From AaronH - Star Wars Imperials x 13 (65 points)

This week I managed to finish 12 Imperial Snow Troopers and 1 Imperial Officer for Star Wars Legion. I'm waaaay behind this year as my work decided that I needed to travel for the last two months. As you'll see at the end, I have not made a lot of progress against my goal this year.

First off are 12 Snow Troopers. These are a mix of the official, soft, bend, terrible official sculpts and 3D prints.

The three in the center are official sculpts. The guy on the left, being all dynamic and stuff, is a 3D print from Squamous.

The rear view. These are set to get new hard plastic sculpts in the next few weeks. The new releases have been great, so I'm looking forward to the replacements.

The two heavy weapons. You can see that the Ion gun on the left has a bit of barrel lift.

Next up is an imperial officer. She is the old, soft plastic and is, colloquially known as Becky. I have no idea why.

She stands up pretty well until you get to her face. The detail is very soft there.

I was aiming for a more grey-green. I can see it in my minds-eye but I just couldn't pull it off on the model.

She and six of the Snows are for Rhys to take to Adepticon in two weeks, where we'll be playing in the World's tournament.

That's 13x5 32mm models for 65 points.

Very nice work here Aaron, the Snowtroopers look ace. The ones with heavy weapons look suitably scary. I also like the subtle colour difference between the armour and the capes/cloth. I also quite like your officer. I suspect you were going for a bit more field-grey look here, that's how I've painted some of my Imperial officers. If that's the case might I recommend Vallejo German Uniform?

In any case it's 65 points for you!

Dallas

From AaronH - Iden Versio and two Orc APCs (17 points)

This week I'm finally getting some painting done after travelling for the last two months. I have Iden Versio in 32mm and two Marauder (Orc) APCs in 10mm.

I painted Iden up for my friend's son so he could use her in a tournament last weekend. She was a quick paint, being mostly black.

I just dry brushed a couple of different grey's over the black undercoat. Her face took the most time.

I had already painted her droid so it's not included here. I still need to paint the other members of Inferno Squad, which may happen this Challenge.

The trucks look like she's playing with Tonka trucks.

The two APCs are Mules, the ubiquitous transport in Mantic's Warpath universe, being in at least three armies.

I have six of these. I'll be doing two each in yellow, blue and red.

They are quick and easy to paint up. I used acrylic paint pens to do most of what you see.

I'm not sure why this is Mantic's vision for an APC but horses for courses I guess.

This is one 32mm figure for 5 points

Two 10mm vehicles for 6 pts each = 12

Total = 17 pts

Nice work here Aaron, I was unfamiliar with Ms. Versio so you sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole there. A pretty intense character, she was the leader of an Imperial black ops unit called "Inferno Squad" (!) and holder of the Imperial record for most verified kills in battle (!!) (I thought surely this would've been the Death Star gunner who pulled the trigger on Alderaan??) before she defected to the Rebellion. You've done a great job on her, especially the face... the sculpt is great too, it really looks like the actress who played her. 

Seventeen for your tally!

Dallas 

From AaronH - 10mm Epic Warpath Marauder walkers (12 Points)

This entry is just two 10mm Marauder walkers. These are for Mantic Games' Epic Warpath game, which seems like it will be a lot of fun. I backed their Kickstarter and got the Marauder and GCPS armies (Orks and Imperial Guard). 

There's a lot of detail on these for 10mm. They are plastic off a sprue.

These are mostly just yellow and metallic. I hit the visors in blue and they have a wash and some highlighting. Quick and easy but that's what you need when you are painting a whole army of 10mm.

The back view. These are three part models; body and two arms. The only real way to get variation is by how you glue on the arms.

There are six of these in the starter army. For no reason other than head cannon and variety I'm doing three clans. Yellow, red and blue. 

I really like the character of these models. Some of the lines in this system don't appeal to me, Asterians for example, but these guys are pretty awesome.

This is 2 x 10mm vehicles for 12 points.

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This also hits the Big Stompy Robots side challenge for an additional 2 points

14 points total.

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Fabulous work on these mobile suits/robots, Aaron. The yellow is wonderfully punchy, which is what you need for these smaller models. Epic stuff is so awesome, no matter what the setting or period - it just looks cool. I hope we get to see more from this force from you in the coming months.

