From AdamW: A load of old junk (15mm) ( 300 points)

 I was AWOL last week and didn't even log on to the blog. I also shelved all my planned painting for the challenge circles. Maybe it was real life that got in the way, or the excitement of finishing the circles of heaven ad finally reaching heaven :)

One of our wargaming group is planning on putting on a game involving Chinese pirates. In the past I have made about half a dozen Chinese junks, in all shapes and sizes. I had a few bits of models left over and  I thought that this was a good excuse to paint them up.

So a rummage in the loft yielded two battered and broken partly assembled kits and a novelty dragon boat, or as I like to think of it, a treasure ship. After some repairs and the addition of some wooden barrels etc I had them ready to paint.

For the crew I had a pile of 15mm boxer rebellion figures from Lancashire games.  These are nicely detailed and expressive sculpts, but are huge in comparison with any other 15mm or 18mm figures. They are almost 20mm and very chunky. I kept them with the intention of using them on ships one day.

I also had some more normally sized figures that I have made up into an oriental pirate/peasant unit. These were an ebay purchase so I have no idea of manufacturer.

I also had a nice pile of guns from Outpost Minatures (now defunct?) which I also added to the mix.

Much feverish gluing and painting later, we have a nice pile ready for the table.

So to the points. I propose the following. The crew and guns is simple enough, and for the ships I have based on the points awarded for my recent ww1 ships. Feel free to change them! 

Unit of pirates - 18 x 15mm foot@2pts = 36pts

Orange junk 

 One 10 inch model junk @ 40pts 

20 crew x 15mm foot@2pts = 40pts

5 artillery pieces @4pts = 20pts

Total 100pts

Brown junk

 One 10 inch model junk @ 40pts 

15 crew x 15mm foot@2pts = 30pts

6 artillery pieces @4pts = 24pts

Total 94pts

Dragon ship

One 9 inch model ship @ 30pts 40 points

11 crew x 15mm foot@2pts = 22pts

Total 52 pts

 Grand total  282 pts 292 300

AWOL? Well, back with a vengeance I say! More excellent work, and a nice, a little less usual subject to boot. I really love the ships, Adam, I think you did sterling work getting them renovated and painted up, they look smashing. The Boxers look very fine too, with their colourful tunics. All in all, a very nice contribution. Your mathematics are OK, but I see no reason to have one inch of boat making much of a difference, so let's score all three ships at 40 points, and as I like round numbers, and in recognition of your salvaging work, I'll round it up to 300 points. Well done!

Martijn

                         

From Millsy: Challenge VIII Wrap - 1018 points

Hi All,

I had hoped to get this done earlier but sorting out the Side Duels and Challenges results, plus cramming for a certification exam for work pretty much wiped that from my to-do list. Anyway, I've got it done now so here I am, relaxing in the lovely Autumn weather in my back yard yet still remembering to be sun-safe and wear appropriate protection.

All up I painted a total of just over 1,000 points which meant I met my total in my sixth Challenge outing. More importantly, I got stuck right into a couple of projects and made major inroads into both which I was very happy about. This is one of the things I really love about the Challenge, I just get so much done!

In addition to everything in the above photo I also painted a few other items  - some terrain for my Boxer Rebellion project (which is in storage at the moment) and my Curtgeld which is already in the post.

As always I'd like to thank Curt for putting on such a grand show and Lady Sarah for supporting his own particular brand of crazy. Minions, you guys rock and without you this wouldn't be possible either. Finally, everyone who has commented on my stuff... thank you for the encouragement and positive feedback. This is such an amazingly positive group!

Til next year folks...

Cheers,
Millsy the Gimp and Duels Wallah

From Millsy: Yet More Boxers (60 points)

Yep, that's right. Yet more Boxers. The buggers are near endless it seems. Quite possibly this is what it felt like to face them in real life. Thankfully I have only another 15 left to paint. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DAVED PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE. :-)

Right then. Another 60 points in the bank.

Cheers,
Millsy

From Sander:
Well Gimpa-Din, you are progressing nicely with this project! It is a joy to follow, both the figures as well as your custom terrain are da bomb mate! While I relate to having to paint too much of the "same" figures, and yes Dave is very generous (keep sending them in Dave, let the Gimp suffer!), I do not think these Boxers have suffered from your Boxer-painting-burn-out, they are superb. The basing is great too by the way. 
Thanks for all your efforts this Challenge both as Side duels Wallah as well as contestant, it's always great having you around.

Cheers Sander

From Millsy: More Militia United in Righteousness (60 points)

Just a quick one this time. Yet another dozen Boxers armed with melee weapons for my 55 Days at Peking project. I think I can see the end from here but I could be mistaken. :-)

For those interested we played out the first games with the full table (as it stands) and painted minis last weekend. Great fun!

So that's a quick 60 more points and I'm creeping slowly towards my 1000 point goal.

Artist: Club des Belugas
Album: Fishing for Zebras

Artist: The The
Album: Infected






Cheers,
Millsy

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Excellent work Millsy! These Boxer reinforcements look wonderful, especially the angry chaps with the nasty bladed polearms. I checked out your battle report and it looks like you and Cory had a terrific time playing through the rules (I love the photo of the Boxers blowing a sharpie marker dimensional hole through the wall). :)

This all being said I have to smirk when any hobbyist says, 'I think I can see the end from here...'. Riiiight.

60 more points for your climb to 1K, Millsy.

And great music choice btw!

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From: NoelW - A miscellany (253 points)

As the Challenge has progressed, I’ve started several things, then put them aside as something else catches my eye. My original plan, was to concentrate on ECW, but along the way that’s been severely dented by other excitements, especially the 15mm lead pile I was lucky enough to acquire. So this week, and probably next, I’m trying to tidy up a bit by completing some of them. Which makes form a rather eclectic submission.

