From RayR: Retreat from Moscow - Limbo Bonus Round - Wagon's not so Ho! (65 points)

The Abyss

First Circle: Limbo

This is where previous projects have stalled. Submit something that has been partially worked on from before. Yes, this can include terrain. :)

I've had these wagons for some time, they came to me from Dave Crook, who's friend Eric had passed on. Dave was helping Eric's widow sell on his massive collection. I already used some of the figures from this collection in previous Challenges. Some of my Ottoman's for example.

So here are two abandoned wagons, I'm not sure what make either are, to be honest?

The first bigger wagon, is a heavy lump of metal and include a dead horse and soldiers who sat down exhausted and never got up again.

The soldier is from Perry Miniatures and the horse is from Tiger Miniatures. Myself and Lee raided their bits box for a handful of horses that we could use as casualties. 

The horse needed quite a bit of filing to get him to lay down convincingly!

For the smaller wagon, again I'm not sure of the make? Or to be honest if it fits in with the 1812 period?

I've included another two dead figures, another chap who sat down and never got up, and another who fell.

So to the points....

20 points for the Limbo round = 20

2 x 25mm figures = 10

1 x 25mm dead figure = half points either 2 or 3, lets not do halves??

1 x 25mm horse - again 2 or 3 points?

2 x  25mm Wagons = 40pts 

( I do feel bad taking 40 points for the wagons, though????)

I'll leave the total to you Teemu.

From TeemuL: We seem to be getting a fair share of wagons and snow today. These are very nice, although I'm not expert on wagons and can't say if they fit 1812 or not. The next challenge are the points... I'll count the dead human and dead horse as two prone figures, meaning one full. That means three 28mm figures, so they total 15 points then. And if you feel bad taking 40 points for wagons, I'll give you just 30, counting the another one as a half one. That makes 65 points for two wagons, not bad?

From JezT: 25 mm Footsore Dark Age Archers and Crusader (25 points)

Hi all 

Jez here and great to be participating again in this years challenge and part of the Thursday crew!

I remember my first ever post to the Challenge a few years ago now was some Goth archers and this first post for this year is again some archers. These are part of the Footsore Welsh range and are very dynamic, I already had some javelin men and wanted to match in the archers. I will use them in several generic Dark Age armies for my preferred Basic Impetus army games using sabot basing. This gives me the option to also use them in skirmish games.

I haven't painted much since the last Challenge so this was a nice group to get back into the flow with. 

Next I also completed another Footsore medieval Bishop Knight character that I painted up as a Teutonic Crusader. This was an odd figure left over from a past project but especially wanted to finish so I have a mounted and unmounted combination.

The mounted figure is from Gripping Beast and aimed to copy uniform

So in all just 5 foot figures to start - 25 points. 

All the best Jez

From TeemuL: Feeling a bit nostalgic, Jez? :) And why not, Challenge is a great way to look back, do some retrospective work and find inspiration for painting and modelling. I have always liked your colour choices, and here again they are very natural and fitting. Let's see what you shall paint next.

From RayR: Retreat From Moscow - Chasseurs a Pied (40 points)

The best laid plans of mice and men!!

I was supposed to be keeping the majority of my French army to Ney's Third Army, but.......

well you've gotta paint some Guard haven't you?

I've called these the Chasseurs a Pied, but they could be any of the Guard regiments that were in Marshal Bessiers' Imperial Guard Army of 1812.

The figures are from North Stars Muskets & Tomahawks range of figures, unfortunately they only sell 3 units. The 8 figure Guard as seen here, an 8 figure Fusiler unit and a 6 figure Voltigeur unit, all of which will be seen at a later date.

Both Lee and myself bought movement trays for our troops, we were going to add them in as an entry during the Challenge, but when Curt disallowed terrain, we both satisfied our painting urge, by painting up all our bases beforehand. So each unit you see will have its own tray, which is great for storage purposes too!

Onto the points.

8 x 25mm figures @ 5pts each = 40pts!

From TeemuL: It is nice to see two you working on this project, can't wait to see how great it will look in the end. Very neat painting, as usual, and the trays are great, too. The minis look great, they have "a bit too cold here" feeling.

From SimonG: A Seductive Guardian for the Second Circle (35 points)

 For my second submission what better than a visit to the Second Circle, the Tempest of Lust. Our tour guide for the day is Barbariccia a Black Rose Wars (BRW) figure from the Inferno expansion.

Barbariccia (with the Brizzi "Inferno" [1] behind)

Now it has to be said that this interpretation of Barbariccia [2] probably owes more to Final Fantasy then she does to Dante, but as the designers of BRW are Italian we can perhaps allow them some creative licence! It is however a very clever sculpt with exceptionally clever integration of the snakes growing out of her torso.

There were two main challenges in painting this figure (apart from the obvious problem of access to the bits hidden behind snakes!). Firstly getting a believable blend between person and snake [3], and achieving the gradients of shades of gray in the snakes themselves. I believe I managed this one pretty well and am especially pleased with how the skin to snake transition came off -- aided especially by layers of shade, from darker/snakier to redder/fleshier.

Transition from human to snake!

