From StuartL - The Tyrant of Badab

After the end of the Chambers of Challenge, I spent a few days getting my hobby room sorted out. I had to arrange all of the Challenge XI minis for photos and that took a couple of days, then I had to find homes for them all, and that took a while too. Thankfully though, that's all more or less taken care of and I can concentrate on painting again. Or not. Towards the end of the challenge I was getting itchy feet (or itchy hands to be more precise) and wanted to start sticking minis together, trying out a few kit bashes and generally get stuck into the big pile of sprues I have cluttering up the place. So I'm probably going to be taking this Vaccine Challenge at a slower pace to begin with as I get more of the assembly side of the hobby done. 

One project that I am keen to work on is my Warhammer 40,000 Badab War collection. I have one army built and painted for it already (The Tyrant's Legion from Imperial Armour 9) and a second underway, (Space Sharks), but I have plans in my head for several more. After decades of buying marines, I have a million of the blighters and not that many painted 40K armies. Back when I was a callow youth of 25-30ish, I never really bothered with painting that much. It was only when I got into historical gaming that I started to force myself into an 'Only painted minis on the table' mindset. Now that I am focussing on 40K again I'm going to try and get some more marines done. 

To start things off, I have painted Mr. Badab War himself, Chapter Master Lufgt Huron of the Astral Claws, aka the Tyrant of Badab. More accurately, I have RE-painted the model. I originally had it done up in grey, rather than the correct metallic silver colour for the Astral Claws. 

I have also taken this opportunity to mess around with weathering pigments on the legs, base, armour vents and flamer barrel. A character model is perhaps not the best thing to be experimenting with to be honest, but too late now. 

Overall, I'm quite happy with the way the pigments worked, but I may go back and tidy up the stone base the mini is standing on.

As the winter challenge was pretty intense in terms of duels and points, I am not going to be keeping score during the Vaccine Challenge. This is going to be a more casual, more relaxing time I think.

From GregB: Space Marine Command Group

Commander & bodyguards for the Vylka Fenryka.

Big surprise: I'm back with even more Space Marines! I'm just on a real sci-fi roll right now at the painting table. This is a Space Marine command group - a Centurion, and standard bearer and a pair of body-guards. The commander and the banner-bearer are resin figures from Forge World - they are wearing Mark IV powered armour, burnished with extra fancy bits, like cloaks and combs for their helmets. The two other marines are assembled from an assortment of left over plastic bits. The decals on the figures are from GW and Forge World. As with most of my recent work shared in the Quarantine Challenge, the models are painted in the colours of the VI Legion Astrates, the "Space Wolves".

Adding a command group like this to the collection helps to firm things up to my random hobby mind. A headquarters choice that brings things together, elevating the assortment of Vylka Fenryka figures from scattered and random side projects into a single, coherent force - one that demands further escalation in terms of additional assets, or course...but a significant waypoint in the evolution of the collection and painting process.

Awesome sculpt on this figure - I love this command group, great work by Forge World.

Rear view showing the shoulder pauldron & back pack.

The Space Marine Legions of the Horus Heresy setting have a cornucopia of officers, commanders, specialists, medics, engineers and other heroic figures you can choose from to serve as HQs, but the core selection of the senior HQ level is this small assembly of a senior officer and three elite associates, one of who carries a banner.

We can have some fun with the wolf-themed symbols on the banner. These are decals from Forge World.

Carrying a banner into battle in such a futuristic setting is a ridiculous anachronism - and I just love it! I mean, it's just OBVIOUS that you would do that, right? You step out of your combat-drop-pod or your Storm Eagle gunship or your Lander Raider or your Rhino or whatever and you make sure your banner is present - it is simply how things are done, even amid the grim darkness of the far future.

I love this figure! Great sculpt again by Forge World.

I thought I would try a different colour combo for his shoulder pauldron, to help him stand out more.

