Painting Challenge Week 4 Submissions

Two contributions from me this week, for different projects underway:

Wasteland Raiders

Here is the beginning of my first ever Fantasy army: a Conan-esque "Riders of Doom" / Game of Thrones Wildling inspired raider force.  These rather ominous looking chaps deliver two 6 Heavy Foot units for Dragon Rampant; one with 2 handed weapons and one with Shields (and led my a Sub-Leader with a Standard Bearer and a musical/signalling Horn blowing chap).

No, these are NOT Chaos Warriors (though the figs are indeed the venerable 2004 GW sculpts).  You can easily tell by the way their shields have been meticulously scraped clean of the characteristic 8 pointed star icons and most of the skulls, right? Right!

Yes that shield/banner device is indeed the Yellow Sign of Cthulhu mythos fame. 
No, they aren't wearing yellow.

Behold: the colourblind Knights of the Yellow Sign!

Painting wise, they were undercoated black and then I fell into the pitfall of enjoying painting all the lovely details and spending far too long on them - not good time economy from a points perspective, but I am pleased with their "just in from the wastelands" appearance.

Banner and shields are of course hand painted to avoid the unpleasantness than Alan unleashes on those who utilise shield decals, which are (and I quote verbatim) "evil and the work of the Devil" (as he is fond of exclaiming loudly into perpetrators' ears...)

Red Devil Jeeps

Another of my hobby objectives this year is to add to my 28mm Brit Para force, which I completed as part of my first challenge back in AHPC IV.  I really love this army (but JamesL's Germans generally don't) and am keen to add some some force options that I didn't do the first time around.

First up is a pair of Para Jeeps which come from the Brigade's Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron, but can also be used to tow the Para's Light Howitzers and 6pdr antitank guns.  Fitted with Vickers K machine guns, they can be very useful for a flanking movements and to throw some suppressing fire about in rear areas and cause havoc generally.  In BA2 terms, they probably wont be as good with the changes to the Recon skill, but I'm looking forward to giving them a go on the tabletop.

Jeeps are by Warlord Games, crews are by Artisan Designs and I've added a bunch of other stowage and gibbons from my bits box.  LMGs are modelled in a "stowed but ready" configuration for playing/storage longevity.  Yes, one of the Paras is toting a captured MG42 - to offset the captured Brit weapons that some of Alan's new Fallschirmjäger are carrying (which will also be posted today) and because its such a cool weapon!

Tip for Commonwealth types (standfast Canuks): note that the Jeep is an American designed vehicle.  Thus, the driver is on the Left hand side. Don't go into automatic and superglue your drivers into your more usual right hand side driver's position.  Yes I felt sufficiently purist (or sufficiently pressured by he who is called Alan) to remove said drivers, fix the paintwork and then re-glue them onto the designed -as opposed to proper! - side.

You can find this entry at AHPC VII here:
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/from-paulog-wasteland-raiders-and-red.html

Overall, these two submissions added a satisfying 130 points to my challenge total:
 - 60 points for the 12 Raiders + some bonus points for the hand painted shields and banner
 - Para jeeps are 2 x vehicles + 6 full crew figures for another 60 points

So where does that put me for progress? Coupled with the Armour bonus round I have now achieved 271 points to put me above the line for my 850 point target.  Now to keep the pace up with my projects various.

And to feed Miles' love of spreadsheets and graphs, here is where I sit in comparison to my previous performances in AHPCs IV and VI: