will paint up after the Challenge. It's a Hasslefree praying female knight that I put on a 3D printed pedestal. I won't claim full points for this for this was a really simple paintjob of drybrushing some greys and using a few washes, perhaps 1 or 2 points?

That makes 12 points for the mounted 28mm figure and the statue.

Cheers Sander

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Hi Sander

I'm enjoying your Bretonnian project, Taking your time  choosing the colour scheme for the Bretonnian King really paid off. Very dynamic and good choice on placing his shield on the base. There is a lot of detail to admire!

The Grail Chapel statue is also very good, greyscale is harder than it looks! I'll use my minion powers to give you the 2points for the statue :)

Both are very cool figures and a well deserved 12 points

- Sarah

- Sarah