Less happy was the second challenge -- the half face -- I struggle mightily with female faces, especially on these plastics which tend to have a rough surface and one on which it seems impossible to get a smooth single colour, let alone a blend. I think I'll need to work on my airbrushing. At least I managed to meet the Val Garland standard and get a symmetrical lip!

Much easier faces are the ones of the many snakes and I enjoyed slotting in their eyes and giving them nice glossy tongues and teeth!

Overall I enjoyed working on this figure and the challenges it presented, one of these days I might even get around to playing a game of Black Rose Wars as well!

Points wise she's a 54mm figure but with all the snakes and what not stands 80mm tall, so perhaps halfway between standing and mounted so 15 points plus a 20 point bonus for the second circle.

Next time we'll be chasing down some heretics!

[1] Highly recommended, the Graphic Novel adaptation of Inferno by Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, originally in French but just published in English

[2] Barbariccia ("curly beard") is of course the guardian of Bolgia Five in the Eighth Circle and looks nothing like this character (even allowing for gender swapping!)

[3] For Barabariccia's boss, Lucifer, I opted out of the human to snake transition by painting each snake individually as a specific, highly venomous, species!

From TeemuL: I can see the painting challenges presented by this mini, especially being a larger one, but you have done a great job with her and she is of course well worth the Second Circle. I like the colours you have chosen, purple and gold are very fitting for her. Your reasoning behind the points sounds reasonable, so 35 points to you.

From PaulSS: Let's get this wagon rolling! (60 points)

I've been a slacker this challenge, I usually try to get something posted on day one, and here we are on day eleven with my first submission!

This year has been the year for me mainly of What a Cowboy! and General D'Armee 2, so I open my account with some more figures for the Old West collection.

First up a group of four gunfighters from the Western Characters II set from Brigade Games, shameful admission, these were prepared and primed ready for Challenge XIV and have languished in the "I'll make a start on them pile" for over a year now.

Lively characterful figures sculpted by Hicksy and based on the Deadwood TV series. These four are Calamity Jane, Silas Adams, Wild Bill Hickok and Tom Nutall. Seth Bullock is hopefully going to be painted for a upcoming post!

While visiting the UK in May I attended the Partizan Show and picked up a load of goodies from Great Escape Games, the gunfighters I bought are all painted earlier this year, but the General Purpose Wagon was saved for the challenge.

It's a characterful addition to the collection.

Six 28 mm figures, plus two horses and a vehicle should kick off my challenge with 60pts.

From TeemuL: Very nice minis Paul and welcome back to the Challenge. You have achieved a very nice and dusty look on your Old West characters, they really look like they fit the period. And the wagon is excellent mini, probably sees lots of action. I hope to paint some Gunfighters from Great Escape Games later in the Challenge, but let's see how it turns out.

From MartinC: Happy New Year (116 points)

Hope you all had a great Christmas and new year.  I had fun. My brother in law snapped his achilles tendon playing football, he's 57 so its his own bloody fault. His so bored that he has asked me to teach him how to wargame.

I've managed to paint some more 10mm Germans for barbarossa. 

Couple of wagons for engineer battalion 

AT, mortars and MMG bases, as yet unallocated to a battalion 

Last 2 bases for last weeks battalion,  except for field gun and transport 

Completed 2nd battalion,  except for field gun and transport 

Completed 3rd battalion,  except for - you know by now

That is 119.5 points for infantry, artillery and wagons

From TeemuL: There is a silver lining in everywhere, isn't it? Accident can be a start of a new hobby. I wish your brother in law gets well, but I also hope wargaming bug will catch him before he is too well.

Your Germans look nice, clever use of coloured basing materials to identify each battalion and the overall look is very neat. I'm not saying your math is off, but trying to calculate the mini count on these photos is a bit painful and at the moment I have counted 98 infantry/horse, two guns and two wagons for 116 points. I'm happy to correct my calculations, just send me an email or comment the post to make me realize my error. :)

Thursday Things of Interest

I guess most of you now know the basics of Finland through the emojis I have used the last two challenges. This time I leave the emojis and concentrate on more concrete issues, with special interest to wars and wargames. Let's start from the basics. While you all are going through historical sources and try to figure out what in the world is "Ensimmäinen konekiväärikomppania*", I'll help you.

Many of the Finnish words are quite easy for English speakers, since many of the words are borrowed from English. Or Swedish. Or German. Maybe from Russian. "Pistooli" and "revolveri" are easy, they mean pistol and revolver. Kivääri is more complicated, it comes from Swedish "gevär", which comes from old German "gewehr", and means rifle.

Things get even more complicated next. For example "konekivääri" means machine gun and "konepistooli" is submachine gun. "Kone" means machine, so Finnish konekivääri is actually "machine rifle" and konepistooli is "machine pistol". On the other hand you might like to translate machine gun as "konetykki", because gun is "tykki" (especially when you are talking about The Guns of the Navarone type of guns), but that would be wrong. Finnish has a word "konetykki", but it means cannon, and that comes from German again.

I guess all the confusion is now gone?

And here is one of the most well known and important Finnish inventions, "Suomi-konepistooli". Suomi is Finland in Finnish and you already know what konepistooli means.

*The First Machine Gun Company

--- In Other News ---

We have couple of entries for today, it is -5 degrees Celcius here in Finland and we have a little bit of snow.