From TeemuL: More Slayers! (30 points)

As promised last week, here are the rest of the Slayer group.

POV: Opponent

So six more GW Slayers, one of them is a banner bearer, but since the original banner never came to me (these are all second hand purchases), I needed a replacement. The banner is a piece of Age of Sigmar Magmadroth, in the Old World the skin could be from dragon for example. Very simple solution and even simpler paint job! No fancy heraldy or unit numbers, just clear and brutal annotation that "We Killed A Red Dragon!"

POV: You

I experimented with hair/beard colours again, so here are two oranges again - one of them is familiar from last week (the darker) and one is new one, so there are now three different orange dyes in the group to bring up some variation. Some of the highlights are quite yellow, especially in the photos. In nature they are not that bright, I'm not sure if that is good or bad. The axes look good, there are two layers of different metallic paints, but I guess the lightning and photographing is what matters here more. One more additional detail of my tip last week, using similar colours and then one wash to cover them all helps hide small errors on painting, too. 

Photographing these is a bit annoying since it is difficult to figure out which side is front and which is not. The minis are from different sets, so probably some are meant for diagonal and some for horizontal slotta bases, but I just try to live with it. Yes, the common Old World problem, or is it First World?

My Squirrel mind is fighting my Hoarder mind, because I keep thinking of getting more of these, since they are so nice to paint and I don't have all the differents sculpts yet... Anyway, these six slayers should give me 30 points.

Participation fee: I decided to donate 20 euroes to WWF Finland for Finnish Nature. Our government (quite racist far right - we have gone far from that smart, young, female prime minister we used to have during covid) has decided to cut the benefits of people and destroy the nature "to save the country". I haven't figured out how harming both the land and the people will save anything (expect the personal benefits of the leaders), so I'll try to do something to save the land.

 

 

Another great bunch of Slayers, that vibrant orange for their haircuts really works out well! Good to see you bring something positive to the Wildlife of your country Teemu. 

 

Cheers Sander  

From TeemuL: 5 Slayers (25 points)

I try to keep up my tradition to keep up my Minion busy and post something every week. It got tricky, when this first Saturday was so soon after the Free Fire period. I had to make a compromise, though. There should be 11 slayers, but I had to choose and finish just five of them for today. The rest will come next week.

These are old metal slayers from 1990s or something, very much hair and beard, big axes and minimal amount of legs. Quite nice to paint, there are some details, but not too much. Being single peace casts, there are no hard to reach spots either.

The dwarf in the middle has a different orange on his hair and beard than others, a bit darker. I guess I use that for the rest, because it is more vibrant and easier to highlight than the other. They look bit pale. The bases are 20mm squares, some sand and Goblin Green - as it should be. These diagonal bases are bit tricky, really difficult to know which side is front - if any?

One trick I used with these was choose simple colours (dark skin, orange, red, brown and gold) which would all look good after a Reikland Flesshade wash. These are colours which look good after the wash, for example greens and blues can be used and you get uniform effect, but blue and green would look dirty. The colours I chose are brownish, so they look nice. Feel free to follow my (laziness generated) tip. After painting thousands of minis, one learns something. I haven't learnt how to paint good eyes, but this time luck was on my side and the eyes look quite nice. Of course the maniac look fits these minis well, being some other minis, the eyes would look horrible.

Thank you for this, next week more the same and then a theme entry for Sunday. 5 28mm minis for 25 points and 1 squirrel.

Squirrel total: 2; 28mm Napoleonic British, 28mm Fantasy Dwarfs

What a great bunch of Doom seeking Dwarfs Teemu!  I also like that you share some tricks for us to get the same levell of painting as you have shown here. Can't wait to see what you come up with next week!

Cheers Sander

From KentG - 28mm Brannog, Dwarf from Zombicide (5pts)

Well here we are again another challenge and I’m very excited to

See what everyone brings to the table, this year I’ve decide to slow

Down a bit and enjoy the painting so first up I present Brannog 

Holding his trusty Dwarven hammer. I managed to pick up

A full Kickstarter set of black plague which means I have a tone 

Of figures to choose from.

Being a Dwarf this chap is shorter than most the figure in the game

But he’s still a very healthy 28+ so I’m claiming him for a 5 point start.

_______________________________

First, welcome back to the Challenge, Kent. Wonderful work with this very characterful Dwarf (but then again, aren't they all characterful?). I really like the red accents on the haft of his hammer and on this armour. Lovely stuff. We've played Black Plague a few times and really enjoyed it. I'm sure Brannog will give you good service against the zombie scourge in your games (or make a very formidable zombie himself if things 'go differently'). :)

- Curt

 

From RhysH - Dwarfs and a Chaos Dwarf monstrosity

 This is Rhys' entry for this week. He's wrapping up Thorin's Company and has finally finished his Mantic Games Abyssal Dwarf Hellfane. We're not sure what to point this thing out as, so we'll re-visit that after the jump.

