From KevinH: T34/85, Zombie Cowboys, Cowboys, Rasputina Gang & Challenge Desperado (160 points)

From Kevin:

OK, just call me "Last Minute Larry"...

Right down to the wire this time.  Here we go...

First off, a set of three Warlord/Bolt Action T-34/85 tanks.  These are the older, resin models - as such, no decals it seems.  Therefore, I had to hand-paint the turret numbers.  After recently watching a clip on Youtube for an old, Czech movie, "Tank Brigade" ("Tankova Brigada"), I think I might try and find some Czech tri-colour roundel decals for the turrets!

Next - FINALLY got my "Wild Bunch" entry finished!  I had to AT LEAST get that one done!  This is a Foundry model, from the "Maxmillian Adventure" line, I think it was...  The model on their site is painted a bit oddly - all "white shirt" but the model doesn't seem to be sculpted that way.  So, since it looks like it's wearing a "sweater vest" over it's shirt, I decided to paint it like a peasant sarape.  I think it turned out pretty good.  And it's got EYES!  I hate painting eyes (hands just aren't steady enough anymore) - so hopefully Curt LOVES those eyes!  ;-)

Next, a pack of Foundry Western Gunfighter Zombies.  I found this pack among the items I bought from my friend's Estate sale.  Nothing too fancy here - I figured they'd be a quick few points as the deadline was drawing near.

Since I did the Western Zombies, I decided to paint up a few Foundry 'human' Gunfighters too.  You can always use more Western Gunfighters!

Last, but not least - the Rasputina gang/crew for the game, Malifaux.  There is beginning to be more interest in this game locally, so I decided it was time to paint up some figures.

The 'crew' consists of Rasputina (a spell-caster type), an Ice Golem, a December Acolyte (a 'tribal/cultist' type with lots of "sneaky" skills), a Wendigo (the model looks like a Chewbacca "mini Me!"), and three Ice Gamin (these are like small Demons or Imps).

I replaced all the "Warmachine/Hordes" style bases with aftermarket resin bases from Dragon Forge < http://www.dragonforge.com/ >

Since the back story on Rasputina has her being up in the mountains of Malifaux, I decided to add a "snowy" touch.  A little thinned white glue and baking soda, and presto! --instant snow!

Well, I haven't had time to total it all up, but I don't think I made my points projection this time around.

I wanted to do some of the Baker Company "Winter War" figures, but I'm still waiting for some to arrive (he had lots of problems with his casting machine, but at least he's keeping people "in the loop!"  I like that.)

Thanks again, Curt.  Hopefully, I have a better showing next year, if you invite me.

Always a pleasure Kevin and thank you very much for the Desperado and providing us with such a feast of miniatures to enjoy.

This collection of excellent figures will give Kevin 160 points, which is precisely what he needed for him to achieve his 300 point target. Nothing like chipping it into the cup Kev! Seriously, brilliant work.

From FranL: 28mm Zombies for 'Zombicide' (120 points)

From Fran:

These boys or zombies are more  28mm plastic madness from Zombicide, these 24 are Angry Zombies and also known as Beserker zombies, they are mutating into something less zombie and more angry armoured nasties and only a head shot counts with these walking dead!

Above is a group shot of the assembled horde, these zombies are from the prison set and mostly feature prisoners in their uniforms plus one of a female guard I believe.

Below is a close up of the fuglies, their skin is mutating and hardening to give them some armour plus there mouths are distending and protruding jaws and teeth.

I painted them as normal but with all the overalls/prison garb I went with red and then thought yellow for the special category of prisoner ( and to show some variety), the skin was given a wash of red ink to show the mutating change at work, you get three unique sculpts as well which include the fattie and the two others to his left in the front row I believe.

Thanks to Curt for the usual madness this year. 

Always happy to provide a bit of fun-filled lunacy for my friends.

What a wonderfully disgusting group of figures! Bravo Fran! I like your use of washes to denote different 'categories' of zombies or where they sit in their undead 'shelf life'. 

These assorted actively lifeless fuglies will give Fran 120 points. It was a great run, well done mon ami!

