Corehammer Single Figure Challenge

Despite the glut of (by my own admission) fascinating articles, reviews and interviews posted on Ye Olde Corehammer this past few months, it pains me to admit that we have been woefully bereft of hobby content.

‘Not enough painted moon men‘ was the cry from the peanut gallery, and who am I to deprive our readership of their bread and butter? So here we have the resurrected Single Figure Challenge.

It’s dead simple right, submit a single figure that you’ve been working on recently to be scrutinised by our readers. The miniature can be from any games system or manufacturer, just send some nice pictures alongside a bit off text telling us a bit about it. Sounds easy doesn’t it! Yeah well you’d be surprised at how hard some folk make this, anyway here’s our entrants. Vote for your favourite in the comments below, winner get’s a £20 Element Games voucher. Crack on.

Man like Paul Mawdsley opens that pit with this bad boy, here’s what he had to say: ‘

Arch Magos Drakyavic finally finished for my dark mechanicum army for 30k. Possibly pushed the verdigris a bit far but needed him to look really worn and corrupted like the rest of the automata in the army. Lot of cool textures to play with on this one, oils, rusts, bare iron, corrosion etc. So much detail too. 

 

My guy Andy Meechan over at Mantic got involved with this absolute monster….

It’s 15th September and I walk into the resin casting room at work to blag this beastie and a Dwarf Steel Behemoth. I throw the latter down onto my colleague Rob’s desk and challenge us both to paint up and play with our respective model before 30th September. This version has the optional wings, but on seeing them, well, they’re a compulsory add-on. I had been through a painting drought and this really got my painting Chi back in line. Sick model. You may have guessed I work at Mantic Games; I wrote a blog about the blag: Painting & Gaming Challenge: http://bit.ly/2kASbBW

Mark Frocker steps up to keep his rep up and threw this tasty little Abaddon into the mix

There used to be a guy called Chaos Carl who’d occasionally rock up at Games Workshop in Coventry. He was called Chaos Carl presumably because he was well into Chaos stuff which was rarity before the Codex and model range came out in 1996. Chaos Carl was about 23 at the time. He had longish hair, a pierced ear and wore a Guns and Roses shirt so he was automatically the coolest guy I knew. He once turned up with a Thunderhawk made out of a Sega Master System box and didn’t seem to mind us prepubescent nerd-pupas rummaging through his bits box; like I said, cool guy eh?

At this point in time I had little disposable income. Paperboy rounds operated on a baroque system of nepotism based on if your parents knew the guy who owned the newsagent. My Dad had just lost his job and didn’t read the paper, so my potential for cashflow was pretty fucked. Model purchases were limited to a strict seasonal timetable of Christmas, Easter and Birthdays, so when the Chaos Codex dropped in Summer 1996 (missing all of these windows) I had to go without. This is, without doubt, the saddest story you’ll read all year. I never did get to paint Abaddon and my dreams of being as cool as Chaos Carl had to wait 21 years to come to fruition. 
Turns out it was worth the wait though. There’s very few Jes Goodwin sculpts that have aged and although this fella runs pretty small compared to present scales, he’s still packing character. This hunk of lead was a rescue model and came as part of an eBay job-lot caked in paint. Thankfully there was no damage to the figure and I painted him up of over the course of a week or two. He’s based roughly on the cover of Codex Chaos and I’m hoping to put together a small army based on the figure range from that period. There may even be a cardboard Thunderhawk involved.

Joe Wilding’s fallen elves The Ashen Host continue to take the absolute piss..

Converted Vampire Lord who I made for a warband for AoS28. His fluff is that he’s a Wood Elf Glade Lord who gets turned by a vampire so I tried to keep some more natural elements in there like feathered wings instead of bat wings and stuff while painting it up kinda grim.

Jamie Lloyd is up next to the plate with this grimy looking Tech priest Dominus.

I wanted to stick with the traditional Martian colour scheme as I like the red, cream and metallic colours together (an old school British redcoat vibe). It’s a busy model with lots of details but I enjoyed working on the numerous lenses, hazard stripe cabling and liquid vials on his back of weird replacement body fluids, also I added some green tarnish to the copper to age it. I Really tied to give the base and figure a dusty Martian landscape look with plenty of skulls of dead enemies/servitors lost to the wastes and make it stand as him blurting binary to the legion. I enjoy the bases and feel it gives the model context.

 My dude John Ryan comes correct with this Bloodsecrator. Come say Hi to the bad guy

I basically re-watched the first 3 Hellraisers recently and thought fuck, it would be cool as shit to have a pinhead mini in my Khorne army. So while not a pinhead mini, the Bloodsecrator was a decent enough fit to motive me, he has metal pins in his head and is probably the most important mini in my army due to buffs.

