Dustin's Big Finish for June (200 points)

June turned out to be another busy month, but despite breaking the 1,000 point barrier in May, I really wanted to avoid taking a mulligan on the last month of the challenge. I was originally going to paint more trolls, then I thought about doing some squig hunters, and then it hit me--I should really paint a giant. Historicon is coming up and I'm looking forward to playing some games of 3rd edition, so having a giant drunkenly stumbling around the battlefield naturally sounded appealing.

Giant -- 200 points

This guy is from Reaper (02770: Lunkh, Hill Giant). He's a little on the small side (not like all those real giants out there), but I like his pose and general shouty expression. Despite this, I did not enjoy painting him as much as I expected. I also noticed a couple of moldlines after I had started painting him, so it's not exactly my finest hour. Regardless, I've got a giant to throw down at Historicon, and I've completed the OWAC without using my mulligan, success!

Gobbo for scale.

Paul's Gribbly Beasts of Nurgle - Month Six (354.5 points)

The Watcher saw the corruption everywhere it looked as the war band moved across the land. The very ground heaved with a multitude of tiny multicoloured demons, aping the forms of their larger cousins, capering among a moving carpet of blood filled maggots that seemed to be spontaneously generating in the morass of the warband's passing.

The change had touched every living thing for miles around, as witnessed by the crooked forms of the Goblins that had started tailing the main force, their number slowly growing as the changes they endured made it impossible for them to stay with their old tribes, and impossible to resist the call of Chaos.

The great armoured warriors were the last to come to the Gandfather's banner. That was only right. Only the greatest Warbands could force these aspiring champions to put aside their own ambitions and fight together for the greater glory of Chaos.

The Warband marched onwards, destined to cause carnage and corruption to any in its path! The Watcher watched... and was pleased. This was prophecy fulfilled, but this was not the end... 


Whoop! and, indeed, Booom! Six straight months of OWACateering and no mulligan. I am exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure.

Having made strong start to the month getting everything base coated within the first week, progress then slowed to absolute zero until the last few days of the month when heat wave and stomach bug be damned I was going to get this thing put to bed.

To be honest this has meant I had to rush some models I'd been deliberately saving until last so I could enjoy them (note for future challenges - it doesn't always work that way and probably best to space them out) but where as the repetition of the colour schemes had been beginning to wear me down at the beginning of the month and contributed to no progress being made, once the pressure was on having the colour schemes predetermined was a big help in getting stuff done.

As I think was mentioned on one of the fb groups recently, it doesn't always have to be a work of art, sometimes you just have to have a good recipe, and that has absolutely been my mantra for this army - stick to the recipe. This month that has probably meant not making as much of the four classic Chaos Champions as I should/could have, but hey, they are painted and look very much part of the army... for now at least, even if chomping at the bit to split off into their own warbands given the slightest chance! ;)

To balance out the four Champions, I included some sculpts in this unit that I felt represented Chaos Marauders who had just stepped up a pay grade. However in researching this post I discovered it was even more of a promotion! The bearded Axe Man turns out to be Chaos Thug sculpt 021307 from the 1988 catalogue, and the furry booted harpoon fetishist is sculpt 021310 - thanks CCmWiki! Shout out to fellow challenger Tom Young for a great deal on these Thugs/Marauders turned Warriors :)

A number of these included shield bosses... but no shields. I'm not counting equipment costs for any of my OWAC units, but if I was these guys would be getting Double Handed weapons, so I wouldn't have included shields anyway. That's not to say they won't get them in the future just for completeness, and painting them as part of the armour just doesn't work for me, hence why the shield bosses have been left black.

The beardy axeman on the end (who for some reason I think looks like a Norscan Raider, even if we all know that heavy armour would be totes innapropes for maritime combat) has a doppleganger who is going to be Iannick's thank you mini for running the challenge. As someone who runs painting challenges myself on a much smaller scale I have some sense of how much work this all is so I was very happy to be able to select something that I hope both feels like it belongs to the OWAC but might also come in handy in the odd D&D game now and then. He got painted in a slightly more neutral colour scheme with that double partly life in mind, as well as the beetle-shell blue feeling like it was in keeping with his possible Norscan roots.

