SCW - Surprising Curt on Wednesday, Group Curtgeld Entry

When the Challenge was about to start, I started wondering what to have as a Curtgeld. Then one sleepness night the idea hit me: What if all the participants of the Challenge would create one huge collaboration entry (like a Space Marine Chapter or a Napoleonic Battalion) instead of working as pairs or small teams. Of course that was impossible, because at that time many of us had already agreed with someone else to paint something else. There was also a lengthy discussion about the subject. In the end some Spanish Militia was decided to be the one, it would allow several different painting styles and color choices and it would also give something Curt could use on his own games - he seems to distract quite a lot, so if we could give him a full squad, it would help him.

Because getting everyone involved was impossible, I turned my attention to our wonderful Wednesday Group. We soon picked up some Tuesday and Thursday guys as well, some Friday people were also interested in an so on. At some point we had, I think, 10 members, but not all of us managed to finish the painting for this Wednesday. I hope they can post their own entries on the final days.

Nevertheless, here are all the miniatures from our group, which were finished by today. Not as massed entry as I hoped in the start, but something to show our comradeship.

TeemuL - Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Militia

I had never painted this kind of historical miniatures before, so I had to paint couple of training pieces first (check my earlier posts). These were very nice and quick to paint and I hope I managed to represent the worn out look of poor militia man quite well.

BillA - Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Militia

I don't know that I have a whole lot to say about this figure, although it was eye-opening to go back to closer to true 25mm after painting so many "Heroic Scale 28mm" figures. I would like to thank TeemuL, as in the spirit of camaraderie he sent me this figure to paint at a time when almost the entirety of my "play" funds were going to pay veterinary bills. If the theme of this year's Challenge was the bonds of fellowship, then TeemuL more than exemplified that theme. 

PaulS - Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Militia

As part of the group I was intending to do a banner, but Curt beat me to painting the exact same model, so I figured I would go for soething a little bit more useful instead. The same pack of figures included an LMG, a lady with some ammo and another with a pistol. All three are generic enough to be useful in multiples, so what the heck. I know the Curtgeld is only supposed to be one figure, but I was on a roll, so there are now three... two have been formed into an MG team with a little bit of terrain and the third is ready to join the rest of the group entry to flesh out the rifles. Curt, they should pop off the bases easily enough if you decide you need to rebase them. I won't be too offended (much) ;)

 MichaelD - Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Militia

SamuliS - Empress Miniatures Spanish Civil War Militia

Spanish Civil War is an era that has always fascinated me (like most civil wars), but one that I've never got around to representing on tabletop. It's been great watching Curt and others paint up troops from this time with plenty of strange and slightly eccentric units active. So when Teemu suggested painting up SCW for a group Curtgeld entry I was immediately sold. Not really wanting to order too many minis in case I get too many ideas about starting a new project, it was quite lucky that Teemu had bought some extras and was willing to send one through our sparsely populated wilderness here in Finland. When picking what to paint I wanted to go with something a bit different than the regular militiaman or soldier and when Teemu had some Milicianas it was an easy choice! Plus we northern men tend to have a soft spot for all the fiery southern ladies ;)

The mini itself is the expected Empress quality. Great, well proportioned sculpts, but with faces that kind of let the rest of the mini down. I guess they are a bit more on the realistic side with detail that isn't too pronounced, but in my opinion at this scale details should be emphasized a bit to make it look more lifelike. Still it was a fun little project to paint up as Curtgeld. I tried to mimic our beloved Snowlords basing with some success. Hopefully it won't stand out too much from the rest of the collection!

ByronM: Nice work guys, I am sure Curt will love them and get a lot of use out of them in his SCW games.  The era is getting to grow on me due to the eclectic nature of the forces involved and the pure bonkers aspect of some of it (some of those old vehicles).  This collection will surely match right in with some of Curt's other figures.