'Mercenary' from JamieM: If you can find them, maybe you can hire...

Using the bonus round as a reminder to “get stuff done that I should have done ages ago”, I spied these five ladies, ready undercoated and looking like they could happily form an interplanetary mercenary band.

These come from the Bombshell Babes range and are all really rather good fun.

I added a droid to the base as she was teetering a little on her base after I pinned her feet in the wrong place....

Weapon swap for hat lady to give me different options.

Another weapon swap for pink boots.

The whole team together. I plan to use them for my space version of Dead Mans Hand and Galactic Heroes, which look like fun and they give me some different weapons.

'Sport' from JamieM: Dreadball Team

My gaming group discovered Dreadball a few years ago and  had a great season of play.  It then, as is the case with so many games, got put on the shelf as something new and shiny had come along.  I recently encouraged my cousin to get back into gaming and Drreadball is where we started as I knew it was quick and fun.  We made do with my previously painted teams at first, then I picked up a stack load of stuff on eBay and split it between us.  I hadn't gotten around to painting any of the new teams I'd picked up, so the sport bonus round was the perfect time to change that!

As seems to be the case with most Mantic sculpts, they are a little soft and the detail isn't too sharp.  As sports games have different positional players, I went for a large plant thing as the blocker, pink hair for strikers and blue hair for Jacks.

Dreadball really is a rather enjoyable sports game.  I find a lot of sports games feel like skirmish games, but this one is unashamedly a fast paced sports game with plenty of tactics and decisions to be made through each game.  It's a bit like speedball if any of you played that on the amiga/megadrive...

'Reconnaissance' from JamieM: Recon Titans

When I saw this round, there really was only one place I could go with it..... Scout titans.  Yep, 80 feet tall giant engines of destruction used to sneak around and spy on the enemy without being seen.  The ones I've used are the original 1980's sculpts as they go with the rest of my Epic force.  When I got these, they were a little worse for wear so I had to knock together a left gun arm for each and add a muzzle to the plasma weapons.  I think my replacements are suitably large and dangerous looking!

A quartered colour scheme felt right and as I wasn't going to have to re-produce it across many models, I went for some colours I haven't used for a while.  Plus they'd make great camo colours for these recon experts.

Some random decals completed the job and now they're ready to sneak up on the enemy!

'Monstrous' from JamieM: Dark Eldar Monster/Vehicles

Hi all, it's been a while.... sometimes the painting gods smile on you and you get all the time you need (well, at least some time anyway) and sometimes you get absolutely no time at all..... and that's kind of what the last few weeks have been like for me - a combination of work and personal stuff has conspired to rob me of time.  There's probably a wall of text coming, so feel free to jump to the pretty pictures if you prefer ;)

Now, before I complain too much, I should point out that one of the things getting in my way was entirely self inflicted... namely a gaming tournament I'd agreed to play in.  I don't normally play in tournaments, they're too much like hard work and "winning" can become the thing, so I'd rather spend time with my mates playing normal games.  The one exception I make is the Doubles tournament for Warhammer 40k at GW HQ in Nottingham that they run a couple of times per year.  The reason I like it is that it gives me a chance to buddy up with a mate of mine who lives the other side of the country from me, about 3.5 hours drive away and we Brits consider that to be "a long way away" aalthough I appreciate it translates in American/Canadian to "virtually next door".  As I don't see him too often, it's a great excuse to make us get together for a weekend of geeking out.

The other thing related to this post is that I absolutely LOVE converting models.  It's one of the reasons I like fictional stuff so much, I can just do what I want to and not be constrained by real life.  The Games Workshop stuff is perfect for this as I maintain that GW produce the widest range of quality kits on the market - not necessarily the best pieces, but the widest range.  And sadly I've gotten out of the habit of converting.  I think this is because I have so much stuff on the shelves of holding that I feel like I don't have the time to convert and should just "get stuff painted" instead as converting is very time consuming.  What I like about converting is when you show your mates of someone passes the gaming table, spots what you've done and says "that looks cool".  I hadn't done anything worthy of that for quite some time I felt like that was an important part of my contribution to the hobby to hopefully inspire others as I certainly enjoy and am inspired by other people's conversions, more so than a good paint scheme.

Anyway, after the last doubles tournament I'd promised myself that I would do a bunch of conversions for the next one, so I dutifully purchased all the parts that I needed...... and left them on the shelves.  Three weeks to go until the tournament and I finally badgered myself to do it, despite the lack of time!  It did mean the converting used up a lot of my painting time, so instead of painting all of the figures I'd prepped and undercoated for the challenge, I was prepping again..... anyway, thanks for sticking with me, here's the first one

"So what is it?!?" I hear you ask through the magic of the internet.... well, it's a dinosaur with a howdah holding three evil elves with massive guns.  It's a Ravager made primarily from a Troglodon.

GW has two parallel worlds, Warhammer Fantasy (now Age of Sigmar) and Warhammer 40k.  The fact that both are exactly the same scale and essentially copy standard fantasy tropes for races (elves, dark elves, humans, ogres, etc) means they are ripe for conversion across the two systems.

The Howdah is totally scratch built from a variety of other kits, both fantasy and 40k.  I needed two Ravagers for my army, so here's the second one....

I tried to make them as different as possible by converting the neck to go look the other way and use a different tail and the Dark Eldaar (Dark Elves in space) are all different on the howdah and steering.

The Ravager is essentially a gunboat, intended to take out opposition tanks and heavies with three massive guns, hence the three Dark Eldar on the back, dancing around to get the best shot.

