ZeroTwentythree's February Eldar - Rank & File (699pts)

February Eldar:  Bombots, Dreads, War Walker (Rank & File - The Heavies)

The OWAC IV phase of the pirate crew focused heavily on regular troops. This time around I'm still painting rank & file, but focusing on support troops & heavies.

So here we have two Rogue Trader dreadnoughts, a Banshee & a War Cry. I definitely wanted to paint a Banshee as that was the model I had in my original Space Elf force back in the day.

War walker. I decided to go with the same purple as on the support weapon platforms & crew. Speaking of crew, I like the idea of having some dismounted crew figures, so I looked through the infantry bits and got as close as I could to the model on the walker. In hindsight, I should have tried sculpting the hair to match. I added a bit of green on both models to break up all the purple.

As I was prepping for this year's challenge, I saw something in the list that had previously escaped my notice:

Bombots! OK, so there were never any actual figures. I gave it some thought and decided to kitbash some hover-bombots. I got some little plastic craft eggs, carefully cut them up, added some sheet styrene fins, little Eldar gems (Eldar love gems...) with greenstuff, and a bit of wire. I don't think they turned out too bad. I had hoped to convert a bombot "handler" but wasn't able to settle on a conversion, but maybe they will appear in a future month's entry.

I also had one old Epic dread that came in a package with some other Eldar stuff for the OWAC4 project. I thought I would paint it up as yet another (small) spirit warrior; build out to be determined.

Lastly, some bonus material.

Continuing my plan for the Grav-Attack Ranch, I made a quick & sloppy, second model. I need to get some cheap putty to finish the base before priming the new one.

Inspired by the power field walls I did in January, I had a couple of other related ideas for personal or portable power field barriers. One is like a personal power field. A "power mantlet"? The other is like a portable field fortification, inspired by the ability of sappers to build field fortifications in WFB 3rd ed. I'm not sure what the plastic end bits are, or even what kit they come from. Something much newer.

Shown here with (previously painted) Kev, for scale.

So my first two months were the sneaky and the heavy support troops. The next few months will involve some more vanilla troops & weapon platforms, weird aliens, and heroes. I think I'll save the heroes for the end. So that narrows it down a little.

Rank & File

War-Cry Dreadnought        140 pts

Banshee Dreadnought        160 pts

War Walker                         349 pts !!!

5 Bombots                            50 pts

Bonus

T.B.D. Spirit Warrior           0 pts

War Walker Pilot                 0 pts

Terrain                                 0 pts

February Total                  699 pts

OWAC VIII Total          1,311 pts

ZeroTwentythree's January Eldar - Rank & File (612 pts)

January Eldar: Scouts, Farseer, Terrain (Rank & File)

The choice for my first month's entry is the result of several trains of thought. One is that it would be fairly easy to complete, thus ensuring that I would not be eliminated in the first month of the Challenge. The second being that the scouts were unfinished business from OWAC4. Sort of. They were not part of my original plan, but was a late potential "stretch goal."

The Eldar scouts were a later addition to Rogue Trader. I believe they were released just prior to the RT Craftworld list. My pirate force is based on the Eldritch Raiders list in Chapter Approved, White DWarf Articles, and the guides & calculator in the RT book. The latter makes it easy to retrofit the scouts in the the Raiders list rather than than use the Craftworld scouts which are more like 40k 1.5 edition. My Chapter Approved style entry is below. Point values have changed a little since my initial calculations.

Since I had 11 figures, I decided to utilize the scout with the sword as a champion, also using the tables & calculator in the RT book.

Another bit of semi unfinished business from OWAC4 was a Farseer that I picked up while shopping for a few other figures I needed for the original force. I initially bought the figure because I am a huge fan of the sculpt, had the figure years ago when the Craftworld figures were released, and just wanted to paint one again for nostalgia.

But four years ago (plus or minus a few months) as I was painting the first phase of the crew of the Cold September, my mind wandered (as it does) and an idea began to develop. The Farseer became a missionary who has left the Craftworld, escorted by a group of scouts who had worked with the Craftworld for a time. The Seer has, in a sense, joined the Outcasts in order to keep an eye on them, advise and guide them away from damnation, and help bring them back to the Eldar Path.

