From JamieM - Epic Warpath Plague (137 points)

We’ve started playing Epic Warpath at my club and it’s a really rather good game.  This is the 10mm mass battle game from Mantic from their Warpath universe. They’ve essentially taken the rules from the old GW epic game and given it a clean and tidy set of armies and rules that are great fun to play. GW decided it would only refresh the ruleset as its “Legions Imperialis” game where everyone had to play marines, guardsmen or mechanicum in a civil war, so Mantic decided to do what a lot of fans actually want and include aliens as playable factions.

(And have an actual set of rules which doesn't suck - Editor)

These are miniatures for the plague faction, which are infected humans who are a horde close combat army (a lot of them don’t come with guns!) family photo first.

Another one slightly off to the side. Mantic decided to have four (or two for the slightly larger) miniatures to a base, which is an absolute godsend for painting as you can paint them after sticking them to the base without a middle fella to get in the way.

The large chap to the front right is a Corruption, who is a leader for them, what with four arms being better than two.

Behind him are some plague zombies. Now, having painted these I feel like I must have unlocked some sort of an achievement as I’ve already painted the same unit in 28mm during this challenge. I use no idea whether to be proud or slightly concerned about the silliness of painting the same unit in two scales, but I figure I’m amongst like minded people who won’t judge me too harshly……

Whilst the primary quality of the zombies are their sheer quantity (they’re rubbish until they stumble into contact), these next fellas are Ghouls - more or less humans who retain the ability to fire guns. Their main strength though is being quite quick and so can gum up the opposition’s lines until the heavy hitters get in.

And that segues nicely onto these heavy hitters - Leapers. Fast and deadly in combat, they eschew guns to better concentrate on ripping their enemies to pieces.

Some funny sizes going on, so I was going to go for 27 bases of four 10mm figures for 108 points, 6 bases of two 15mm figures for the leapers to make 24 points and a 28mm figure for 5 points for the corruption to get to 137 points.

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Painting the same subject in multiple scales within one Challenge...why, that is just BRILLIANT. I would say you are "in a safe space" when it comes to that sort of behaviour. Why, I might even describe such an approach to the hobby as "wise" and "comprehensive". The smaller figures give a larger scale battle, sure, but within that you think, "wow, a skirmish would be lovely!" - so you paint some larger figures, naturally. Then, while skirmish gaming in 28mm, you think "wow, a huge scale battle with a whole lot of figures would make for a great spectacle". You see - it's all a virtuous cycle. 

Well done Jamie - 137 points for you!

GregB

From JamieM - Braaaaaains (200 points)

Zombies for me this week. A veritable horde.

These are by Mantic and are intended for use with the Firefight ruleset, which is a 28mm sci fi ruleset that I really like but which struggles to get traction against the 800 pound gorilla that is 40k. Still, if I build them, players will come (to paraphrase Field of Dreams).

There are only five different poses, so they get a little samey and I went for some lab workers, some military and some civvies.

In the Firefight universe, zombies are caused by the Plague, which turns some people into zombies and others into ‘roided berserker creatures of varying types (leapers, busrsters, etc) and this is my attempt to get the cheap troops done so I can field an army.

The largest unit size is 30 so I did ten in the orange jumpsuits so I can easily separate them on the tabletop.

Fairly soft details on these so I stuck with contrast and limited highlighting and detail on the skin/blood effects.

Like a lot of rank and file, it’s good to get them done and whilst individually they’re no great shakes, quantity has a quality all of its own as someone once said.

 Nice and simple for scoring - 40 x 5 points for 28mm infantry for 200 points.

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Great work Jamie! I've never seen such a fine representation of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 28mm before! They are all set to represent their constituents in Westminster, ready to enact Sir Keir Starmer's bold vision of...oh...wait...sorry about that, I should have read more closely. I saw "zombies" and just went from there...

Well done - it is always tricky to wade through a large pile of figures like this - particularly ones which are "samey", but I think you have achieved a proper balance of variety and painting efficiency. And I do expect these fellows are to be targets at the end of the day, correct? So they have the proper intimidation effect en masse here!

That's 200 points for you!

GregB