From GeoffreyT: Low Budget Doctor Who monsters (Babylon 5) (45 points)

Scooting back into the outer ring from Coruscant, we glide into Babylon 5 for low budget fun.

I have been looking forward to reaching this destination, because it is fun.

When it comes to low budget fun, the BBC took it to a new level with Doctor Who.  As a youth, the low budget costumes for the baddies were quite plausible, due to lavish application of imagination.  In retrospect now, they look rather funny.

Here I have four of the harlequin miniatures licensed releases from the 80's as well as one of the earlier citadel models.  All in 28mm of course. 

Hilariously, both these ranges sculpted the monsters true to the costumes as shown in the TV shows.  There appears to have been no attempt to make them look plausible in the mode the costume designer would have imagined them, they are just plain straight up true to the costume as made.

In chronological order, we start with a Monoid from 1966 (harlequin range).  This poor monoid has lost his psychic communicator so can only wave his hands.  From the era of Patrick Troughton, the second doctor.  Monoids were slaves to the human race who were abandoning earth in an Ark because it is going to crash into the sun.

"Im thinking really loudly at you"

I probably should have painted him in greyscale, as these series were B+W only.  They were quite dark outfits, but no clarity as to if they were green or brown or green-brown.

Next we have a Citadel miniature, representing the fabulously menacing Roger Delgado as the master.  he played this role from 1971 to 1973 in the Jon Pertwee third doctor era.  As such a terrific actor, he was very scary as the Master in my childhood days.  Worthy of hiding from behind the couch.

In TV lore, the Doctor and the Master were old friends who had walked different paths.   In a real life parallel, Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado were close friends, with Jon encouraging Roger to join the show.  When Roger Delgado passed away in 1973, it was a catalyst for Jon Pertwee to retire from the role.

Back suit and black hair makes for bland viewing in 28mm

Roger and Jon together again. (Jon already claimed in week 1)

"My Tardis is better than your clapped out piece of junk", "Whoah Master, take it easy on the old girl"

For the next three baddies, we move forward to 1978.  All three of these are from Harlequin range.  Season 16 in 1978 features a season long theme, linking together the usual four part stories into a continuous story line now known as "The Key of Time".  This was the time of fourth doctor, Tom Baker.

In the first four part serial "The Ribos Affair". The Doctor encounters a shady used planet salesman named Garron.  he is trying to sell a Russian themed icy world.  It also features one of the most unconvincing monsters of all time, a reptile called the Shrivenzale.  On TV it was in a dark corridor and you didn't get a good look at the whole beast (fortunately), mainly its roaring mouth.

Above and below, we have Garron and the Shrivenzale.  I love how the Shrivenzale's rear legs look like a guy in a costume crouching.

Finally for this post, again from 1978, we have the Cailleach.  An ancient space criminal disguised herself as a Celtic goddess "the Cailleach" and was living in Cornwall.  Apparently it is a safe haven for ancient space criminals.

"Worship me, you foolish humans"

In her 'natural form' she is a lady painted silver. But here she is covered in feathers and a bronze mask.

Somewhere I am sure I had 'Vervoid advancing', but disappointingly I cannot find it.  I don't have any gaming use for these guys, but they are very collectable in my eyes.  It was also fun researching the more obscure monsters that I had only a vague recollection of, and laughing at the old footage.

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In total, I have 5 x 28mm miniatures for 25 points

The Babylon 5 bonus for +20

A squirrel for 28mm Doctor Who baddies.

Kind Regards

Geoff.

Is 'low budget Dr Who monsters' an oxymoron? This is a perfect fit for Babylon 5. Your Master is a great representation of the actor, and the monsters... well, they're screen accurate! I hope they bring a lot of melodrama to your table!

Barks

From JamesM: Battlefleet Gothic (Babylon5) (60 points)

Hi folks,

Getting sucked in to painting for the Quadrant Map, I thought I'd have a bash at some Games Workshop 'Battlefleet Gothic' miniatures that have languished in my possession for around a decade. I'd gotten into this game when it was first released (back in the late 90s), and around 2007 I sold my original collection as I was doing nothing with it. I've then spent years regretting this decision and buying bits back. 

And done nothing with them. Until now!

This small patrol group originates from my interest in the Rogue Trader role playing game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. Within the Warhammer 40k setting for the roleplay game was a Imperial Naval force belonging to Battlefleet Calixis named 'Passage Watch 27-Est'. The standing force patrols the unexplored reaches of the Koronus expanse and guards the narrow safe route back to 'civilised' space. The force also has a secret role in guarding a warp gate to another distant part of the galaxy where an Imperial Crusade is being fought. 

This long standing detachment was often nicknamed 'Battlefleet Koronus', and attracted many of the ships not suited to 'traditional' Battlefleet tactics. I decided to paint up at least some of my imperial ships using the scant information available about this fleets paint scheme, and to add bits and bobs fitting their long range patrol and protection theme. 

