Welcome to second half of the April 2020 Paint the Crap You Already Own! painting challenge.  Part One of this painting challenge round-up can be found here.

First up is John’s Franco-Prussian War marching Prussian infantry, currently on parade from Just Needs Varnish!.  John mentioned that this “marching unit is a bit different from the others I’ve painted.”  He makes a good point.  Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen many marching units like this one either on the tabletop.  Plenty of units at attention or in action, of course, but not marching.

These figures are from “the Emhar plastic 1:72 FPW Prussian Infantry set,” and the officer is “a metal figure from Hagen Miniatures.”

John mentions that the “Prussian coats are described as black-grey,” and thus are lighter than the real thing.  You can read more about what he has to say on the issue here if you’d like.  Whatever the case, I think they would look good.

He also painted some Prussian field artillery to go along with his infantry.  All of the figures in the gun battery below “are from the B&B Miniatures 20mm FPW range.”  In games, when the gun is being moved, John places it on the lengthened base “behind its limber.”

Below we have a French Mitrailleuse team.  John reports that “In English, Mitrailleuse is the name given to the first machine gun in French service in the Franco-Prussian War, the Reffy Mitrailleuse.”  John also has a couple of interesting videos showing how the Montigny (1863) and Reffy (1867) versions of the Mitrailleuse operated.

The story behind this Headquarters base of a “French senior officer conferring with one of his aides,” gave me quite a chuckle when John wrote the officer was “wondering why he hasn’t got a map of France.”  Apparently the French expected that they would be invading Germany and consequently didn’t have maps of France.  Turns out the Prussians had “tourist maps of France” aplenty.  Either way doesn’t exactly sound ideal!

Dave of Faith&Steel is working on increasing his Chinese Bolt Action forces and toward that worthy end completed a GAZ jeep.  The model is produced by Warlord Games.  I had never heard of these vehicles before so I poked around and learned there were several versions.  (At first glance I thought it was one of these but the nose and fenders were wrong.)  I asked Dave which version he thought his miniature was and he believed it was a GAZ-67B.

According to Wikipedia, “GAZ” stands for Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, which translates to Gorky Automobile Plant.  The GAZ-64 was developed “during the 1940 war between the Soviet Union and Finland,” and used “commerically available parts already available in the Soviet Union.”

Improvements made to the GAZ-67 over the earlier GAZ-64 included, among other things, a stronger frame, wider wheel base and greater fuel capacity.  This newer version was first produced in September 1943 with the B-series entering production as a replacement in January 1944.

Many people paint Blood Bowl players/combatants, but this month Dave from Scent of a Gamer presents something for the teams to fight over:  four trophies!  They are good sized as trophies go and to illustrate this Dave includes a couple of players for scale.

The trophies have some fun lore associated with them.  When I asked David about it he wrote that each of these trophies is awarded for a separate, major contest with the Blood Bowl being “the richest tournament which awards players a finalist medal.”  My favorite is the Chaos Cup (obviously) because of the “special interest” the Chaos Gods take in the tournament, resulting in random mutations and the like, as well as innovations such as prize money being determined randomly.  (“Yes, Gruncher, we only took second place but we got ALL the money!”)

David “decided to stick as close as possible to the original art in the 1993 Blood Bowl box.”  The pictures below show each trophy next to their original art.  I think he did a good job with that and a nice job painting them as well.

Maenoferren22 of Bogenwald worked on cavalry again this month but this time instead of Lustria he rides into Japan, possibly during (by the looks of things) the Sengoku period, which was a long period of civil war.

I always wondered about those flags on their backs or sashimono.  They look pretty cool in those old movies I used to watch many years ago (back when James Clavell’s novel, Shogun was popular) and I always assumed they had to do with identification and unit cohesion.  Turns out I wasn’t far wrong.

