From TomG - My, What a Big Weapon! - The Chambers of Darkness - 30 Points

MORE?! My my, you do adventure quickly, but surely after dodging traps, suffering terrifying experiences and being chased by a golem, you have earned a respite. Maybe a game of cards?

WAIT!

HOW DARE YOU! YOU CHEATING SCUM!

Oh my, what a predicament we find ourselves in, although I'm sure charm, and maybe a little bit of leg, will save the day... 

For my entry to the Chamber of Darkness, I take you back to the classic black and white films, full of wicked Germans and the most demure femme fatale.

I had a real journey of pleasure creating and painting this vignette, having thought about it since the end of Challenge X, but never making time to create it.

All of the greys are unique to their texture, even down to the skin of the two figures. I really wanted the lady of the scene to have that pure skin tone, so famous from the best age of cinema (open to debate I'm sure). The cards are curtesy of my wife and her hobby of miniature sculpting for dolls houses, made from a polymer clay. 

I don't think I'm going to enjoy painting anything as much as this ever again, but we will see. The frame used during photo editing felt too appropriate to miss. 

Points are 10 for two 28mm miniatures and 20 for a challenge entry = 30 points. 

From JohnM: A Plunge into the Dark (210 points)

I have decided over the last couple of years to take the opportunity afforded by the AHPC to do something different. Last year saw my foray into a 6mm miniatures with a Blood Angels Epic army. This was quite novel for me as I had never painted any 6 mm models nor had been involved in anything to do with Fantasy wargaming. For this year's Challenge, an unusual series of events and observations sent me down a path I would have never predicted.

This past fall found me with far fewer wargaming opportunities than had previously been the case. What was I do? Through a Kickstarter a Boardgame had landed in my lap. I gave it a go and discovered that boardgaming was a possibility but at the same time it was still a challenge to play solo. Somewhere along the way, I believe Curt mentioned that there were Boardgames out there where the story line was driven by a computer programme. In fact he had recently painted some figures for a same said game. 

So I bought Mansions of Madness. I had heard of HP Lovecraft but had never read him and the Cthulthu Mythos was unknown to me, although I had wondered what it was. I like main stream Science Fiction but had never really been into the horror genre aside from maybe Steven King and TED Klein. I set up a game and found it quite interesting and fun to play and as a bonus one day my wife and sister-in-law were watching me play and quickly got talked in to having a go. They were immediately drawn in by the character profiles of the Investigators in the game. At the end of a 2 hour session, they both said when are we going to play again!

Being obsessive, I really could not play with unpainted figures, so I set about painting them. A further conversation with Curt gave me the idea that it might be interesting to paint the Investigators in polychrome while painting the Monsters in a monochrome. But while putting the project together, I started to ask myself who was HP Lovecraft?

Well I suppose this is where I started to lose control of myself. Reading about him certainly revealed a somewhat unusual character; both parents going mad and dying in an asylum, riches to rags, and a quite extraordinary fan base. His books are out of copyright, so Kindle versions are easily obtained. I read The Dunwich Horror, a strange story and I liked the writing style. But what was this Cthulhu Mythos. While researching this, I discovered that many of his stories have spoken versions and are easily available without cost. I discovered HorrorBabble and I was hooked. 

I suspect in the last two months I have listened to maybe 20 of HP Lovecraft's short stories and novellas over and over again! At the Mountains of Madness is my favourite, but close behind is The Shadow over Innsmouth and of course The Call of the Cthulhu. I suppose it does not help that I live in Salem, Massachusetts, the dead centre of Lovecraft Country. 

This immersion has also sparked an interest in 1930 and 40's pulp magazine cover art. I am going to have to stop myself from starting a collection.

I could go on and on, but I should stop. If you would like to take the plunge, here is a link to my YouTube playlists of HP Lovecraft stories.

Anyway, please excuse my ramblings, time to get back to the challenge! Below find the start of my Mansions of Madness figure collection. The figures are mostly semi-hard plastic, the faces are somewhat soft but generally I enjoyed painting them. The polychrome Investigators were easy enough to paint but I am not really sure if you can call my Monsters true greyscale, so I decided to use the term monochrome. The black background is a real challenge to get right. I have photographed all the figure 3-4 times. I initially tried my iPhone 8 but I just could not get it right. I then went back to my Cannon and in iPhoto I was able to adjust the background (make it black) using the blackpoint adjustment without destroying the image. Still not an hundred percent but improving.

The Investigators

Carson Sinclair, Joe Diamond, Father Mateo

Kate Winthrop, Rita Young, Agatha Crane

The Monsters

Cultists

Hunting Horrors

Mi-Go

Ghouls

Cult Leader, Witch, Priest of Dagon

Innsmouth Rioters

Deep One Hybrids, Barnabas Marsh

Ghost, Hound of Tindalos, Maniac

Deep Ones

Chthonian

Star Spawn

Shoggoth

Well another year's challenge has gone by: Many thanks to Curt and a very patient Sarah. Also thanks to my minion Ray as well as all the other helpers. And finally congratulations to all the participants, each year the submissions are just more and more brilliant.

