Jeff McC's Wood Elves - JANUARY (208 Points)

January's done! 

I ended up doing month 3 from my plan in January.  I'm pleased with the results and think they'll fit in well with the existing force.  As planned, I've kept to an autumnal color scheme, with an evergreen mixed in as an accent color.  Still getting the hang of painting  and modeling with glasses, as a couple of missed mold lines will attest, but they'll be fine on the table top.

Points breakdown as follows (3rd edition):

4 Wood Riders with longbows @ 26 = 104

1 Beastmaster @ 13 

1 Level 10 Hero with longbow = 91

Total = 208

Hero & Beastmaster

Wood Riders

Firthy’s chaos horde (205 points)

Well first month down. Not a big haul of figures for me to start things off but it is all part of the plan. Because whilst I haven’t finished many this month I have got a good number of figures nearly completed that will help me in February. Anyway here are the figures I did:

The point values for these are:

- 5 chaos thugs with light armour and double handed weapons - 50 points;

- level 15 wizard - 155 points.

More thugs next month. 

Sam's Savage Orcs - The one where it was okay until it wasn't... (204.5 points)

So its a bit of tradition for me to lament on how savage the orcs were to me during the months challenge, and for the first time this month I thought it wasn't going to be necessary. Luckily for me though, that isn't the case (and I don't actually have to think about something else to write about whew!😅)

Everything started out swimmingly, I was painting fairly consistently knowing that I wouldn't have the last week in the month due to international travel for work (coincidentally I'm typing this from a hotel room, woohoo... not), then I got sick for a few days, as a result work piled up into the infinite, and did I mention I have two small kids. So it was 11pm the night before I was due to leave in the morning for work and there was half the work to do on every figure. Many hours of power painting later and it was done, as was I...

100 pts: Savage Orc Big Boss, DHW

104.5 pts: 10 x Savage Orcs inc. musician, spear, shield

Total: 204.5 points

A couple of points, 

You'll notice that some of these sculpts are not technically spears, I decided a while back that I wanted to have roughly a 50/50 split of spear and HW in the unit for visual purposes. There are only 4 sculpts in the range for spear and they are all quite similar, so when they line up in bigger units I think they don't really look all that savage any more. Additionally, they are rarer to come across, so breaking the unit up like I'm planning, not only looks better, it was also easier to arrange for.

I was planning on doing some face painting, which I still may add later, but the time constraints threw all "extras" directly out the window. My general idea is to go with some black and white face paint, making simple patterns that are evocative of skulls in a Calavera style. This is to go with the theme that they are 'Da Immortalz', the story of which I will tell once the unit is finished. The black and white theme is reflected in the shields colouring though. I also think the drum face looks a bit boring, so I'm thinking of hitting that with a primitive looking dotted spiral pattern. Hopefully I'll experiment with both of these things next month.

The basing isn't 100% finished as I need to varnish these guys first, and again didn't really have the time to do that. I'll add the tufts and static grass same as my army next month.

Generally, I've also realised that I really need a better set-up for taking the pics, so I'm going to have to have a bit of a think about it. I don't really know anything about cameras, but I have a bunch of people at work that do pro photography, so may be able to rope them in to doing something for me. In fairness to myself though, I did take them at gone 3 in the morning knowing I needed to get up at 6 to go catch a flight... 😭

Anyway, enough of my lamentations, this months is done and I'm back in the challenge, ooooohhh yeeaaahhh!!!! Next month I'm lining up to paint my fav sculpt in the range, bull hat guy, and I'll either finish the spear unit or start on the archers.

Good luck to everyone, looking forwards to checking out some sweet oldhammer paint jobs.

Samuel

Brennan's January Post (240 Points)

Well, these have been different than the Slann I did last year!  The Slann were blue, with lots of earth tones and neat fabrics.  These dudes are all metal and hair.  I felt like I was painted the aged remains of a hair metal band....

Anyway, I'm trying to keep a couple of distinct colors as themes for this brigade, but you will forgive me if I refer to this collection of dwarf companies under one leader as a 'battle'...  It just seems proper.  In this case I chose to use a nice medium green and brighter light blue as contrasting colors.  I sprinkled in a few more tones as I worked through the figs, metal painted orange on a helmet as an example, to get some variety.  I wanted continuity but not a uniform.  These colors will repeat in a variety of ways throughout the battle.

What I like about the imperial style of Dwarves is that they have those nice surcoats on, which break up all the armor.  The problem with the Long Beards is that they have so much hair that it makes it hard to see the nicer designs on the surcoats, so I went for some nice taping on the edges.  It's much easier to see from the back.

I did the beards in a couple of different ways.  Sometimes I used just a multiple level dry brush and in other cases I used a couple rounds of inking with a dry brush.  Frankly, I think the results are similar, but I was hoping to get enough variety to create a slight visual variation to break-up the uniform aspect of the figures and the painting.

For January I did...

14 Long Beards with a Standard and a Musician which would be 240 points in 4th ed!

The astute may notice that I had planned to do 16 Long Beards but alas, when I did my count I failed to notice the two short beards that had snuck into the ranks....  They will just have to go somewhere else!

Brendan's January Skaven (209 points)

The Army Begins!

First thing first, I felt like I should start out with a character to lead this plucky band of scavengers, and I felt like the Throt "the Unclean" model was the perfect for this role.  Since I am going with a clan Moulder theme, it made sense to me he would be a good fit with his man-catcher.

Skaven Chieftain: 59 points

And because who wouldn't want to see what he looks like with his sweet warp-stone eyeball?

