JohnB - unable to continue

Due to life becoming crazy chaos I will have to drop out.

Good luck to everyone else.

I look forward to seeing all the incredible work by the rest of you

Nicolas' Daemon Legion of Khorne - Month 1 - rank & file (700pts)

January, month of all hopes and promesses!

    For this first month, I decided to go simple, initially. But why keep a safe path when you can venture in the wild and treacherous fields of miniature hobbying!? The plan was sample, start with a first unit of 8 bloodletters to confirm my base color scheme for my new daemonic legion, and paint a first spidery spawn to break the monotony of repeat painting.   So right after new years eve, I was franticly unpainting and cleaning old lead… and assembling flesh hounds… and jumped to stripping all chosen warriors and monsters in the project… and remembered I had an offering to produce and ship… and ended up with 2 weeks left like a real planification champion!

8 Bloodletters unit - 600pts

1 Chaos spawn - 100pts

  

    But here they are; my first 8 bloodletters in flesh tones, skinny, thirsty, freshly out of the warp after centuries of torments in suspended cells for disappointing Khorne. They are back, ready to replenish their physical form with the blood of countless enemies and retrieve the favor of their master. 

    As for the spawns... I began with the one that sparked the idea of this regiment of spidery creatures, straight out from a single line of stats in the random list of Tzeetch champions of the Realm of Chaos - Lost and the Damned;

Tzeentch_095 --- Beastman --- Tentacles - all arms, rotting flesh, crossbreed with giant spider, manic fighter, evil eye, FP4

Sculpting this guy was so much fun! I let you guess the origin of the 4 kits involved 😉

Obviously, I will play him as en unaligned chaos creature, whether a champion or a simple spawn, which really drove my color choice in avoiding blue and pink, the 2 main colors of my Tzeentch deamons... Yet the shape of his horns reveal his true nature 😈

Here is the tale of this creature, as described by its former Lord many years ago;

''The thing was called Garan’hga and whatever that creature once was, troops now call it “The Tamer”.  As my battalion progressed through badlands and dead forests, I gave order to seize any creature of form or size startling enough to break any of the soft southlanders. Three herds were formed over a month of progression. I could already foresee the handlers releasing a wave of flesh, fur, claws and teeth in front of my men. Breaking and disrupting ranks of shiny halberdier, those expendable beasts leaving the enemy disorganised and weak for my warriors to crush.

The Hand of the general visited my camps two days before the final march to reach the front line. Some fortified city was causing the complete army to stop progression. We could see columns of smoke from our position, hear the sound of their artillery and the flashes of magic bolts. My men were immersed in delirious toughs of the massacres and glories to come. I gave order to form the ranks to focus the troops and show The Hand the quality of the fighters under my command. It is only then that I first felt the presence of Garan’hga. His only eye was looking straight throught me, filled with sheer anger and hatred, and for a split second I could see this eye right in front of me.

What began as a distant clamor within the ranks rapidly became the distinct cheers of my men watching Garan’hga freeing himself of its chains and attacking its handlers. What they thought a clumsy mindless beast proved to be swift, deadly and particularly wise. It leaped several yards to reach the closest man, the one who had used the whip too many times. The spidery legs pierced through his body in several places under the impact and even before the body hit the ground, Garan’hga had jumped sideways to the other beast master. Nailing him to the ground, it plunged its dart through the armor of the petrified warrior, releasing a magical plague into his body.

As we all watched the warrior convulse, violently morph and inflate into a hideous spawn, Garan’hga looked back at me. He made me see through its yellow eye its place as the leader of the beasts, “the tamer” of any creature who would not follow my command. Although what he did not show me, was his renown to come, and my place by his side as favoured pet since he gave me a taste of his venom.''

...And before I forget, I present to you my tribute to this year Overlords, the emissary of my Khorne deamonic legion, a grotesque metamorph deamon, cursing aggressively at people and collecting bribes from the ones that think they can bargain with Khorne!

Ben's Chaos Gnomes - Month 1

"After a blistering defeat at the Battle of Tinyfoot Pass, the army of Harthrak Hammerblow was scattered to the woodlands beneath the mountains. Winter rolled in the morning after, as though the fire in Harthrak's heart had been the only thing keeping its chill at bay. Amid the cutting winds and icy chills, few of the chaos gnomes claimed rights to the remnants of the horde, but among those who did, the loudest claim of all was Kazar Ambraz. When he revealed Harthrak's warhammer and swore vengeance on their mountain cousins, it is said that the winds howled like wolves, and that the very ground turned black. Such signs could only mean that Kazar's claim was truest of all, clearly approved by the dark gods, and beyond reproach of his kin."

