From MartinN: Fallschirmjäger and Firefly (65 pts.)

Another challenge is drawing to an untimely close and once again I come up short a few points. While I had a good start I rapidly lost steam and only were able to pick up speed again those last few days. I'm pretty certain that a lot of you know the feeling only too well. But the ride was a lot of fun and once again I enjoyed myself immensely. I wasn't as active on here as I'd have liked, but I enjoyed watching the daily stream of gorgeously painted miniatures.

First off for my last entry this year is a 20mm 3D printed Sherman Firefly by Arvernes Miniatures. Having painted two regular 75mm Shermans for my Canadians previously I felt the urgent need to add a Firefly for that little bit of extra punch. The stowage is mostly from AB Figures as is the tank commander.

This is then followed by a Squad of 20mm Fallschirmjäger, also from AB Figures. They're a mix of regular Heer figures, mainly with Zeltbahn, and Fallschirmjäger with head swaps as I was aiming for a very late war feel. So these should be more suitable for those battles following the German defeat in Normandy. A time when the Fallschirmjäger were a mere shadow of their former strength. I don't like the hype that surrounds some of the supposedly 'elite' German units and having this hodge podge of grizzled veterans and raw recruits is just my thing.

For points we have one 20mm tank clocking in at 15 points, a half figure tank commander for 2 points and 12 Fallschirmjäger of which two are prone figures for another 44 points. All this should give me 71 65 points.

A huge thank you for goes out to my good friends Sarah, Curt and Greg as well as all the other minions. 

***

Nick I am confident I speak for all Challenge participants when I tell you it has been an absolute treat to have you along for the ride once again. Your brushwork sets the bar, as ever, and combined with top-shelf photography, your entries are a real treat for all of us. I think many Challengers will relates to the ebbs and flows of interest and momentum when it comes to painting all of these miniatures - and many of us will come up short in the face of our targets (certainly I will!). 

But what a treat is has been! And you close out with some absolutely stunning brushwork. Nothing makes me bonkers like camouflage patterns of late WW2 German units, and you have made it look stupendous here, and the blend of the zeltbahns and sky-blue uniforms, of the veterans the rookies, it is all just spot-on and makes we want to get back to painting some WW2 myself!

But my favourite here is the Firefly! When it comes to WW2 tanks, I'm always struck by how dreary so many of the western allied designs were. Even the ones with cool names were disappointing to see. But NOT the Firefly! One of the best silhouettes of the war (and only improved once the IDF started cracking out I-Shermans later on) and you've done it absolute justice here. Even the weird colour pattern at the bottom of the barrel - excellent!

As for your points, the magical spreadsheet tells me this is all worth 65 points - so I'm going to listen to the spreadsheet. Great Challenge Nick, it has been a treat to "minion" your work!

GregB

From MartinN: 20mm StuG III and Opel Blitz (62 points)

This submission has been simmering for a while, but I had a hard time getting started on the weathering.  I quite like the look of the vehicles once finished, but getting there is always a little tedious in my opinion. I'd rather paint some foot sloggers instead. Anyway, here's the latest reinforcements for my German motor pool.

First of a 3D printed StuG III Ausf. F/8 from Night Sky Miniatures with an AB Figures commander. While I was a bit of an early adopter when it comes to resin printing, I never got comfortable with the process. It's smelly, dirty and needs a lot of effort to get right. In short I can stand it even less than weathering the final product. And probably that's the only reason I'm not drowning in unpainted prints and I'd call that a clear bonus. I turn on the bloody machine once or twice a year and that has to suffice.

Anyway, there are certainly upsides to the technology. For one there's lots of niche stuff out there that'd be hard to get commercially and I can scale to any scale I like. So while the file was scaled to fit 28mm originally it was quickly converted to go with my 20mm collection. Especially helpful as I feel that there's less 1/72 stuff available than it used to and if it's available it's just as expensive as 28mm.

Next is a trio of 20mm PSC German trucks. The vehicles are a little too basic for my liking, but went together easily. For a little more variety I printed a box body to go with one of them. Can't remember the sculptor though, I'm afraid.