The Nurglings were painted in the full cacophony of colours present across the warband, deliberately echoing some of the plague bearers and Beasts of Nurgle in particular. The chaos warriors helped get me over my fear of putting purple and red next to each other in a unit, and the Nurglings helped get me over the fear of putting them on the same base. It is chaos after all, not a colour scheme for a bathroom suite. Although now I'm thinking about brown and avocado 80s Plague Marines as a 'vanity' project...

My plan to paint the little blood filled maggots with Tamiya Clear red over a dark red base, then a flesh coloured dry brush over the top turned out OK. Would have been better if I'd realised I wanted to do that before doing other base colours, but hey... it looks sufficiently gross that both my children actually made a face when I showed it to them. Result :)

These 'Chaos Goblins' really are a hodge podge. Including a 'unit' of five goblins obviously serves no tactical purpose (although I have already acquired more suitable minis to bulk up this unit) and at 12.5 pts for the whole lot it obviously wasn't about bulking out on points (probably the opposite really as I was already over the 1000 pts mark at the planning stage). No, this was always about painting a collection of old minis that I really liked the look of and would almost certainly not get painted otherwise.

Three of the five were damaged in some way, with odd poses or very thin joins making weapon repairs a bit of a challenge, I want to say these are from an early Middle Earth range, but I haven't made any serious investigations as yet (clues welcome in the comments!). I think my favourite is the slightly oriental looking Hobgoblin chap. He got Oni-red skin and off-white hair to play up the slightly eastern mythology feel, which I think has worked.

The next one was bobbling around my collection missing it's head and I have lost count of the number of times I'd picked it up and thought about sticking a white plastic goblin head from the Fantasy Regiments box set to make it into a Chaos Goblin - it was the inspiration for this little unit to be honest. Thanks to research on the beastment last month I now know it is the Broo Attacking body from the Runequest Broo Box Set.

The final sculpt is of course the classic 80s Citadel skull faced Chaos Thug (code 021002 from the 1988 Catalogue), another trade from Tom Young and a mini I have long wanted to have in my collection (Cheers again Tom!). He's had a bit of a demotion down from thug to goblin. Who even knew that was possible!? Perhaps that is why he looks so confused and down on his luck.

So here is June's breakdown:

5 Nurgling Bases (30 pts each) - 150 pts
5 Chaos Goblins  (2.5 pts each) - 12.5 pts
8 Chaos Warriors (24 pts each) - 192 pts
1 Chaos Warrior for Iannick's Thank You present - 0 pts

Total for the month: 354.5
I realised too late that I didn't take a picture of the whole unit of Chaos Warriors in the light box, so here's a pic I took of the whole month's minis with the unit ranked up :)

Right that's me done until the wrap up posts. Massive congratulations to everyone who has made it to the end! :D

Jeff McC's Dark Elves - June (215 Points)

This one was down to the wire, but I made it. June included me retiring from the Navy, my eldest graduating from High School, selling one house, finding and buying another, and prepping the house for the movers who showed up on the 1st of July. Whew! Somewhere in all of that I got these done, though I'll admit, I was still applying paint on the 30th of June.

 5 Hell Drakes with Lances 

(43 points each)

 A little better view of the shields

I'm rather pleased with this unit, especially since I was questioning some of my color choices all the way through. I pushed outside my comfort zone with the orange and turquoise, but I think it came together in the end.  This is another of the Khorne/Khaine units in the army, and I wanted to stand them apart a bit from the more fanatically devoted units like the witch elves, and I think the orange and turquoise helped achieve that.  I was also pleased that I was able to find a friend willing to sell me the 4th lancer during the course of the challenge, allowing me to field an all marauder unit and leaving me enough riders with hand weapons on the earlier style of cold ones to  put together a unit of Doom Drakes later on. (OWAC 3?)

I've enjoyed this year's challenge; I find a deadline massively helpful for getting things done.  I'll show off the completed force in next month's summary post, so that just leaves one question at this point....Any oldhammerers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN area?

Tom's Dwarfs, Month Six (449 points)

Well, I write this at the eleventh hour on the Thirtieth of June.