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I can't express how stoked I was when I saw this entry. John had dropped me a line a few months ago asking me about figure-based boardgames and I had suggested he look into the various cooperative titles out there like Kingdom Death and Mansions of Madness. Well John, to see that you've not only been having a good time with the game and figures but also enjoying the literature of HP Lovecraft makes me very happy. It's such a rich 'world' and so very thematic that I always love seeing others get immersed in it. (As a quick aside, if you enjoy Lovecrafts writing then you HAVE to check out Peter Rawlik's writing - it's sooo horrifically good.) I also had to smile when you said that your lovely wife and her sister had a good time with the game. Sarah is a big fan of the genre as well, so these games (Elder Sign, Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, Mansions, etc.) are perennial favourites in our home. We've even travelled with them so we can play them with friends abroad (Phil and Alice had to put up with a multi-day marathon game in Avignon a few years ago.). As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of the setting.

Back to your post! I really love how you've done your figures John. I especially admire how the punchy colours of the Investigators are wonderfully juxtaposed against the greyscale of the eldritch monsters. Such a great effect. I also see that you've adopted using clear bases for your figures which I think is such a good idea, especially with tile-based games where it's nice to see the varying artwork below the figures' feet. (And I see you've discovered my 'secret' of using the blackpoint adjustment in iPhoto. ;P Good one! ) 

210 points for you John. Tremendous work and thanks for sharing your newly discovered love of all things eldritch horror! 

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From ByronM: Zombies, Zombies, and yet more Zombies (1130 Points)

When I started to paint things for the challenge this year, and started painting large numbers of Greeks and Mechanicum forces I got challenged by the wife about why there were no zombies on my painting table.  Zombicide is one of the only miniature games that my wife will play, and we have all of the expansions.

I started painting zombies in monochrome 2 challenges ago, and have a bunch done, however we always run out of zombies and I have never done anything other than the normal zombies in black and white monochrome scheme.  That meant we normally stuck to the basic games so we could use painted figures, but the wife made the logical complaint that with all the other painting, surely I could get some more zombies done for our games.

SO.... starting from week 1 I started to get at least 10-20 zombies done per week to add to our collection.  I also made the choice that posting 10-20 here and there would not have the same impact as posting them all at once.... SO....here is everything I have gotten done over the course of the challenge in all its monochromatic glory!

As you can see there are several different shades shown here to match up to different types of zombies in the game.  I have done them as follows:
- Normal zombies - grey scale
- Berserker zombies - red scale
- Toxic zombies - green scale
- Skinner zombies - yellow scale
- Dog zombies - grey scale

Nothing here is at all original though, I came across an excellent site years ago when looking for ways to quickly get through the mountians of plastic that came with the game and found Carmens site that has a number of guides on each of the colour schemes required.  You can find a lot of info on his blog here: Carmen's Miniature Painting Blog.

Also, nothing here is painted all that well, or neatly.  The nature of the game is that handfulls of zombies go on the table, and handfuls of zombies come off the table each turn.  The are there more for effect (and look good when there are mobs of them on the table) but each one individually looks pretty poor. These are not figures that you would show people to say "here is how I paint stuff", but when grouped up they look pretty cool, and the different colours let you quickly identify what zombies do what and to sort the threats visually very quickly.  The photos are worse than the figures are too, since I obviously could not put them in a light box with that may of them, so there are only a few pictures that show up any detail at all well (the green one shows the shades properly for some reason, and the rest don't).  They also look much much better than bare plastic, so there is that.

Lastly, as you can probably tell from the big first group shot, there are a LOT of zombies here.  This is in addition to the almost 100 grey scale zombies that I already had done!  The total numbers here are as follows: 
- Normal zombies - 64
- Berserker zombies - 36
- Toxic zombies - 36
- Skinner zombies - 80
- Dog zombies - 20

I think that this submission should appease the wife on the zombie front for at least a little while...  But then again, our copy of Zombicide: Green Horde showed up the day after finishing all these and she said "Come on, you havent painted Black Plague yet and now have Green Horde to do, quit slacking off!",  those will have to wait until next year though, as I am still madly trying to finish off the last of my greek units.

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Ka-Boooooom!  Brilliant job Byron, what a bomb to drop on me at the last.  Like you I have long admired Carmen's grey scale zombies and have often thought of doing something similar myself, just need to pluck up the courage first.  These look awesome and I love the different colours to represent the different zombie types.  With regards to points, I have decided to give the dogs the full 5 points, thinking that any discrepancy in scale would be offset by the fatties and abominations so that is a whopping 1180 points to you Sir!