Side Duels Roster and Points Updated

Hi All,

Sunday once again mateys and the ninth points update for the Side Duels and Challenges has now been posted.

As always, please check the points and make sure they're correct.

Cheers,
Millsy The Duels Wallah

From TeemuL: Only the faithful (72 points)

If you know about the lore/fluff/history/nameit of Stormcast Eternals and the exiled people of Numenor, you understand the title.

First three Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane crossbows. That's six shots per weapon per round.

Most of the Stormcasts around are gold or metallic, I'm looking for a rock or stone on my Stormcast. They are known as Eternal Quarry. There's a hint of light blue in the highlights, but it is not very visible in the nature or in the photos. I'm not 100% happy with the theme I have chosen, but I'll keep to that at least for the first 1000 points or so.

I already have three of these and to make these different, I used red as spot color on belt buckles and plumes. I'll have three more to paint and with three squads of Aetherwings (one squad painted for Flying and one still to paint) I'll have a battallion, which will make them even more shooty.

Then some Numenor fighters for Lord of the Rings. I actually only needed some banner bearers for my army, but since I got a pack of them from a gaming friend, I decided to paint more of them.

The flags are made of street brush and wine bottles (the metal things on the neck). I made a quick free hand on the flags, the same White Tree which is on the shields. Not very pretty up close and personal, but from a distance does its job.

They are pretty simple paint jobs, mostly black and some metal. Below is my whole force, more than I will ever need I think, unless I start the Last Alliance against Sauron...

3 Stormcasts are most likely 7 points each, so 21.

10 Numenorians are 5 points each, so 50.

That's 71 unless something is awarded from the simple flags.

While this again gives me lots of points, I'm still defeated by AdamC in our side challenge. I'll post the prize text sooner or later in my blog. :)

________________________________________

Smashing work Teemu and although not very knowledgeable about such things, I can't help but appreciate just how splendid the Vanguard-Raptor sculpts are.  Scoring is a bit problematic as I couldn't find out just how tall the Raptors are, but I did discover that they were on 40mm bases and if you had armed them with Long-Strike Crossbows we would probably be talking crewed weapon status so happy to admit them as 40mm infantry at 7 points a pop.  Definitely a bonus point for the flags, so that is 72 points for your tally.

From KeithS: Another hodge-podge (160 points)

Well, time for the latest pile of miscellaneous stuff I want to finish off!

First up is a Treant from Otherworld.  This is a big guy at around 95mm tall - almost a decimeter for you metrical people!  It's a great figure, though perhaps too big for use with most of my 25mm chaps.  But, it's a gorgeous sculpt, as is usually the case with Otherworld.

He's got a very serious face.  No happy-go-lucky Treebeard type guy, this one.

I like the details Otherworld included, such as the mushrooms growing on him and what not.  They give him a lot of character.

He does seem a bit grabby.

Next up are a pair of newer Displacer Beasts from Wizkids (their Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Minis line).  They're also somewhat larger than I prefer -- I bought them to compare scales and see if I could use some of their stuff to supplement my old school collection.  They'll get used, as the sculpts are quite nice.

This is an oldie, a Carrion Crawler from Grenadier (I think).  I've had this one since around 1981.  I recently stripped it as the old paint was sorely battered.  Nothing special, but lots of nostalgia for me.

Here's trio of random guys.  The left is a Reaper Bones; the middle is old school Ral Partha the right guy is...not sure what he is, but an oldie to be sure.

Flip side.  The Bones are too big for my usual tastes but, with monsters, having an off-scale isn't the end of the world.

Up next, a pair of pack horses from Reaper Bones (I think).  Nothing special, but they will get use as part of a pack train in a game of Chainmail.

Going firmly back to my beloved Old School now, we have three Goblin Warg Riders from Heritage.  They're all the same sculpt, though that's OK as I have a larger force of Heritage and other Warg riders that they'll blend into.

 Another angle.  The Wargs are a bit lighter color than most of my other ones, but I kind of like the variation.

Continuing with a theme of non-human cavalry (to go with the above and my dwarf-bear cavalry of last week) is a force of six goblins mounted on spiders.  These are from Ral Partha's recent Kickstarter.  Definitely a force of low-riders.

There were three sculpts for each rider, two spear, two sword, and two with darts.  They were a pain to glue on as they don't easily sit atop those spiders.

Goblins with scimitars.  It's their thing.

Last up is another Heritage model from days gone by, this one a Troll.  I've had it for a little while and finally got to him.  It, too, is from their Lord of the Rings line of figures.  I gave him a goblin/orc style green-brown skin tone

From the back.  Perhaps not the most elaborate sculpt of all time, but then again not bad for the late 70s.  He'll see some use one of these days, I hope!

That's it for the week.  Alas, I have work travel coming up, plus a much-anticipated trip to Garycon in Lake Geneva WI to follow it, so my painting will drop off precipitously.  Hopefully I'll get some free time right at the end to push out a final point bomb!

Pointwise, a confusing group.  I'll throw this out and let the wise judges make the final call:

Treant (95mm) - 15 points?

Displacer Beasts x2 (40mm) - 14 points

Carrion Crawler (60mm) - 5 points (10 makes no sense for that simple guy!)

Serpent Guy (45mm) - 7 points

Cockatrice+Ogre - 10 points

Horses x2 (25mm) - 10 points

Warg Cavalry x3 (25mm) - 30 points

Spider Cavalry x6 (technically all 25mm but the Goblins are pretty small so 5 for mounts and 4 for riders?) - 54 points

Troll (40mm) - 7 points

That would be a total of 152 points and will easily put me over my goal for the Challenge!