First off though, is the last Dwarfs of Thorin's Company.

This is Thorin, and three other dwarfs whose names I can't remember and don't want to look up.

I've heard a story that even Tolkien couldn't really tell them apart. I choose to believe that story.

The sling shot is a bit silly.

Three more dwarfs. The one on the left as sympathetic to Bilbo. That gives him more personality than most of them.

They have a wide range of weapons. In the old rules that made play difficult.

In the new rules most of the rules for special weapons are gone. That is nice because it speeds play and simplifies the turn.

And here is the entire group. Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorn, Fili and Kili in the front. Dwarfs with various colored hoods in the back. And Gloin and Dwalin.

Next up is the Hellfane. This was a Christmas present and is a very large chunk of resin. Several large chunks actually; assembly is an Ikea level task.

I'm exceedingly proud of him for this paint job. He wanted to do lava on the base so I taught him about ripped up cork and he took it from there.

The three dwarfs on the top were painted separately and glued in at the end.

The engine at the back is very delicate and breakable.

We have no idea how this thing will play yet, but he REALLY wants to try it out.

The howdah with the big-bad and his two flunkies.

For score that's seven 28mm figures = 35 points

I am offering up a score of 35 for the Helfane as well. 15 for the three dwarfs and counting the beast as a vehicle for 20.

If that works out then this is a total of 70 points.

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Wow!

Great to see the whole of Thorins Company, they look ready for some adventuring!

Im not really sure what a Hellfane is exactly -  but looks big, stompy and scary!I like the bronze of the howdah and what a cool use of cork bits for lava!

7 x 28mm = 35

helfane dwarves 3x  = 15

Beast 20

Another 70 points for you, way to go Rhys!

From AaronH - Heroes and Villains (89 pts)

This week's entry is two more Star Wars Legion models, a dwarf for role playing and some nasty Morannon Orcs to storm Osgiliath and Minas Tirith.

First up are Luke and C3PO. There are several versions of Luke models and two different game versions, a commander and an operative. This is the Operative Luke model.

His clothes are all black so I went with Black and dark gray with a Nuln Oil wash to give some differentiation.

Truth be told, Luke's not a great  hero for the Rebels. A lot of force users are sub-par but he hasn't really been upgraded to the level of the top tier in the last couple of years.

C3PO is a nice, clean, easy model.

C3PO is R2D2's sidekick. He can't be taken alone except in the new Ewok battleforce. He's actually pretty interesting there as a strong support character.

C3PO and R2 come in a scenario pack with the crashed escape pod. It comes with some objective, deployment and condition cards to play a themed scenario. I've never actually played any of those, which seems like shame now that I think about it.

Warhammer Dwarf Quarreler

This next model is a rank and file Dwarf crossbowdwarf from Warhammer. I painted him for our role playing campaign as one of the characters is a dwarf ranger with an arbalest.

He was quick and easy and I should probably just bang out the rest of the unit as well. These are not great models but they do the job.

I decided to add a splash of color with the fletching on the bolts. I'll carry this across the army, mostly to the bolt throwers when I get to them.

14 Morannon Orcs to bring terror to my enemies.

The last entry is 14 Morannon Orcs from the Lord of the Rings game. These are 12 plastic spear orcs and two metal heroes, Grishnakh and Guritz - the Master of Reserves (with the skull on his helmet).

Grishnakh on the left and Guritz on the right.

I've had Grishnakh for 15 years. Gurtiz is a more recent acquisition, being only eight years old.

I painted the armor with a dark metallic and then washed it to make it look rusted and un-cared for. In these images it came out more as brown but it presents better in real life. I'm having some issues with varnish since I ran out of my old Vallejo matte and the new one is more satin. Very disappointing and it makes photographing these models trickier.

Twelve spear orcs. 

The plastics come with separate shields, with one or two exceptions. This lets you get more variety in the poses but only within reason.

The shields do leave room for painting heraldry. Is it heraldry when orcs have it?

These models are the usual sort of crappy plastics from GW. They have large blobs that aren't actually any sort of thing, just plastic filler. A lot of the details are soft or imaginary. 

The numbers you see here are not representative of what comes on the sprue. I have several boxes of these and just grabbed 12.

