AdamH's Brets in le house! (215 pts)

I made it!!

You might look at this small volume of models and think to yourself “Adam, that isn’t exactly a lot of models you have painted there, I do that every week” and I would say to you “well that is kind of rude but I get what you are saying, that isn’t a lot of models for a month’s work.” However, what you don’t know about me is that I am an extremely slow painter. What you see below is the result of me painting at least one hour a day for the last month, frequently more on the weekends. I know they might not look good enough for that sort of time but here we are.

For me this represents a huge step towards finally having a fully painted army, which in my on-and-off 25 years of collecting would be a first. If I can keep this pace going, I am hopeful to finally have something to bring to the table that I am proud of.

Soppy sentiments aside this week I painted three Knights of the Realm and six Mounted Yeomen. The Knights I have kept very simple intentionally as I have never painted anything similar before so I wanted to get the basics down first before trying anything more complex. The plan is to do at least another month of these basic guys before I try anything more interesting pattern wise. That said I tried to make them look nice with some bright colours and simple patterns, following the suggestions in the 5^th Edition Bretonnian book of using combination colours of white or yellow and then another colour. Hopefully these look simple, yet striking.

Next was the six Mounted Yeomen, now with all the peasants in my army I am going to be painting them in these browns and greens as I imagine them all to be part of Bertrand’s band of brigands defending their land alongside the local nobility. To this end I used muted colours to represent the natural fabrics and sort-of camouflage that they would be using to stay hidden in the local woods and forests.

The very keen eyed amongst you may notice that a few details remain unpainted, such as the eyes on the Yeomen, this is deliberate as I am still getting back into the swing of painting and don’t want to push myself and end up ruining the figures. I plan to go back at the end of the challenge and tidy up these little details but for now at least they look OK at tabletop height.

So to sum up, this month I have submitted:

117 - 3x Knights of the Realm

98 - 6x Mounted Squires with bows and musician

For a total of 215 points.

To all my fellow participants I hope you are enjoying the challenge so far, it is great to see all of your fabulous models being shown and can’t wait to see what else is coming. To everyone else following along with us I hope you have enjoyed the show thus far!

-          AdamH

Mustafa's Meinolf Fehrenbach’s journal. 32nd of Nachexen (195pts)

32nd of Nachexen

Restful sleep continues to allude me. Despite retiring to bed as early as I can, I rise in the mornings and find myself drained and pale. Ghastly images fill my mind and cause me to wake several times during the night, often screaming. Sigmar knows what the servants must make of it all.

The physicians cannot find any reason for this, but have advised me to record my visions in a journal as they feel it may provide an insight into whatever malady is afflicting me.

Last night as I slept I found myself in a landscape that was an utter and abhorrent perversion of nature. The air was fetid and sticky, trees oozed bloody bile, leaves shrieked in pain as the wind swept through them, and clawed hands frantically grabbed at me from the earth.

As I made my way through this nightmarish terrain I encountered several creatures, the mere sight of which would cause most men to lose their minds. Fortunately I am made of sterner stuff and do not easily break!

The first of these beasts was a two headed troll. Its skin was a lurid purple, and white swirls and patterns writhed around his body. It had in its left hand some wretched soul that it proceeded to slowly and loudly devour. Not wanting to be its next course, I carefully and quietly snuck away while it made a meal of that poor fellow.

As I crawled through a meadow of translucent crystalline flowers I heard giggling coming from several yards ahead. It sounded like the laughter of small children, but as I got closer I saw that they were a bloated parody of childhood. Small, swollen, malformed creatures frolicked and played amongst the flowers. A cloud of flies swarmed around them, but they did not seem to care. I could not see them in great detail as their foul smell kept me away.

I continued on and found myself in a clearing. The ground here was completely devoid of life. Nothing but dirt and burnt grass. Ahead of me I saw something truly bizarre and disturbing. The mass of its body was a swollen and ruptured lump of flesh, covered with bright green boils and lesions. It pulled itself along the ground with two spindly arms. This thing had the face of an old man, but it’s mouth split vertically. Even writing about it causes me to tremble and it is easy to forget that it was nothing more than a figment of my unwell mind.

I wandered a while longer and came across a stream. Unlike everything else I had encountered, this was clean and beautiful. It reminded me of the small lake near my grandfather’s farm. I took the opportunity to refresh myself. The water felt cool and soothing on my skin after so much walking.

It was then that I saw him.

I caught sight of his reflection in the stream as he loomed behind me. I quickly turned to face him, and he let out a soundless shriek that turned my soul to ice. He raised a rusted blade overhead and lunged at me.......

And that is when I woke up, drenched in sweat.

My next appointment with the physician is in a few days time. Hopefully he can make more sense of all this that I can.


Chaos Troll 65pts
Chaos Spawn 70pts
Nurglings 30pts
Plaguebearer 30pts

Total 195pts

Anthony’s Orcs and Goblins - Of Crossbows and Chariots (234.5 pts)

Well, here we are at month's end of OWAC II, and I've managed to paint up some Orc Arrer boyz (with crossbows) and a couple of goblin chariots. I just love these particular orc sculpts and, since this will be a detachment of an existing army, I've kept a consistent color scheme of muted earthy tones with orange as the spot color.

