Side Duels and Challenges Updated

Hi All,

Another points update for the Side Duels and Challenges
has been posted.

We're getting down to the pointy end of things now a few of the side duels are showing clear leaders. Not much action this last week which is either a sign of fatigue or sandbagging. I know where my money is...

Please check and confirm I have things right!

Cheers,
Millsy the Duels Wallah

From MilesR: More FOW Pacific Troops (168 Points)

 A bit more Pacific themed Flames of War stuff this week.  First up is a platoon of 3 Ho Ro Japanese assault guns.  These tanks have paper this armor but do mount a 150mm gun for a bit of a punch.

 Next is a US Marine AT gun unit with 4 37mm guns/crews, 3 bazooka teams and a HQ.

 Lastly - a second US Marine Infantry platoon to go with the one completed last week.

A group shot of all the FOW Pacific stuff completed to date.  I have a few odds and end to finish up but this will be the bulk of what gets painted this year.

Lets see - the tally is:

3 Tanks for 18 points

AT Gun Platoon has 25 figures plus 4 guns which nets 66 points

Marine Infantry Platoon has 42 figures and comes to 84 points

Total: 168 points

This submission plus this weeks bonus round should but just a few points ahead of last years final tally with two weeks to go.  I wonder if I have any surprises up my sleeve?

From DaveD
Its Saturday and its another fine collection of work from Miles our spreadsheet king as he works his way to the upper reaches of the table once more... will Martin catch him!  and I don't believe for one minute Miles you don't have something up your sleeve! Look forward to seeing it and well done on bettering last years total. 

From DaveD - Battle reports

A couple of short videos for you

and a fine day out was had!

From ValeryN ValeryN - Ten Lee (60 Pts)

I painted the tanks next to my army. Today it is american M3 "Lee". They were delivered to the USSR under the Lend-Lease system. Unfortunately, on the Eastern Front, they had to meet up with the "Tigers" and "Panthers". As a rule, such meetings ended sadly for "Lee". For this reason, Soviet tankmans called this tank "Mass grave for seven". Also, the high altitude it was called "Fire Tower"

From DaveD

A nice little addition to any collection - even if as you say they will magnets for burning markers!

From DavidB - A small morsel.(10 points)

I wasn't able to complete too much this week, and I have training this weekend and was unable to get to my table. I did sneak a few moments to snatch some photos of a couple models I completed.

I got this fellow years ago thinking he was a tech marine. He is a tech priest and has been primered since about 1989. He is lead and not pewter and was part of my inital purchase into warhammer 40k. I bought him, the rogue trader book, a box of terminators, a predator, and a couple boxes of the old RTB plastic marines. He is honestly the part of my first purchase entirely impulse as a younger enlisted with more money than brains!;)

He(as my only table ready so far tech priest) will be responsible for the Cadian7th armor and the Soritas Immolator.

I posed him with my three partial assembled Soritas tanks, but he insists he only repairs he doesn't paint nor assemble them and the thinngs still need their tracks!

(I couldn't help but notice that now he is painted, his backpack resembles a cartoon pig wearing a red vest!)

I shown him the Valkyrie, but he was also unimpressed. He says I'm missing parts. I introduced him to the death guard marines to which he responded, "bring it"....I think he will fit in well, perhaps he is Catachan.

I finished this snipe model too, I believe he was an Atherium miniature. I demoed the game, but didn't really get into it at last years Adepticon. A enterprising fellow riding a tricycle sold me a $3 Guiness which came with a suprise grab bag. I recieved te snipper, some dice and flame tokens for one overpriced beer.

I felt he would look nice with my Sequoia Scouts. I painted up hisfatigues in a similar style, and did up a camo cloak for him. I painted his mask blue in a mimic of Seneca False Face Society. The Seneca used the masks to chase away bad dreams, ill luck, and bad omens. The Sequoia Scouts all have masks in the False Face Socity style, but their masks are filled with optics, comm links, and speakers to amplify war shouts

The model is resin and very clean, It didn't have a lot of detail that you would expect for a resin model. The sculpt was a bit...meh.

Still, he meshes very well with the scouts I painted last year, and that is good enough for my purposes. Now I have five Sequoia Scouts!  So just a small post. of two miniatures, but both have big roles to play.

From DaveD
It always feels like a small victory to me when you get something done in the face of adversity. so well done. And for taking the time to set up the shots too. A very colourful tech high Priest by the look - so no simple paint job either - well done

From PaulOG: FIW British Light Infantry, a Canoe and Red Skull! (60 points)

In addition to the bonus round this week, I present two more FIW submissions.  First up is a six man unit of British Light Infantry (who were blooded on the table this week and naturally suffered heavy losses at the hands of Dux's Canadiene Milita):

These 'light bobs' are rather handy in the wilderness; good shots and able to screen the regular troops in more traditional formations, they became critical to the war effort (yet somehow those lessons were lost during the subsequent rebellion of the American colonies...)

I've painted these chaps as members of the 24th Regiment, a Regiment that would become famous in the Zulu War for both unlikely victory at Rorke's Drift and disastrous losses at Isandlwana.  I've modelled the Regiment for that war in 15mm previously and thought it would be neat to game with the same regiment in another time period and scale.  I've used a dark, dirty wash to reflect their irregular nature and lack of spit and polish compared to line infantry.