I went with the basic Khorne scheme of red and brass, the only real difference is I attempted a more polished brass effect to indicate the dudes importance, he doesn’t really fight, he looks cool as hell and inspires the other unit to go kill everyone or die in the name of Khorne. At the same time he holds enough presence to say ‘come at me motherfucker’ and holds up well in combat.

The only other things I did a little different from the GW standard is, I attempted to get a lifted skin effect going on with the dudes nut, but instead of showing skull it was meant to look more raw and glistening with fresh blood. The scar through his right eye was also emphasised a little more, and I took it completely into the eye so it hopefully looks like he only has one eye (which is slightly yellowing over as he conjures Khorne’s will to open the portal of skulls.)

John Adam’s contributes this truly disgusting Mamon, good job!

Never really been a strong painter and dipping my toes more into centrepiece models I needed a challenge. This guy is intimidating with so much detail! However I went for it, never liked the dingy dark scheme for nurgle daemons, so went for something bright and “jolly” with some nurglings dancing around in his cesspool. I feel I’ve done this model somewhat justice.

A&E bloggerman Tony Maher invokes yet more grotesqueries from the plague lords own jizz bucket.

This guy is a pestigor, inspired in no small part by the recent(ish) release of the Tzaangors which were first seen as part of the Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower boxed game. Now obviously I love all things Nurgle, which led to me converting up a crew of 7 miniatures for the Dark Age of Sigmar project.  I personally hold no truck with this new-fangled Age of Sigmar nonsense. I don’t see the fucking point. But the guys I game with wanted to do something, so I was persuaded into it.  In my mind I was making a war band for Mordheim. Or so I keep telling myself.  Anyway, the opportunity to do something with a bit of a grim-dark aesthetic in a fantasy setting was too much to resist.

 This was worked up from  white undercoat using minimal amounts of paint, and plenty of washes and glazes, all finished off with some weathering powders and GW technical paints. He has no name.
 
Joseph Bugman tribute act Josh Bottomley dips into his Infinity stash….
As my Hobby resolution this year was to paint more, I had had a hard time choosing which model to submit for the challenge, I decided on the Pan Oceania Jotum TAG from Infinity the Game as it was the first model I painted in the style I was going to use to paint everything else in my shame pile. 
I love this model, both on the table and off, its a beast, and was super fun to paint. The Newer Infinity models are a so sick and the Jotum fired up my Infinity addiction again this year. Special shout out to Vallejo Model Air Fluorescent Red and white watercolour pencils!’
Our man in Toon Town Chris Mcgreevy has been chewing away at his 30K World Eaters for a while now, here’s the grisly fruit of his most recent labours…..

As with most of my stuff, I’ve had this World Eaters Leviathan Dreadnought half painted for months so I thought this was a good opportunity to finally finish it. Love the model, it’s an absolute beast and really enjoyed painting it. Got stuck into allsorts really and tried some modulation with the airbrush then added sponged/painted battle damage, oil washes, AK effects, pigments and then inks for the heat bloom on the melta lance and grease in the joints etc. I thought it’d suit being a bit banged up without going too mental, but hopefully looks like it’s been in the thick of it.

Sticking with the theme of eating worlds in the years of the Heresy, here’s Doug Mckerracher’s glorious Kharn The Betrayer….

With Kharn the thing I really wanted to capture was the tragic closeness the World Eaters have to their Primarch; that whole thing of damning themselves forever with the Butcher’s Nails so they could understand what he feels. So I chose a scheme that was halfway between the standard World Eaters white and blue and the brass/bronze of Angry Ron’s armour, emphasising that where most World Eaters just took the Nails to feel that kinship, Kharn went the step further and had his armour wrought to be a miniature version of his Dad’s.

Finally here’s Tom Deacon’s Night Lord, I don’t have any fluff for this one because he sent the text over in some unrecognisable format.

No matter, Tom’s marine is another excellent submission in a Single Figure Challenge where the standard has been incredibly high. Vote for your favourite in the comments below!

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16 thoughts on “Corehammer Single Figure Challenge

  1. Some crackers in there, Frockers is great and the sob story is well emo.Gonna have to go with the Pestigor though as it’s a top conversion and the crustiness is spot on.

  2. Joe’s wood elf / vampire lord conversion for me. I love the brooding aesthetic.
    Although the overall standard from everyone that’s contributed is great.
    Also really liked how Josh has done the model from Infinity. Paulo always takes the piss with his awesome painting too.

  3. There’s some awesome skill on display here, way beyond my childish attempts. I’m a sucker for a good conversion though so I’m going to go for Tony’s Pestigor, pure filth!

  4. Love the use of a limited palette on that Vampire Lord, but I’m a sucker for weeping sores, so the Pestigor gets my vote.

  5. Loads of great stuff here but my favourite is the Vampire Lord, for the combination of painting, conversion and, er, general style.

  6. Great stuff all round, but my vote goes to Tony’s Pestigor – fantastic use of weathering posders and technical paints.

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