'Mercenary' from PaulS: Water Vampire

One of the things I love about Necromunda is the oddities that turn up. The old system had some strange things, but the new writers are taking things to the extreme with some excellent additions to the universe like Sumpcrocs. One of my favourite so far though is Eyros Slagmyst, the water vampire/Bounty hunter/Merc.

"Eyros was once an underhive dome-rigger from Cogtown, one of the sweating, emaciated souls responsible for repairing the rusting pipe networks that fed the dismal settlement. Deep down in the sump wells, close to hive bottom, he found and donned a strange archaeo-rig which, though it gave him strength and life, it also gave him a burning thirst. As it turned out, while water can be found in many things, few things in Necromunda have quite as much as humans. Eyros leaves only dust and scrap in his wake, searching endlessly for fresh victims from which to strip every morsel of fluid. These days it is hard to tell how much of Eyros is left under the archaeo-cybernetics, and no telling what Eyros will become once the archaeotech is done with him."

While sorting out Eyros, I also managed to finish off a few other bits and pieces for Necromunda that I'd missed.We have 1 barricade, 4 terminals, one shrine, 1 Blotz mdf generator and 10 doors from the Rogue Trader kill team box. This lot fit in one terrain cube.

'Reconnaissance' from PaulS: Underground Recon

The Recon theme for this round couldn't have been better timed, or placed for me to carry on working on my Necromunda bits. Most of the gangs are fairly gung-ho in their approach, With one or two being a bit sneaky... but the Genestealers (and more specifically my campaign build) are about as recon as you can possibly get 3 games in. In a starting gang you can get up to three people infiltrating. My magus is too important to be throwing away like that, so I started with two infiltrators, one has the terrifying Seismic cannon and the other has two pistols to act as a bodyguard and help keep the cannon alive

I also put some paint on a few cultists that I'd been converting to represent a few of my gang. One of these has double duty as my Medic for Kill Team. All four use parts from the Genestealer hybrids, Cawdor gang, Skitarii and Orlock sprues to make a rag-tag mining guild look. Who better to be the mining guild in a campaign without any Orlocks? The fourth figure is a really useful longlas sniper, capable of taking the head off my own magus in one shot when missing the enemy in a firefight. Beware fire lanes kids!

Speaking of which. As we don't have an Orlock player in out campaign, no-one is all that interested in paying attention to what the Orlock territory cards do, other than me (as the Cult gets to use them as well). First choice was Toll Booth, which automatically gives you first turn, or lets other people pay you so they can take first turn in their games against other people. Income or first shots of the game... hmmm. Win. Second up was Tunnels. These allow a gang member to infiltrate at the start of the game... or in our case, two (maybe three, I forget). So that'll be a couple of Aberrants chewing down on your gang on turn one then...

Currently I only have one on the roster as I spent all my cash recently on a horrible, horrible Ambot... that also infiltrates! Sadly I finished that one in the run-up, but the recon crew (as they are now known), currently looks like this:

So no matter the size of the game, or the draw, I can always infiltrate at least two models *and* always go first. For some reason no-one wants to try their luck against the gang at the moment. I suspect Tunnels will be an early victim of territory grab attempts once the other players realise what they did by not challenging me for it in the early phase!

The group shot for the bonus round is as follows:

So Curt. In summary, that is 8 28mm figures and a solid recommendation to register for your local Cult in your Necromunda gang as you can't get more recon or sneaky :D

'Childhood' from PaulS: Coooooobraaa!

When I was a kid, I loved my Action Force/GI Joe figures, but I never actually owned any of the basic Cobra infantry

Before Cobra started to have more specialized personnel, there were the Cobra Troopers. These men served as the basic infantrymen of Cobra. Each man swore absolute loyalty to Cobra Commander. While serving as the infantrymen of the organization, they are also cross-trained to be proficient in least two other support skills. The lot of what makes up the Trooper forces are mercenaries, criminals and people who are angry at the world who have taken up Cobra's offer of wealth and power.

The basic Cobra infantry slowly got replaced in the comics with the more armoured Vipers, but these guys are still an iconic part of a Cobra strike force.


In my rush to take the photo, I forgot to peel off the bottom layer of protective material from the bases, hence the brown layer... doh!

'Music/Musician' from:PaulS: Bountiful Growth

When the challenge first started, I had no clue what musician to make, then some kindly soul sent me a bunch of the new goblins from Oathmark, the mass battle game from the makers of Frostgrave, which included a drummer. Score! So the drummer was painted up and put into a queue to photograph when t came around to this Bonus round. Despite being a goblin, he's the same height as a Frostgrave human. Their view of Goblins is similar to JRR Tolkein, rather than GW's.

I finished this and was all "That looks pretty good. I'm happy with that as my submission". Then Games Workshop happened. Along came the Nurgle releases for Age of Sigmar, which you've seen some releases for this challenge already. Part of this was the monstrous Great Unclean One.
 I'd always wanted one since the old metal ones way back in the early 90s, so when this hunk of plastic came along... well.

Great unclean one. Musician? What? Yep. One of the options in the new kit is to carry a giant bell to encourage your army to move faster. The kit offers quite a few different options. You have the bell, a flail, sword, knife, massive sword or a tentacle arm and wand for a special character. Me being me couldn't decide. To me, the sword is iconic GUO, but the want and tentacle were also pretty neat... but the bell is pretty much essential for a game. So... kitbash time!

