AdamH's Tyranids - If you got the money, honey, we got your disease (575 Points)

If you have ever followed one of my OWAC entries in the past you will know I always try and go out on a bang, well this entry is no different. I’m going to waffle a lot this month and show pictures of unpainted things so if you are not interested in any of that feel free to scroll down to the bright pictures at the bottom of this post.

You may have seen a small clue I left to this month’s entry back in my introduction post, and if you did, well done. This month is my biggest…

WILDCARD!

WAFFLE COMMENCE:

Back when I started planning this challenge it was always in my mind that I wanted to paint one of the original Armorcast Tyranid bio-tanks, so I went a searching around facebook groups to see if I could track one down and as you will see, ended up with more than I expected.

I managed to track down one of the original Malefactors, however the previous owner had converted it to a different pose. While I didn’t necessarily dislike the pose I wanted it to be as close to original as possible. So I started by stripping off the paint to unveil the previous work:

You can see that what they did was cut the arm and flip one of the pieces upside down to give it a different angle. They also cut both arms at the base again to change the angles:

So next I cut along the lines that were originally cut and removed as much of the glue as possible, this revealed that a bit of detail had been stripped away during the conversion:

I pinned the pieces back into their original poses and set about sculpting back the missing detail:

And when undercoated I think I managed to return it to the original pose fairly well don’t you think? Oh yea, also he came with a completely standard brother:

And two friends:

Spot the Termagant included for scale...

So yea, the purchase I made actually included one of each of the bio-tanks, and two of the Malefactors. A little more than I was planning to take on in the OWAC but I don’t like to turn down a challenge!

First up the two you have already seen, two Malefactors:

For those of you that are not in the know, these are the Tyranid troop transports, essentially bio-rhinos so having two of them is actually pretty useful in a list. They are also pretty cheap points-wise. They are not that much faster than the units they transport until they get to “fast” speed but they are nicely armoured so should help to deposit your gribblies into combat relatively unscathed.

Painting for these was done much in the same way as the rest of the army, with the same scheme only not quite as detailed. This is partially due to time restrictions (i.e. I would have never got them all done in time), and the relatively low level of detail on the actual sculpts. Never-the-less I think they look pretty striking and certainly fit in with the rest of the force.

The final missing piece when putting these together was the base. I knew I wanted to tie them into the rest of the army with more than just the colour scheme but no one made a base big enough. So 21^st century technology to the rescue, and one trip to thingiverse later I had the 3d plans for regular sized oval bases and some quick edits and they were scaled to the right dimensions. Even so however they were so big they wouldn’t fit on my printing bed in one go so I had to split them in half, print two and then stick them together. I also made use of the extra space on the base to include some bigger foliage, again the 3d printer to the rescue and I printed some palm tree looking trunks. Again I think they look pretty decent and bring some nice verticality to an otherwise quite squat looking army.

Next up we have the Exocrine, basically a Rhino with a gun for a horn:

As expected, this is similar to a Basilisk only a little stronger. Same range and strength but an extra D6 damage and armour penetration and double the save modifier. Basically, it is a tank killer.

Same scheme and basing style as before, I guess the only new element would be the green to bone transition on the gun. Not sure if it fully works but could be worse I guess.

Something you may have noticed is the slime trail behind each of these models. I built up the base with hot glue to give the look of furrows being driven into the ground and then filled them with red ink and gloss varnish.

Finally, we have the Haruspex:

This chap is a bit of everything, a couple of different medium range weapons, one for troops another for tanks and a close combat weapon for chomping anything silly enough to get close.

I guess the main stand out point of this model is that I tried to carry over the NMM effect onto the claws that I have in other parts of the army. Not sure it works as well on such a big model but it certainly is striking so I don’t hate it.