So, 4 vehicles in 20mm as well as a half figure should give me another 62 points towards my total.

Still quite some way to go to 300pts, so we'll see how much I can squeeze in over those last few weeks.

***

Always such incredible work Nick! I am out of superlatives on the painting, beyond just noting that it meets your usual incredible standard of brushwork and weathering. I love the foliage on the vehicles, speaking very much to the whole "let's hope they think it's just some bushes moving along" amid skies full of Allied fighter-bombers. 

I also love the off-colour look of the barrel on the StuG's 75mm gun. I often don't think of how often barrels on guns like that need to be replaced, and the presence of a barrel which doesn't match the rest of the paint speaks to the under-pressure nature of the German forces late in the war. 

62 brilliant points for you!

GregB

From SamuliS: Saxon Cavalry ready to defect from the First French Empire (104 points)

Finally kicking off this painting challenge from my side as well! Back after a few years hiatus to what I think is my 11th challenge after first participating in 2013! And the first entry now is actually part of a project that I started in the 2015-16 challenge so more or less a ten year anniversary for this!

Starting off the challenge this year is a selection of Napoleonics to wrap up my Saxon army for the 1813 campaign. We were originally planning to play the campaign starting around 2016-17, but after years of heavy Napoleonics gaming we started to move to other interests and the army newer saw the gaming table and some units were left unpainted. Moving forward quite a few years there has now been a renewed interest in Napoleonics at the club with a lot of fresh faces so I decided to dig up the remaining miniatures and paint up a few additional units. Nice change of pace as well to return to 18mm scale as I haven't painted smaller scale in several years despite it once being my main scale with Napoleonics, Flames of War and Team Yankee making up much of my gaming. Miniatures are mostly AB Figures 15/18mm Napoleonics and I suspect at least some of the command figures are Campaign Game Miniatures.

Fitting nicely with the Empire theme as the First French Empire was really on it's last legs in 1813 and throughout the campaigns the disillusioned Saxons (as well as some other French allies) started defecting to the Allies speeding up the crumbling of Napoleons forces. The Leib Kürassiere painted here were the last Saxons to desert Napoleon after the Battle of Leipzig signaling the end of Saxonys alliance with France.

 

 

Unit sizes are quite small as with the ruleset we are now using the units are smaller than we used to play with. Personally I'm not the biggest fan as I like the spectacle of massive amounts of minis on the table when playing big battles with larger units, but it has definitely helped get a lot of newer players into Napoleonics as you don't need to paint hundreds of minis to field a Division of your own. And for me of course it helped speed up the process of painting the missing cavalry units into the army. I'll get around to bringing the unit sizes up to the same as the rest of my collection at some point, but for now I'm all set for 1813. 

 Leib Kürassiere

Prinz Clemens Regiment

 

 Hussars

 

16 cavalry figures in 18mm scale coming in at around 64 points  with another 50 added for the Empire theme.

Next up some Fantasy minis with a return to The Old World! 

 It is great to have you back with us Samuli and with such nice and crisply painted Saxons indeed. These do look the part and I really like your colourchoices. Do have a great Challenge and can't wait to see those Fantasy miniatures!

 

Cheers Sander 

From MattW: WW2 vehicles and Flak (171 points)

I have been on a mission this week to complete a number of 20mm WW2 vehicles and guns to clear the decks a little and complete something for the build. 

First up a Flak 88 for my 16 Luftwaffe Field Division project 

Next six supply Jeeps for my 90th Infantry Projects. The jeeps are resin from Raventhorpe with Drivers are AB and Alder Miniatures. 