For this reason (and another) I opted to paint the figure in a camouflage palette similar to the scouts. Again, the stats, points, and equipment have been generated from Rogue Trader. 

Too lazy to make cards for them at this time. So....

Farseer - Eldar Major Hero (426.5 pts)

Psi Level 40, 3xLv1, 3xLv2, 2xLv3, 2xLv4, Force Sword, Energy Scanner, Bio Scanner, Communicator, Respirator, Auto-Senses, Cameleoline, Las-Pistol, C-Field

Scout Leader - Eldar Champion (21.5 pts)

Mesh Armor, Las Pistol, Power Sword, Needle Rifle, Cameleoline, Photo Chromatic Visor, Communicator, Respirator, Frag Grenades

Also painted this month is the traditional Offering, formerly for the Overlord, now for the Old World Army Challenge Revolutionary Coordinator Committee (or something like that?) Fortunately this year my theme aligns with one of the Committee members' theme.

Since I finished painting my core figures (10 scouts plus The Offering) by mid January, I returned to some other unfinished business -- terrain business. Years ago I started a couple of terrain projects, now completed(ish) below. I made one "power field fence" as a test, but never made more. Now I have three. I will probably be building some more. These are very simple to make, just some acetate sheet cut to size, sanded to give a hazy appearance, and glued to craft sticks for bases. because I have other low obstacles, I made these taller.

Initially unrelated I had also started making a terrain piece from the plastic blister packaging from a door latchset. I added some granny-grating and oval shaped googly eyes for some additional Eldarishness. So now I finished painting this, and it feels like this could maybe be the power field generator for the fence. 

One of the other "stretch goals" I started on is a project that I came up with before even deciding to join OWAC8 or return to the Eldar. In November I made a brief stop in Amarillo, TX for work. Just ten minutes from the work site I needed to visit was the Cadillac Ranch. At some point in next few days the idea came to me...

Grav-Attack Ranch

Conveniently I had a couple of deodorant containers stashed away for long running plans for a wrecked Grav-Attack terain peice and Thomas the Grav-Attack Engine (which I still plan on building.) Fortunate timing, I've also scavenged a couple more. So my plan is to get at least three built & painted, but ultimately I'd like at least five to use for terrain. At first it was going to be a single based bit of terrain, but I've changed my mind and will put them on individual bases for flexibility.

Below is the build - a bit of a test piece. A little sloppy, but like the original inspiration (well, 1/2 of the inspiration) I'd like the structure to appear to be deteriorating, and some texture from a lot of layers of paint!

For what it's worth, I did paint on a couple of the Cadillacs, but the wind was so intense that it turned out a mess. I also took a quick drive to get my kicks on Route 66 and stand on the yellow line in the center of the midpoint of The Mother Road!

Alright, enough with the Texas and Americana, back to the Grim Dark Future. Below are my January totals. I've let one surprise out (Grav-Attack Ranch) but hopefully still have a few more to unleash. In fact, February's entry is still a surprise to me. Although I have The Plan, I haven't decided what to paint next!

Rank & File

Scout Squad                      82 pts

Scout Squad                      82 pts

Bonus

Scout Champion             21.5 pts

Farseer                         426.5 pts

Terrain                                 0 pts

January Total                  612 pts

OWAC VIII Total           612 pts

ZeroTwentythree's June Skaven (327 pts)

June Skaven: Grey Seer (Leader Month)

This is the way the challenge ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

I had planned more -- much more. For the whole challenge, not just this month. But this year has been difficult, culminating with June as the peak. Or the valley. Whichever is the appropriate analogy.

My humble offering for my leader entry is Grey Seer whasshisname. I had a name but I lost it.

