From Sean M - The race is almost run (120 points)

No idleness before the Ides!

With Spring Break and a Mid-March freeze settling in, it's a good time to make the final push on the Challenge. Nothing bad ever comes of leaving some nine and six year old boys unsupervised while painting, amirite? More on that later...

The Challenge has certainly inspired me to put a dent in the old leadpile, and I think I can claim I did not buy a single new mini for the Challenge. And here is the culmination of my second oldest ongoing project.

The last of the Celts are done, a Warband of 24 dudes. These are the bourgeois cats who can afford armour! They will either be fielded as an uber unit at the centre of the line, or split amongst the other units to make three more homogeneous units. The bulk of the figures are Warlord Games, with a good seasoning of Old Glory and the last 4 from Wargames Factory. That was the payoff from this unit, as I expended most of the WF minis as slingers, this unit was mercifully free of them. My experiments with the Magic Wash have progressed, so that the overly muddy tones of the earlier minis have been evened out, although they still have the dirty peasant look Hollywood has primed us to expect.

The hardest part of these figures is still hand cutting out the shield transfers around the shield bosses, although the application process is getting to be old hat. However, shield choice at this point in the project has curtailed by the remaining unspoiled decals, which meant a certain amount had to be javelin/shield pieces. The Warlord (above) is using one of the ceremonial gold shields, like the one they found in the Thames. While it is acknowledged that the shield would be too fragile to take into battle, how, as a modeler, could I pass it up. This unit also got the largest carnyx of the lot.

I've been hacking on the Wargames Factory minis a bit since the dreaded slinger entry, but to be fair, they did what they were bought for, which was pad out the units and add an option that the other manufacturers did not offer - money cheap slingers. Each WF mini is less than a dollar, and their rub on decals are pretty easy to put on once you cut them in half.

So here's one last WF Celt, who had an epic journey of a sorts. I came home from the Kill Team league yesterday, prepared to flock up the warband then snap some pics. However, 24 Celts had become 23. It seems the youngest of the brood had been watching You Tube on daddy's computer, and had shoved all of the minis into a pile on the side of the desk, and one last WF Celt went walkies. He was later found safely ensconced in a mukluk, all warm and toasty, with his spear only a little bent.

So here I am, with about a week left to go, wondering what to try to top up my points with now that the CurtGeld is off to my partner in the tender care of Canada Post. I think I will bash onto my Grymkin proxy army made of odds and sods from the basement leadpile.

TTFN.

Alan and Paul: Great to hear that the missing spearman turned up, and wasn't sacrificed in a bog to guarantee success for the rest of the warband! This is a great looking bunch, and the mix of manufacturers will just add to the personality of the army as a whole. Five more days! What will you paint up next?