- Curt

AaronH - Imperial Storm Troopers (60 Points)

This year I'm going to try to get through my nemesis, Storm Troopers. I've been collecting Star Wars Legion since it came out, six or seven years ago. I've painted a fair few models for it but I've always been intimidated by the Storm Troopers (and Scouts and Snows). As an aside, I only play this game with painted models. It forces me to paint up models I want to use. So no Empire up to now.

The tray of potential, waiting for the Challenge start. This is approximately 135 war dollies.

I assembled and primed everything and laid it out to be ready for the Challenge. I've found other bits since this picture and added them to the tray.

Storm Trooper wash on the left. Fresh off the factory on the right.

I started with a flat white prime. I then cleaned up the spots I did a bad job of priming with more white. I then hit these guys in a batch manner. 12 models. 12 sets of lenses, then 12 lines above the lenses, then 12 mouth snouts, then 12 weapons. I had to do the black undersuits one at a time since every model is different. I then dry brushed gun metal on the guns and put some sombre grey on the high points of the black. I touched up everything with another bit if white and then everyone got washed in storm trooper wash. As you can see in the picture above it knocks back the white, emphasizes the details and makes the armor look more lived in. I really like the affect.

The 12 man unit. I have 3 heavy weapons in here, as well as the optional five man upgrade.

The back shot. 

And now the closer ones in focus.

In Star Wars Legion you get a base unit of four dudes that you can then add on weapons and specialists to, getting you up to a potential unit size of 10. There's one more heavy weapon that I don't have a model of, so is not included.

This is 12 x 32mm infantry models = 60 points.

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Welcome back to the Challenge, Aaron!

It looks like you have a veritable battalion of Stormtroopers ahead of you, and what better way to work through them than the Challenge! I quite like the final result that you've achieved, with these looking like hard campaigners with little time to keep their armour white and shiny. Question: What do you use for your 'Stormtrooper Wash'? I'm sure there are a few of us that would be keen to compare notes. :)

This large squad of 12 will give you 60 points for your climb up the points ladder. Well done!

- Curt

From AaronH - 34 Star Wars Legion B2 Battle Droids (170 points)

 This week's entry is 34 B2 Battle Droids from Atomic Mass Games for Star Wars Legion. These are 32mm sculpts, and these are all 3D prints. The B2s have been out of print for several months so the only way to have any at the moment is printing.

AMG released version 2 of the game last summer, though they call it version 2.6. It brought significant changes to the game. I am a big fan of the new version, though thoughts are decidedly mixed on that front across the community. I, however, have not had a bad game with the new rules and I definitely had games that were lost as soon as we set up in the old version.

One of the big changes in this version is that they added squad upgrades to core units. Core units are the tax unit, you are required to take 3 and can have up to 6 (or 8 in one of the droid lists). It used to be that you had a core size, 3 in the case of B2s, and could add a heavy weapon and one additional model. Now the B2s can add 4 B2s instead of 1. This means squads could be up to 8 models max instead of 5. Other units can go up to 10 or even 14 models in the case of B1s. They also raised the army size from 800 to 1000. This change seems to be much more popular as it lets us put more of our toys on the table.

As a result of these changes I've been adding bog standard models to all of my core across my armies. Last year I painted up two units of B2s (here). I needed to add three more models to each of those to make them capable of being maxed out.

Three bog standard B2s for Red and Blue squads.

Full Blue squad with the three new members in front.

Full Red squad. New 3D prints in front.

Next up will be four squads of seven each. I went with seven because I need to print a few more and you can't actually take six fully upgraded squads in an army, so I can always drag an extra from one squad into each of the others for now.

Purple squad. A lot of these prints have bases with terrain molded on.

Silver droid butts. Some of these prints are themed for mountain warfare and have extra gribblies on them.

Baby Blue squad.

Orange squad.

Green squad. This heavy weapon is different than the rest. There are two options but I, honestly, don't care so if there's a special weapon in the squad it's whatever upgrade is on the card. This one looks cool though.

Close up of the unit leader. He has gold around the colored section. It shows up better without the glare from the photo lights. You can see the large special weapon here. I painted them with color shifting paints and they vary between this purple and a sort of green depending on what angle you view them from.

All of the models painted for this week.

My entire B2 collection with the previously painted squads in the back.

34 32mm models x 7pts each = 238  points.

