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Dakka Painting Challenge Round 119 January 2025: Frugal  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

Welcome all to the 119th 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: Frugal - Your entry should be cheep. Could be in-universe penny-pinching, like troops equipped with bargain basement gear, or ruleswise, for miniatures with a low points value, or real-world, like making a character out of a regular trooper tarted up with accessories from the bits box and a fancy paint job instead of paying top dollar for the actual Captain/whatever miniature. Actual paymasters or misers would also work.

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 January and will end at midnight EST on January 31st. After this, I shall compile the finished entries into a new thread, and voting will run for 5 days.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/02/01 12:22:00


   
Made in de
Huge Bone Giant






Nobody is more frugal than a (space) dwarf, especially one with basic gear. And I have a color scheme to test.


Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone? 
   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York



Because why pay GW’s single character prices when you’ve got a bits box?

Primaris JP chaplain. Started life as an ETB assault intercessor.

   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut






Not the best start to the year but I think I may bow out this first month…

I might change my mind and throw some ‘token’ entry in towards the end, maybe a ghoul or something very simple, but at this stage I have my eye on alternative hobbling goals.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/01 12:41:05


 
   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

 XvArcanevX wrote:
Not the best start to the year but I think I may bow out this first month…

I might change my mind and throw some ‘token’ entry in towards the end, maybe a ghoul or something very simple, but at this stage I have my eye on alternative hobbling goals.


You need to take a month (or longer) go for it. While we always love to have more participants, this is not a job. If life has other demands, or it’s causing more stress then fun, take a breather. I’d rather see people take a month off and be back, then burn out and drop out of the hobby for good.

We should be here waiting for your return.

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Mostly, on my phone.

Well, a mate 3d printed me this:

So I'll file and gs out the ultra icons, and mount on a bit of mdf that's an offcut, maybe base with actual gravel and a free genestealer mini of the month?

Theophony"... and there's strippers in terminator armor and lovecraftian shenanigans afoot."
Solar_Lion: "Man this sums up your blog nicely."

Anpu-adom: "being Geek is about Love. Some love broadly. Some love deeply. And then there are people like Graven.  
   
Made in fr
Sureshot Kroot Hunter






Please remove

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/01/01 14:08:24


 
   
Made in fr
Sureshot Kroot Hunter






Please remove

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/01 14:08:14


 
   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut






Sydney

Alright, storytime. During December I was browsing through a gaming shop during my lunch break because nobody at work pays attention to how long I'm 'going to get something to eat', and I spotted the intermediate starter set at a bit of a discount. All the marine minis would be new to my nascent crusade army, and a quick calculation told me that even with the redundant Tyranids in the box I'd be saving about a billion dollars compared to buying them individually (particularly the Infernuses, which I didn't really want a full box of ten of anyway), so I snapped it up. Good deal - and if it'd been the end of the day, I'd probably have just posted a quick note on the local gaming discord to see if any of our bug bros wanted reinforcements and not given it a second thought. But I still had the afternoon at work, and it was pretty quiet so the treacherous thought snuck into my head: how close am I to 1000 points of Tyranids now? And consulting the Munitorum Field Manual and tallying up various odds and ends I had at home, it turned out I already had 1K, so that's how I ended up collecting a Tyranid army.

So here's some of those odds and ends:



You can't get much more frugal than free - the Genestealers come from childhood Space Hulk v1 and v2 sets and have just been in a box under the stairs this whole time (so technically my parents paid for them - but I've actually got two v1 boxes, my own and one I inherited from the gaming club at uni, so that's 20 literally free 'stealers in the mix), and the Neurotyrant I got from the local GW store's birthday speed painting contest during the year, where minis were made available from the store's surplus and you keep the one you paint; I had no intention of doing an army back then, but there wasn't anything notable I wanted for my warband, so I went for the big impressive one (I thought it was a Zoanthrope at the time, hadn't read a Tyranid codex since 3rd edition so I just assumed this is what the floaty brain bugs look like now).

A caveat on the painting though, I'm fully committed to my 'nids being a 3-foot-rule army and no more - there's no way I'd get through all those 'stealers and Termagants (let alone be willing to add even more units later on) if I tried to give them individual attention the way I do with even my basic Legionaries. Big bugs like the tyrant will enjoy a bit more care naturally, but for consistency I'll be using the same techniques for the bulk of their work, so these won't be fancy, just drybrushing, contrast paint, pick out a few key details, and move on. So probably not the best entry for a painting contest, but I like how well they fit the theme, so here we are.

(Yes I know one of the 'stealers is missing a right side claw, that's one of the uni ones and it was like that when I got it. So that one's named Lefty.)

   
Made in us
Sureshot Kroot Hunter






Vespid Stingwing Warrior is my entry for the month. Just one as a test model for the rest of the Kill Team.

This is like my fourth time to try to upload this thing.

edit. - for some reason my files aren't uploading and the website keeps giving me a failure message and then bam it all works. Sorry I'll stop spamming the forum with the same stuff over and over again.
 Filename IMG_3523.jpg [Disk] Download
 Description Vespid warrior
 File size 721 Kbytes

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/01/01 14:10:03


 
   
Made in us
Krazed Killa Kan





USA

@Jammer87: Hello from a fellow Wrath of Kings player. I recognized your icon as a Skorza.