Plus they also provide aspiring tabletop shoguns scope for painting because Maenoferren22 wrote that he spent a fair amount of time painting the mon (emblems) on the sashimono and he had to 3D print them separately as well.  With posts such as “I Hate Sashimono,” and Maeno’s general sashimono-based efforts here and here, it is a good thing they add a lot of color and interest to miniatures as well as fun to old timey war movies because otherwise I’d have to say there were an awful lot of trouble.  Fortunately it turns out they are worth it.

Maeno’s force certainly is colorful and there are quite a lot of them now.  They’ll present quite a spectacle and instill the requisite awe and fear in his enemy’s hearts on the battlefield.

Argentbadger of The Bovine Overlord continues to expand his painted Warmachine collection and this month he has painted Anastasia Di Bray of the Mercenaries faction.  Argent reports that she is “basically a spy in the stories and her game rules involve ambush deployment and a highly amusing (if hard to pull off) special rule,” that seems to involve creeping up to the enemy warcaster/leader-type such that her forces can take advantage of the distraction to move into “punch them to death” range.

This seems a highly desirable thing to do and I have to say that I’d make sure Anastasia (or anyone else who could pull off a plan like that) got paid on time and was happy with her mercenary contract.  Wouldn’t want to look up one day and find out the hard way she’d gone over to the enemy!

Argent used “dark, naturalistic colours” for this miniature because it fit into the idea of Anastasia being sneaky.  He also pointed out that he liked the “fairly old” and “understated” pose versus the probable newer sculpt that would have her “balanced precariously on a rock throwing knives around like confetti.”  I agree and think that companies often overdo this, especially with rank-and-file types.  Heck, even though I don’t play Warmachine I find myself wanting this miniature because I think it would be useful for Dungeons & Dragons and other games.

Wudugast of Convert or Die! apparently has a love-hate relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Here we have two Skitarii rangers, one of which he started years ago, abandoned the project, then finished him for the challenge; the other he recently knocked out in about ninety minutes.

I said “love-hate” because Wudugast wrote that he has “a long standing love for the Adeptus Mechanicus, dating back to long before there was a range of models available for them,” but that until now he had “never painted a single model from the range,” and he found painting his first ranger an exercise in “frustration and irritation,” though he did much better sanity-wise with the second.  I’m glad because I’d very much like to see more Adeptus Mechanicus stuff from the mighty Wudugast!

What game doesn’t need more “hard-done-by civilians” to populate its burgeoning Necromunda hives?  Wudu is quite right to complain that with all of the xenos, cultists, gangs and such, no one is “here to do a day’s work.  They just seem to think that the corroded pipes, pools of toxic gunk and ominous piles of skulls just happen by magic.”  Complain no longer for here are some “Mechanics” produced by C-P Models ready to put in a hard day’s work.

Well, they used to be mechanics until Convert or Die’s chief, um, “converter” got his multifarious and (perhaps) charmingly misshaped paws on them.  He also used “heads from Anvil Industry and various Games Workshop gubbins.”  The spherical drone was “kitbashed entirely out of odds and ends” and almost ended back in the bits box junk pile until Wudugast decided his new workmen might make use of it.

Wudugast also wanted to experiment with “a new and easier way to paint orange.”  For these chaps he base coated with Jokaero Orange, followed by Gryph-Hound Orange Contrast, ending with a highlight of Jokaero Orange and then Fire Dragon Bright.  Looks pretty good to me.  Might have to try this recipe out.  Certainly sounds easy enough.

On a side note, I mentioned to Wudu that I liked the candles and he told me they came from the Cawdor kit.  Fancy!

Here are the original C-P Models mechanics in case you were wondering:

Head swaps, candles, sinister drone assistants and the like might not be ideal working conditions/fringe benefits, but at least they are better off than these four unfortunates below.  If you would like to see Wudugast’s completed forty poxwalker-strong mob (I manually counted them in the picture), with all of his various conversions, sometimes subtle but always delightful, you can find them here.