I lost track of the amount of kits I took things from for these conversions, but boy was it awesome fun and has reignited my creative spark.

On the weekend they fared very well and tallied a lot of kills.  The also died a lot as the Dark Eldar are the epitome of "glass cannon" armies and use wet cardboard for armour.

Next up is another conversion for the same army - this one is an Elf Griffon (no longer available so picture attached instead of a link) to be a Raider

As you can see, this is the troop transporter version of the gunboat and the theory is that the Dark Eldar are agile enough to hang around on the outside of it.

Another scratch built howdah (using the bottom half of the steps used on the Ravager conversion) and just the one lunatic with a massive gun on this one.

The hard line highlighting wasn't perhaps my best choice as I'm not really neat or patient enough to make it work really well.  I am pleased with the overall effect though as I've learnt that often with painted figures your eye will make up for it by seeing what it "should".  I got plenty of "dude, that's cool!"s through the weekend, so mission accomplished!

I do have another Griffon/raider converted , but I didn't quite get the hard line highlighting done (it's one of those jobs that's hard work so I tend to shy away from actually sitting down and doing it) so perhaps I'll pop it on in another post in the next few weeks if I get it done.

Overall then, 3 28mm vehicles for 45 and 10 full crew for another 50 to add 95 to my slightly anaemic looking total...

'Flight' from JamieM: AoS Elven Dragon with Rider

When the Flight round was announced, my thoughts went immediately to the dragon I'd undercoated and done nothing with.  Once again the challenge worked it's magic in getting me to get something done!

Originally intended as a mount for a dark elf sorceress, I couldn't find all the bits I wanted to use for her so I went with an elven lord instead - I plan to use magnets and get the sorceress ready so I can use both with the same mount and get her done later in the challenge.

 Big old kit, nicely detailed and a nice use of a "tactical rock" to give the Dragon the illusion of flight.

'Choice of the Challenge' from JamieM - Selections of Work

'L'amour' from JamieM - 'The Honeypot'

A story as old as time itself..... A sailor, back from the sea has a little drink.....

Will true love blossom if she gets his attention?

 

Possibly not.....

'Defensive Terrain' from JamieM - 'Terrain That Might Make You Feel Defensive'

This is a bit out of left field, so please do bear with me..... I was wondering what to for this bonus round and then I saw this and a crazy idea took root and just wouldn't go away. So here it is. A 28mm MDF wargames shop.

This wargames shop is all set up for trading, with shop space downstairs

And gaming space upstairs

Two tables with green cloths on (and a shelf to hold scenery) and a smaller table for Magic or board games.

.........Ok, so you're asking yourself why this is "Defensive terrain"?

Here, for those who have stuck with me this far, is the answer. This hobby of ours really is great. It's been a huge part of most of my life, but I do get a bit "Defensive" about it sometimes. Often I won't tell people it's my hobby, for example most workmates. From talking to my gaming mates, their approaches range from one telling absolutely nobody outside the club ("brown bag hobby" in his words) to another who openly preps and paints figures over lunchtime at work. Should I put it on my CV in the "other interests" section? At what point is it best to tell someone that you're "courting" about your hobby? Should I take a bag to town big enough to put the "Games Workshop" carrier bag I'm planning on getting in? Do I talk about my space marines to my boss?

Hence I thought I'd do this in homage to the "defensive" side of most gamers, which we know we shouldn't have, but I for one haven't been able to totally shift, even though it gets easier as I get older and worry less about what is "cool". 

Ok, turns out finally typing all that hasn't helped me to finally decide if this was a good idea or quite the opposite, so please feel free to score or disqualify as you see fit Curt!

'Nostalgia' from JamieM - Rogue Trader Guardsmen

For me, there was only one option when I saw nostalgia was a round - 3 relatively unremarkable Games Workshop figures I remembered were hiding at the back of my drawer of "things not related to current projects that I'll probably get around to. Maybe. Sometime."

Why these three figures?

Well, they're the first figures I ever owned. They've managed to survive any purges of my collection that headed to eBay and I'm jolly glad they did. They were paint stripped some time ago and put aside for another time, and thanks to the challenge, that time has come far earlier than it otherwise would have.

They're from the "Rogue Trader" era, which is what got me into war gaming in the first place and brings back lots of happy memories. The chap in grey is from the Imperial Guard range (the massed soldiers who enforce the galactic emperor's will) and the other two are space adventurers.

I think I originally chose them as they were £2.50 for 5 at the time and seemed better value than space marines! Very important when pocket money was a very limited resource.

The grey was the standard colour for imperial guard at the time, the chap with the red helmet is an indulgence as those are the colours I remember painting him in the first place (hey, it was the 80's!) and the colours on the other chap just felt right.

I really like the facial expressions sculpted on them and can easily forgive the slightly wonky proportions (for example, the hands like spatchcocks on the imperial guardsman) and they gave me a real sense of delight to paint them again, remembering doing it first time round. I think the others from the original blister packs are buried in a box in my brother's garage of all places and I just may go and find them now!

'Myth' from JamieM - 'Genie & Mermaid'

When I saw this round, I knew there were two miniatures that I had to enter for it. Why two? Well, I immediately thought of two miniatures I bought about 7 years ago when my group was playing pirate games. One was rescued from an "everything £1" bucket at a show and appears to be a Genie by Grenadier in 1985 and I thought he'd make a smashing water elemental. The other is a fun little mermaid from Black Cat Bases.

I've based them in the water, with the water roiling frantically underneath the elemental. I figure the jewellery he has is from sunken ships..... Perhaps ones he had a hand in sinking.

Thank you to the Challenge for nudging me to get these two done!