This small painted patrol taskforce is led by the Dauntless Light Cruiser 'Aegis':

Painted with the red prow and yellow/gold trim of Battlefleet Calixis. Most of the artwork available seems to show a blueish hull colour, which I duplicated using 'French Mirage Blue'. This vessel is based on one featured within one of the RPG adventure books 'The Frozen Reaches' which sees the players coming to the aid of a forgotten Imperial colony under attack from Orks, supported by a single Imperial Navy ship.  

Serving alongside the Aegis in my small fleet is the 'Retribution' - an uncommon design of Imperial light cruiser. The mangled hull of this ship and several others were recovered from Ork pirates who had been using them for an unknown period of time. After the Orks were defeated, the hulked hulls were retrieved, cleansed and rebuilt in a fashion befitting the Omnissiah.  

The Adeptus Mechanicus rebuilt the four artificially shortened hulls with the 'Retribution' and her sister ship the 'Revenge' re-entering Imperial service after decades of work. The other two vessels were retrofitted differently. 

In true Battlefleet Calixis fashion these vessels were immediately assigned to Passage Watch 27-Est. Mainly due to the very traditionally minded admirals of Battlefleet Calixis having no idea what to do with these unusual ships.

A dedicated light carrier and long range patrol vessel, the Retribution comes equipped with a fighter and bomber wing. It carries extensive stores to allow for long deployments, and following its long service as a pirate vessel has a reputation for being able to sniff out other ships at long ranges and accelerate into action with uncommon zeal. It's wings of strike craft are the bane of many pirate groups, who's raider ships have no easy counter to them. 

Outside of own fluff for this model, this ship came to me as a rather poorly executed Ork terror ship conversion alongside three others. I stripped back the conversion work and equipped the shortened hulls with resin imperial style prows obtained via eBay. Orkish conversion work to the engines was corrected and repaired using cut up Chaos cruiser bridge parts to extend the hull and fill the gap. The result of this repair work is a rather portly looking 'heavy' light cruiser sized vessel - really just a shortened plastic Imperial cruiser. In game terms, I would find a light cruiser with similar stats (possibly launch bays and dorsal lances or weapons batteries) and just use those on the table top. 

The strike craft are actual BFG models, which I was lucky enough to obtain a few years ago. 

Escorting these larger vessels are four Sword class frigates detached from 'Triumph Squadron'. 

These escorts are original metal GW models - one of my favourite ships. I've gone for some blue and white detailing on their lower fin, just to mark out that they are part of the same squadron. 

I will unashamedly admit that these models are painted in a very basic fashion - lets call it retro - in keeping with the paint style at the time of their release. I may do a few more bits to detail up the engines in the future with heat effects, but for now I'm happy with how they look. I took a huge amount of pleasure from painting these, so much so that I have spent this week looking at 3d printed offerings and talking myself out of adding to a large collection I've yet to paint!

These models, being of a 'Space Opera' style with even the smallest ships being kilometers long and having crews in the tens of thousands, are submitted for the Babylon5 planet. 

Points wise, I think the larger vessels are equivalent size wise to a 15mm vehicle, while the frigates are roughly equivalent to a 15mm mounted figure or gun. As such:

2 x 15mm vehicles: 16 points

4 x 15mm artillery piece: 16 points

4 x 15mm infantry figure (for the bomber and fighter bases): 8 points

Total: 40 points, plus bonus 20 points for 60!

It has been a while since I've seen anything for Battlefleet Gothic (normally that's a cue for GW to rerelease it in a new edition and completely different scale isn't it).   Really like the colours that you gone with on these spaceships, the ram like prows in red piped in yellow are particularly nice.

From JohnE - 28mm Town Crier [Babylon5] - 25 Points.

Just cruising around the Quadrant at a scorching sub-light speed. Here's a Town Cryer [sic] from Foundry. Same old bag of tricks - Scale75 ScaleColor and InstantColors. Makes a pretty good animated character for Sharp Practice and seems operatic to me, so fingers crossed.

Points Summary:

1x28mm foot @ 5 points = 5 points

Babylon5 (Outer Ring) bonus = 20 points

Total = 25 points

From DaveD

Oj yay, oh yay,,i can hear him shout from here - lets add another 25 to the tally!

From PeterD Babylon 5: Operatic Pictish Bard in 28mm (25 points)

The next stop for me is Bablyon 5 with a brief of Operatic or Low Budget Fun.

In my Dark Age RPG word there are no Operas, so folks made do with the local Bard, Skald or Scop.  If the story teller was good, it was a lot of fun and it was certainly low budget.  

This fellow with his Pete Townsend harp technique is another Gripping beast 28mm figure from the same Picitish command pack as the two competing religious types in my last post.  I think that he's grateful to be released from his internment with them!

