'Sport' from AdamC: Tourney Knights

I found these two in the clearance/yards sale section of the Hobby Bunker.  They were made by Falcon Miniatures a Company I was not able to find much about them but they were a local Massachusetts company: Falcon Miniatures these are clearly miniatures form the 80s or early 90s but more than that I can't say.

They were fairly rough with a lot of flash that needed to be cleaned up but once that was done they painted up very nicely.

 I kept the livery simple Purple and Red for the Dragon Knight

Yellow and Blue for the Swan Knight.

 I came up with this tourney field it was a pretty simple build.

Its a 6" x 8" area the bar in the middle is about 1" high.

So 20 points for the Figures, 50 points for the bonus round and whatever Curt judges is right for the Tourney field.   If he's especially generous and gives me 5 points I would call this a squirrel point for a tournament set but that's probably not going to happen.

'Sport' from AlanD: The Blues!

I have a sneaking suspicion that these won't be the only gladiators to appear in this Bonus Round! This is my new Ludus for playing Jugula, and I have gone with the blue theme to give them some team identity.

In The Blues lineup, for your amusement, we have a secutor and a dimachaerus, the former wearing his characteristic simple helmet to avoid it getting snagged in the net of his classic opponent, the retiarius. The dimachaerus wields two swords, but I don't fancy his chances in that helmet if any peripheral vision is required.

Next on the bill is a Moorish retiarius with net and trident, and a Gallic veles, armed with Javelins and relying on speed and agility.

And as the climax to the day's entertainment, a murmillo and a thrax, identified by his curved sword.

I had a lot of fun painting the shields on these two. The murmillo has an image of the two-headed god Janus on his shield. Since Janus is associated with transitions, beginnings, endings and doorways he evokes the possibilities of life and death, freedom and slavery that define a gladiator's experience. The thrax's shield depicts the goddesses Fortuna and Victoria, both close to a gladiator's heart. Fortuna on the left holds a rudder, one of her visual attributes, and both she and Victoria are presenting crowns of victory.

The figures are all from Foundry's great range of gladiators, except from the murmillo, who is from Warlord Games. We hope you are amused.

'Sport' from Barks: Orc Cheer Skwad

Gimme a O! Gimme an R! Gimme a K... or is it a C?

Are there female orcs? Can you put lipstick on an orc? Do orcs have hair? Can they even spell?

So many important questions Professor Tolkien left unanswered. Luckily, Shadowforge (via Eureka) have attempted an answer with the Cheer Skwad for my embryonic Orc Blood Bowl team, the Green Streaks.

These lovely lasses need names- I was thinking Doris, Mabel, and Bernadette- other ideas welcomed!

'Sport' from BenF: A Spot of Tennis?

This bonus round initially had me stumped. Most of the projects I'm working on have little connection to sport and I didn't want to paint something up that I would have no use for. Then my wife Laura came to the rescue and suggested 'what about something like the football field you made?'

About a year ago I'd scratchbuilt a football pitch for my 6mm '80s Cold War collection. Its now served faithfully in many battles as a defensive position, objective, and even a landing zone for Soviet VDV troops.

As most battles we play at the club are set in Germany or Scandinavia, I wanted something which was as appropriately 'German' as football. So it had to be tennis.

When I was growing up as a kid in the 80s, one of the biggest sporting stars I remember is Boris Becker, the youngest Grand Slam singles champion at the time, and winner at Wimbledon in '85. I decided that a tennis court would be a useful and appropriate addition to my cold war terrain, a place where aspiring young Germans could practice their game, and where NATO and the Soviets could battle it out for the fate of Europe.

For this, I chamfered the edge of an MDF coaster for the base, and then measured out the dimensions, scaled to 1:500, as a true 6mm scale court would be far too large. The football pitch is similarly downscaled.

