From Curt - 28mm Napoleonic Spanish Guerrillas (75 Points)

Cripes, I started these figures in December at the start of the Challenge and have been slowly nudging them along in fits and starts. It’s funny; I find that when I’m not following a common uniform ‘template’ it can take me forever to come up with the goods. I’ll hum and haw over how to paint every item of clothing, every strap, every hat, almost paralyzing myself with indecision. It’s really quite silly. I know I could have probably done-up the majority of these figures in simple browns, greens and blacks, but that seemed pretty uninteresting and a bit of a cop out for such fine figures. So I painfully plodded through them, model-by-model, and I’m happy to see them completed and off my desk. 

These fifteen 28mm castings are from Brigade Games. Most are listed as ‘Napoleonic Guerrilla’ figures, but a few are actually Napoleonic naval crew, nonetheless, I found they blended together quite nicely. By the looks of them I would say that Paul Hicks was the sculptor, but I’m not sure on this. No matter, they are excellent models – they required little in the way of preparation and were a real joy to paint. 

From my understanding many of these guerrilla units were composed of Spaniards from all walks of life so I decided to paint them in a motley assortment of civilian garb and re-purposed bits of uniform, both Spanish and French. (And, yes, you have to have a fierce priest and armed monk with any Spanish guerrilla unit.)

I stuck to my standard method of basing for these. For ease of identification the force commander is based on a hex base, while the lower level leaders are on squares and the troops are on rounds. 

The roadside shrine below is from Grand Manner. It’s quite a nice hunk of resin I think. I often find a small characterful piece of terrain can speak volumes to a setting than a bunch of nondescript models. When I put this on the tabletop it immediately says to me, ‘We’re in the Iberian Peninsula. Genuflect, put on your wide-brimmed hat and enjoy some hot chocolate and churros.'

I picked up this shrine along with a few other pieces from Grand Manner this past Christmas during a promotion. It was the only way I could rationalize getting them, as with shipping they’re quite expensive. Nonetheless, while some of their range has been around for quite awhile, I still find Grand Manner offers some of the best terrain available, so it's nice to be able to treat oneself from time to time. 

Next up for this little project will be some dismounted French dragoons for these Guerrillas to tangle with…

From TamsinP - 6mm ACW Union Cavalry (83 Points)

It's just as well my race with the Dux is over - I've been sick the past few days which has made painting a touch difficult.

After the past 2 weeks of excessiveness, I was taking things a little easier this week. And so, I present my 15th entry of this Challenge - some more little blue blobs; this time with little brown blobs *lol*

I am still somewhat puzzled by the composition of the Baccus cavalry packs. The mounted are supplied as 3 strips of 3 to do a regiment; the dismounted are supplied at a ratio of two horse-holder strips (1 man, 3 horses) to 3 strips of 4 dismounted cavalry. The numbers don't add up. As I am basing my cavalry and infantry on 60x60 mm bases they would have looked rather sparse with 9 mounted cavalry or 7 dismounted cavalry, so I decided to go with 14 on each base. That left me with 7 figures over - I chose to remove the excess as officers, guidons and one bugler. These I have mounted singly for use as markers for command points or some-such.

The dismounted cavalry:

You see what happens when you switch to 6mm scale? Both regiments have lost over half their horses!

And their not-yet-dismounted comrades (with some close-ups! - the horror!):

As a detailed inspection will reveal, some of the figures managed to jump in the way of the dry-brush so will need attention later on.

Let's tot up the points:
63 mounted = 63 points
28 foot and 12 horses = 20 points
Total = 83 points

Like I said earlier, just as well the race with Dux is over!


Before I leave you, I have previously posted pics of my paintbench. However, here's another showing it as it is right now:

New toys! Well, the airbrush and compressor were bought around June last year, but haven't been used yet. The portable spray booth is new though. It does come with a flexible extract hose, but as I'm not using anything solvent-based, I should be OK to use it without.

I'll be having a play with these tonight to get used to the brush and try out some camo schemes. It's a cheapo single-action and 3-speed compressor, so probably only good for priming, base coats and rough details.

The small Really Useful Box to the left of the booth has my collection of Model Air paints and various bottles of Vallejo surface primer.


From Curt:

Wonderful work Tamsin. Again, your paintwork is distinct and clean, and so not making these nondescript blobs at all. My favourites are the dismounted cavalry vignettes with the horseholders at the rear of the base. I'm sure you've mentioned it before, but what rules  system are you using with these?

I hope you start feeling better soon!

From TeemuL - Old Orcs (20 Points)

Back to the Oldhammer and Orcs after a quick visit to LotR and High Elfs. I have a quite nice collection of painted arrers so it's time to get some close combat power as well. Here are four classic Orc Warriors with swords and shields.

I really liked to paint those arrers, but these were not fun for some reason. I don't know if the reason is the increased amount of metal studs, more colors or the fact that my Goblin Green paint is both running and drying out. It seemed to take ages to finish these, there well always something I missed or messed up.

It's 5pm here in Finland and the sun has set, so the light is not very good this time. Where I was able to explain the "angled ranking" of the arrers with the wind, I have no excuse for these warriors. As you can see (and some of you remember), they won't rank up nicely. Not even when running away.

These should give me 20 points and with the points from the Hot bonus round I should be very close to my initial target. One more reason (the first one is that I'm running out of green paint;)) to paint the Curtgeld next.

Update, two pictures taken in the midday sunshine:

From Curt:

Ahh, more OldHammer goodness, excellent.  It's great seeing these venerable models getting the love again. I especially like the various shield-boss designs.  If you can Teemu, please take a couple more shots when the light is better and update this post so we can get a better look at them.