So wrapping up, my points for this month are as follows:

 

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
Malefactor (80)		2	160
Exocrine (165)		1	165
Haruspex (250)		1	250
TOTAL			575

And that is it, challenge over (for me at least). When I started I wasn’t sure I would be able to get everything done, and as it turned out I actually managed to add a few additions. Everything looks really cohesive, which I am very proud about and I can’t wait to show you all the full shots next month. But until then I hope you have enjoyed seeing me paint this very red force this year and have enjoyed everyone else’s entries just as much as I have.

Filippo's Ultramarine - FREEEEMMMMM!!!! Predator (165 points)

Rank & File #4

I think it's time to blow this scene

Get everybody and their stuff together

OK, three, two, one let's jam

I'm definitely not happy. For June I had to search an alternative to avoid failing miserably, so I grabbed the Predator I was planning to do for a different project and quickly paint it.

I could blame the intense heat of these days which makes almost impossible painting, I could blame the work, family and other things I had to do, but in the end the blame is on me. I almost screw it up.

Almost!
(muahahahhahahahha I DID IT! I'M FINALLY FREEEEEEEeeee......)

Here's my Predator Annhilator (Freeeeeemmmmmm!!!!!!)

The bulky design is a little uglier compared to the Rogue Era's Predator, but still is one piece I always loved and dreamed to have.

It was hard to find reference to the original version with the Lascannon, and I was worried about the red cupola. I feared it could be too bright, but luckily it ended quite fine

Predator: 90 points
Lascannon sponsors: 45 points
Twin Lascannons: 30 points

I miss the devastator squad, surely it would have been a nice entry, but this will be enough to vaporize Andrea's pointy-ears when we'll finally play together next month :D

Mariano´s Wood Elves - Miscelanea (381 pts)

WILD CARD

Hi,

For the last month I had very clear what I have to do because I had all units without the standard bearer and the musician so finish them was the main objective. But mostly of them were in different states of painting work from previous months so that gave me the possibility to add a couple of extra heroes... 

Orion´s banner

So what have I done this month...?

Warrior kinbands musician and statandard bearer (36) Spear (2) + Light armour (4)

Total:42

Warrior kinbands musician and statandard bearer (36) Light armour (4)

Total: 40

Lord´s bowmen musician and statandard bearer (48) Light armour (4)

Total: 52

Lord´s bowmen musician and statandard bearer (48) Light armour (4)

Total: 52

1 Hero L5 (48) + Spear (1) + Heavy armour (3) + Shield (1)

Total: 53

1 Hero L10 (88) + Heavy armour (3) + Shield (1)

Total: 92

381 on th month

1336 for the total.

Lets see the stardard bearers and the musicians:

Warriors kinbands:

Lord´s bowmen:

New heroes

Hero L5 has been the latest addition  to the list and it happened because Markus Leeb sent me this miniature as a present with the only condition to paint it so better to do it on the Challenge. THANKS MARKUS!!! I have painted him to be included as soldier on the Eternal Guard unit or as a Hero...

Last work I have done has been a battle standard bearer. He was not listed but he was on one of the first pics so I really wanted to paint him. I have modified the miniature form previous pic because I wanted him to have more presence on the battlefield (oldhammed banner is a big hammer, you´know). I'm very happy with the result

Well, I hope you like it. I can´t wait to do a family pic with all them together....

Ratwig's OWAC IV Rank & File #4 (286 points)

My last regular submission for OWAC IV consists of a unit of Dark Elf warriors equipped with halberds and led by Varlok, a level 10 hero who is not equipped with a halberd as that is not an option for Dark Elf characters in 3rd Edition Warhammer Armies. All figures are Marauder except the standard bearer and Varlok, which are older Citadel figs. Varlok was converted by replacing his head with a plastic one from the old DE crossbow figs. The standard bearer had been modified by a previous owner who cut down his spear so it looked like he had a sword. I cut off the spear head and added a section of brass rod with copper wire wrapped around it to make the standard pole. The flag is paper. The shields are by Gripping Beast. 