Poky Git's crossbow orcs (126.5 pts)
Why 11 orcs rather than 10? Why not?

Backing up this fine firing squad are 2 goblin chariots. I was advised by better generals than myself that these guys should be run in units of two (like I ever game ...). And it just so happened that I recently acquired 2 of these chariots. Perfect!

2 goblin chariots (108 pts) 

And here they are with the two that I have that are already painted

Not sure what I'm going to paint for February, since I have quite a busy month coming up. I'd hate to be the first in the challenge to utter the 'M' word. Then again, perhaps better army selection for the painting challenge would have been the smart thing to do ...

Brennan's Slannuary? - 237 Points

January Slann...  or is is Slannuary?

I'd like to be frank, it has been too cold for my poor Slann.  I've had to keep them in an aquarium in the house and away from the cool mud they love so much.  If I take them away from the heat lamp, just for a little painting, they get quite upset!  I think I was hit by a little dart from a blowpipe one evening...

I needed an easy start to the challenge, read as not too many figures or shields, so I went for the venom tribe and a hero to lead the whole affair.  It seems to have been a wise choice, as Nurgle's blessing has been with the household off and on since xmass, and the hobby time has been minimal.

Also, I am not always the best planner, and I had to blitz paint a 40 man IEF platoon for WW1 right before the start of the challenge.  I'm pretty good as mass painting, 4 days of mostly evening work, and the whole thing was ready to go into action.  We used the WW1 mod for Chain of Command if you were curious.  However, forcing myself to slow down and do some real quality can be a challenge after that.

I went for blue froggies, because I didn't want to do them in green (I did green skin tones last time) and I though having a nice dark blue figure would help make some of the brighter cloths and other elements on the figures stand out. I also wanted natural tones for my Slann.  I wanted to keep a muddy jungle off-white tanny vibe.  There are a lot different influences on the Slann, but the pre-columbian Mesoamerican is certainly the strongest, so I broke out some source material and dug in...

Which was mostly this fine work:

So I present....

Croak Lord Mitzocowatel:

The Venom Tribe:

And the group shot:

That makes:
LV 15 hero with 2 Handed Weapon and Heavy Armor - 117
10 Venom Tribe - 120
For a 237 point kick-off to the challenge.

I hope you like them as much as I do and thanks much for reading the post!

Yosef's TROLLS and more TROLLS! (390 points)

So here is a small addition to my army 6 trolls. It was a joy to paint them, it was very easy to paint with a collection of shades, mostly greens and yellows. Personally it was easier that painting dwarfs.. I did just paint the bases, i tried to do a bit more complicated basing but i gave up on it quickly, maybe next time.

There is 6 trolls and that is 390 points.

Andy's Insanity January Skaven Offering (232.5pts)

Hello and welcome to my January's offerings. I’d decided at the start of the challenge to paint as many Skaven slaves and clan rats as possible in the first month in order to to allow me time to meet the minimum requirements of a Skaven army. I’m painting my army to the 3rd edition WHFB description which is more of a muted dirty colour compared to the the garish bright schemes of the 4th and 5th edition. It’s challenging as the use of so many browns can quickly overwhelm the look of the miniatures

First up were the Skaven slaves, 19 troops and 1 lvl5 Hero with shields. They were really nice and quick to paint. I tried to augment the unit with as much variety as possible using different models and fur colours. (85 pts) 20/20 Salves completed.

Next we’re my first batch of Skaven Clan rats 11 troops, 1 Musician, 1 Standard Bearer with shields and spears accompanied by a  Lvl0 Hero. My aim is to get 4 regiments of 25 strong units each with a musician, champion and standard bearer but I’m struggling to source the appropriate models. In the mean time I’ve lumped then into one unit with different unit colours so can form new unit as and when I get them. (147.5pts) 14/50 Clan rats completed.

All models were based using fine grit sand and small cork pieces and the miniatures were given a black undercoat. I then dry brushed the models using silver than a generous wash of Nulin oil. I’m not a huge fan of the current offering of chainmail by Citadel and vilagio paints as they are far too dark. Next I blocked in the main fur area with various browns, greys and black and then applied shades and inks to pick up the recesses then lightly dry brushed. After that I picked out the details of the weapons, bags and pouches. Finally I did the skin, I wanted a good contrast to the dark paint scheme so used Ratkin flesh, Shade then picked out using elf flesh.

Total points 232.5

Sam's Orcs - The Savagery Begins (209pts)

So it begins. And banging straight out the gate is the man (orc?) himself, Ugg Bonekrakka and a couple of the Beastie Boyz.

So to tally it up:

- 1 x savage orc warlord on boar, with shield : 159pts

- 2 x savage orc boars boyz : 50pts

Total : 209pts.

Bit of a small month volume wise, but still waiting for a few things in the post and a nice gentle reintroduction to actually painting stuff.

