Painting Challenge Entry 11: Epic 40k

Another week and another wholly different subject! This time back to even smaller scale than before with some Epic 40k minis!

I've always loved the idea of Epic as at least for me it represents what the battlefields of 40k should look like. Massed forces with tens if not hundreds of vehicles per side all going at it over the battlefield. Regular 40k has lost quite of it's appeal with the additions of larger and larger vehicles that just seem out of place. They do look cool as miniatures, but the scale just seems odd when you throw in a few Imperial Knights to battle against some other big monsters. However as a kid I never really got into Epic as most of my mates weren't interested in it and with a limited youths hobby budget I couldn't really get into multiple different rules and scales! I still bought some Epic minis like Gargants, but never really anything even close to resembling an army.

Luckily with a looming 30s crisis and a much improved financial situation I've been able to indulge on many a miniature that I was drooling over 10-20 years ago. Not very surprisingly one of the subjects that I've been drooling over was Epic. Like a lot of my Oldhammer acquisitions my Epic failure/adventure started by being bored on a business trip and wandering into eBay. Spotting a good deal on an Imperial Guard force is what got me started, which lead me to acquire some Orks to bolster the couple of gargants that I found in my stash of old models bought when I was a teenager. I'd been planning to build the IG and Ork forces, but then I ran into a good deal selling an unpainted and unassembled Space Marine force for roughly the price of a single 40k tank. It would already yield me nearly a full army and with a few additional tanks later I came into possession of yet another force.

The Guard and Ork forces have been a bit of a more daunting task as there's a lot of paint stripping required as well as clipping minis off their bases and basing them again. So it would be the men in power armor that would get paint on first! I'd already decided to paint the Guard as Steel Legion and Orks as Kult of Speed and Goffs, so sand, red and black were taken. Add to that my hatred of yellow and those blue smurfs being boring as hell. So I didn't have too many colour choices left. Going through the Armageddon campaign forces there weren't many chapters with suitably simple colour schemes that would fit the bill. Luckily one of my favorites, the Salamanders, were very active in the campaign so the choice was rather easy in the end! I mean who can resist the purifying flames of justice!

This entry represents the first half of the army with a solid core of 3 tactical marine units representing roughly a full company of Marines with their Rhinos. There's also stands for the Supreme Commander, a Librarian and a Chaplain. Miniatures wise this will be roughly half the army, but points wise only a small portion. There will be a few Terminator units coming, as well as heavy support in the form of Predators, Dreadnoughts, Devastators and a mighty titan! But those will have to wait for another time.

I haven't painted 6mm in a while again so there was bit of a learning curve again. The minis were still very nice to paint as they are quite nicely and clearly detailed especially considering that these are the plastics from '91 or '92 if I recall correctly. I went for a basic green and picked out some details. To make them look like Salamanders I decided to paint some flame effects on their shoulder pads as well. Worked out quite nicely, but as the missus pointed out some of them do tend to look a bit like German flags :) Basing was a bit tricky as my normal flocks were far too long for this scale and in the end I used a few different model railroad turfs products as well as some saw dust to represent burnt grass.

With these done I'm sitting at 751 points out of my 1000 point goal. So still a bit behind schedule, but with about two and a half weeks to go it's still achievable. So with that done it's back to the brushes in a mad rush to the finish line!

Painting Challenge entry 10: Sturmpioniere

Back in business with something totally different this time. I'll let a gem of Australian TV introduce my subject this time!

So with the formalities done it's time to present my Sturmpioniere! I was cleaning the cabinets last weekend and came upon a box full of readily based and built Germans. When people at my club got into Bolt Action a couple of years back I quickly built a large Red Devils force and figured I'd build a German army as well to have the opposition ready as well. I built a  large force, but only really got a few squads painted before something else came up and they got packed away. With a Bolt Action game day coming up and I promised to run a scenario, I figured it would be a good time to paint them now that I uncovered them again!

So 23 foot miniatures and the Goliath demolition vehicle, which probably counts as another infantry figure as well as it's rather tiny. 120 more points to add to my target. I'm still a bit behind schedule, but with over 600 points out of 1000 I'm starting to feel a bit more confident about being able to reach my target. After these there's still most of the support weapons left, but as I don't really need them for the scenario they will unfortunately most likely just go back into the cabinet.

Two evil officers. Warlord has a knack for doing these Commando style evil nazis. Great looking minis, but a tad bit cliched.