From FranL: 28mm Zombies for 'Zombicide' (120 points)

From Francis:

More 28mm plastic Zombicide zombie shenanigans with this box set of 24 infected specimens with what they say are three unique sculpts, I especially like the big momma fatties as they're called.

They say that you need more zombies to make the game better or just a sneaky marketing ploy?

Well there you have it...plastic zombie madness from Walk of the Dead Set 2.

Sneaky marketing aside these look great Fran. In addition to the Big Momma what are the other two unique sculpts to this box? I like the two that are dashing as I've always found 'fast' zombies to be particularly scary. 

These two dozen undead will give Fran 120 points. Great work and I hope we get to read a battle report on this game from you soon.

From ClintB: 28mm Challenge Academy Girls School (40 points)

From Clint:

The Team

From left to right. 

Tamsyn P is a very productive worker. Andrea Saunders has a keen interest in Norse Mythology (and 'sign language' - ed). Anne O'Leary a very glamorous foreign exchange student. Francine Lee while a team player has anger management issues. Miss Campbell is the head girl and she keeps them all in line by dishing out house points. Me a new girl. And finally Rachel Rousell is very keen on her history, liking to get both the facts right and to wear lace lingerie for which the other girls sometimes tease her she has even had a couple of falsies (sandbags) and it is best not to mention anything about her "erhm...badger".

All the figures are 28mm Crooked dice miniatures. Inspired by the work of Ronald Searle and called St Searle's Girls (That's St Trinnians as far as the film industry is concerned) They started as cartoons and books originally, the first being published in 1941 in the magazine Lilliput.

I have kept the colours of a local school uniform but avoided the local girls grammar school where I did a PGCE ( which is Navy blue and pink). I have used pink as an accent colour just because I see a lot of girls in the UK wearing pink and I suspect that they might find it hard these days to get any other colour. 

And the last picture is of me and "Misty" the muse for the crooked dice miniature. As Misty is a zombie hunter you can see the zombie going Nom Nom Nom on another wargames Blogger (Mathyoo from Slovakia) on the left. (Salute last year).

Haha! This is awesome. I think you may have nailed the characters here Clint. Tamsyn (Veruca Salt!?) and Andrea are hilarious and Anne is quite the vamp (great legs). I quite fancy myself as Head Girl (dated one in High School - lived up to her title... ba-dum-pish! Boo! Hiss!!) Francine may need to be a bit more strawberry blonde but the rage-filled pose seems appropriate. How Clint would translate into a schoolgirl's name I cringe to think about (nice teddy)... And poor Rachel with her hidden secrets, Victoria or otherwise... 

All of them, excellent stuff.

The Team will give Clint 40 points, with a bit extra as, well, I'm in it.   ;-)

From FrancisL: 28mm Zombicide Horde and Heroes (360 points)

Our Irish lad from Gravesend has not been idle...

From Fran:

This is the complete of miniatures you get with the boardgame Zombicide, 71 plastic miniatures: 6 heroes, 8 fatties, 1 abomination and 56 various breeds of slim zombies. A present from a friend and as miniatures were low I decided to paint the feckers...

First up, above, we have the full set of miniatures...

Here are the 6 characters, 2 I'm not so keen on are roller skate girl and the samurai sword wielding teen but the other characters are fine...

The fatties are next but do remind me of Buster Bloodvessel from the band "Bad Manners"...

Now this is an Abomination and a real beauty and was my favourite from the box...

Now we have some pictures of the main bunch of 56 zombies, 8 each of 7 different poses, now these buggers were a bit of a pain due to all the same poses and then trying to paint every single one differently...

Started to worry about which colour went with which, does green go with pink?

That initial enthusiasm started to wane a little and then we started improvising, cutting and drilling...

Buckets of blood were also used but all in all not a bad bunch of figures or sculpts and another box of 24 infected zombies have turned up on my doorstep and may make the end of the challenge...

...and maybe even a game or two? 

Holy smokes that is a lot of minis Fran - well done! I was asleep at the switch when this Kickstarter launched and now, after seeing the excellent work of yourself and Paul, I will have to bite the bullet and pick it up with the rest of the great unwashed. 

This fine horde of zombies and coterie of heroes will give Francis an impressive 360 points - enough for him to handily punch through his second Challenge goal of 1250 points. Cracking job Mr. Lee!

