From BillA - Bidowers and SKELETOR! (35 points)

I am going to be all over the place with this year's Challenge, but one thing I am focused on accomplishing is painting up a retinue for Osprey's medieval small-battle/skirmish game, Lion Rampant.  Moving the focus from big battles like Agincourt or Hastings to "Baron A has accused Baron B of stealing a pig from his land.  A scuffle ensued" allows for a game to be enjoyed with fewer figures on the table, and Lion Rampant's design, focused on categorizing troops by how they work rather than nationality or anything like that, means a simple unit profile can cover a wide variety of similar soldiers.

One of the smaller and cheaper in-game units is called "Bidowers," consisting of light missile troops that function as scouts or harriers.  A unit of Bidowers in heavy terrain can annoy a unit of mounted knights into charging them, bogging the knights down in terrain that really hampers them.  I've seen Bidowers modeled as everything from peasant archers to Renaissance handgunners.

I picked up a pack of Bidowers from Crusader Miniatures, selecting six figures to represent my own peasant archers.  I've got them on magnetic bases (I'll mount them on steel movement trays to simplify moving them until combat starts) and played around a bit with GF9 "Autumn Flock" on the bases for a change of pace.  I think for the remainder of the retinue I'll go my usual route of applying a first layer of Army Painter brown basing grit, and then apply the Autumn Flock over top of that.

I'm still getting the hang of doing highlights without just drybrushing; up close the tunics and hoods look like bold strokes of paint but on the table the result works out pretty well.  A lot like an Impressionist painting, I suppose.

Next up is a Reaper...undead? Demon? I'm not entirely sure, actually.  Reaper #02218 "Abraxus, Dire-Dead," appears to be a muscular fellow with a tail, clawed feet and a horned skull helmet encasing his head.  Sculpted by Bob Ridolfi in the late 1990s, he was too cool not to buy when I was gathering some older undead from Reaper back in October.  The juxtaposition of skull face, muscular torso and cape gave me no choice but to paint him as the supreme villain of my childhood cartoon-time: Skeletor, archenemy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

I think the blue skin came out really well, and I played around with a new method for painting gold on his helmet and chest-piece that I think looks fantastic.  The highlights on the folds of the cloak aren't showing up as well in the photo as they do in person, and I think I might need to go back and bring them up a little higher.

So with seven 28mm figures, this update should net me 35 points.  As Bidowers are a 2 point unit in Lion Rampant, that puts me on the board for the Lion Rampant side duel with 2 points towards me 24 point retinue.

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But wait, there's more . . . . not French. Unless the bidowers are French? Could they be French? Eh, I guess the French would hire anybody so, for the purposes of posting and theme here at the Friday Follies, I deem them French! After all, why not go mad with power, now that the Snowlord has handed me the demesne of Friday as his vassal?

And hey, who would not go mad with power when we have SKELETOR in our midst? It's almost obligatory! 

And a right chuffed and smashing example of supervillainy he is. Cuts quite a dashing figure, does he not, with the highlights to his blue skin and his purple cape? You've done a smashing job, Bill!

So, 35 points go on the board for you, I have marked you down in the super secret Stats-wallah double bookkeeping, and I expect to see the rest of your retinue ere long.