June Points:

327 pts         Grey Seer

327 pts         JUNE TOTAL

1405 pts       OWAC TOTAL

ZeroTwentythree's May Skaven (35 bigass pts)

May Skaven: Skavenslaves (Rank & File)

This month was back to rank & file troops. Boring ol' Skavenslaves. These are mostly somewhat newer figures by Colin Dixon. I think they capture the Skaven vibe almost as well as the original Jes Goodwin sculpts. (There are a few Jes Skaven in there too.) I'm still mystified as to why GW/Citadel never made plastic Skavenslaves. Given the vast numbers that should be fielded, collecting them in metal has always been... challenging. Honestly, as a Skaven player since their inception, I've always been frustrated by the half-assed nature of their availability. Let's not eve talk about the plastic monkey-rats. 😬

So this month has been extra challenging. But it's the Old World Army CHALLENGE, right? No the Old World Army Walk In The Park. We had to clear out our basement, which happens to be where my painting table is. The work that was done didn't go according to schedule, meaning I was left without no workspace for painting.

When live gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or Skavenade.  Warpstoneade? Whatever. I didn't achieve my May goal, and this is some really poor painting, but got some rats painted and I kept myself in the OWAC for another month. June is slated to be my leader month, but I will also try to finish the rest of the Skavenslaves. And maybe some touch-ups on these hastily painted figures from May.

Other artists call this "plein air." I'm not sure they had miniatures in mind, but I'll go with that.

May Points:

35pts          13 Skavenslaves plus mucisian.

35 pts         MAY TOTAL

1,078 pts       OWAC TOTAL (so far)

ZeroTwentythree's April Skaven (620 pts)

 April Skaven: Clan Skryre (Wild Card)

I thought I would get in the April Fool spirit and paint some crazy and/or dangerous things  for this month's entry. Thus, Clan Skryre month. As with many of my OWAC projects & entries, there's a bit of nostalgia behind it. (See below.)

At first I was going to paint 12 Clan Skryre models for my Wildcard month. Then I added "one" more model, a rat swarm. Because 13 is better than 12! But I got jealous after seeing big beasts in other people's armies...

I first started playing Warhammer not long after 3rd edition came out. After a bit of experimentation with various "armies" I eventually settled two, Skaven and Dwarfs. If I had to guess, I'd say Skaven were the army of choice 80-90% of the time. A unique army with a quite a few unusual options. However, I was always jealous of all the other armies that could select awesome mounts like dragons, griffins, wyverns.... hell, even horses. This was probably exacerbated by the fact that my second army was in a similar situation.

At some point I figured I would try summoning a monstrous host. I always loved Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and The Jabberwock poem in particular. I picked up three figures back then, two of the Citadel model and one from Ral Partha. Two ended up being painted in gaudy fluorescent Polly-S acrylic paints. Perfectly chaotic! A "brightly colored" mutation. Although the creature was borrowed, it always seemed like one of the most chaotic of the creatures of chaos to me.

So that was my choice for summoning. They were usually unimpressive on the battlefield and a waste of spell points. But I continued to use them on occasion just so I had an excuse to put the model on the table and surprise my opponents.

I still have one of the Citadel and one of the RP figures, but they have been repainted in more drab colors to serve another purpose outside the scope of the OWAC. But I recently picked up two newer Jabberwock figures, one from Reaper and this one, from Satyr Art Studio/Drew Williams (sold by someone else now, I think.) I can't help but think that Drew's figure is a tribute to the Tom Meier sculpt from Ral Partha, similar to the giant he did a few years ago. I had to bend the figure a bit to get it into a similar pose but a little more three dimensional

I prepped the figure before the month started, but then wrestled with the color scheme for weeks. At first I was going to try to emulate old color printings of the original B&W John Tenniel illustration from Carroll's book. Then I thought about ultra-technicolor-izing that into a vivid RGB color scheme. But I couldn't get entirely behind either option. I haven't been sleeping well, and one night in my sleep-deprived tossing & turning late at night, I had the idea to paint it red. I like the way it has a cliche meanacing "devil" look to it, but is still a Jabberwock and creature of chaos. "Brightly colored" doesn't have to mean fluorescent blues and oranges and yellows and greens.

The Jabberwock is a creature of Skryre because it is a summoned host.