This Centurion figure is a favourite sculpt of mine. Normally I hate Space Marine figures who are not wearing their helmets. Space is dangerous! The Emperor spent a lot of money making you! Wear your damn helmet! But this fellow is an exception, the sculptor did a fantastic job on the figure. He looks like he just stepped off a transport, and is wanting to see the situation for himself, with his own eyes. He is cradling his helmet in one hand, ready to bellow some further orders to his underlings, with direction to be reinforced by his power sword if needed. He looks like an actual officer, something that very few Space Marine command figures actually do.

Bodyguard for the command group.

The two additional figures, essentially bodyguards for combat, are composed of a hodge-podge of components...when you are as passionate about 30k as I am, you start to accumulate enough spare bits that you can put together an extra marine here and there...these fellows have the helmets, shoulder pauldrons and backpacks of Mark III power armour, the torsos and legs from Mark IV power armour, and arms and weapons from one of the new "Primaris" marines. As guards for the banner bearer and Centurion, I figured these fellows would be veteran fighters from The Rout, only gradually replacing armour bits as required (hence keeping the 'older' Mark III helmets and shoulder plates).

A little blurry, but I enjoy the animation on this figure.

The assortment of spare bits came together nicely.

These veteran marines would also have access to cool kit - I thought the "bolt rifles" from the new Primaris marines would do the trick, and I'm pleased with how they turned out. I really like the look of the longer barrel and the (redundant and over-the-top) gun sights.

Ready to lead a Great Company from The Rout into battle.

While I was sure to put a lot of wolf-themed decals on the banner itself, I have again avoided adding pelts or any of that other wolfy-wolf stuff with this command retinue. If I ever add a Rune Priest or something like that, well...SOMEONE will likely need to wear a pelt cloak or something, but for now, I like to keep the obvious wolf theme to the decals and the banner. 

From GregB: Veteran Space Marines from the VI Legion

Squad of VI Legion Space Marines in Mark III power armour - multi-part plastic models from GW.

I appear to have tumbled further and further down a 30k rabbit hole in my hobby efforts...suddenly it seems so hard to get any more Prussians from 1870 painted, when instead I can paint yet more Space Marines for GW's Horus Heresy setting! Oh well. It's important to "go with the flow" on the painting mojo. Here is a 10-man squad of Marines from the VI Legion, the "Space Wolves", clad in Mark III powered armour. These are multi-part plastic miniatures from GW.

The famous "shark-fin" style missile launcher - a shout-out to the early days of the plastic Space Marines from the Rogue Trader era.

The so-called "Space Wolves" have a long history as a GW sci-fi sub-product. They stood out right from the early "Rogue Trader" edition of the game and gathered a passionate fan following. I thought they were kinda neat when I was a young fellow, but the GW designers have a way of ruining certain concepts. Since those early days the "Space Wolves" have been thoroughly ruined, becoming insufferable. These days they are, I suspect, a form of self-parody or something...

The sergeant has a comb on his helmet - and is carrying a scary plasma pistol and what I like to call a "tickle glove"...

Of course the Space Wolves had to play some kind of part in the Horus Heresy. I love the Horus Heresy setting, but when I started collecting the figures and models for the game, at the time I couldn't care less about how the stupid Space Wolves would fit into it. They fought on the loyalist side, but were not present at the Siege of Terra so...so who cares? I assumed Leman Russ spent the war off chewing on Primarch Milk Bones or something.

With the exception of the sergeant and heavy weapon gunner, these veteran marine all carry their own chainsword because, as one does...

Enter Dan Abnett and his awesome, awesome Black Library novel "Prospero Burns". One of the most talented scribes on the Black Library roster, Abnett turns his gift to the Space Wolves and makes them not only readable, but supremely interesting! Putting aside the wolfy-wolf-wolf drivel, Abnett's portrayal of the VI Legion brings them back instead to, essentially, spooky space Vikings - happy to be thought of - and underestimated as - brooding barbarians, when in fact they are clever tacticians as well as fierce and dour fighters. This is a great book, and if you like the setting at all you should go read it!

The fellow in the middle of the front rank in the photo is carrying a flamethrower...good for cooking dinner, AND the enemies of The Emperor.

