Monthly Archives: May 2018

June-Unit: Painting Challenge 2018

by

48

We’re now hitting the final seven days of May, which means it’s time to formally flag/remind people about the painting challenge for June. Since I can’t think of any cool alliteration that works with the name “June”, I’m just going with June-Unit. It’s not awesome, but then the models we all get painted are what will make it awesome. Just like it did last time we did this in March.

I’m happy to be a bit looser this time around – the objective is simply to complete a group of models that fit together thematically. This could be a squad or a unit. It could be a gang or a team. It could be a retinue or a bodyguard – with or without their leader. It could be a tank platoon or a trio of Dreadnoughts or a trio of Ninjas. It can be wargame models, boardgame figures, models that fit into a diorama – just use common sense and context and it should be pretty obvious. I think a minimum of three models for a “unit” is fair enough

As always, the biggest distinction between this challenge and ones like Squaduary are that I only care about you completing these units. It’s not a “start-to-finish” challenge set during a single month, so regardless of whether you just missed out on finishing that squad this month, last month, or six months ago – or you’ve got stuff that you’ve been chipping away at for six months – or, indeed – if you’ve got units that have been shelved for months or even years, feel free to dig them out and join in.

Similarly, if you want to go start-to-finish, then feel free to go right ahead. If you have a squad of five figures and two are complete while the other three are bare plastic or metal, that’s fine too. It’s about completing units. The challenge is designed to easily fit into your (and my) painting schedule and be flexible enough to encompass quite a lot, and hopefully just act as a bit of an impetus or inspiration to get this stuff completed.

Once again, I will NOT be posting regular updates over the course of the month on it. I WILL do a round-up of all the participants I’m aware of just after the end of the month, though – so once again – please DO LINK to this post when you finish something that you want counted in the round-up – because I WILL forget your post otherwise.

That’s pretty much it. If you might be interested, you’ve got a week for thinking about it before the challenge starts – though if you’re keen there’s also no reason you can’t be working on your models. Because it’s only about completing models in March! 😉

There’s also no special criteria as to who can or cannot participate. If you’d like to participate, then you can. Simples.

Conan Kickstarter’s Baal-Pteor

by

26

Today we have a model from the Conan Kickstarter once again. The model is of a Conan character called Baal Pteor, or on the box, Baal-pteor. (I keep thinking of him as Baal Predator. I wonder if that’s a subtle pun on GW’s part?) He was a paid add-on from the Conan Kickstarter, and cost me ten bucks.

Kickstarter text: “The Strangler” as he is known is a cold blooded murderer. A new leader minion, he comes with his own scenario as well as guidelines for integrating him into others.

I picked this model out of a stack of boxed add-ons to paint entirely because of his appearance – basically a buff dude with a loincloth, bracelets and sandals. Or to put it another way – a simple model to paint as almost the entire thing consists of flesh tones, followed be a chance to discard the giant box that a single tiny model and a couple of cards came packaged in. Now, I pretty much know nothing about Conan. I’ve never read Howard’s novels or stories, and my total experience pretty much amounts to the two Arnie films and the single 2011 film that shares a name with Arnie’s original, and very little else.

So I used the box art as my rough guide to painting. Once I had pretty much finished the flesh, though I went with shaved bald rather than short stubble for the head, I got online to work out what colour(s) to paint his accoutrements. I also stopped to find out who the hell this guy is. Mostly since I wanted to note whether he was a player hero or an “Overlord”-controlled hero.

Alongside my only other painted Conan models. Well, the wolf is one of ten, but you get the idea.

And then I find that he’s “a Kosalan strangler of Yota-pong” who is described as “a black man from the lands of Kush“. Uh. Huh. So where or what is Kush or Kosalan? Wikipedia: Kingdom of Kosala was an ancient Indian kingdom, corresponding roughly in area with the region of Awadh in present-day Uttar Pradesh. Oh, right. Ok, where is that? North-Eastern India. So… I guess from the regional and physical descriptions given, Baal Pteor should be panted as a darker-skinned Indian. I guess it then makes perfect sense that the artwork shows a character that’s clearly European. I’ve heard that the developers were careful to reinterpret various Howard characters so as to appear less racist (though sexism was apparently not a huge problem), though I’m not sure how “giant dude who is stronger than Conan and fights him” is inherently racist regardless of what ethnicity giant dude happens to be. I’m kinda ambivalent to the whole series of arguments either way, but I’d personally rather have painted the character as he’s “supposed” to look. Still, the flesh is all done, and I’m not repainting him now.

Go home, Baal. You’re drunk!

He’s got a bit of a lean to him as well, that I only really noticed once I had cleaned, primed and base coated him. In person it varies between looking like a lean and like part of a swaggering gait. otherwise, I feel that he looks pretty decent, all things considered. I’m happy with the flesh tones and musculature, though he would have been a cool figure to paint with dark skin as well (Bobby Lashley, anyone?) Less happy with how the eyes came out, but as you can see via the Marine comparison pic here, he’s much more truescale than GW figures, and a bit of a weird looking pinhead to boot! Then again, a bit of eyeliner fits in well enough with his pretty coin-fringed loincloth and fabulous bracelets, so who’s to say?