But the clan has more direct yet equally chaotic and unreliable means and methods. I had to get a few different photos for clarity, but below are a poisoned wind globadier and the one non-Skryre figure I did this month, a plague censer bearer.

The plague censer belongs to Clan Pestilens, but as I am not doing any plague monks (I think the clan was underdeveloped in terms of rules and figures until later editions) I figured this fella fit well with the Wildcard entry.

Back in the day... as a kid, I had to request my FLGS (I didn't even have one of those for a long time, and just picked up whatever scraps of Skaven figures were available scattered model train and comic book shops within a reasonable distance.) I don't know how it was elsewhere, but the US catalog had one code, "Skaven." And whatever they sent was what you got. I was hoping for a whole great variety. I got a boatload of warpfire-throwers. Like six packs of fire-throwers, and six packs of everything else. Luckily "everything else" included 2 rat ogres and some globadiers, but almost no actual troops. For most of 3rd edition the only foot soldiers I had (clanrats, slaves, stormvermin, black skaven, plague monks, etc.) that were available were just plastic Fantasy Regiments clan rats painted with different color schemes. 

Back to the present. I wanted to paint a fire thrower for the challenge, and knew I had a few of the old six still lingering around. I could strip one team and give it a fresh look. But after searching for months, I couldn't find them! I ended up ordering a fire thrower  team on ebay, and as expected, about two months later I found the two teams (one of each sculpt) that I had been looking for. Not a horrible end result. I still have my originals, plus I got to paint a new team for OWACV.

There was only one jezzail team sculpted by Jes back in the day, but I used to use the hero with a rifle as my "champion" among my old jezzails. All of those old figures are long gone, but I managed to collect the hero along with a single jezzail team before the challenge started. I used a modern plastic figure in lieu of the jezzail (musket) brace holder so I had the required two figures. Unfortunately the actual jezzail team are among the figures I didn't get to finish in time this month.

Not a terribly clear image, but I also painted one of the two "gas mask" poisoned wind globadiers I had planned for this month.

Lastly was the sort of "bonus" figures of the month. I never used a swarm host in 3rd edition. No one has in any of the games I've played or watched. This is the single most expensive figure (points wise) in the Skaven army and I just don't get it. But I had some extra swarm figures from 6th edition (I think?) which look pretty nice but are meant for a 50x50 base. Since no one I knew ever used swarms in 3rd ed. it came as a surprise to me that they go on 50mm diameter bases. Or 50mm radius bases. As discovered by the OWACV Team Skaven, there is a conflict in the rules, but I had already based mine on 50mm diameter. I think I will probably make a 50mm radius base with some additional rats for this swarm to fit inro so I can play it either way. Well... not exactly, because actually playing a swarm seems like a complete waste of effort. But maybe just so I can have it in my collection. :)

April Points:

50 pts          2 Poisoned Wind Globadiers

81 pts          Warpfire-Thrower Team

39 pts          Jezzail

200 pts       Jabberwock

250 pts       Rat Swarm

620 pts         April TOTAL

1,043 pts       OWAC TOTAL (so far)

ZeroTwenythree's March Skaven (235 pts)

March Skaven: Clanrats & Clan Moulder (Rank & File)

For March's entry I finished the figures that should have been part of January & February entries but didn't get painted on time. 

First are the final five clanrats from January, including the champion, standard, and musician. The standard is one of the few "newer" figures in my plans. He scales pretty well with the older figures.

Next are some more packmasters, giant rats, rat ogre, and a bonus figure -- Throt the Unclean!

Another bonus, after finishing all of the above figures I thought I would make a small bit of themed terrain. Warpstone!

March Points:

31.5 pts         3 Packmaster with light armour

20 pts            10 Gian rats

38 pts            1 Rat ogre

45.5 pts         5 Clanrats with Spears, standard, and musician

100 pts           Throt The Unclean (lv. 20) w/heavy armor, halberd

235 pts         March TOTAL

423 pts       OWAC TOTAL (so far)

ZeroTwentythree's February Skaven (59 pts)

February Skaven: Clanrats & Wolf-Rats (Rank & File)

After failing to paint all 30 clanrats in January, I switched up plans to finish the last 10 in February and then paint some "bonus figures." As February started winding down, I had just finished the first 5. 