Quite what he is singing is anyone's guess as the Picts are somewhat of a historical mystery and no one knows what their language sounded like.  The competing best guesses are "pretty close to the early Welsh spoken everywhere else in Britain"  and "a non Indo-European language that pre-dates the Celts by centuries".  The only written records that they left themselves are carved stones in Ogham. 

No mysteries about the figure however, a nice sculpt in typical Beastie Boy style and pretty nice to paint up.  Although labelled Pictish he's pretty much generic Dark Age Britain in dress and equipment.  The red cloak is a pushing it a bit historically, as dyes should be pretty much muted browns, yellows and greens - much like an over cooked dinner at your English Grandma's.  A continual challenge in modelling this period is to paint figures that looks right, but don't fade into the background. 

It being early days of the Challenge I am picking off a few smaller pieces while the bigger stuff goes on in the background.  Assuming that he counts as either Operatic or Low Budget fun enough to count towards the location, this is 5 points for the figure plus 20 for Babylon 5 for 25 points.  I will be using him in an RPG, but have taken Curt's point so won't count him towards the fantasy Duel.

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This is a great mini, Peter. As you say, he's definitely channeling his inner Pete Townsend, or, who knows, maybe it's always been the other way around with Pete tapping into his inner Pict! :) 

As you say, it's often a challenge to paint Dark Age stuff without it blending into the terrain. You want it interesting, but not lurid. I think you've struck a fine balance here, and besides, he is a bit of a showman so a brighter colour should not be amiss. 

I look forward to seeing this fellow in our visit to the village in your RPG game. :)

- Curt

From TeemuL: B Movie Mayhem and Escape with a Star Yacht [Babylon5] [Sarah's Star Yacht] (70 points)

Wise and learned Elrond showed us the way and found ourselves on the nearby planet Babylon5, the place of Opera and also Cheap Fun. They might mean the same thing, but usually not. On our Voyage it was mostly Cheap Fun - using b movies as inspiration to create non-licensed miniatures is pretty cheap, but fun.

So here we are, a mixed group of Pulp characters, which I picked up from the Crooked Dice sale a year or two ago (I have supernatural ability to buy miniatures when they are on sale - my less supernatural ability is to buy miniatures when they are not on sale). I primed them before the Challenge started, they are varied enough to fill (hopefully) some thematic goals or just pure fun to paint. They ended up being both.

There is a Jack Booted Sadist and a Time Lift Security Lieutenant pointing with his hand (vice versa in photos), both in blues and greys to match my previous TLS and other characters from the range Danger 5 and extras.

 

Schahführer Eric Köhner is wearing white shirt and camo trousers like his minions Nazi Lizards and Nazis.

 

And finally two villains from Outer Space, Otherwordly Invader and Inhuman Servitor (vice versa in photos). I had lots of fun painting the various browns on the Servitor and using bright colors on Invader (and Servitor's super high tech pistol).

 

 

I'm quite sure I purchased 7TV pdf rules some time ago and I have quite a lot of suitable miniatures as well, so I might need to try it out someday. These models should fulfill the requirements of Babylon5 and 28mm Pulp Squirrel.

Apparently Babylon5 was not the place where we wanted to go, so we quickly moved on Sarah's Star Yacht, accompanied with none other than young Princess Nirnadel from Middle-Earth. She is Mithril Miniature M32, invented by ICE for MERP (quite a lot of codes and acronyms for a fantasy model, but since this is a scifi challenge, I couldn't resist myself). There is not much to told of her background, like mentioned, she is not created by Tolkien, but ICE to use as RPG character: Princess Nirnadel.

 

 

I mostly painted her at the same time as I did Elrond, but since I needed her later, I held her back (I could have used Jack Booted Sadist as a ticket to Star Yacht, but it didn't feel right). I ended up using quite light colours on her and used my general brown fantasy basing technique. It is really nice to paint their older models every now and then, they are not filled with details and you can actually paint, not pick up details. I used stronger contrasts here than on Elrond, so the tones on the gown(?) are easier to see.

 

Red lipstick, red jewel...

Princess Nirnadel hopefully provides me a trip from Babylon5 to a hostile sounding Klendathu.

So here we have a total of 6 miniatures about the height of 25/28mm for 30 points.

Then 20 points each for Babylon5 and Star Yacht for 40 points.

That would be 70 points total.

My personal Squirrel count: 3

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

 

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Wonderfully characterful miniatures, Teemu! I particularly like that Servitor with the snazzy ray gun. It's funny, Princess Nirnadel would also be a great candidate for a Barsoom princess (vis a vis John Carter of Mars), though perhaps she has a bit too many clothes for the setting.

Great work Teemu and good luck on hostile Klendathu!

- Curt