After reading Abnett's book, I was hooked, and I surprised my friends by painting up some members of the Vylka Fenryka for 30k gaming. I started with the contents of GWs "The Burning of Prospero" board game, and have been adding a few models to my small contingent of The Rout here and there in the years since. This 10-man squad is another modest set of reinforcements. This is a veteran tactical squad, with a couple of special weapons for support.

Decals on the shoulder pauldron come from the box game "The Burning of Prospero".

These plastic Space Marines in Mark III armour are just the bee's knees. GW hit the ball out of the park with this kit. I love building them and painting these figures.  With the plating, the segmented and riveted armour, they look scary and menacing, just like a good Space Marine should!

The plastic parts can fit any other plastic GW Space Marine kit out there, allowing for a number of easy possibilities to customize the figures. In the case of this submission the model with the "shark fin" style rocket launcher is using arms and a back pack from the Mark IV power armour set. Of course there is a large range of Legion-specific bits that work well with the models as well, available from Forge World. 

Pattern of markings on the shoulder pauldron denote a "Great Company"...the higher level formation this squad is attached to.

Overall my collection of VI Legion marines for 30k is still pretty small (somehow the overwhelming majority of stuff I painted fights with the Warmaster...hmmm). This submission sees my Vylka Fenryka collection grow to just 30 marines led by a single character and backed by a solitary Contemptor Dreadnought armour - enough for a very small game. As I said at the outset, however, I seem to have tumbled down the rabbit hole a bit...so we'll see what else might join my 30k collection before I get back to those Prussians...

From Sander and ArthurS: Meet Starshine... (5 points)

So once upon a time there were two heroic adventurers ranging all the dungeons in the Old World. From Kellars Keep up to the Frozen North they trekked, you know how it goes: there and back again.

Many an hour did Arthur and myself spend playing Heroquest (and Necromunda...and Space Crusade...and Space Hulk... this may take a while), but never were/ are we joined by misses S.  Arthur's mum dislikes anything utilising violence and that includes pretty much all games an 8 year old plays. So when Arthur imploringly asked mum, puppy-eyed and all, what it would take for her to join us in a game of Heroquest, she needed to think fast in order to avoid doing so. After a little pause for thought she imagined she had found the ultimate unreachable goal indeed: "If you guys manage to paint me a pink and purple unicorn, I will play a game along with you." Mum was counting on my aversion against anything unicornish (pun-intended) and the lad's aversion of pink to be spared the fate of delving the board with us for treasure.

She could not have been more wrong...

I will let the pictures speak for themselves shall I?

These are Impact miniatures My Little Pony look-a-likes, only they have an evil glare to the eye. (I have just created a tag/ label for "My Little Pony")  They come in packs of 4 with two sporting horns and two without, and an ample spread of wings and sundry stuff to glue on.The one to the right has been painted by Arthur and that's the one Mum uses for her games. Is there a Sarah's Choice in this Challenge? And if so do these apply?

To use them with a game you need some stuff:

A characterbooklet to keep track of things, a big character card describing the figure and it's abilities, 3 magic cards (in Dutch) that describe the spells the pony can use (with names like: "Glitter-in-your-eyes!", "Jar-of-cookies" and "Magic-lightning!") Oh and pink HQ dice...

I think my brain is dying on me truly... Apart from Starshine (the figure Arthur painted) these were all done just before this Quarantine Challenge started, as Tamsin well knows ;-) but I wanted to show you anyway.

What I did paint this week is a test figure for a new project. While I am still adding to my first wargames love (the Dark Angels, 40K), I thought it time for a different coloured space marine army and after watching the hilarious rant by Arch (love him or loath him) I just had to do something with the Celestial Lions or Star Kitties. So now you know why I have combined these two figures in one post.

The Celestial Lion shoulder pauldron has been done on the 3D printer and boy do I love that!
I really like this scheme and reinforcements for the Kitties are ordered and incoming.
For now I want to get some more 3D printed stuff done and am still painting Star Wars Legion miniatures. See you next time!