1 x Level 10 DE Hero: hand weapon, light armor (+2), shield (+1) = 91 points

14 x Dark Elf Warriors: hand weapon, light armor, shield, halberd (+2), standard (+13) = 195

Total points = 286 

Varlok:

The rest of his anti social band of miscreants:

I didn't get to finish as many figs this time as I had originally planned to. They will have to roll over to another OWAC to complete my Dark Elf army. I hit a burn out wall around half way through and struggled to paint anything so I'm lucky I didn't end up in the field of bones, whew! I may take a break from Dark Elves next OWAC and paint something completely different, we shall see how I feel about the DE hordes I still have remaining next time.

Have a good day! It's Jack time here!

Ratwig out.

Lissanne's Eldar- Welcome to the Machine (358 pts)

Defense of the Maiden World part 6
(Wild card month)
 

Unexpected reinforcements!  Space Pirates!  These space pirates have a secret base on this maiden world.  Since they take great pains not to disturb the world in any way, or be tracked here, the Worldsinger Yavanna lets them be.  But they will join the fight to keep their base a secret!

   For my Wild Card month, instead of painting more of things I already have, I finally decided to do as many 'must paint' minis as I could.  Didn't do to badly!

First, this tempest has sat around for decades with a bit of blue and red paint splashed on it.  I decided to finish it for the Wild Card, because anything goes.  But I will only take partial points, because it was started, just the color design, but...  (Not like I need the points, anyway)  Keeping with the prog rock art theme, this one is based on the illustrations of Gerald Scarfe,  specifically the Sea of Blood and Metal Monster, images from Welcome to the Machine, adapted to fit on the Tempest.  I am very very happy to have it finished after all this time! Here are some pics, and since I paint tops AND unseen bottoms (and it doesn't need glue) pics of the parts too.  Even painted some of the adoring hands from the Sea of Blood on it!

And a squad of Space Pirates!  Well, Shadow Spectres posing as 2nd edition Space Pirates.  A squad of 5 and an Pirate Captain (exarch).  And what self respecting crew of space pirates would go anywhere without their Jokaero!  Anything goes this month, as long as it's in your army list!

My story of the Shadow Spectres- you can skip this paragraph if you don't like stories.  Long ago, GW ran a series of in-store battles to determine the fate of Cadia.  Oh, and by the way, if Cadia fell, Ulthwe would fall as well.  If it stood, a new type of Aspect Warriors would appear.  It was an anything goes battle of just 6 turns, so I came up with a novel strategy, that myself and my 2 juniors used.  We brought our Armorcast Titans, stepped in front of the gate round 1, and shouted 'We don't care about the mon-keigh,  we're here to save Ulthwe.'  And such like. The opposition couldn't blast the titan AND the gate in 6 turns.  We won 6 of these games that way, myself 3 and my junior captains 3.   I think Cadia ended up winning by 3 games, if I remember.  But it seems there were GW reps at every game, and they couldn't help but hear our battle cry.  We said it often. So Cadia fared less well than it might have, but Ulthwe stood, and the next aspect warrior figures to appear were the Shadow Spectres.  As a result, I have an undue fondness for this faction, and took this Wild Card opportunity to finally paint them.  They weren't easy to paint either, fiddly little things.

Here are the 'space pirates' in pairs, and a back shot which is mostly ribbons.

Oh, I have them unpainted too. should be fair about it (when I remember to take 'Before' pics)

   The Jokaero- another mini sitting about for about a decade, when I got the bright idea to paint it for the challenge.  Some pics

So there you have my last entry for this OWAC.  I'm not bothering figuring wargear, I don't need the points, and I don't like math.  And Jokaero are in RT not 2nd edition, so no points there,  I'm only taking half points for the Tempest because I had decided the color pattern beforehand (but again, don't need the points)

Rundown:
Tempest- 300 pts
Space Pirates-45 pts
Pirate Captain-13 pts
Jokaero- 0 pts
total (more or less) 358 pts

I hope everyone else had a fun and productive OWAC too!  Next, the wrap up post!

