Confrontation Painting Challenge

My first project for the year will be to participate in the 'Corpuscle Paint Along - Let's Paint a Behemoth Orc!', hosted on the Confrontation Haven forum and also tracked on the 'Confrontation Painting Challenge' Facebook group.

This challenge is both exciting and intimidating.  Rackham figures, made for the game, Confrontation, are generally my favorite figure range.  Unfortunately, Rackham went out of business in 2010, and the figures are now hard to acquire.  One of my painting goals has been to paint to the standard that the Rackham painters established in the 2000's.  I think I've finally reached the lower range of that goal, but it's intimidating to finally break the seal on these boxes and blisters that I've been collecting for so long and finally put paint to these rare and exquisite figures.

I couldn't resist the challenge, though, for several reasons:

1. The community.  I've come to know many of the stalwart Confrontation enthusiasts all over the world.  A lot of well-known names in the core group are participating in the challenge.
2. I'm in the mood to paint orcs.  
3. I need to build out the core troops for my Orc & Goblin army.  I never got to play my Orcs & Goblins in Warhammer, and now it looks like I probably never will, now that Games Workshop has killed Warhammer.  However, the local gamers are playing Kings of War, and I can bring Orcs & Goblins to the tables here.  I'm also in the mood to play Mini Mayhem again, and I want to build out the Evil Hordes army that I've always imagined for it.
4. I'll be able to fill a slot for the 'Fantasy Collection' entry for the Capital Palette painting competition at NOVA Open 2016.

The painting challenge is to paint a model from the faction for the Orcs of the Behemoth.  Since I have the entire month of January to work on this, and because I want to field an entire unit of orcs for my games, I'm going to choose some subset of figures from my collection of Orcs of the Behemoth.  I've been collecting for years, so I'm lucky to be spoiled for choice!

I decide to work on all the basic, core fighters.  I'll add crossbowmen, heroes, and trolls at a later date.  The downselection comes out to 14 models.  Here are the 14 models, bundled in bags to keep the parts together for each model, while I filed the mold lines.




Our instigator for the painting challenge, Corpuscle, has already finished his first miniature, and it looks fantastic.  He inspired me to attempt to build bases like his. I tried using rocks and bark to lend realistic textures to the plaster-of-Paris casts.




The bark works better than the stone. The stones sink to the bottom of the container, so only the top side is usable, whereas the bark floats on the bottom layer of plaster, and it gives you two impressions, one on the bottom and one on top.




I have a lot of variety to play with, but I still like Corpuscle's results better!




In case anyone ever questions the value of washing miniatures prior to painting them, here is a comparison. The top miniatures have been washed, and the bottom miniature hasn't been washed. The top ones are nice and shiny, and the bottom one is dull. You wouldn't think being dull is a big deal, until you consider that it's release agent that makes the surface dull (as far as I know). All that release agent counteracts the purpose of the primer, making the paint-job more prone to chipping.




All filed, pinned, and washed. I probably have about 8 hours put into the project so far, and it's still a long way off before I can actually enjoy painting the figures!



That's probably over $200 worth of metal laying there.  Luckily, I bought almost all of it on discount!