From RobP: 28mm ACW Irish Brigade & Monks (273 points)

From Rob:

Here is my latest entry to the Painting Challenge.

I conclude the Irish Brigade with the 28th Massachussetts and the 116th Pennsylvania... These are all Foundry figs except the 28th standard bearers wich are  Steve Barber conversions... I was running out of command figs and do not want to double up so I had to come up with an alternative; nothing that a spare cossack arm cannot be used for....

The Foundry figs are among the best ACW I have seen; clean without mouldlines and full of character and paint up easily. I have used them before as they make the bulk of my  Confederate brigades. I know people tend to think they are over expensive but they currently have changed policy on shipping and offer a good deal on larger orders.. I am planning on  doing another Union brigade in a few months and will definitely use their figures.

Also some Brigade command and casualty markers; all Redoubt figures. The Redoubt Command sets are excellent and I have used them also within my Reb troops.  Being the Irish Brigade one would expect to see Meagher and Kirby instead of generic command figures. They will be up next included in the final batch I am currently finishing. 

Having kept my focus on this project I did however wander off sometimes and painted other bits and pieces in between.. Mostly little stuff that can be used to give our group's gaming table a more lively look.. This time I include some figures that can be used for Dark Ages or Peninsular, or even downed pilots if you are familiar with the ´Allo ´Allo series.... These men of the cloth are Qualitycast figures (where have they gone??) and have been fun to paint. I will enhance my procession overtime with more faithfull followers to litter our gaming table.. 

This batch will more then double my current score and puts me right on track of an average of 250 pts a month to achieve my challenge...

Beautiful work Rob! Your Irish Brigade looks marvelous and the command stand is brilliant, but I am eager to see Meagher and Kirby in your next submission. Those monks are very nice as well - I'd like to source some of these to go with my existing Foundry Dark Age monks...

This entry will give Rob a very respectable 273 points. Bravo, well done!

From ScottB: 28mm Goblins from 'The Hobbit' (180 points)

From Scott:

I burned a bit of the midnight oil last night and finished off the 36 goblins I have been working on, off and on, since the beginning of the challenge.

The quality of the plastic sculpts was very good, and the amount of mould line to scrape away was minimal. As for painting them up I was in a slight dilemma as to what colour to paint them. They were not going to be classic 'green' as the majority of the Moria goblins are.

In the movie they come across as having a yellowish hue, yet a lot of stock pictures show them with a pale grey skin colour. I can only assume the lighting effect in the movie from the flaming torch-lit caverns of GoblinTown would have cast a yellow colour to their actual pale grey skin.

So I went with the pale grey base tone.

After this they had shading washes and heavy drybrushing to set the flesh tones. The loin cloths and equipment were painted up, and finally the disgusting spotty lumps and bumps were given red and purple washes and the yellow spot heads added, just ripe for popping! An adolescent kid would have a field day on these buggers! ;-)

Finally facial features were added, including eyes and teeth/mouths.

I have to confess to the eyes not being the best - normally I do the eyes at the mid point of the models, but with so many washes and dry brushing going on they would probably have got messed up, so I left them to the end. Typically by which point my fine detail brush had given up the ghost! So with nothing good to hand to dot the pupils I resorted to trimming a cocktail stick to a sharp point and used that! Not the most accurate way of doing things and some of the eyes went a little off centre, but in the end I think it actually added to the character of the mis-shaped limbs and general ungainly poses. Bases were PVA sand textured and painted and drybrushed.

So I am rather happy with the way they turned out. Suitably loathsome!

So now I need to finish off the Goblin King, his throne, 2 Goblin Captains and the scribe. Then the 13 dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf who are all undercoated... And there is still an LOTR Groblog Goblin King (that's 2 goblins kings on my table at the same time!) and a Victorian EotD police inspector to finish off!

Hopefully I'll get these done before the deadline!

Wow, you've done a superb job on these, Scott. I really like the blue/grey skin tone and I love the disgusting buboes - they really are quite zit-tastic! Painting eyes with sharpened cocktail sticks?!! Awesome. This 'technique' reminds me of my first efforts at 14 with fabric pins and testors oil paints - though my results were, ahem, rather less successful than yours!

This mob of acned goblins will give Scott 180 points. Well done!

From JohnM: 28mm Dwarves from 'The Hobbit' (60 points)

From John:

The minute I saw these figures last weekend in the GW store in Montreal, I knew that I had to have them. They are just really cool. Painting them was great because I could see immediately how I wanted to paint them. No googling away this time. 