So I went back to some of the figures that were to be in my February entry from the start. I had planned to paint Clan Moulder troops in February, figuring I would paint the easiest figures in the shortest month. I only got to some of them.

Back in my youth, in 3rd edition, we didn't really have good figures for wolf-rats, aka ROUSes. They're still sort of lacking, but some of the more recent metal giant rats aren't exactly large, but in the context of old 3rd ed. scale, I think they're decent enough. Not too far off from the metal giant wolves of the day. Plus, they're not exactly massive combat beasts anyway. So here we are. 6 wolf-rats.

I will be overwhelmed with work/travel for the rest of the month, but managed to squeek (heh heh) in one last figure. The wolf-rats needed a Clan Moulder packmaster.

Actual brand of mints I just discovered at a local grocer. Only slightly altered the flavor when I inserted it into the appropriate ad background. Kudos to the company marketing mints to the underserved Skaven demographic.

Mmmm... love those half points in 3rd ed. 

February Points:

10.5 pts         1 Packmaster with light armour

18 pts            6 Wolf-rats

30.5 pts        5 Clanrats with Spears

59 pts         TOTAL

189 pts       OWAC TOTAL (so far)

ZeroTwentythree's January Skaven (130 pts)

January Skaven: Clanrats (Rank & File)

As with previous projects, I wanted to start off this year's Skaven project with the backbone of the army. If a cowardly Skaven army can even be said to have a backbone. "The core troops upon which the army is built" is perhaps a better description? No, not the slaves. The clanrats!

I had ambitious plans for a full regiment of 30 clanrats, including standard bearer and musician, for the first month of the challenge. But life has been busy and I've spent a considerable amount of time away from home. About midway through the month I revised my goal to get 20 of the 30-strong regiment painted, and I managed to finish them just in time!

Here's the full batch of 20. All metal, and with quite a few duplicates as expected. I'm going for a dark & dirty look. Although they seem to have a lot of red-tones, I'm imaging them as not seeing that themselves, as I understand that rats are colorblind to red. So these Skaven may think they are mostly dressed in stealthy black gear, which is only half correct.

To add some variety, I made some minor conversions, such as the two figures on the left. One is a simple sculpted hood, the other is just repositioning the spear arm so the weapon looks "shouldered" rather than held forward.

It's not visible, but the clanrat in the center was broken, missing it's shield hand. Nothing a little bit of sloppy putty-work couldn't fix.

These are the remaining 10 figures that didn't get painted in January. As you can see, I am using brown primer, as this has worked well for me with Skaven in ages past. I depend on the brown primer and a couple of black/brown washes to tone down a lot of the color, tie all of the figures together, and keep them looking like verminous troublemakers who crawl through tunnels and sewers.

While most of the figures are 2nd/3rd edition, I do have a few "newer" figures hidden in the mix, such as this standard bearer.

These "remainders" will still get painted at some point in the challenge. I had other plans for February, but maybe I will switch that up so I can complete the regiment before moving on.

January Points:

130 pts        20 Clanrats with Spears

130 pts         TOTAL

ZeroTwentyhthree's OWAC6 Introduction Post

Hey.

 

It's me, ZeroTwentythree,

 

 

How's it goin'?

 

I'm doing an Old World Army Challenge again

Yeah.

It's going to be sweet.

SWEET!

OK. Sweet-ish.

Maybe a little filthy and diseased.  Warped, even.

 

 

A bit different the previous elves, elves, elves (in space) and undead (not saying they were undead elves, but also there's no knowing those skeletons, wraiths, etc. were NOT previously elves when alive.)

 

For OWAC6 I'll definitely be painting chaos RATMEN.

 

 

Definitely not ratELVES.

 

 

Not that we know for sure the rats were mutated from men. According to the game lore, they appeared in the area that would become the Empire well before the human settlers even arrived. Not sure who else would have been living there in those ancient times. But definitely ratMEN.