 

Sylvain: Wow, this is truly an unstoppable tide of metal, all shiny and well coordinated. I like your Tatooine bases, very evocative of the Star Wars universe, as well as your coding. I'm sure players won't be able to stop their urge to say "pew pew" when engaged in combat. Excellent paint job!

 

Regarding your points, the rules of the Challenge do not have a specific category for 32mm, so I will count them as 28mm (rather than 40mm) at 5 points each. 170 is still a nice bunch of points.

 

 

 

 

From AaronH: Mordor (and Isengard) Orcs from GW (125 points)

 This week's entry is twenty five GW Mordor orcs. They are a combination of plastic and metal and include two of the ooooold metal orc models from when the line was first started, now re-purposed as captains.

First up, painted as Isengard orcs.

In the movies Saruman has normal orcs in his army as well. They do the grunt work around Isengard, hatching new Uruk Hai, cutting down trees, a little light gardening. Since you can take orcs in the list (at least in the old rules) I am painting up some of my orcs as Isengard. For this lot it's mostly the flag and the shield on the captain, though the two archers with helmets have an S rune on them.

You can see the shield symbol on the captain. This is how they are described in the book, a black circle with a white hand in it.

The captain is one of the two old metal sculpts. They are soooooo much better than these crappy plastics.

This guy is just prime LotR sculpting from back in the day.

Next up are the "heroes" for the Mordor orcs. These are three metals and a plastic Gothmog.

The third guy from the left is another ancient metal orc re-purposed as a captain.

The three metals are some of my favorite GW sculpts. They are just clean, interesting and well detailed. Gothmog is a great example of the current plastic state of the art; very good considering the medium.

I don't usually run the drummer or the whip dude, but you never know what the new rules will lead to.

The last group is 13 archers. These guys are the same as the Isengard ones above, there are only two poses, and they're really the same dolly with a different head. The main difference is that my Isengard army, painted years ago, has brown bases with grass on them and Mordor have grey bases with a single brown tuft.

These are pretty good for plastics of this stage of LotR development, but still not great.

The archers will fill in Mordor, Minas Morgul and Moranon lists and will provide the fire support for the Moranon orcs I painted last year.

These will also serve in other fantasy games like D&D, Pathfinder, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, Rangers of Shadowdeep and Oathmark.

This group means I have enough painted orcs for almost all of my needs, barring Oathmark. So, naturally, I'll be painting up a bunch more of the non-archer ones soon. 

This entry is 25 28mm orcs x 5pts each = 125 points.

Sylvain: I share your passion for metal miniatures. With your paint brush, you flawlessly included these into your plastic minis. When your models are grouped together, the light brown color you chose suggest a horde of rodents. Your heroes are characterful and bring a nice touch to the whole band. Excellent production!

 

 

From AaronH: 12 Riders of Rohan (120 points)

 My entry for this week continues my work on Rohan. This entry is 12 riders for last week's heroes to command.

They look pretty impressive all ranked up together.

First up are three with spears. They are much more expensive than non-spear dudes, and rarely get the kills, but they look so cool I always take some.

The horses were mostly done with speed paints. This is a much more acceptable process for me.

I did the capes for the rank and file in a darker, less glorious green to reflect them having access to less expensive cloth than the heroes and Guards.

Next up is the archers. The axe dude is in there to make it three guys.

All of the Riders count as having bows, and have them modeled on them.

The archer models have their shields hanging on their harness. A nice touch.

Six hand weapon and shield. This is the basic un-upgraded profile.

These model are mostly twenty year old purchases. Rhys has been at them and there are lots of broken weapons held together with super glue and hope.

The bases are Luke's APS base ready, which I love. It's a mixture of soil, grout, flock and stones and doesn't require anything done to it once it's glued on. I did add tufts though.

This is a significant jump in playability for my army. I need a few more riders and some Warriors of Rohan (foot dudes) and I'll be able to play. I'm not sure if I'm going to roll directly into more riders or take a break and hit something else. That's a tomorrow me problem.

12 x 28mm mounted models = 120 points

 

Sylvain: These models do not look static at all, they give the impression that they are furiously charging the enemy. All together, the color of the horses, the soft green of the capes and the texture of the bases immediately evoke the color palette of the trilogy of the Ring. This is the kind of paint job that makes me think: "I want to play that game". Excellent work!