For the scheme I wanted to keep things fairly simple and instead rely on max vibrancy. To that effect I wanted the brightest green possible for the orcs, in fact shading aside the darkest green panted on the skin was Moot Green (time to get your sunglasses out). To contrast I wanted to use old skool red wood, again relatively bright, and a light blue grey for the stone. From there I kept to complimentary colours for the furs, leather and metal.

For now I've gone with the same lion colour fur on their clothing, I imagine it as some kind of rite of passage into the Beastie Boyz, having to best a lion bare handed. But for other units though, I might mix it up, ala the boars.

Speaking of the boars, I wanted to keep a uniform colour for the fleshy bits, tusk etc., and then chuck all thoughts of uniformity out the window for the fur. I definitely like how its turned out so I plan to continue it on the rest, although I may run out of schemes. Off the top of my head I've got at least another 5 ideas though, so fingers crossed I'll be good.

One very busy model

Although savage orcs are known for their tattoos and war paint, I decided not to indulge. Mostly this is because the sculpts are already really busy and most of the places to put some details like that are already covered with rings and trinkets. This is especially true on the Big Boss, his fur cape is one of the busiest things I've ever painted. That being said I was originally thinking to do simple tattoos, things like patterns of dots and zags in black and white, which I may yet experiment with, but for now I'm happy without.

Basing wise, I wasn't quite brave enough to do Goblin Green to the max, but I wanted an appropriate homage. So a dirt base covered with tufts and a mix of bright and dark static grass, finished with an olive green edge. I'll be knocking out a movement tray for them to similar effect at some point during the challenge.

I have to say I'm pretty happy with the challenge so far, I've been really enjoying getting back into painting. Especially if I can paint with some eye watering 90s vibes.

On once more to the story/theme of the force, this time introducing the shaman, Grog Mindbenda to continue the plot.

Grog's Blowin' Off Steam

Ugg was clearly daft, Grog had known it for some time, but the brute was nie on unkillable. Mork how he’d tried! The levels of shroom powder he’d put into that stuntie brew they'd nicked would’ve killed a rhinox. He'd even chosen the stuntie stuff becoz it’d hide the flavor better. But no, Ugg had drunk the lot then demanded he make more to share wiv da boyz. He’d had to kick gobbos around for the rest of the week gathering shroomz for another batch. Then just to make it worse, da git had only gone an run down into some hummie gaff kracked a bunch of skullz and brought back another lot of brew. An somehow dis lot had a bunch of stuntie brew wiv it too. Grog hadn’t believed it!. When a couple of da Beastie Boyz rolled it over to his hut, he woz so livid he would’ve straight up brain bursta’d the pair of them if Ugg hadn’t been standing there, grinning from ear to ear and tellin’ him all about wot he found. For Gork’s sake hummies were even dafter that Ugg! Who wiv there brains not leakin out stored stuntie brew instead of bloody well drinking it! As soon as Ugg left, he’d blasted the nearest gobbo and kicked another one down the well. As if he hadn’t had enough trouble gatherin’ the shroomz for the last batch! He’d ‘ave to think of something else or Mork’s Foot he’d be beating gobbos for weeks just to keep the boyz from braining each other. 

For some time he sat in his hut, fuming. The hours passed as he tried to think of something, anything, but every time he looked over at the barrels they just sat there, the stoopid stuntie wordz chiseled round the rims givin’ ‘im the ol' stink eye. If there was anything Grog hated more than Ugg, it was stunties!... well that and lazy gobbos!... and of course bad shroomz! (The little uns that looked exactly like the good shroomz until he’d already taken ‘em and BAM! He'd wake up days later in the middle of the forest using a couple of gobbos as clubz for his favorite drum!)... oh and that one bloody toof at the back of his mouth that wobbled a bit... Come to think of it there were a lot of things he hated more than Ugg, but that didn’t make him feel any better about the situation. 

He realised he'd been pacing up and down and decided to go sit back down, this time in his favourite chair, the one wiv da good furs. It was well away from the barrels and more importantly facing the other way. But still it didn't work, he couldn't stop fuming. He even took a couple of deathcapps to try take his mind off it, but all that did was cause him to accidentally blow a hole in his roof. 

It was just as he was poking his staff into the thatch, inspecting the damage, that he had an idea, it was a little bit cunnin’, and very brutal, or woz it the other way round? Nevamind, it was an idea. For the first time since he’d set eyes on those stuntie roonz that mornin' a toofy smile crept its way across his face. He knew exactly wot to do about Ugg. If it worked it’d be brilliant, two gobbos wiv one rock as they say. Sure he'd have to knock up some more of dat brew, a lot more in fact, and that would mean goin' on some more raidz, but the boyz were always 'appy to do that. And once he'd done dat he'd pay a visit to the Broken Peak and lure out an old friend to give him the helpin' hand he needed. He sat back down feeling very pleased with himself, not even caring about the thatch that was tangled in amongst his best furs and scratching at his skin. At long last things were beginning to look up... (especially wiv a hole in the roof)

Not sure I'll manage to get a side story out every month, but I've still got a few ideas yet...

And on a side note, my daughter got hyped watching me paint and wanted to have a go. So we painted this chap together.

Thanks to AdamH for the model as this guy and a whole bunch more horrors were a wonderful present from him.