I think my planned entry definitely fits for the theme of frugal. I'll enter 5 Tyranid Termagants. The cheapest Tyranid per base/model in the 7th edition codex, which are coming from a Space Marine board game that I bought on clearance

   
Made in gb
Steady Space Marine Vet Sergeant





United Kingdom

I snapped a quick picture of my entry for this month. Lost Kingdom's Atlacoya the Sunarcher (or in other words, a Skink Hero). In The Ninth Age, 4000 points is a standard game. A Skink Hero comes in at a whopping 60 points, and with a magical bow that buffs his friend's shooting and a single spell, he is coming in at 170 points - a grand total of 4.25% of my Army List. He is definitely the frugal character choice!



His friends might get some love too. We'll see.

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Mostly, on my phone.

Got started:

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/01 18:48:59


Theophony"... and there's strippers in terminator armor and lovecraftian shenanigans afoot."
Solar_Lion: "Man this sums up your blog nicely."

Anpu-adom: "being Geek is about Love. Some love broadly. Some love deeply. And then there are people like Graven.  
   
Made in us
Utilizing Careful Highlighting





Tangentville, New Jersey

Okay, so my frugal entry is more for my Mordheim Warband On The Cheap project.

Years ago, I cobbled together a hero from various plastic kits and I liked how he looked. Earlier last year, went through my bits box to make him some buddies. Well, since I liked how how well they painted up, I challenged myself to make a whole warband using only plastic I already had. Last month's entry was one of those guys. Here's the current crop of mercs:



I have another henchman with double-handed weapon, another marksman, and another swordsman waiting in the wings.

However when it came time to get a leader, I wanted something a little more special. I normally go all-in on metal Oldhammer models, but that would conflict with my plastic warband theme. Then I bumped into a broken Talisman miniature on eBay that was perfect! He was normally going for something like $35 on sprue with $25 shipping from the UK. The broken one cost nearly half that with like $6 shipping.

When Frugal was announced as this month's theme, I knew I was good to go:



 
   
Made in us
Scarred Ultramarine Tyrannic War Veteran






Maple Valley, Washington, Holy Terra

I'll paint these Imperial Guardsmen, surely the most economical of the soldiers of the 41st millennium.


"Calgar hates Tyranids."

Your #1 Fan  
   
Made in us
Walking Dead Wraithlord








In with either Samus or some Man O' War. Whichever I can make happen. 3D prints are real cheap. And the files were free, too.
   
Made in us
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain






A Protoss colony world

I'll enter some Tomb Kings Skeleton Warriors for this one. Proof:

I figure they fit the bill of frugal, both in terms of not costing many points in-game, and in terms of Settra considering them to be cheap and disposable extensions of his will.

My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/7/24, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~16000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Imperial Knights: ~2300 | Leagues of Votann: ~1300 | Tyranids: ~3400 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000 | Kruleboyz: ~3500 | Lumineth Realm-Lords: ~700
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2024: 40 | Total models painted in 2025: 10 | Current main painting project: Kruleboyz Spearhead
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You need your bumps felt. With a patented, Grotsnik Corp Bump Feelerer 9,000.
The Grotsnik Corp Bump Feelerer 9,000. It only looks like several bricks crudely gaffer taped to a cricket bat.
Grotsnik Corp. Sorry, No Refunds.
 
   
Made in gb
Liberated Grot Land Raida






Northern Ireland

It’s all gone a bit Turnip over here. My plan was to have a full firing squad of 28mm napoleonic turnip guys but they tend to be lots of marching, reloading or advancing guys so I got a few spare sprues with the right kind of bodies and set about recasting like a bandit.

And of course it’s a greenstuff, tuft and kitbashing kind of an aesthetic so it’s all about the messy make-do madness.

   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Surrey, BC - Canada

Going to do a scratch build with household items.

Scratch that, due to a lack of time, an old Orloc Heavy.


Cheers,

CB

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/25 02:27:41


   
Made in jp
[DCM]
Incorporating Wet-Blending





Japan

My wife and/or son got the gachapon figure on a trip to visit her family, and she's been asking me to paint it for a while now. I'm adding this Uruk-hai looking sword to replace the one that came with the model and subsequently got lost, and mounting the whole thing on a plinth made from the board that came under our New Year's kamaboko. Actual monetary outlay: 300 yen. That's pretty frugal, right?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/03 03:57:35


Now showing some Deadzone heroes!

Painting total as of 1/31/2024: 16 plus a Deva King statue
Painting total as of 12/31/2024: 107 plus a set of modular spaceship terrain and two walkers and a quad mech and five giants



 
   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut






Sydney

Turns out when I go for speed, I'm actually a pretty quick painter:

Daia T'Nara - Neurotyrant and Genestealers

Spoiler:










Obviously I'm just going for 'good enough for the tabletop', but I think the bugs will look pretty good en masse, and while the tyrant's 90% the same 'good enough' techniques as the stealers, I really like how the glossy brain pops.