_______________________________________

What an amazing post Keith, chocked full of monsters and fantasy goodness - absolutely tremendous.  You seem to have a knack for unearthing wonderfully nostalgic miniatures that are then lovingly painted, splendid work Sir.  As for the points, I am going to concur with your guidelines apart from the cavalry units, they can be a full 10 points for each.  I am going to count the Treant as two 40mm beasts and add in a few bonus points to round the entry off to 160 in total.  Bravo Sir and a jolly well done for reaching, and surpassing, your target score. 

Pete F - Pike Toy Soldiers (31 points)

Progress on my Pikeman's Lament army continues - at an albeit glacial pace. Project 6 [ECW] was inspired by a very enjoyable game using Daniel Mersey's pike & shot skirmish rules and an irresistable EBay deal for Warlord's King & Country starter set. At the time I thought maybe some of the plastic could be used for Project 4 [Game of Thrones conversions] - however, the soldiers on the sprues are too flouncy and lacey - there may be a couple of morion heads that would work but I'm going to have to look at more medieval and dark ages types - I'm getting sidetracked.

Here is a half section of Pike. ECW soldiers wore whatever they had or their commanding officer gave them so there are regiments that wore the main colours - red, green, grey on both sides. This unit will have generally green/grey green clothing - with a dash of red here and there - I'm thinking one of my commanders  (Royalist) will have red as his colour and the other (Parliament) one tawny orange.

I've been working on a flexible basing system so that these troops can be re-purposed to any ruleset. My ECW friend has a lot of his troops mounted on pennies and inserted in wooden bases but they had a tendency to fall out - I think he may now be going for a more permanent glued solution. I'm trying small magnets drilled into the wooden based and a metal backing to the mdf frame. It's a partial success - the troops grip to the base just fine but the magnets (3.2mm x 1.6mm) aren't quite strong enough to lift the whole base by one of the soldiers. It works fine if you lift the unit by the base. 

Although I now have 11 Vallejo greens I still couldn't find one I really liked for this unit - it came out a little too WW2 Wermachty. Never mind.

6 x 28mm foot for a total of 30 points

Warlord plastics

______________________________________

What a cracking unit Pete and a timely reminder that I need to do some for my summer Witchfinder game.  I love the subtle use of colour to link the chaps together and what amazing detail on that face.  Your clever basing solution is worth a bonus point so 31 in total to your tally. 

From BrendonW: Goblin Sharpsticks Legion (210)

36 x Goblins, 1 x Chariot pulled by two giant spiders, 28mm, Games Workshop, Plastic.

and 2 more sneaky Goblins.

This enormous unit is based on the dimensions required for a 'Legion' in 'Kings of War'. A 'Legion' is symbolic of 60 infantry. Like the previous Sharpsticks Horde I went with rocks and barrels and so on but also a crazy idea to include a leader Goblin in a chariot.

I had spotted two wheels and two side pieces in my bit's that I had kept from long ago and thought these would be perfect for a scratch built giant spider pulled Chariot and this was the project for those bits. The great aspect about being involved in a Challenge is to sometimes do exactly that. Challenge myself to try something.

My initial idea was a small chariot pulled by a single spider. However I dove into construction and ended up with a small but wide platform. In retrospect I knew immediately if I had made the angle less it would look more like a single animal pulled chariot but, this was try as I go building and not much planning involved apart from a quick sketch to cement my brain wave. Perhaps even taking off some of the length of the side pieces would have shrunk it as well. So change of plan to make it a two spider pulled boss chariot. I found some more bits and added the wheel blades and the front pointy piece. Everything else on the chariot is just sprue carved up and the platform is a Renedra base. The Chariot rider is a converted plastic Goblin who did have a small Squig instead of a shield and a sickle type blade that went on a previously completed Spider rider leader looking git. I decided that two gong bashing noise makers walking behind this Chariot to announce his presence would fit the bill.

I hope the presence of the chariot does not confuse people as to what this unit really is. Goblins with spears and shields....and lots of them. That's unit number five completed for project Goblin Army.

The two Goblins not on the base I glued onto the previous Sharpsticks Horde to increase the bodys.

The term for the size of this unit (Legion) Reminds me of a 'KREATOR' songs lyrics....

"We are LEGION! United in Hate!"

So go and play some high quality German Thrash Metal.

Cheers from Brendon

____________________________________________

Whilst being a Minion can be quite time consuming, normally at a time that you just want to get on and paint your own things, it has been such a privilege to be the first to comment on some outstanding ideas and Brendon this project of yours has been one of the finest!  Another cracking post and the sight of the Legion is just magnificent.  I am awarding 5 bonus points for general battlefield clutter and conversions so a total of 210 points to your tally, bravo Sir! 

From AlexS: To the Strongest! (205 points)

Hello everybody! My name is Alex and I'm from Russia. On February 24, the world championship on the game "To the Strongest!" will take place. Unfortunately, the team from Russia will not be able to come. But we decided to make a little event. This will be a great game for an interesting script, which one of our players wrote. And then on Monday, I learned that more miniatures than I have for this scenario. And then I urgently picked up the paint and brushes and started to work ... And here are the results of my work: Cows, Roman velites and Roman general, psiloi, phalanx, heavy Hellenistic cavalry.

I really hope that the event will turn out to be interesting. Special thanks to Simon Miller for his excellent rules.

 28mm inf 29 - 145 pts

28mm cow 4 - 20 pts

28 cav 4 - 40 pts

total 205 points

________________________________________________

Great to seeing you flying with the brushes again Alex, brilliant stuff!  Another great entry full of character and some great looking basing too.  You be careful with those sharp looking pikes.