Lots of different washes and dry brushing, plus some weathering effects led to what you see. I'm really happy with this horrible mountain of rotting flesh. As for points...  I'm really not sure what he is worth. You decide Curt. Here's a scale picture of him, along with his band mate, the goblin drummer. You thought the beasts on Friday were big, you ain't seen nuthin ;)

'Flight' from PaulS: Airborne Away!

When the details first came up about the bonus round themes, my mind turned to anything with wings... as I'm sure everyone else did. With only a couple of options in my painting queue, eyes turned to other related subjects that were already built and awaiting a coat of paint. Then it hit me. Last year I put together a very small US Airborne force for use in Achtung! Cthluhu... Airborne infantry need to fly to reach their goal, so Bingo!

This force is designed to go up against the sinister machinations of Germany's Nachtwolf, with their mythos fuelled powers.

"The horror was all over the squad. Tentacles everywhere, flesh and bone flying. We thought we were done. Backed in to a corner, we made our peace. Then, the air was ripped apart by gunfire. Chunks of blubber rained down, as through the mist of smoke and blood, strode the Sarge. As we watched, he ground a twitching tendril into the ground with the heel of his boot and calmly lit a cigar."

Leading the way is Sergeant Carter and a team of Pathfinder Demonhunters

Supporting these are a squad of US Airborne infantry with a selection of BAR, SMGs and a machinegun team

The initial 4 figures are Modiphius' Achtung! Cthulhu metal characters. The infantry squad (12 figures) are all Warlord plastics, so you can see they scale really nicely with each other. Carter is a little larger, but he *is* a larger than life superhero type... so that sort of fits. So that is 16 28mm figures that hopefully fit the theme enough for Curt ;)

That should be 60 points for the figures, plus the 50 points for the bonus round.

'Characters/Scene from' PaulS: These are the droids I'm looking for

Over the past few months I've been watching Banks do a stunning job painting up all those iconic characters from FFG's Imperial Assault game. I've managed to avoid getting sucked into this game for quite a while, but with all of his great work and a stroke of luck on eBay, I managed to pick up someone's collection for significantly  less than it would have been new. What better way to celebrate the final bonus round than two of the most iconic characters from Star Wars (plus a rebel trooper for some company)

'Armour' from PaulS: The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Punch

About 3-4 years ago I had a regular 40k opponent and we'd do trips up to Nottingham to visit GW, play on their tables, shop in the ForgeWorld shop and partake in some of the ForgeWorld painting clinics. My favourite one was the tank painting day, where Phil and some of the other FW painters walked us through lots of tips and tricks to weathering tanks.

One of the purchases over the weekend was one of my favourite tanks produced at the time, the Macharius Vulkan. This beast of a tank mounts a Titan scale weapon in the turret that spits out so many shots a turn you practically need a bucket to roll all the attack dice in one go, especially if you manage to use some of the tricks available at the time and twin link it ;)

Unfortunately they didn't have any in stock at the time, so had to post it out to me the following week. What actually turned up in the post was the Vanquisher model... followed by a parcel a few days later with the Vulcan and a letter apologising for sending the wrong tank! Two super heavies for the price of one!

The sponsons on the tanks should be fixed to one weapon choice, but a little bit of plastic tube and some small magnets and we have multiple sets of weapon load outs to use, depending on situation. 

For those of you who do not know how big the Macharius are, here is a scale shot to show the sheer majesty of these tanks. In front of them is a normal Imperial Guard  infantryman, about to be crushed beneath their tracks if he isn't careful.

So this is two absolutely massive tanks for one armour round. The figure is only included for scale purposes.

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

'Risk Taker' from PaulS - 'I'll take that bet...'

One of the sub-challenges in this year's Painting Challenge was for Gamblers and Risk takers. Handily this also matches Curt's fee model as well.

I spent lots of time trawling through lists of the world's greatest risk takers and gamblers and then trying to find models of them. I couldn't find Donald Trump or Richard Branson; I wasn't too keen on Warlord's Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus seems to be missing from the miniatures market...

Sooooo... I appear to have settled on exactly the same gambler as everyone else. Wild Bill Hickok. Dammit.

The model is from Great Escape Games' Dead Man's Hand range. 

As Curt is likely to be getting a lot of Wild Bills, this one is actually going to go to Tamsin for doing a stellar job of grading the Tuesday crew this year. Thank you! I'll have to sort out something else for Curt after the Challenge as I'm off to Germany with work tomorrow...

'Nautical' from PaulS - 'Where's the rum?!'

Arrr. Who took me rum? And me hand?

This pirate was one of the old online-only Warhammer Fantasy models; a pirate captain from Sartosa, and has been sitting in my painting pile for a looooong time. When the Nautical theme was announced, it was a no-brainer really. Well, that or having held onto the vikings from earlier in the Challenge.

With the demise of the Old World, he is now going to be visiting the city of Frostgrave and acting as a captain in my nautical/cthuloid  themed cultist warband. You can't get more nautical than a pirate, surely?

'Defensive Terrain' from PaulS - 'Stockpiling'

Defensive terrain was a very subjective and ever so vague title for a bonus round and caused no end of pondering and false starts. Did it mean a full terrain piece, or just something small that may be defensive in nature, but still have a figure. In the end, inspired by the Epic Fail entry, I decided to keep this one fairly simple and add to the Old West project at the same time.

The cowboy is from Great Escape Games as part of their Dead Man's Hand range with a few pieces of terrain from various places.

From this angle it looks like a fairly big base for him, or a small diorama. Turn it around a bit and it starts to make more sense...

He pops off the base to be useful elsewhere, or allows someone else to take his place behind the barricade. I forgot to paint it up, but there is a second stack of grain bags on a base that fits into the gap so it can be used as pure terrain.