Bill's Greenskins: Hell on Wheels (240 pts)

 Leader Month

"Oi, Nakscrath, wot'choo got fer me?" rumbled Yorzolg, red eyes narrowed as he tried to stare down the gloom inside the tent.

"Yer gonna love dis, boss. Remember dat absolute mad lad Chaos git last summer?" The smaller orc stumped forward on his peg leg, grinning maniacally.

Yorzolg chuckled cruelly, "Haw haw, yeah I do! Remember wot 'e said right afore I gigged 'im?"

The two greenskins recited in unison, "Blood fer da blood - Aaaaggghhhh!"

"Right, well, we still 'ad 'is fancy ride sittin' around, and so's I scraped off mosta da Chaos gubbins an' painted it up proper Orc-like. Figgered yez'd look right Big Bossy ridin' on dis!"

Yorzolg's eyes widened as Nakscrath pulled a tarp off the chariot. The sides sewn out of human faces had been painted a tasteful red-and-black check pattern, a huge, scowling Evil Sun graced the front and the bronze horned skull on the end of the prow gleamed from being freshly polished. 

"Now dis is right Propa," Yorzolg said approvingly. The war boars already lashed to the chariot snorted and pawed the ground. Nakscrath climbed in, taking up the reins as Yorzolg boarded behind him. 

"Yez'd betta not even fink about farting," Yorzolg growled to the smaller orc.

This was a challenging month for me. I got lucky and got most of the chariot finished before the end of May, but June brought on a bad case of the blues; I lost all energy to do anything after clocking out of my day job, and the thought of picking up a paintbrush felt insurmountable. Painting Yorzolg turned into a grueling forced march of 5 minutes of painting here, 3 there, maybe 10 minutes on a Saturday. I used Contrast paints (Iyanden Yellow and Snakebite Leather) to try and speed things along, then cursed myself out for a week straight for not simply quartering the yellow and black color scheme and doing the full puff-and-slash. And there was no way I was going to manage to do the diorama base I'd originally planned on; a 50x100mm MDF base painted Goblin Green would have to suffice.  

But I made it work. And I was able to glue a Yorzolg I was happy with in behind his driver, glue the boars down to the base and flock it, then glue the chariot to the base and to the boars. It was done.

 

The chariot itself is a Beastman Chariot from Warmonger Miniatures, with the occupants replaced and some slight modifications; the horned skull on the beam is originally from Grom the Paunch's chariot from 4th edition WHFB. I had originally thought I'd manage to put two crewmen (a driver and a banner-bearer) in along with Yorzolg but once I had the pieces in my hands it was obvious that the orcs were just too beefy for that. As is the chariot is comically crowded, and I needed to add a platform for Yorzolg to stand on to be able to see over his driver's shoulders. The back of that platform is covered by a "bumper" made of three goblin shields from Knightmare Games glued to a strip of plastic card. 

Overall, even without the supersized diorama base, I feel like this is a suitably impressive piece to conclude my first OWAC on. Even better, it contains pieces from Warmonger, Citadel and Knightmare, making it representative of most of the companies I've bought figures from for this army. We've got some freehand in there which I'm really proud of (I've become such a big fan of painting these Evil Sun faces) and I even worked in the classic Games Workshop checkerboard pattern. 

The chariot rolled to a halt, the heavy boars grunting against the weight. Before him, stretching out as far as he could see down the Black Fire Pass, Yorzolg could see more orcs gathered than he could even begin to count. 

Throwing his arms wide, sword held aloft, he addressed the teeming horde.