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 For the first month of the challenge, I decided I wanted to muster a playable force. Setting my sights on 500 points, I pulled out just enough models to have a few units to push around on the battlefield. Thanks to the lower starting unit numbers, I wound up with four 5-man units and a general, who I imagined to be the ragged survivors of an ill-fated battle. This isn't reflected in the minis, since I wanted to be fairly clean, but I enjoy the framing narrative. That, and I think its important to give your elements a relationship or two with the elements that already exist in that setting. 

I'm still experimenting with what the chaos gnomes are; being as they're not quite chaos dwarfs and not quite imperial or alpine gnomes. The fun thing is, gnomes are mostly considered mythic, and so their world is briefly glimpsed by human record, and then largely made of rumor and dust. They are known to dwarfs, since they're cousin-races, but they don't cohabitate (to the knowledge of the dwarfs anyhow,) so how could these gnomes have picked up the chaos dwarf culture? Also, where in the Old World are they? I don't know that I'll have all the answer by the end of the challenge, but these are the kinds of details I hope to consider in the coming months.

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Chaos Gnome General w/ heavy armor and two-handed weapon - 165p

2x 5 Chaos Gnomes with blunderbusses - 70p/ea

2x 5 Chaos Gnome Warriors - 70p/ea

Total: 445

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I feel good about this start. Since I'll be doing this for a while (these 21 figures are only the tip of the iceberg,) I'm popping my paints in the post as well. Thank you so much everyone, and see you in the future!

Coming up next in: OWAC VIII - Chaos Gnomes

Chris P's Rank and File Month 1 - Khorne Berserkers

 

9 Khorne Berserkers with aspiring champion - 345pts

Mighty Champion - 58pts

 

 

 

The Blood God gets his due this month, with 11 ravening madmen.

Nathan’s beastmen of Khorne - month 1 rank and file (199.5 points)

Well the title says it all really. For month one I managed to paint up 14 beastmen; here they are:

In terms of points these add up to 199.5 points as an individual figure with light armor and a shield is 14.25 points each. I already had a couple of these painted from when I did a chaos army for the OWAC some years ago so I have two full units. Next month I’m doing the leaders month and will add a banner for them.

As I’m painting up khorne figures I thought I would also work on some of the 40K stuff I have  -here are two I finished this month:

And finally my pledge mini which is an old citadel cyclops who will go out in the mail next week. Here he is:

 

Pablol - Imperial Guard - Month 1 - Rank & File

I started off pretty strong with a Chimera almost painted on the 10th of January. That's all I had originally planned for this month. Then about a week ago I thought I could paint a whole infantry unit that I hadn't even finished putting together. A lot of faffing about, building flagpoles, making molds to convert some models and suddenly there was only a few days left of the month.

Very last minute, but I made it.

Larger size photo 

Imperial Guard Squad 100pts

Sergeant: Power sword, Plasma pistol 10pts

Heavy weapon team: Heavy Bolter 10pts

Special weapon: Grenade launcher 10pts

Chimera 140pts

Total: 270pts

I only later on realized that my Chimera is a not an MK1 model, so I added some Hellhound armour plates on the turret for compensation. I also made a flagpole and flag similar to the ones in the 2nd edition codex. While I was rushing to get everything finished I totally forgot the Chimera Storm bolter and couldn't manage to finish it in time because I hadn't made a pintle mount for it. It'll be mounted by next month. Tank markings will also be added.

I didn't have quite enough Cawdor gangers so theres a few Catachans and a Bretonnian archer to fill the unit of 10. The heavy weapon also changed from my original plan.

For my tribute I painted an Aspiring Chaos Champion in Terminator armour.

Side view 

It is in the post on it's way to Slaaneshchild. Slaanesh models didn't get a lot of attention in the 2nd edition codex, but I think these Daemonette bits go pretty well together with the terminator armour. I hope it has a similar mid 90's vibe as my Imperial Guard models. I was close to putting this on a 40mm base, but I'm glad I sticked to the original 25mm.

Next month I will paint another tank and hopefully also another unit. I hope to have atleast one tank painted per month.

Good luck for next month!

Paul's Dark Elves - Crossbows, but no catapults - Rank and File Month 1 (468 pts)

Ooooooh! It feels good to be OWACking again!

The pent up painting potential was just too much for us so we planned to go to bed early on NYE and get up at midnight so we could start our painting for the OCHO as soon as possible!

Five minutes later we had a big spill of Rakarth Flesh. Whomp-whomp.... Happy 2025! At least it wasn't Nuln Oil!

Worse than that, we'd been out for a walk in the woods earlier in the day to try and burn off some of the Twixt-mas cheese and chocolate calories and make sure we could sleep early... but Tom failed his save vs rope swing and lost a fair amount of skin off his hands and fingers. F*%K!!! It really wasn't good but he was an absolute trooper and insisted on painting even with bandaged hands... although that may have contributed to the spill... :p   

Anyway, we had a great time listening to ghost stories and painting through the witching hour, focussing on using up the Rakarth Flesh getting as much basing done as possible in one go, and then enjoying working on our OWAC tribute minis. 