This month has been mentally super stressful, for personal reasons.

Physically though, I've just had some cartilage removed from my knee which has laid me up a bit and, although I've kinda enjoyed my time off from work, I've not made the best painting use of it.

I started my months quota relatively late on the 19th, after languishing in a doldrum, so all in all I'm very pleased with my output!

Here's some before pics, as they were not in my original quote. You'll have to forgive that basecoat painted dude - I was too eager to get started!

They are pictured with models I've painted for the challenge - that's their 'timestamp' :)

Once I had painted these up, it turned out that I'd really enjoyed painting them and I'd be able to paint a few more in the allotted time, so here's their pic:

That gyrocopter was for if I was feeling particularly motivated and flash. Turns out I wasn't, so he sadly remains unpainted.

Everything else though, is painted and roughly based - however the banners are not done yet. And neither are all the movement trays. I think these can be deemed as non-essential, and so they can wait for tomorrow! (And, if not tomorrow, then the follow-up OWAC2 post which'll include a nice army shot).

It being late, I'll have to do my photo's tomorrow too, but you can take my word that my 200points for this month is done.

Actually, I'll take a rough photo now, for those of you who doubt, (although I guess there's no timestamp to be had):

Here we have 27 doughty warriors ready to protect the Hold. It includes Champion, a Hero, a Musician and a Standard Bearer, for a princely total of 449 points.

I always wanted to paint up a large unit in the Oldhammer tradition of using monopose plastics as the main bulk, and metals for the front line and here it is! For the record, I really prefer these plastic over the round comical looking ones that came out after these. The ones that look like this:

Anyhow, after a nights sleep, and gluing the tufts onto the bases, here are some pictures of the completed unit models:

The standard doughty dwarf!

The greater horned doughty dwarf!

I see here that I've forgotten to add shields to the metals which need them (like this dude on the left). They're done and on the painting table, but right now I will save the completed pic for the next instalment.

Twins, pictured above! The twins were the first metal models I painted for this unit. I had in my mind to paint an Anvil of Doom, but in the end I thought I'd best stick to the range. They reminded me, strangely, of the Anvil guards which is kinda fitting.

The unit hero pictured above with two of his chums. I really like this model - the hammer looks like it packs a hefty whack!

The champion, standard bearer and musician. I disliked painting the champ for some reason, so he's a bit rough... To be fair, I think they're all a little rushed, although I feel that the plastics came out much better than the metals! 

As an aside, you can really see the downside of taking photos outside, where the very slightly different light conditions create a not so uniform effect. Fingers crossed a friend will take some proper photos in a couple of days, which should look noticeably better.

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A group shot!

I've the movement tray ready for painting, and I'm just waiting on some magnetic sheets to come in the post so that I can create some more movement trays for the war machine crews, and a spare tray so that I can re-arrange the warrior units into different weapon types.

Here in this unit, it was a conscious choice to paint as many metal dwarfs with hammers as I had left. I could mix these up with the other hammer holders in the Homestead dwarf unit, and so draft in a unit of Hammerers. Failing that, I guess the front rank can demonstrate the unit type instead...

To go with them is an EXTRA model, brought as a nice find on ebay after the start of the challenge. An iconic slayer champion - aaaand I'm choosing the least points value here, so he'll count as a Giant Slayer for the purpose of the OWAC round up next post.

He was painted a little while ago though.

Apologies in advance for the style range break.

Here's his before pic - pictured with some of last months Goblobber crew mid paint as a timestamp:

And done:

He costs 63 points. I liked painting him, but I do regret not putting blue war paint // tattoos on any of my slayers,. Never mind. I guess I could go back over them again if I really wanted to...

That's it for this month I'm afraid. I guess they all count as extras anyhow, as I'm well over the thousand mark :)

Here's a 'group shot' of all my 1000 points - a before and after, if you will.

I've done my best to lay the painted ones out exactly like they were when they were unpainted.

The only model I failed to do was the duplicate King Gorin. He was originally meant to be Iannick's tribute, but instead he received an injured fellow as;

1) I thought the injured dwarf would see more tabletop time as an objective or something and,

2) I really didn't like painting my own King Gorin!