I also have 12 sword and board on the table right now, along with a troll and some more heroes. The local gaming group is doing an Osgiliath themed narrative game at the end of the month. Rhys and I have been working on these models as well as terrain for the last six months. Sadly by the time they locked in the date, we had a prior commitment and will not be able to attend.

I think this guy is my favorite of the spears.

At the very least I'll complete the sword and board as well as the troll and 12 archers. That will give me a painted and playable Mordor army to add to the collection.

I only grabbed one of this dude. He's terrible to play with since his spear really really gets in the way on the table, instead of only partly really getting in the way like all of the others.

2 x 32mm Legion x 7 pts = 14 pts

1 x 28mm Dwarf x 5 pts = 5 pts

14 x 28mm orcs x 5 pts = 70 pts

Total =  89 pts

Nice variety in the post today Aaron, those Legion models are super and I love the shiny Threepio. We all have tons of unpainted LotR orcs and good on you for cracking on with this dozen, they look good and I like the scrawled on "heraldry" on their shields, they look really good. 89 points for you!

Dallas

From TeemuL: Bagration Germans [History] (158 points)

Instead of the lovely old metal miniatures, today I present rather new plastic miniatures. Here we have a German Panzergrenadier Company HQ and two Panzergrenadier Platoons with Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks. Models are from Battlefront Miniatures Hit the Beach box for Flames of War. I painted the Panzer IVs and Tank Hunter teams before the Challenge, but here are the main components. You might also recall my last week's entry of 20mm WW2 Germans in winter uniform, this time this are 15mm WW2 Germans in summer uniform, ready to make a fighting retreat against Soviets during Operation Bagration or die trying. We have a small East Front campaign planned for the first months of this year and now I have the starter force ready. I'm planning to buy some mortars and more vehicles, but at the moment I have painted all my Germans for this project. Of course plans change when contacting reality and after a game or two I might want something else to bolster my forces.

The miniatures are painted following the Splinter Pattern Camouflage instructions provided in the Colours of War book. There are little bit different shades of green and brown, when I tried to find a proper compromise between "reality" and "looking good." Some of them look quite right, there's Reikland Flesh Shade painted over the camo to tie the colours together. The base colour is khaki. Pants and helmets are dark grey with a quick highlight of light grey. I painted the grenades dark yellow, but I guess I should have painted the Panzerschrecks yellow, too, instead of black. I guess I can live with that... And still claim history points for these. :)

The bases are rather simple, painted green and then some green sawdust and couple of tufts. It should look quite ok for summer in Ukraine and be generic enough to be usable on other theathers, too.

In the Library I have completed Sections 1 and 2, but before moving on, I'll get back to Section 1 and claim 20 points for History topic. What's next, we'll see.

I did say something about not posting old metal minis, but I finished the Germans during the week and I had then time to do something else during the weekend... I picked up a nice couple from the primed collection, going with the good old method of elf and dwarf. They were both on 25mm round bases, but then I realized, that the dwarf might actually see some action on the gaming table if he had a square base. The traditional 20mm base was too small (no scale creep here, dwarf if from 1988), so I decided to use the Old World base size of 25mm. Most likely these two won't see any adventures together, though...

The elf looks a bit odd, chain mail, sword, fancy poncho like cloak, and bare legs. It took me a while to find him and actually he is a half-elf fighter mage, which explains his odd equipment. He is Julie Guthrie's Personality 804 by Grenadier. Most of the colours on him are what I had on the palette, which gives him a little fantasy feeling. The red on his cloak is freehand, I wanted something looking magic there. White blue hat completes him.

The dwarf on the other hand is a no nonsense dude, heavy armour, heavy axe and bare head, some pouches to carry dwarf bread and tools to keep his axe sharp. He is completely business oriented and his business is chopping heads, I guess. This lovely character is from 1988, Grenadier A294 Dwarf Companion by Nick Lund, also sold in blister pack 906 Fighter and Companions. He is almost just chainmail and beard, but in true 80s spirit, I gave him a red axe shaft and colourful pouches and blue boots.

The green base is the wrong colour, I used my trusted Coat d'Arms Goblin Green while painting the bases of Germans and I didn't have the exact same colour anymore and was unable to mix the correct tone. So I went with Army Painter Greenskin.

64x 15mm minis (2 pts) = 128 points

History topic = 20 points

2x 28mm minis (5 pts) = 10 points.

Total = 158 points

Sylvain: Awesome work on these Germans, especially the camo pattern on their uniform. The two platoons look ready to assault (or die trying). And I also like your vintage metal figurines. Where do you get those? Is there a vintage miniatures mine in Finland? Keep the pace, the Monday Crew needs all available men to the front!