Not ratELVES

 

Whatever.

 

 

 

Skaven 2023

This is going to be another nostalgia-fueled project for me to a factor exceeding even my Eldar project in 2021.  Skaven were my first Warhammer Fantasy Battles love, my first army. From 3rd through 8th editions of the game my army evolved until I sadly sold off most of it when times got tough and gaming hit a low.

I still have a small number of metal figures from my old army, including a number of unpainted figures. A few small purchases recently rounded that off to give me enough for a Challenge! The basis is that I will mostly be sticking with the objectively best Skaven fixtures ever sculpted, the Jes Goodwin originals. There will be a few figures breaking that "rule" ("more like guidelines, actually...")

In very general terms, I plan on painting:

• 30ish Clanrats witgh spears
• 20ish Stormvermin with two handed weapons
• 25ish Skavenslaves
• 4 beastmasters
• 1 Rat Ogre (I already have another one painted)
• 15 Giant Rats
• 1 Plague Censor
• 5 Globadiers
• 2 Jezzail teams
• 1 Warpfire-thrower team
• Some characters
• Completely unplanned stuff that I probably haven't even thought of yet. 

Solidly over 100 figures! I'd like to paint the regiments completely each month, so the first four items above will be my rank & file months, the characters will be the command month, and all the weird/crazy weapons in the remaining month. 

At one point I had this all organized & out on my desk, but failed to take a photo. Not everything in here will be part of the challenge. Maybe. Probably. There's also another bin of Completely Not OWAC6 figures that I definitely won't dip into.

Overlord Offering

Our Benevolent Overlord mentioned a fondness for creepy things, and specifically The Thing. Not only did I just watch both the original and prequel films, I also bought some Thing-inspired figures for a sci-fi project I've been working on (5 Parsecs). In that case, I was painting them with color shifting paints to represent dimension-shifting-teleport-accident-mutants, and repeated that at first, but felt that a fully flesh and gore version would be even better. So my Offering this year includes two versions - Incorporeal Warp Thing, and Gory Flesh Creep.

ZeroTwentythree's May Undead (333 pts)

May Entry

Rank & File Month

 

As explained in my intro post, aside from Donovan, the other big inspiration for painting undead for this OWAC was my purchase of three Carrion from a semi-recent Knightmare Games Kickstarter. Awesome looking figures, but a bear to assemble! I kept putting them off and figured that an OWAC project would help motivate me into it... or retiring in shame to the Field of Bones.

Apparently it worked! Although it did come down to the later end of the OWAC before I finally picked up drill & wire & glue and finally got them prepped. So now I subject you to excessive photos in celebration of finally completing the death turkeys!

 

 

 

  

The one that gave me the most trouble is also my favorite, the one with feathered wings. My favorite rider, though, is the one with the outstretched scythe, on the right in the first photo. Feathery puts me in a mood...

 

And just for laughs....

I previously painted  an Overlord miniature. When the figure on the right, from Oldschool Miniatures, arrived I figured it was the perfect Assistant Overlord! Here are both of them, at the Field of Bones, discussing the fine print of the Old World Army Challenge Rules. (Actually, more like what you'd call guidelines...).

 

 

 

Finally, I managed to get the rest of this month's entry done at the last minute thanks to and in spite of the US Memorial Day holiday weekend. Five more Death Riders. Slightly different variety of flamingo served as the inspiration for these.

 

This figure was painted earlier, but I didn't want to reveal it until the rest were done. This was my first test model for the flamingo cavalry. Although I liked the idea, I decided I didn't want full squads of Necron 99/Peace inspired cav, so he will serve as a champion.

 

In spite of the last minute rush to finish painting, I still had time to relax by a fire on a beautiful Spring night and contemplate the completion of the OWAC next month.

 

May Rank & File Month
 

3 Carrion........................................................ 135 pts
1 Assistant Overlord (lv. 5 necromancer).....   60 pts

6 Death Riders w/Lances, Shields................   138 pts

May Total: 333 pts

Total So Far: 1,466 pts