   
Made in us
Utilizing Careful Highlighting





Tangentville, New Jersey

 JoshInJapan wrote:
My wife and/or son got the gachapon figure on a trip to visit her family, and she's been asking me to paint it for a while now. I'm adding this Uruk-hai looking sword to replace the one that came with the model and subsequently got lost, and mounting the whole thing on a plinth made from the board that came under our New Year's kamaboko. Actual monetary outlay: 300 yen. That's pretty frugal, right?

Spoiler:
Ooh! Is that Fudo Myo-o ?!


 
   
Made in us
Walking Dead Wraithlord






 Daia T'Nara wrote:
Turns out when I go for speed, I'm actually a pretty quick painter:

Daia T'Nara - Neurotyrant and Genestealers

Spoiler:










Obviously I'm just going for 'good enough for the tabletop', but I think the bugs will look pretty good en masse, and while the tyrant's 90% the same 'good enough' techniques as the stealers, I really like how the glossy brain pops.


Hey, if it works, it works. I think they look sweet. Big fan of that color scheme.
   
Made in jp
[DCM]
Incorporating Wet-Blending





Japan

 KidCthulhu wrote:
 JoshInJapan wrote:
My wife and/or son got the gachapon figure on a trip to visit her family, and she's been asking me to paint it for a while now. I'm adding this Uruk-hai looking sword to replace the one that came with the model and subsequently got lost, and mounting the whole thing on a plinth made from the board that came under our New Year's kamaboko. Actual monetary outlay: 300 yen. That's pretty frugal, right?

Spoiler:
Ooh! Is that Fudo Myo-o ?!
  

I had to look that up. This guy is one of the Deva kings (Vajrapani in Sanskrit, I think) who stand guard at the entrance to Buddhist temples.

Now showing some Deadzone heroes!

Painting total as of 1/31/2024: 16 plus a Deva King statue
Painting total as of 12/31/2024: 107 plus a set of modular spaceship terrain and two walkers and a quad mech and five giants



 
   
Made in jp
Regular Dakkanaut






 Daia T'Nara wrote:
Obviously I'm just going for 'good enough for the tabletop', but I think the bugs will look pretty good en masse.

Your tabletop has high standards! I like that colour scheme, very 'grimdark'.

I managed to end of with three of the reloading pose marine from the Space Marine Heroes series. I already painted one in Deathwatch colours last year, and felt like practising the paint scheme again. I happened to have some spare arms from the 'named characters' deathwatch kit which are also in a reloading pose, so a little bit of kit-bashing hopefully produces a legit-looking Deathwatch marine.

Proof



   
Made in us
Whiteshield Conscript Trooper






What do you get when you stick a pile of string, some pipe-cleaners, a ton of hot glue, and some bits from a couple of toy animals, together? You get whatever this horrific abomination is:
[Thumb - IMG_20250105_104018.jpg]


Formally known as BaronVonReichspudding 
   
Made in us
Hurr! Ogryn Bone 'Ead!





USA

It doesn't get much cheaper than peasant bowmen in a Bretonnian Army.

Since the challenge dictates five figures or so, I'll focus on just the 4 person leadership command team. Otherwise, I'll be working on the whole group and the (LI) reaver titan on the side! Spoilered photos of the up close command squad for those interested.



Spoiler:













Guard, Templars, Dungeons & Dragons, Terrain & More. - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/800909.page

Way too little free time. 
   
Made in us
Scarred Ultramarine Tyrannic War Veteran






Maple Valley, Washington, Holy Terra

 Mon-keigh wrote:
What do you get when you stick a pile of string, some pipe-cleaners, a ton of hot glue, and some bits from a couple of toy animals, together? You get whatever this horrific abomination is:


It looks a lot like an otyugh from D&D to me. Nice work!

"Calgar hates Tyranids."

Your #1 Fan  
   
Made in us
Krazed Killa Kan





USA

 Pariah Press wrote:
 Mon-keigh wrote:
What do you get when you stick a pile of string, some pipe-cleaners, a ton of hot glue, and some bits from a couple of toy animals, together? You get whatever this horrific abomination is:


It looks a lot like an otyugh from D&D to me. Nice work!


I was thinking the same thing, when I saw it.

   
Made in us
Stabbin' Skarboy






I'm in. The reason I proposed Motley Crew as a theme for this month was something along the lines of, "A Hernkyn Yaegir, a Fellgore Ravager, and a Ministorum Priest walk into a bar..."
Since we got "frugal" instead, I'll be painting one or two of the three and saving the ministorum priest for another month (even though she is certainly frugal, having taken her vows and all).
These two were free minis of the month, and both don't require much in the way of creature comforts, definitely not "high maintenance".
The Yaegir model kind of threw me as I was assembling him though, because his head is so small it's like shrunken head levels compared to the rest of his body.
Proof pic:

All Orks, All Da Zoggin' TIme. 'Cause Da Rest of You Gitz is Just Muckin' About, Waitin' ta Get Krumped.
My Painting Blog: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/689629.page  
   
 
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