We continue our tour of Necromunda with Alex’s (of Leadballoony) D’onne ‘Mad D’onna’ Ultanti miniature he “originally intended to complete” a couple of years ago, again for his yearly Fembruary painting challenge.  Happily, Alex finally managed to gather his courage and complete the miniature for this little challenge.

I suspect D’onne would be the sort of person our aforementioned mechanics would complain about, what with her tragic upbringing, her time in and out of various underhive gangs, and not having the inclination what with being on the run and all, to admire their cunning fashioned piles of skulls and working, not-leaking-too-badly plumbing. 

Given her penchant for the plasma pistol and table manners (one wonders if a fish fork is the correct utensil for taking out someone’s eye at a formal dinner … at least in polite society?) I imagine said mechanics would do well to keep their opinions firmly to themselves.  

Alex based his paint scheme for D’onne from the book, Survival Instinct, by Andy Chambers.  The cover art was done by Clint Langley.  He (Alex not Andy or Clint) talks about some of the challenges of painting the miniature, such as fishnets, and I have to agree that sounds hard.  Well done, Alex, for finally getting D’onne finished and not having to endure another year of her sending you threatening, faux Morse code-based messages from your bits box by cunningly revving her (nuclear powered?) chainsword, demanding you get her painted for Fembruary 2021.  Now you can have some other miniature threaten you instead!

Eric of Candore Et Labore certainly was productive for the month of April, which heralded (besides finishing 26 models) the completion of Eric’s first (five months in the making) diorama.  Here we have a scene near the cliffs of Dover, very likely during the Battle of Britain.  Note that the decals on the German aircraft, painted in 1940 colors, represent the 109 flown by Luftwaffe ace, Feldwebel Heinz Bär.

Some of the “many firsts” for Eric in his diorama is “modeling water using toilet paper, using an airbrush to paint a realistic model and camouflage and making smoke/fire from cotton balls.”  I think he did a great job and this dogfight alone would have been a good month’s work, in my estimation, but Eric was far from done yet.

From England we journey to a scratch-built patch of North Africa where Eric has emplaced a flak gun.  I like how this turned out, particularly the weathering on the gun shield.  The sandbags where a nice touch too, as well as the verisimilitude in locating the emplacement in what seems a tactically sound area.  The picture gives the sense that the area is a slight depression.  The ridge on the right provides good cover and concealment on that side and the Germans have placed some sand bags where they would do some good for the riflemen.  Perhaps they have a machine gun back there somewhere they could bring up if needed?

Eric fired up his printer and completed some alien plants.  His idea was to paint them up fast with “wild colors,” and to that end Eric “used only craft store paints straight from the battle.”  (Note the guardsman in the bottom right picture put in for scale.)

Eric also printed out and painted a Necromunda loader and a “little critter” that reminds me of a Tarantula sentry gun with twin assault cannons.  (I think I have one with heavy bolters eternally lost somewhere in my pile of plastic.)  He also got an interesting bit of terrain done that looks like it could be some sort of turbine or field generator.

Finally, Eric painted two busts that he “had printed months ago.”  The plant person on the left is “baby Groot,” and the idea was to “put a small cactus in his head,” which is hollow like a planter, and present Baby Groot Cactus Head as a present for his wife’s birthday.  Alas, with the stores closed down he couldn’t make the cactus happen, but he did also paint up a plague doctor bust.  Nice!

Mark, of Man of Tin, inspired by a 1987 article by Stuart Asquith, decided to open up his blue box of drawers that has done good service by helping “preserve a small core of randomly painted and unpainted figures from my gaming in the 1980s throughout many house moves.”

He has taken advantage of his extra hobby time to finish a bunch of figures and units that have been sitting around for nearly 40 years.  Mark got a lot of work done and I’m sure there is much more space in his blue box to build up to another big painting project by 2060 or so!

In addition to the Blue Box Figures, Mark also had another box where he stored “random figures from job lots,” that he acquired in his quest for more Peter Laing figures.  Some of scrapped metal found new life as european “ImagiNations ‘Forgotten Minor States,'” such as the Volunteer Militia.  One wonders what the symbol on their flag is supposed to represent?