These 15mm figures have suggested quite a few new projects, but most of them would need additional work or purchases, so for the time being I’m just painting units that interest me for one reason or another. At the moment, they’re mainly Seven Years War and French Revolution.

Firstly, SYW. Here are 12 Austrian cuirassiers and 12 Grenzer. They’re not actually 15mm, but 18mm Eureka miniatures. I think their additional height won’t be much of an issue on the battlefield if they’re in units separate from true 15mm. And there’s also a unit of 15 French infantry, though they’re lacking command (so that’s a purchase I suppose I’m forced to make).

Next are two more battalions of French, this time from the Revolutionary wars (circa 1798), a total of 52 figures. They’ll be heading for Egypt eventually. Plus three more of the guns I began last week (there are still more of these to come, but no crew as yet).

My main aim with these is to get as many as possible painted as quickly as possible, so the style is very basic:

As well as all the 15mm, I have kept the ECW project ticking over, however. So here’s the two Scots ensigns I didn’t quite manage last week, together with a General to lead them.

Finally, three more EMP figures for display on Wargames Emporium’s shelves. They’re from the Boxer Rebellion range: one Chinese officer, one Japanese officer and one miscellaneous European.

So, that’s 12 x 15mm cavalry = 48 pts. 79 x 15mm infantry = 158 pts. 3 x 15mm guns = 12 pts. 1 x 28mm cavalry = 10 pts. 5 x 28mm infantry = 25 pts. Total: 253 pts

Hoi there Noel! What an exciting miscellany you've cooked up for today. A return to 15/ 18mm and in Napoleonics  no less, great work. These small ones look mighty impressive arrayed like this in battle formation. I must confess however that I like the 28mm figures you've painted up best. Both the ECW and the Boxer Rising figures are superb, well done indeed! Cheers Sander

From NoelW: 28mm ECW, Zulus, some boxes and a Russian (408 Points, perhaps)

Well, I seem to have banished the ‘flu bug, but instead I’m suffering the Annual Painting Challenge Bug which, it seems, is highly contagious and quite virulent. I’m enjoying the business of painting for points so much that I’m spending every spare minute painting figures or terrain, and I’ve a long list of figures I want to have a go at before March 20^th. As I’ve already exceeded my initial target of 500 points, and now just passed 1000, I think I’ll revise the target up to 2000, and maybe even see if I could hit the hugely ambitious 2500. After all, who needs sleep?

I’ve done well towards that total this week, with, I think, a submission of just over 400 points. Admittedly, these are not the most beautiful figures in the world, but that’s not the point for me with these armies – I want to get them on the tabletop as quickly as possible, and that means compromises in painting style.

Firstly, though, a figure that’s a little better quality than the rest. This is another EMP figure, painted for Wargames Emporium’s display. It’s a Russian officer from the Boxer rebellion. I couldn’t find a perfect source for the uniform, so took a uniform from the Russo-Japanese war instead. I do have quite a decent library of uniform information, but it’s pretty feeble after 1890 (mainly because my only interest after this date is WW2) and I've found it quite hard to locate decent uniform info on the Boxer rebellions online, strangely enough.

Next are more figures for the continuing ECW saga: 18 cavalry this time. There are 6 “lobsters”, the early war cuirassiers who may, in fact, never have taken the field, but who make a cool variation on the tabletop. The remainder are the usual lobster pots and soft hats. All Warlord figures, I’ve a sort of love-hate relationship with them. They’re cheap (and can be even cheaper, with shopping around) which means a reasonable army can be built quite quickly, but they style is sometimes a little awkward, and the apparent variation you think you might be getting with plastic figures turns out to be quite limited in practice. For the infantry, there are three pike poses and four musket poses, and attempting variation upon them largely results in unrealistic poses. I may have a go at converting a few figures later on, simply to add a little more variety to the setup.

Next, 42 zulus. This is pretty much the remainder of my unpainted Zulus. I wanted to get them done before buying the new Perry figures, which I’m certain I’ll be doing as soon as possible, perhaps even at Vapnartak in the coming weekend. Again, I’ve taken the simplest possible approach to painting them: block painting, Warlord’s dark shade, then a little highlighting of key areas. In the mass, I think they look fine. Close up, I keep thinking “I should just touch that bit up, just highlight that feather). 

There's a couple of close up photos to show how reasonable a basic painting approach can be (though you can also see the downsides, too!)

Finally, a little terrain: the mealie bag and ammo box defences of Rorke’s Drift for the Zulus to hurl themselves against. These are nice models to paint up, mainly through washes and dry brushing and I’m quite pleased with the final result. 

Not sure how to score it, though: there’s the wagon piece, plus 8 strips of about 5.5 inches long with a cross section of about 1.5” square. A stack of  the 8 strips would thus fill roughly half a six inch cube, so perhaps 10 points? Plus the wagon at, maybe 3? Making 13?

Pointswise: 1 x 28mm Russian = 5 pts + 18 28mm cav @ 10 pts = 180 pts + 42 zulus @ 5 pts =  210 pts, plus terrain at 13 pts: Total: 408 pts

Noel, you have done a sterling job yet again! That bug is one I would like to get, because I am not as productive as you have been this week. What's not to like about your entry? There's a beautiful Russian officer: that blue is really well done, ECW cavalry which is always nice specially when you're a Rupert and your Zulu's are ace too, even if there are no thousands off 'em sar! The terrain does remain a conundrum every time, but let's be honest 408 is an ugly number. I'll let you have an extra 2 points for the wagon and give you 410 points.