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Welcome all to the 115th round of the Dakka Painting challenge. For the unfamiliar, this is a friendly painting competition open to members of all skill levels and experience, whether your entry is your first or you thousand-and-first time painting miniatures. Each month, finished entries are collected into a thread where the community can vote on their favorite pieces, and those votes go towards an annual overall League that runs for 12 rounds.

This month the topic is: Absolute Unit - Some things are just Bigger than others. Entries should be larger than their peers. Giant tanks, big bruisers, or even the roughest little fey in the fairy circle. Or it could just be part of the model. Swords longer the the wielder is tall, or hammers bigger than the torso of the guy/gal swinging it. Sometimes size does matter.


How To Enter

- You may enter up to 5 MODELS as a SINGLE ENTRY, and are permitted one entry per member per month. If you enter multiple models, they should ideally be related in some way, such as part of the same squad, unit or scene if you are doing a diorama
- You may enter at any time during the month, up to the last minute. We do encourage people to enter early, as to be part of the community, but if you can’t start until the 11th hour, that’s OK.
- You MUST post a 'proof' picture of your entry in the thread of the state it was in before you started working on it; this must be either unassembled, unpainted, primed or coated a single colour. Entries that do not submit a valid Proof Picture will not be eligible for voting.
- After this, you may post WIP pictures in this thread and your own if you wish, and on completing the entry, you may post up to 6 final pictures IN THIS THREAD that will then be used for voting. Please note that pictures in a montage or collage picture will be considered individual images for this purpose, so while these types of presentation are certainly acceptable, please keep the image limit in mind when compiling them. For example, a collage of 5 images and one separate image would count as your 6 picture allowance.


So What Do I Win?
- Points... and points mean... bragging rights for the next month! Following the vote, points will be awarded to every entrant. This year, the Points you receive will be equal to the Percentage of Votes your entry receives in the final Voting thread; if you get 10%, you get 10 points, if you get 6% you get 6 points, so on and so forth.

These points will be used to form a league table, which will be updated month on month as the results come in.

How Long Do I Have?
This challenge begins 1st of September and will end at midnight EST on September 30th. After this, I shall compile the finished entries into a new thread, and voting will run for 5 days.

I have this carnotaurus from Reaper that I've been meaning to paint for a while. Everyone loves big, chompy dinos, right?

Can’t go wrong with dinos!

--

Going to paint up the pair of Kosargi Nightguard from the old CC box.

Banana for scale.

I’m going to repaint this chibi Triceratops.

Oh man, I was going to paint an avatar or a wraithlord, but if everyone's painting dinos... what's an exodite collector to do?! I'm almost shamed into following suit...

I’ve had this unit in my ‘pile of potential’ for some time. It feels like it’s finally his turn. Got to admit I’m excited about this one…

It’s an Ironjawz Megaboss

Lady Sheeva, and her familiar, because I've got a couple of these Ral Partha minis still around after the Keeper of Secrets (I feel like the wraithbone undercoat's doing enough to censor her for now so as not to ruin all your innocent minds):



...and alongside a regular Legionary (not part of the contest entry), just for scale:



You can guess which line from Beverly Hills Cop 2 I'm thinking of.

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
Oh man, I was going to paint an avatar or a wraithlord, but if everyone's painting dinos... what's an exodite collector to do?! I'm almost shamed into following suit...

I would enjoy seeing an avatar of wraithlord, personally. I'm planning the intimidating task of painting one or more of my scratch built ork stompas. But if a bunch of us want to get in on dinos, I could always paint up another of my big squiggoths that were converted from toy dinosaurs.

Don't laugh fellow mini-frantics, but I really wanted to paint a dwarf again, and still had a spare Runelord. My original and existing Runelord is in my user icon eponymous to my name, a more natural version.. but wanted to make the second Runelord emitt absolute magic power which without question was peaking; in the stead of buffing others he would look like primarily buffing himself to the heights of dwarven potential. Making him an absolute unit among the smaller folk.

His name?.. Ah ofcourse this had to be a etymologically laden whiz..

He shall be known as 'Adel pléascadh aroggyd-borhud' or in modern english; Adel the explosive rugged-beard; somewhat inspired from black adel askar the frisian viking who raided phoenician ships around crete who funnily as much as ironically was depicted as a giant.

His trade is self buffing into such a frenzy that after the resulting mayhem he probably wanders around the lands forgetful of what has passed for a while.
Just like Askar.
Hehhh

I am in with a Rancor, who would fit the bill on his own, but he will be sharing his base with Boba Fett and Baby Yoda. All that marketing power has to make them an Absolute Unit.

I plan to build self-propelled artillery vehicle from WWII - Elefant, but in "historical fantasy" version. The vehicle will be painted in colours of Imperial Japan, later maybe with small diorama.
The model is some special version, with metal barrel and lots of photo-etched part. It was surprisingly cheap for all those things, so I hope it will be good quality. I'm not sure I have enough skill to use it all, but I'll try .
Proof pic:

I just used my big stuff for the Summer Blockbuster Centerpiece...

Cheers,

CB

Been a while since I've done one of these. Gotta try to knock out a Varghulf Courtier. Need to get my flesh-eater courts spearhead army painted.