Some “Confederates, generic rebels or Revolutionary forces” made up from “unpainted scrap American Civil War type figures from various makers in mixed uniforms.”  Given its pedigree, it seems to me like this unit ought to get some sort of bonus in games when fielded as irregulars, militia, etc.

The cannon is “from the Napoleonic Risk board game served by a crew made from “broken figures.”

Besides, revolutionaries, Mark also found (and patched up) pirate types a plenty in his magic Blue Box of Insurrection. I think he has enough miniatures between these guys and some of the others to put on a pretty respectable Treasure Island game.

These chaps below in white shirts could fill many roles.  Guerrillas, colonists, sailors pressed into service by the pirates perhaps?

Mark also found a lot of 15mm “Tricorne figures with short muskets or carbines.”  He painted them to be “practical Redcoats roughing it in the forest wilds or along the cliffs and coast searching for Natives or Wreckers.”  Worthy opponents for the revolutionaries and pirates and as Mark points out could be useful for 18th Century Close Wars types of conflicts “in the forests of America.”

Mark completed a couple of dioramas, in addition to his newly refurbished 1980’s 15mm forces.  Here we have a “border watchtower in one of the forgotten minor states.”

Finally, Mark put together a “portable port” that was (in part) “inspired by finding a Murray King postcard of Cornish Wreckers” when he was “on a seaside trip a year or two ago.”

The lighthouse and warehouses came from a “wooden buildings from Christmas” project.  The Martello tower has a swiveling cannon that Mark is very proud of.  He writes more about the these fortifications and how he made his here.  A spoiler:  it involves some “mini crumble puddings” containers.

Miko, of Dawn of the Lead, offers up a “mixed selection” of six miniatures he painted this month.  I think they are all very nicely painted and I like the background he used for them too.

The fellow below on the left is Black Cat Bases’s metal pirate surgeon, who provides many opportunities for the Carpenter to make a wooden limb.”  The pirate is Esmerelda II from Black Scorpion Miniatures.  Let’s hope a wooden limb isn’t in her future anytime soon!

The monkey with the hat is another miniature from Black Scorpion.  (I think Mikko did a much better job of painting his than the one on the company website for what it is worth.)  Originally, as I pointed out in the comments to his post, I thought the miniature was a “dwarf anthro-donkey swashbuckler with an outrageously oversized hat,” but nope, it’s a monkey.

The monkey on the barrel was a “3d print from Depths of Savage Atoll.”  Speaking of barrels, Mikko did some more you can check out here.

The pirate on the left, with the raised sword, is a “custom Hero Forge piece” who Mikko named Smith of Bristol.  The inspiration for the name comes from a song by the Dubliners, and “tells the story of a daring pirate who goes around a-plunderin’ and a-robbin’ before finally being killed by a Spanish bullet.”  If you want to listen to the song, Mikko put a Youtube link in his blog post.

The last miniature is Tigl Uilenspiegel (or Till Owlglass), who “is a 16th (or possibly 15th or even earlier) century trickster figure,” and a rather odd fellow indeed.  Nice job with this one:  I really like the shading of the skin and the choice of colors for his clothes.

Finally, we wrap up our April painting challenge with my small contribution:  a bugbear and two poxwalkers, #18 and #19.  I liked how the flesh on “Somewhat Orange Poxwalker” came out so I might do something similar with the flesh on #20, which is the second of the great coat zombies.  (I saved the ones I wanted to paint the least until last.)

Thank you very much again to everyone who participated in this, my second painting challenge.  If I left you out, please let me know and I’ll rectify the situation pronto.  If you haven’t seen Part One of this challenge, you can check it out here.

I apparently haven’t had enough of running painting challenges yet, so if you enjoyed this one and want more, check out the Sixty Day Miniatures of Magnitude Painting Challenge, which ends on July 3rd.

Take care, thank you for reading … and Paint On!