I then constructed the uprights using brass spears cut to size, and glued down some sandpaper for the court and car park surface. After that it was just matter of painting, basing, then adding the net and fencing using fine grade flyscreen. I ended up drybrushing the flyscreen with a medium grey, as it was far too dark. I also added a car to make it more used.

The PT-76 and MTLB snooping around the carpark are just included for the photos, not the points, and they'll be being based up for a future entry.  

As far as points go, my calculation is 

1 x 6mm vehicle = 2pts

1 x 4"x4" terrain piece = 20pts(?)

'Sport' from BenitoM: Battlefield Hunters

This bonus round has given me some headaches… “Sports”?? How could I fit this topic in my major project, the British Airborne platoon. Until I remember a wargame scenario for Through the Mud and the Blood (TooFatLardies 1WW rules), some years ago: it featured a British officer and large landowner, acting as sniper and hunting enemies like when he was hunting in his estate in Britain.

So the closest models I can argue are in compliance with the current bonus round are these two snipers teams.

I’m not totally sure they acted in pairs, but the British Airborne platoon in the Second World War had a reinforced allocation of marksmen. A sniper team was attached to the headquarters of the platoon and a second team was embedded in the third section of the platoon (integrated by two LMG teams).

The models presented here are from the Warlord British Airborne range. The sniper figures are from a metal blister reference while the guarding companions are from the plastic box.

Note the model standing is wearing neither a beret nor a steel helmet but the camouflaged scarf usually wore around the neck by the paras.

With this entry I credit an additional 70 points to my Challenge Score (4 models

x 5 points + 50 points bonus)

  

'Sport' from BillA: Morituri te Salutamus

Of all the bonus round themes, this is the one I was most ready for, as I've been slowly working on a mountain of Foundry and Crusader gladiators over the past few months and I'm nearing the bottom of my stack.  As such, when my FLGS held an open-painting day last weekend, I grabbed a handful of figures I had left to go and got to work. 

I ended up with eight figures total, about an equal mix of Foundry and Crusader, of a variety of "classes" including some of the most iconic gladiator styles of all time. 

Foundry Murmillo

Crusader Secutor

Foundry Thracian

Crusader Velite

Foundry Secutor

Guy Fieri Goes to War - Crusader Velite

Foundry Dwarf Dimachaerus

Foundry Lion

I'm still figuring out a basing scheme I'm really happy with for my gladiators - I've just bought a bottle of Vallejo sandy paste, which you can see used here, and it's starting to dawn on me that maybe it should be applied before the figures are primed...? Either way, I'm expecting to have some fun with these figures on the table this year.  

'Sport' from BrettM: Blood Bowl Refs

For the Bonus sport round I have these Refs for Blood bowl from Forge world

 Had these guys for quite a while. I believe they were only available for a couple months when Blood bowl had been out for a few months. 

 Actually first forge world models I have ever worked on as well. Everything was pretty much easy to put together though. Easy to clean and glue together

 First time I have free handed anything on a model. Granted these are only white lines so not to complicated. 

Enjoyed painting the dwarf more than the goblin. Neither model turned out as well as I thought it would. Good enough for the tabletop though! 60pts with bonus

'Sport' from Byron: F1 race car, Ork style...

Games Workshop has a long history with Orks and it has not been good for many years, they have languished without new models for a long while.  However all that was made up for the last few months with several amazing new models, that for me are complete home runs.

There is one though that is a real favourite for me and one I just had to get, despite not even playing Orks!  The vehicle in question is the Shokk Attack Dragsta.

Why it is called a dragster is beyond me as it is an obvious homage to a Formula 1 car, regardless I love F1 and this model just screamed "BUY ME" when it came out, so being a weak willed gamer, I bought one (or two, or three, or ....).

I have visions of painting up a pile of these vehicles in the various F1 liveries to match all the top teams.  I decided to start with one of my favourite drivers Kimi R'Örkönin in his red ones go fasta' Ferrari.