Here's a link to the original, starting post: LINK

And here they all are painted up.

I've left out the many extra units/models/items I was fortunate enough to complete.

You'll have to tune in next time for the full model shot, count and breakdown!

Hopefully by then I'll have the banners done too, although I can't promise anything...

There are some cracking armies coming to completion in this OWAC, and I've felt privileged to be a part of it. I can't wait to see all their complete army shots!

Many thanks to Iannick for creating and running such a lovely challenge. I still have some units of Dwarfs left to paint (Bugmans Rangers, Prince Uthers Dragon Company, the rotund plastics, Thunderers, more crossbows, more war machines, Thrones, Anvils - LOADS! ...but I doubt they'll see any paint until next year. Right now I'm very much enthused on another army project, and hopefully these new GW contrast paints should be just the trick for them).

Here's some links as usual:

January:
130...Crossbowmen
54...Bolt Thrower
33...Warriors
LINK

February
202...Slayers
LINK

March
143...Warriors
110...Cannon
LINK

April
176...Warriors
209...Warriors
LINK

May
160...General
74...Stone Thrower
LINK

June
449...Warriors

TOTAL POINTS: 1740 (not including the extras - they'll be in the breakdown next time)

Cheers all!

Nathan's 206 points of hobgoblins

Well I got there. During the last 6 months I had times when I didn’t think I would make it to be honest. Hobgoblins are fun to paint but with no cavalry I had to paint quite a few of them to get to 1000 points. Thankfully heroes and banners bolstered my points totals as I couldn’t have painted 1000 points of rank and file in 6 months. 12 months maybe. Anyway for June I finished:

- mercenary commander (the temple dog was done earlier) with light armour and a spear for 108 points
- 4 hobyars with light armour and double handed weapons for 40 points
- 7 mourngul renegades with shields, light armour and hand weapons for 56 points

So 206 points all up. I do need to add a shield to the commander at some stage. Going to be a pretty small one as there isn’t much room. Anyway here they are:

Andrea's non-Mulligan post

Hi guys,

this is my non-Mulligan post!

My OWAC2 list was finished last month but while painting I had the opportunity to round up ranks&files with some nice addition. So, instead of enjoying my Mulligan month (maybe painting something waiting on the ever-growing lead pile) and boldly take the walk of shame,  I decided to undertake one last, small effort.

Last month I included two additional beastmen and this month I will show you two more chaos warriors:

Let me introduce Ulfhdhnar the Destroyer (on the left), with his very nice the wolf cape, and Utokh Vilespike (right).

They will complete my chaos warriors regiment, which is now 10 men worth!

So this is really the completion of my OWAC2. Next step: wrap up post!

Cheers, A.

ZeroTwentythree's June Sea Elves (316 pts)

June 30: I finished the last bits of the chariot. Down to the last day of the challenge, and I was up late the last two nights to get it done. But June was the worst of the past few months of excessive work travel. (The travel is done for the moment as well -- now that the OWAC is over. Ha!)

So here's the final portion of the sea elves for the challenge:

1 Warwain with scythed wheels, shield, longbow...... 162 pts

8 Warriors with spears (+1 shield) ..... 89 pts

1 Marsh troll ..... 65 pts

June Total: 316 pts.

Most importantly, I finished the Elven Attack Chariot, which was a large part of my decision to paint elves. After decades of sitting in a bin, the model is finally painted! Even if I got nothing else done for the elves, and even though it's FAR from my best painting, THIS feels like victory!

There were a couple of missing bits from the chariot -- I think there is a javelin case, and the spear-elf should have a cape. But I like it better without the cape anyway, and the model is busy enough that it doesn't need the javelins

The mage/falconer was miscast and has a mangled face. I painted it like a scar and figured it's part of the dangers of handling aggressive birds of prey.

I had a bit of fluff from the perspective of some wood elf scouts half-written in my head, but I'm a bit tired and won't get to it at the moment. Maybe by the time of the army wrap-up in the next week or two.

Coming soon is my OWAC2 wrap-up, and a look forward to a few minor post-OWAC additions I have planned