Here we have 12 dynamic poses of heavily armoured dwarves. It took a bit of time assembling them, but all in all they went together easily. 

They were primed white, I know this sounds strange, but the car primer I use, has really a great bite. They were then airbrushed with the old GW Boltgun Metal. I then heavily washed them with a really oldie Citadel Tin Blitz. A very new paint Citadel Dry Necron Compound was brushed on. 

The beards and the clothing was then painted and AP Dark Tone was sparingly applied. I then touched up only the beards and the clothes with AP brush on Antishine, leaving a lot of the metal shiny. I really like how they came out. 

I will leave the Hobbit now and get back to some Napoleonics.

Lovely work John. I really like how you did their armour - you're getting very good with the airbrush (something I've never had the patience for). I'll have to try out some of the Necron compound as it seems to give a very nice effect.

These dozen dwarves will give John 60 points. Good stuff!

From SteveM: 28mm WWII Allied HMGs & Armoured Cars (70 points)

These were for a commission. They are from Warlord Games with decals from CompanyB.biz. The armoured cars are a British AEC Mk III and a Humber Mk IV.

The crew are fully magnetized. Meaning that the magnets are in the figures and metal was put into the round bases. This allows for casualties to be taken off the larger stand if desired. Smaller bases are supplied a well.

Very innovative Steve. I really like how the HMG bases have been designed to be mixed and matched to different basing options. 

These two HMGs and the pair of armoured cars will give Steve 70 points, which includes extra for the work that went into the basing. Well done!

From ChrisP: 28mm Taliban & Modern Americans (193 points)

This time from me, we have the Taliban Insurgents to be an OPFOR (opposition force) for my Modern US I sent through recently. Primarily they are Empress sculpts, with a few additions from the Eureka range. 

The bones of the force is made up of 8 soldiers with AK-47s (or derivatives thereof), in addition to one having a Light Machine Gun. These are all Empress sculpts.

The firepower for the basic guys comes from three insurgents with Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), again cheap, seen all over the world and incredibly nasty.

The insurgents also have a "dicker", which is a British term for an observer with a phone, who might be calling in troop movements or mortars or the like. I like to think he is actually just on the phone to his mum, "But mum, all the other kids are allowed out to fight the infidel...."

Heavier firepower comes in multiple forms for this Taliban force, ranging from very accurate in a marksman with an SVD sniper rifle, to a two man machine gun team, to a DsHK heavy machinegun, right up to a recoil-less rifle or even a Stinger Anti-Aircraft Missile!

Lastly we have a unit of 4 Insurgents, these guys are a bit more hard core with better assault rifles, body armour and camo. One even has a ski mask! They must be hard core. Or off skiing. Perhaps in a Bond Film.

I am pretty happy with how these have turned out over all, I used a reasonably limited colour palate to keep them a bit more unified. I plan to add a few more bits and pieces to them hopefully before the painting challenge is through.

As for the Americans, they needed a cool way to get to battle. Option number one, is to ride in a HMMWV, armed with a Mk 19 40mm Grenade Machine Gun. This is a 1/48th scale Tamiya kit, built exactly as the box said. The soldier has been put in there for scale. I am really happy with how this turned out, and am already planning another!

Perhaps driving isn't for you? So for those who rather aerial insertion, I converted two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters. Starting with an Academy kit, I cut off the doors, built bench seats and gave it a swish black paint job ready to represent the helicopters from Task Force 160. I am really happy with the conversion, and the painting of the pilots (hence the close up), but my big fat thumb decided it wanted to have the last laugh, and put smudges all over the canopies of both helicopters. Much swearing later, I have accepted my failings and have moved on. Will I replace the canopies in the future? Possible.

Last, but surely not least is a 1/144th scale LaGG-3 fighter aircraft from Zvezda. This is going to be part of my Soviet Tank force (last seen here a month or so ago) for a competition at the weekend. The paintjob came straight from googling the LaGG on the internet, nice and simple!

I need to get back to clearing my painting table, I have too many half done things so I am trying to get some things actually done now.

Holy crap that is a shedload of excellent toys Chris! That HMMWV is a particularly fine piece of work and compares very nicely with 28mm figures.

This great assortment of figures and vehicles will give Chris 193 points to add to his first place lead. Well done!