I started by painting the body panels with a deep red and then airbrushed on various layers to lighted it in key areas and give it some high points.  I then went back and edge highlighted with sunny skin tone, which sounds really odd, but someone told me about it as a trick years ago (so I don't remember who or I would give credit) and it works wonders as it doesn't look pink or orange like most edge highlights show up on red.

I kept the engine out of the car to paint it separately as it got in the way of a lot of bodywork and needed some attention of its own.  The engine is a very Orky piece of artwork as it is 3 radial aircraft engines bolted together in sequence with a shokk attack gun bolted on the back to boost power.  It got painted about 3 shades of metal and then several washes to make it grimy and oily.  The shokk attack gun and the gun on the side of the car were both airbrushed to have a blue energy effect.

For anyone unfamiliar with what a shokk attack gun does, it opens a small work hole which Ork's used to feed Gretchen, goblins, and squigs through while opening the other end of the worm hole inside an enemy tank, dreadnought, or even just inside a space marines suit of armour.  It made a mess of things.  However, this one allows the car to "sometimes" jump around the table as it disappears and re-appears through the worm holes it opens.

I purposely left the vehicle very clean and crisp as I want all of the vehicles to look as if they are lined up fresh on the starting line.  I know it is not very Orky, but I just didn't feel right chipping up a shiny new Ferrari.

Last up was to make a base that looked like some old broken up road to race on.  For this I simply used some cork sheet, broke it up, added some sand, and some tufts and was done.

I also had visions of lettering and advertising on the car, BUT I thought I had several more weeks to get decals made for this project! I was busy painting away for the Mercenary theme week when the results were posted from last weeks theme on Sunday only to read that the next theme was Sport!!!  I had not even put the model together at that point, so had to spend Monday assembling and priming, then painting Tuesday and Wednesday, and then pack it up to finish it while visiting Curt this weekend, whom I have to thank for both the hospitality and for taking some amazing pictures for me.  So, back to the decals, I simply did not have time, but will have to later.

Overall it worked out great though, I am very happy with how it turned out, and I am almost done the mercenary entry, so can take some more time on it to get it exactly right rather than being in a rush for the theme weeks all the time.

Thanks for checking it out, and I hope you all like it.

'Sport' from DaveS: There's an Evil monkey on My Football Pitch

Firstly, yes, that is a Gorilla......  Yes, this is a Sport bonus round.

I had grand plans to finish painting the last few models for my Guild Ball Team (The Butchers) and enter them into this round.  Unfortunately, real life got in the way, and so I woke up this morning having nothing painted.  Looking for something for the round, and knowing that I would need the Butchers players for the tournament today, I spotted my Mason's Guild players.  A plan was born, and this was started and mostly finished before I left for the FLGS at 8am this morning.

So, one wooden spoon and 4 losses later, I got home, and have managed to get him painted ready for the round.  So I present Marbles, the Mason's Guild mascot for Guild Ball.  I may well have the rest of the team to display before the end of the competition, but not before the deadline for the bonus round I'm afraid.

'Sport' from DaveX: DEVGRU Sniper Team

For this bonus round I had to think what in my collection would constitute "sport".  Shooting is a sport right??? They do this at the Olympics right?  They also do this within the Military and compete right?  What about the two way firing range?  I have left it open to interpretation!

I present my 20mm Elhiem Figures DEVGRU Sniper Team.  What is DEVGRU? One just needs to punch this into Google and it will return...

Test The United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), commonly known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six, is the U.S. Navy component of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It is often referred to within JSOC as Task Force Blue.

So there you go! You learn something new everyday. Now I chose to use their desert cam variant of the many shades of Camo they wear.  It is quite difficult to recreate this in 20mm so I gave it my best crack.

Some people will notice (I didnt pick this up) that the pose of the sniper is rather awkward and unnatural.  I say to that he is setting himself up for the shot! This aside I think the model looks great!

Smile for the Camera