"Boyz, gobbos, an' assorted rest of yez," he began, "tha eyes o' Gork and Mork are on yez today, an' I'm tellin' yez dey's grinnin'! 'Cuz dis right 'ere, yez lot o' greenskins, both da big'uns an' da useless 'uns, yez make up da greatest ting ever seen on dis, or any, world - yer a WAAAAAAGH! NOW LET'S HIT DA MOUF O' DIS 'ERE BLACK FIRE PASS, AN' SHOW DEM HUMIES WOT IS FEAR!"

The crowd began to cheer. Yorzolg grinned, baring his teeth. This was his moment.

So that's it for me for June, and for OWAC IV. Let's see what that comes to points-wise:

• Yorzolg himself is a Level 25 Orc Hero, with Light Armor and a Handweapon - 145
• Chariot with a single Orc crewman, scythed wheels, drawn by a pair of War Boars - 95

For a June total of 240 points, and an overall total for OWAC IV of 1248 points!

Tom's June Bad Moon Orks (61points)

Rank and File month 4

Oueff! The last month of painting - and not a moment too soon! Real life is hectic, motivation has waned and the grind on these last few models is very real indeed... This month is the first time I've had to lean on the rules and submit 10 models rather than 200points.

Here's a pic of this months models (For the first pic = the post banner pic)

I had such great plans for this month; I really wanted to finish off some models that I put a bit of paint on throughout this challenge, but not completed. Another dread and a buggy for one. 

There's a load of boys to paint also, and I hope to paint at least another 10, hopefully (realistically) sometime before Christmas. Bikers and wartraks and buggies and big gunz will have to wait a little longer.

Anyhow - on to the models I have actually painted:

Runts for the Runtherds!

Sorry for the blurry pics, I blame the new phone... Anyhow, I enjoyed painting these fellas up. They're smol, but simple - I like them :)

I painted the banners moon as slightly worried. Kinda apt...

This guy 👇 has some freebooting aspirations...

Runtherds:

A snakebite sculpt in freebooting colours. I liked painting this guy - he's responsible for me getting my painting mojo back (just knuckling down and a few 10min sessions over a couple of mornings, and then awaaaay!)

Here's the runtherd that runs the squig catapult and crew. Surprisingly I've painted him not in stripes. Half of this was for motivations. I just wanted some easy colour choices, and that deep blueblack was an easy choice to make.

These runtherds also love their squigs, so here's a couple to keep them company. These are also good motivation boosters as one can go from undercoated to finished in an evening, with maybe a bit of paint on something else at the same time.

Crew for the big guns. These guys, because I HAD to paint them ,  sucked the life out of me. I was relieved to get them done, and to be fair once I started on them  they painted up quickly. Just that initial push was a proper sticking point.

Standard bearer for da ladz. Well, he can be a stand in army standard bearer if I need one - and what's more, I don't need to actually paint a banner. Win!

And to finish off the freebooter mob (for the purpose of the OWAC - I've still like 7 more to do!) these guys:

Holy moley, look at the size of this guy! He must be particularly shtoopid to not be the top dog though. Either way, his martial prowess has garnered him some serious firepower.

I also painted a banner for the dreadnaught from last month :)  It's super simple, but at least it's done.

Well, that kinda wraps it up - sorry no extras, but as a bonus here's a cracking group shot of all the runtherds. I really like them and I'm super proud of them! I believe I might have one more to paint, and then that's all the runtherds accounted for... Some of the squigs I had painted before the challenge, and I include them in this pic for artistic licence.

Fingers crossed I'll have some proper decent photos of da lads, with some proper lighting and focus for the round-up and army shots next month.

Laters!

Intro

(Proposed army list)

link

January

(Rank and file month 1)

link

February 

(Rank and file month 2)

link

March 

(Rank and file month 3)

link

April

(Leader month)

link

May

(Wildcard month)

link

June

(Rank and file month 4)

12...Ork boy

24...Freebooters x2

25...Grots x5

Runtherds x2 - free

Squigs x2 - free

Grot Crew x2 - free

TOTAL: 61 points, which should put me in at around 1300 points for the whole army! |YAY|