Exciting entries!

Throwing my hat in the ring as well.

Going to be painting this Dark Eldar Archon conversion, which is built from one of the Crimson Court Vampires.
She's going to be the second archon for my "Space Vampire" army.

She's definitely bigger and meaner than the Kabalites or Incubi who follow her to battle.
And according to the 10th edition rules, she's an "Absolute Unit" on the tabletop (or at least due to the buffs she gives).



Aaand got a bit excited while listening to the R.A Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy audiobook.
Some progress after the first night of painting:

I think I'll throw down with the hunters from the Primal: The Awakening core game. Proof:

Each of these hunters is an absolute unit; just look at the size of the weapons they carry! They'll need those weapons to have a chance of surviving against the giant monsters in the game. It'll be nice to paint something that isn't GW for a change!

Last month for the Centerpiece challenge I painted the Carnosaur and 5 warriors.
For this month I hope to paint the 3 Kroxigors as my entry and the other 5 warriors to have the whole spearhead ready.

The same picture for proof because I can't be bothered to take a new one. The only thing I have done on the Kroxigors is I have washed one with Mortarion Grime.

First time for everything I guess, finished already 2nd day having spent all day yesterday to put every last once of inspiration into this one as I got into the flow of it (love it when that happens on single mini's, maybe thats the cataclyst anyway.. as that never happens in batches for me)

Here is my self buffing power runelord, rotational vid to do it better justice than photography can.
https://sendvid.com/di2ruakg

So yeah, a day 2 finished entry for me (can finally finish my elves now I think, having been postponed for half a year now)

-Adel the explosive rugged-beard-

Rest of the pics;


-

EDIT: Did a touchup, changing the inner side of his cape from red to grey, also slightly rosed up his nose (not sure if that is noticable)'
so'.. replaced the final result imagery.

 Captain Brown wrote:
I just used my big stuff for the Summer Blockbuster Centerpiece...

Cheers,

CB

Dw, just use your imagination and make something smaller into something bigger than its peers.

 Syro_ wrote:

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
Oh man, I was going to paint an avatar or a wraithlord, but if everyone's painting dinos... what's an exodite collector to do?! I'm almost shamed into following suit...

I would enjoy seeing an avatar of wraithlord, personally. I'm planning the intimidating task of painting one or more of my scratch built ork stompas. But if a bunch of us want to get in on dinos, I could always paint up another of my big squiggoths that were converted from toy dinosaurs.

Ah okay, I'm happy to go with a wraithlord, or maybe make a second attempt at an avatar. I might do my dire avenger wraithlord. Maybe dinos could be a theme for a future month, if that isn't too restrictive a topic?

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:

 Syro_ wrote:

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
Oh man, I was going to paint an avatar or a wraithlord, but if everyone's painting dinos... what's an exodite collector to do?! I'm almost shamed into following suit...

I would enjoy seeing an avatar of wraithlord, personally. I'm planning the intimidating task of painting one or more of my scratch built ork stompas. But if a bunch of us want to get in on dinos, I could always paint up another of my big squiggoths that were converted from toy dinosaurs.

Ah okay, I'm happy to go with a wraithlord, or maybe make a second attempt at an avatar. I might do my dire avenger wraithlord. Maybe dinos could be a theme for a future month, if that isn't too restrictive a topic?

Make the topic Spare No Expense. Anyone who doesn't have or want to paint dinosauruses can paint units with expensive or rare gear, or blinged up stuff. Or John Hammond.

I like that idea. Maybe even include dinosaur hunters as well. I have a few models with dino skin or dino bones.

I love that phrase. Excellent topic.



Prepped the basing material for the Rancor. Don't mind the rando Mando who snuck in.

I was going to do a Burrows and Badgers Otter, who’s a bit of a Unit, but then I saw this guy in the £shop.

He’s the perfect size for a WFB bone giant! So of course I had to get him and enter him in this months challenge. Boney McUnit!

Aw, and here I was debating doing a pair of B&B badgers if I didn't do assault mechs...
That is quite a skeleton though!

The all important pose really needs to sell it.

@Leopold Helveine: Darn that was fast! Getting into the flow usually yields great results and that's no exception. Well done!

@theCrowe: That truly is the definition of an Absolute Unit!



Managed to push the model to completion by adding the final touches during the lunch break. Pros of working remotely and all that.

Finished pictures of the Dark Eldar Archon:


Model converted from the Crimson Court Vellas von Faine.

theCrowe - the posed skeleton really looks like it was meant to be a wargaming miniature.

I bought a crew for my vehicle, so I post a proof pic:


The model slowly takes shape, but the photo-etched part are quite difficult to assemble:

 Ezki wrote:
@Leopold Helveine: Darn that was fast! Getting into the flow usually yields great results and that's no exception. Well done!

.

Hey thanks, you're quick too, that sword really takes the cake.

Work on Boney McUnit continues.

I’m thinking about his headwear. Don’t think I’ll go the full King Tut. Maybe just a topknot and some face paint.

Good work on the Bone Giant!

When it comes to headgear, I always liked the look of the headband the old metal Tomb Guard has. See example in spoiler.

I got a little carried away and tried to paint Emperor vs Horus on Sheeva's reactor access panel.