Finally a Armoured caterpillar D7 Bull Dozer for my Engineers from Raventhorpe 

20mm gun @ 8 points

1 x flak gun = 8 points

20mm vehicle @ 15 points  

15 points 6 x US jeeps = 90 points 

15 points 1 x Bulldozer = 15 points 

20mm miniatures @ 4 points    

5 x Flak 88mm crew        = 20 points 

9 Jeep drivers and crew = 36 points 

half dozer driver @ 2 points  driver                                                      = 2 points 

 Total points.               = 171 points

Cheers

Matt

TeemuL: Nice to see the "default gun" of WW2 German wargamers, Flak 88. Just add a couple King Tigers and Jagd Panthers and you have a nice army to wonder how Germans lost the war. But no, you seem to have taken the historical road here and added jeeps and a bulldozer, excellent! You don't see that many bulldozers on wargaming tables, good to see at least one in this Challenge. I have a faint recollection of seeing some others, too, but I can't be sure. And 20mm, the bulldozer definitely looks larger, so you have done great brushwork on it!

From BobV: A Peninsular Brigade and some bonus 18th C. Command [Children's Books] (280 Points)

 This week I have completed the second of four planned Napoleonic brigades. I had a little extra time with this batch and decided to  paint some of my remaining 18th Century command figures. This portion of the project includes 112 infantry and 8 mounted officers, all in 18mm. 

After perusing the foyer of the Analogueville Public Library, I decided that this brigade has a definite connection to the Children's Book section, at least it does in my world.  We'll see if you agree. Many, many years ago, in the summer between 5th and 6th grades, I volunteered to work at a tiny branch library in a little valley town on the edge of the Southern California Desert. For a kid who loved books it was the perfect job. I was taught to reshelve returned books and eventually even given the heady responsibility of working behind the desk to check out books. All of that was fabulous experience but it wasn't even the best part. The best part turned out to be the daily responsibility of shelf reading, going through each shelf to ensure all of the books were in their proper place. 

Not only did I end up learning the Dewey Decimal system in spades, I got to see every single book in the branch library. I soon discovered my favorite sections and some of my favorite authors, including C.S. Forester, George Fielding Eliot and Martin Caidin. While most kids discover Forester via Horatio Hornblower, I happened to find an old copy of Rifleman Dodd. That afternoon, I forgot about the shelf reading and quickly found myself beside Rifleman Dodd, crawling across Portugal behind enemy lines. Thereafter, I was hooked on the author, the genre and the history. Rifleman Dodd is still my favorite "children's book" as it started me on a long and pleasant road of reading history and led to a hobby I greatly enjoy. To this day I remain enamored with almost any book that can be found in my beloved 940's and 359 sections.     

On to the Brigade...

This brigade consists of two Portuguese battalions in winter colors and two British battalions in Peninsular uniforms. All figures are 18mm AB from Eureka Miniatures USA. The flags are from Fighting15's. The Brits are flying the colors of the 33rd West Riding and the 35th Sussex. I have tried to get the correct facings for each but that sort of detail is not all that important to me. I like using historical OOB's whenever possible but all of my battalions (or brigades as the case may be) may stand in for others in any given engagement, so hyper-accuracy is not really a requirement.  

This portion of the project was kind of a bear to paint, I found the Bavarians much easier. It is likely because the British battalions are larger at 32 figures so progress is not quite as visible but they have some extra detail as well. I use a variety of base and shading colors with some contrast paint for shading. You have to be careful with contrast paint as it tends to flow everywhere, especially on top of any layers that are not fully flat. I do like the depth of color it provides. I rarely drybrush anything at this scale.

The extras this week are 8 mounted officers from Eureka's 18mm SYW range. I believe they are labeled as Prussian or Austrian but at this scale and in this era, they are pretty interchangeable.

This week's scoring is as follows:

112 x 15mm foot @ 2 points = 224 points

8 x 15mm mounted @ 4 points = 32 points

Children's Book Section Bonus = 20 points

Total = 276 points

In two weeks it's back to the Empire with a brigade of French Ligne. Happy Monday all!

Sylvain: The story about how this post fits with "children's books" is well argued. You really had a dream job as a kid. Your colors (the blue and the red) are vibrant and almost burst through the screen. I will throw in some extra points (4) for the flags to bring your total to 280 points. Great production and great read!