BTW I would really like to see a game of this posted at your place or Postie's... Just sayin'.

From PaulS: Zombie Fatties, Abominations & Commando Force (160 points)

Okay, emerging from the crashing and smashing of the 'Vehicle(s)' bonus round we have another real treat with Paul's excellent greyscale zombies PLUS an impressive Commando force to counter this undead threat. 

From Paul:

I finally finished off the last couple of normal Fatties and the second Abomination for Season 2 of Zombicide. I've also managed to get a sample Rage fattie and Toxic Fattie complete to show the difference in the colour splashes. Hopefully the green will show up in a large horde. At the moment it's looking a little too subtle... but that's what experiments are for.

Just before I came across the challenge, I'd bought some Bolt Action figures to use in some WW2 games, mostly Cthulhu based ones like Strange Aeons or for my players in the Achtung! Cthulhu rpg. I'd originally only intended to put together enough for the players and a few NPCs, but with the challenge came the idea of actually turning them into working Bolt Action forces. So, I would like to present my first, complete, British Commando force, totalling about 500 points worth of troops (24 models). A very small, elite force. Hopefully this will be a fun little setup to learn with and is certainly a good starting point to grow from. Apart from the officer, the entire force was constructed from one box of Warlord's plastic Commandos. If I hadn't given one figure to a friend, I could have made everything from the one set, which seems like excellent value when you compare it to some other manufacturers who I will not name.

The force consists of a 2nd Lieutenant, plus his supporting rifleman. The Lt model came from a set of pulp characters one of the Lead Adventure forum members had sculpted. He was supposed to be Rorschach from Watchmen, so I replaced the masked head with a spare from the Commando sprue so that he fitted in more.

British forces in Bolt Action get a free observer to drop an artillery barrage on the enemy.

A Medic is always useful for keeping your elite squads going.

A PIAT team seemed to make sense in case I come across any armoured vehicles.

And a Sniper team to take out officers or weapon teams.

Along with the obligatory two sets of commandos to fill out the infantry slots. These guys are armed with 4 smgs and 1 lmg each, so should put out a fair amount of firepower

This week Also saw the Achtung! Cthulhu kickstarter models arrive in the post, so the two characters from the British army were painted up in the same style and colours as the rest of the commando force, seen here accompanying the commander; Captain Harris on the left and Corporal Singh on the right. Both are really nice sculpts, even if Harris is tiny compared to any of the plastics that surround him. The smg on his back was from the Commando plastics as the metal one in the kickstarter kit was far too thin and bent to be of any real use. These two will be of more use in the rpg scenarios or Strange Aeons, but could make for some interesting officers in Bolt Action if they ever get around to the rumoured Weird War 2 supplement.

Just for fun, here's a shot of some Commandos cornered in a graveyard by the zombie horde.

Awesome work Paul! Your greyscale zombies are first rate and I think the green will stand out on the tabletop but field-testing will confirm. The Commandos are very nice as well I love the medic with the comb-over hair and the Sikh with his Kirpan. Very cool.

These arcane commandos and the zombie additions will give Paul 160 points. This entry will see him surmount his initial points target with almost two months to spare. Great work!

From PaulS: 28mm Zombie Horde (222 points)

This fabulous Zombie herd provides Paul with a huge points haul.

Here are one or two more zombies for the Challenge.

The horde continues to swell with the addition of 26 new walkers, 14 runners, 3 fatties and a massive Abomination. The Abomination is, as you can see from the last shot, absolutely huge, towering over the standard walkers. 

Just to prove that I've not cheated and stuck the last batch of zombies in again, there's a full crowd shot at the bottom with the original 14 walkers, 2 runners and 2 fatties from last time. 

I wanted to submit the finished batch of normal zombies from Season 2's Kickstarter today, but I wasn't happy with the last 3 fatties and Abomination, so those will come soon. Only another hundred or so zombies left to paint :/

Wonderful work Paul! All of them are so characterful, but that Abomination is pretty nasty indeed (and good lord, please tell me that's a belt hanging between his legs...).

This horde of Zombies will give Paul a monstrous 222 points! Wow! Great job Paul.