From PhilH: Wildlife at the Larder and Hatchery (60 Points)

A couple more Chambers to hit up before I hit the sack tonight. First up, the Larder had me stumped for a while, and I nearly begged a boon from the Witches to skip it. But then I was struck by inspiration for my main project of the Challenge, North American woodland tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. As well as horticulture, the male warriors hunted extensively for food and goods and maintained extensive hunting grounds in modern New York State and beyond.

So I ordered a few bits from the Warbases animals range. Pity they don't sell turkeys, but the deer work well enough for woodland hunts.

I painted these as White-tail or Virginia deer.

And of course, there is a link the the wargames we play too: loss of hunting grounds was a cause of Native American frustrations that erupted into conflict with European settlers. The British government had a policy of preventing settlement West of the Appalachian mountains to preserve tribal lands after the French-Indian war, but couldn't practically constrain the colonies from westward expansion. This loss of traditional hunting grounds to settlement and encroachment came to a head with involvement in the American Revolutionary war. While there were losers on all sides from the frontier warfare, the Iroquois were devastated by death, destruction and disease, their ancient confederacy broken, extensive loss of lands and forced westwards to destitution.

Moving on to the Hatchery, more North American wildlife in the form of the ubiquitous Canada Goose. Seriously, these things are everywhere.

These were a delightful diversion to paint, I had a blast and am majorly pleased with how they came out. I just noticed I should to drop some gloss varnish on their little goosey eyes.

I was playing the daft Unitled Goose Game on the PS4 at the time, where you play an obnoxious (British) Goose harassing a quaint village.

Not sure how to score these, but there's two Chamber bonuses, plus 10 or so for the critters? So two little bits of table dressing and two more Chambers down, and into Level 2.

Those deer look simply splendid, and as for the geese, well, you've done a cracking job on those too.

I've scored the deer as 28mm foot and the geese similarly but for each pair, so that makes 60 points all told.

Tamsin