I had fun converting these two plastic Daemonettes, one with a ram's skull and the braid from an EM4 plastic gang member, one with a RTB01 space marine close combat blade. Tom selected a Bloodletter that I'd recently been lucky enough to be gifted via a monthly painting challenge in the Middlehammer fb group and gave it a Christmas/Secret Santa inspired Grinch-like paint job. These are destined for one of our very well deserving admin team and will be going in the post this weekend, but I'll leave it as a surprise for that person :)

We were blessed with some really rubbish weather in January, and on top of that I was unwell at the beginning of the month. Obviously this was a blessing in disguise from the painting gods, and I did not waste this opportunity to crack on with my Dark Elves. 

But first, an introduction to the concept behind my Dark(ish) Elves, and how I see them fitting into the geography as well as the history of the Old World

The two maps below are snapped from the Dark Elf Army Book. The idea I had in mind for my rogue prince of Caledor is that he would take his ship and a small force of only his most loyal troops on this fateful voyage north, feiging a run to Arnheim but then steering even further north, making for a nearby Dark Elf port, but not one that was too big or powerful that he couldn't still fight his way free if his.... diplomatic.... overtures go awry. 

Dawn broke grey and grim across the bleak coast to the south of the blighted isles. The fetid mists of the Doom Glades rolled out over the dark river deltas behind them and met with the cold, clammy sea fog that now perpetually rolled in from the blasted Shadow Lands beyond the sea. The guards on the walls could rarely see very far in such conditions, but that didn't stop them keeping a watchful eye on these dangerous waters. High Elf corsairs were just as much of danger as sudden squalls and giant sea serpents in these waters. 

So it was that when a lone sail bearing the sign of a sea drake rising from a blood red sea against a storm grey sky appeared in the south, the alarm bells of the Dark Elf sea fort 'Daggerpoint' were quick to ring out. The crossbow wielding wardens of the first shift soon joined by the second shift, and then the third... 

This sigil was known to them. "The Blood Dragon". A fearsome reaver prince of Caledor, but not at the head of a fleet of warships... No... Just one lone sail.  Was he lost? Borne on rouge winds north of his intended destination of Arnheim? Was it a ruse to lure out their navy? Surely he couldn't hope to assail Daggerpoint on his own? Unless he knew the fearsome lord of the blighted isle was currently abroad with a portion of his strength?

The watch captains won't run the risk. The bells sound again. The city guard are called to muster.

The classic white plastic Dark Elf Crossbowmen from the Fantasy Regiments box set were always going to form the mainstay of my army and so I thought it was only right to start with them. I've split them into three units of 12 each, which in my head form the three different guard shifts, tasked with watching from the rain lashed walls of the blighted fortress.

I chose three main colours for the different units/guard shifts from what I considered to be a generally Dark Elf appropriate palette and went with purple, teal, and burgundy for the elements which I considered to be leather armour, and then a dark gunmetal with muted steel highlights for the metal elements. 

Other aspects of the uniformed kit were painted according to material, dark brown wood for the weapons, more dark steel for metal, and olive brown for leather strapping etc. I also introduced a pale grey tunic and alternate blue-grey leather colour to break up the darker elements but still keep it feeling grim and rain soaked. 

The skin is a base layer of vintage citadel Hideous Blue, blended into Elf Flesh, and given a purple wash.

I'm very happy with my first month's output and feel like the principles of limited colour palettes and therapeutic batch painting that have naturally evolved over previous OWACs are already serving me well.

Total for the month:

36 Dark Elf Crossbowmen  (13 pts each) - 468 pts 

Total: 468 pts

I can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to in their first month! :D 

Tom's Bony Bit

What's up Brothers!? Tombo's back for another year of OWAC madness!

I started with some base colours such as; Death World Forest for the ghoul skin, and Leather Brown, and of course lots of Rakarth Flesh for the rags. I then moved on to doing highlights on the elevated parts of their bodies with Ogryn Camo. I then had a break from painting the Ghouls and did all the basing for the rest of my army.

I then finished the Ghouls with a blue wash over all the skin and Skeleton Horde and Gulliman Flesh on the rags. The slightly red tone of the gulliman flesh enhanced the orange tone of the brown rags to make them different from the paler Rakarth Flesh and Skeleton Horde combo.

 

I am really happy with how they look next to my ghoul king from last year. I am quite proud of myself after the first month. I think it was a successful month and I have already started on next months skeleton crossbowmen!

Total for the month:

20 Ghouls  (8 pts each) - 160 pts 

Total: 160 pts

Hope everyone had a good and successful month and I am looking forward to seeing every ones posts!