All are from Warlord, with most minis from their Pionier box. I spiced them up with some head swaps and some later equipment from the Grenadier box. The officers are metal offerings. The plastics are pretty nice, but I still prefer the metals that Warlord has. Much more character! Paint job wise I went for quick and dirty again with a wash and highlights for the uniform and major equipment. I had an autumn theme running on the previous germans bases so continued with the same on these.

Regular Pioniers with varied equipment

With the end of the challenge looming I really need to start finalizing some projects. I have a lot of Epic Armageddon started that I've been slowly painting every now and then. My Curtgeld entry is still in it's infancy with the models cleaned, but nothing else done. Add to that the random single minis that I have on the desk.

Specialized Pioneer equipment. Goliath, flame-thrower, Sturmpistole, breaching charges and all kinds of other equipment.

As an afterthought this is pretty much what I had in mind when going through my cabinets... Too many projects, too little time! Probably should minimize random purchases, but that would be slightly boring...

Painting Challenge entries 8 & 9: Black Plague Survivors and Regiment Prinz Maximillian

I'm lagging behind a bit on posting my challenge entries here, but I guess it's better late than never!

First up the six basic survivors from the new Zombicide Black Plague box. I'd promised myself not to buy anymore Zombicide as I have all the boxes and quite a few extras from previous kickstarters, but then those dastardly guys decided to do a medieval version! The sculpts seemed a lot more characterful than the previous "modern" Zombicide sculpts and there were plenty of great looking heroes and special monsters. When they showed a few Monty Python themed sculpts I was finally sold and pledged for the whole deal!

The basic game arrived just before christmas as they had the boxes ready and apparently wanted to give an early christmas gift to the backers with the rest arriving in February. Not surprisingly in late January we were informed that items wouldn't arrive before June/July and the main boxes would go on sale at stores already.

I hadn't painted any Zombicide stuff previously, but figured that these medieval versions deserved a bit of paint. I'm probably going to paint up all the heroes at some point when they show up. I went for a simple paintjob as they are only really going to be used with Zombicide and not in normal miniature games. So block painting, a brown wash and a single highlight on the largest items. Finally some blood and slime effects thrown on the weapons and ground.

The second entry of last week was another Saxon Regiment. This time Regiment Prinz Maximillian and it's first battalion. After this unit it's Regiment von Steindel and with them done I have all the line infantry of the 1st Division finished. Not sure what units I'm going to paint after that. A change from the line infantry could be nice so I might try my hand at converting some Uhlans from regular Chevauxleger miniatures.

Painting Challenge entries 6 & 7: Chainsaw Wizard and American halftracks

Last week I actually managed two entries, even if one of them was only a small one with one miniature!

First up is a limited edition Citadel Chainsaw Wizard sculpted by Aly Morrison in 1987. A suitably wacky sculpt that was fun to paint for a change! I've been buying up some of the old citadel limited editions whenever I see them going for sale on eBay or somewhere else for reasonable prices. Slightly embarrassingly most have been waiting for paint for very long times. With that in mind I figured I should prep a few of them for the painting challenge and paint them up between other projects every now and then. With the chainsaw wizard done I now really need to start looking for his long-range counterpart the submachine gun wizard!

The second entry of the week was 10 additional halftracks for Flames of War. 5 M3 tracks for the armored rifle platoon that was finished a few weeks prior, 2 M2 command halftracks and 3 M4 81mm mortar carriers. With these done I'm only missing 4 M10 tank destroyers and some odd weapons stands for when I choose to dismount the mortars or some of the MG's from the infantry half-tracks.

With the plastic infantry I was complaining about the appalling quality of the sculpts and moulding, but compared to them the plastic halftracks are actually a very pleasent surprise. I find them far better than the resin vehicles that Battlefront makes. Detail is very crisp, they go together very easily and all in all were quite a joy to paint. And I think the same can be said for most of their other newer plastic kits as well. Apparently even the plastic soviet infantry is quite nice. Practice goes a long way in helping improve the kits, and they seem to have gotten the hang of it by now. Hopefully they'll go around updating some of the first plastic kits in the future as well.

Painting wise I went with my trusted method of Brown Violet with dark yellow modulation. After details were picked and chipping applied, a liberal brown enamel wash was applied which was then wiped of when it had dried. Getting the modulation right really does seem tricky as before the wash I'm constantly thinking that I went too far and the effect is too stark. But now after the wash I'm almost wishing I had gone for even more contrast.

That's all for Flames of War US forces for a while now. I have nearly everything for my Mid War list as well and the only really missing pieces, the M10's, can easily be proxied with other TD's. I'll finish them up closer to the European Team Championships when I've gathered more motivation to paint olive green again.