Next up is the rank and file of clan Moulder.  The very reliable and would never break when you enter combat; giant rats with their faithful Packmaster handlers.  

24 trusty rats and 4 Packmasters: 100 points

Last for the month of January is a rat swarm.  They only cost 50 points when I include a unit of Clanrats, and since I plan on painting Clanrats, I will count them as 50 points.

Rat Swarm: 50 points

In total for the month of January I have 209 points completed and I'm feeling very accomplished so far!  Can't wait to start on the next batch of rats soon.

Lissanne's Undead - Bring out your Dead! Bring out your Dead! (410 pts)

In force, the vanguard of the army of Dirge rises from out the ocean waves to attack the unsuspecting town of Merchant's Reach...

The song of the Plague Cart seems an appropriate title for this month.  After doing my obligatory squad of skeletons, I wanted to do some more extras.

Each month I should try to do 2 or 3 zombies and a death rider if I want to finish all the Karr-Kell figures.  Did I cherry pick the easier zombies?  Yes.  But I finished 3 and a Death Rider

Death Rider

Pretty Lady zombie

Orc Zombie

And Dirge's undead Golden rottweiler

And I also finished the carrion I wanted to repaint to match the Tolkien fluff and my other carrion

AND...the undead war rhino as Plague cart, which turned out to be way easier than I thought.  I even dug out the 3 original skeleton riders and painted them up.  Still haven't found the catapult, but it's a plague cart so that is OK.  I can't believe I got this done after all these decades.

So, points are:
20 Skeleton Unit (20 shields, 10 spears) 230 pts
Carrion 45 pts
Undead Rhino Plague cart 100 pts
3 Zombies 12pts
1 Death Rider  light armor 23 pts
Total: 410 pts

That's a lot of rank and file done 
(I am spreading the spears pts 10 each to the 3 units because math bites.)

Dirge's skeleton army starts its rise from the ocean floor to attack the town of Merchant's Reach.  The plague cart has already claimed its first victims who march with it now as zombies, and there are still many more to come.  Her faithful rottweiler marches in the fore, her eyes and ears before she appears.  The carrion flies overhead, scouting out the path.

Don't expect this much every month! I do have my main units planned, I just got a lot of extras done this month too!

Next month, I plan to do Dirge the lich on her throne (and palanquin) if things go well.  If things go poorly, another unit of skeletons!

JamesP's Reiksgard unit (251 Pts)

The Sons of Solland were formed by a collection of second sons and offspring of minor nobility. Knowing it was unlikely they would inherit, they set out to make their own fortune. With a strong sense of loyalty to Solland and each other the Sons have collected like-minded soldiers from across the province to form the core of the army. Their leader is Dieter von Krueger with his long-time friend Volker Holdermann acting as the army standard bearer. Each of the Sons have raised a fighting unit from their own funds reflecting their unique fighting styles. Since their forming, the Sons have taken part in many campaigns and have travelled as far as Tilea and Estalia.

The Reiksgard is currently lead by Archibald von Krueger. Archie and his cousins, Dieter and Siegfried, were raised as brothers in Kreutzhofen. At the age of 14, Archie begged his father’s permission to accompany Dieter on his quest for glory and riches. His father agreed on the condition they both look after each other and return safely. Archie was assigned to the first unit raised by The Sons; The Reiksgard, where he was to be trained. The unit took him in and became very fond of him due to his unshakable optimism and joking manner. Even the dour Captain of The Reiksgard took a liking to Archie and upon the discovery of Archie’s musical talent made him the unit musician.  Archie was a fast study and in two short years he was easily the equal of the rest of the unit, and better than most.

The battle of low water was the turning point for Archie. The Sons were hired to guard a river crossing on the main forces flank against a hoard of undead while the knights lead the attack. It was not going well for the Sons when the undead broke through and pushed them back. Archie looked down to see the Reiksgard banner laying next to the bloody remains of the standard bearer, his hand still clutching the pole. The Captain noticed this at the same time and retrieved the banner only to be speared through the shoulder by a skeleton. Archie cut the abomination down and helped the Captain to his feet. The Captain growled “Summon the men to the banner or all will be lost”. Archie sounded his horn and called the Reiksgard to stand firm while defending the Captain from the enemy. Wave after wave of putrid flesh and rattling bones broke against the wall of iron the Reiksgard had become. Archie dashed up and down the line shouting encouragement, sounding his horn and taking part where the fighting was most fierce.

The next night at a feast hosted by their benefactor the captain spoke. “I am stepping down as leader of the Reiksgard. I have spoken to the general and we both agree that Archie should lead the unit.” Everyone looked to Archie in silence as the captain continued. “I will remain as the unit standard bearer to support Archie and to smack him about the head to keep him straight.” The crowd cheered their approval calling for a speech from Archie. Again, the soldiers grew silent as Archie stood. “This is unexpected…I didn’t even kill anyone in the battle.” After the laughter died down Archie turned to his cousin and said “I swear by the Sun and by Sigmar I will do my best to uphold the reputation of the company. If I am half the leader as my successor, I will be twice the man that stands before you tonight. It is my honour to lead men of such iron resolve.” The crowd cheered their approval until the general raised his tankard calling for quiet. “From this night forth The Reiksgard’s title shall be The Ironclads!”

15 Reiksgard – (champion, musician and standard) 217 Pts

Double-Handed Weapon, Heavy Armour

Level 5 hero 34 Pts

Heavy Armour, Shield