And a second native american canoe, the crew of which look suspiciously like the chaps I posted last week portaging a canoe through the forest.  They look far more rested in this pose! I also did up two piles of trade goods, which will be good loot to capture on the table.

And finally, what was to be my Bonus round Character but who got replaced at the last minute...

The evil mastermind and super-villain Johan Schmidt, aka Red Skull, nemesis of Captain America and founder of Hydra

“His Skull maybe Red but his heart is Black”

I bought this mini some years ago – it is the “Herr Totenkopf” figure by WhatThe! Miniatures.  I love that this sculpt mirrors a classic cartoon image, complete with the Mauser C96 pistol (because anyone can have a Luger, right?).  As a result, I have been faithful to the colour scheme of this pic. All that black was a bit of a sod to get right but I'm happy with the end result.

The skull isn't so washed out IRL, but I got the blue eyeballs done!

Interestingly, Red Skull first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (dated 1941) and is, apparently, rated No 21 in the Top 100 Greatest Villains Ever list by the people who consider such things far more deeply than I – or so Wikipedia tells me anyway.

Together these three submissions total around 55 points I believe, which leave me a tantalising 8 points shy of my upped 1000 point objective.

From DaveD

A great little entry Paul - nice the the 24th in a different setting other than Zulu! Great job. Red skull is a little cracker. my favourite is the canoe , it just feels so evocative of the era...
Now get yourself back to some brushes - you have a target that needs meeting !

From DaveD - The calm before the storm

My game is all set up!

From SylvainR - Grand Fleet (129 points)

♪♪ Yo ho ho, ♪♪ and a bottle of rhum ♪♪

I already discussed how I acquired these ships in a previous post. Now I would like to present the opponent of the Hochseeflotte, the Grand Fleet. Again, these are mostly capital ships of the armored cruiser class of bigger. If I had all the big German ships, this time, a few hulls are missing, in particularly HMS Canada. Anyway, here is what I have.

In line for the annual Coronation Fleet Review.

In the above picture, each ship at the beginning of a line is the leader of her class, followed by her sister ships. Again, I opted to use a medium base for ships of 25,000 tons or less. I'm very happy with the way this fleet turned out, despite the proverbial lack of details on CinC models. And the bases feel just right, with a feeling of sailing over a deep sea.

Race you to the finish line!

Here is a column of battleship class leaders. The only one missing, at the very top, would be HMS Dreadnought. At the bottom, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Revenge , along with all their sister ships, would all survive the Great War to fight into the next one, where they would know various fates. As was the case with German battleships, with each new class the ships would not get much longer but would get bigger guns and better armor.

British battlecruisers would  get longer with each new class. The bottom ship, HMS Courageous, along with her sisters HMS Furious and HMS Glorious ,would all be converted into aircraft carriers in the mid-twenties.

Two classes of cruisers. I will need to buy a lot more of these, along with many destroyers, to have all the necessary units to play Jutland or any other "what if" scenarios of Great War naval.

Two oddities before concluding this post. HMS Erin was originally built for the Ottoman empire under the name Reşadiye, but was duly seized by the British in 1914 and renamed. Same for the extravagant HMS Agincourt, originally built as Rio de Janeiro for the Brazilian government who wanted something both spiffy and macho, so why not request seven double turrets? Everybody wanted a British battleship in those days.

There are 43 ships in this lot. At 3 points each, it sums up to 129 points, which will also count toward my naval duel with MilesR.

Thanks.


From DaveD
Aah what a fine set of Castles of the Sea you present us with... your fleet review picture is great. So we are off and running Saturday gang... 

Saturdays Minion... DaveD

Our dear SnowLord has his feet up again.... is busy sorting out the final bonus round entries and has handed the reins over to me!!  So all you weekend loafers..time for you lot to be properly minioned! after I have tidied up the mess by PeterD... AGAIN...

We are reaching the final straights people...

Things might be a little haphazard in posting times throughout the day  as yours truly is involved in running a "small" outing for my Sudan game at the Hammerhead show in Newark on Trent today ( I will up date the points roster toward the end of the day) - I have some past challenge participants roped in to the game - and I just found space in the car for yet another box of Fuzzy Wuzzies,,, it should be fun.

I may even tempt you with battle report update!

So while I get things sorted in the meantime lets rock the weekend!

With a Little Help from My Friends

This weekend will see our last theme round and in order for me to get things arranged (meaning to give me time to laze about and enjoy myself) you will be treated by the tender ministrations of our last Guest Minion, DaveD, or better known (to me anyway) as 'Dave of the Sudan'.

Dave will be reporting to us live from the Hammerhead show in Newark, where he is running a participation game for some lucky folks there. Dave tells me he'll try to give us some updates on his game as the day wears on. This should be great fun!

As a final note, remember to get in your entries for this weekend's theme round: 'Characters and/or Scene from Movie, TV program, Book or Piece of Music' The theme round gallery will be up later Sunday, so remember to check back to enjoy all the entries. 

It's going to be a corker! 

Okay, on to you Dave!