From MartinC Village of Kujumachi (80 points)

I have built, Ok I have bought and painted, a 28mm Japanese village circa 1601. The village of Kujumachi is in the foothills of Kuju Mountains in Higo Province at the extreme south of Japan. It has recently been given to Kato Kiyomasa as part of the land granted to him by Tokugawa Ieyasu as reward for support in the Battle of Sekigahara.

Blue dot marks the spot

Kiyomasa was a successful general in the Injin War and a fundamentalist Buddhist and hated the Christians that we becoming dominant in the province.

The aim is to fight skirmishes, duels and generally have adventures in this village. I have the advantage that I can keep it laid out for as long as I want

Kujumachi Village - 3ft by 4ft. Village to the left (South) and Farm land and waterwheel to the right

Village

Looking North

Looking South

So that would be loads of points apart from the fact that most of it already existed. I have however built and painted a lot to the buildings in the last couple of days.

Waterwheel mill - Sarissa. Fiddly to built out of mdf but looks really great

the front door

Small farms and animal pens - again Sarissa

some form of shop - from ebay (banksjohnedwars). Really like this guys stuff. Simple but study and very cheap

House - ebay again

Dojo - for all your martial prowess (ebay)

temple cells - Sarissa. roof has warped due to paint. Plan to use as shops

another house - guess from where

another house - sarissa

So that is a lot of houses and they add up to 4 terrain boxes so 80 points.

All I have to do now is paint loads more villagers and animals.

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Wow, this is absolutely awesome, Martin. I love the whole idea of having a little, fully realised skirmish board ready and waiting in the wings. Can I come over to play? I'll bring some figures, beer and crisps.

The buildings look terrific. That watermill is pretty darn impressive and so are those eBay finds. I have a few Sarissa pieces from this range and can attest to their good quality. I'm also happy to see your village bell nestled in the posh part of town. Now, do you have enough figures to fill all of this? I hope not as I'd like to see more of Kujumachi. 

80 points for you sir. Thanks for sharing this great project. 

-Curt

From PeteF: Heer Goes A Hanomag (25 points)

It’s a very long time since I painted a vehicle – the last one being in the early 1980s. Since I got back into the hobby it’s been mainly Napoleonics, Dark Ages and AWI – so no tanks or half tracks. This Hanomag came with the Blitzkreig Germans starter army and I picked an easy colour scheme for Operation Sealion – German Grey that will provide some camouflage in the British rain.

The half track comes with a gunner and a couple of medium machine guns. I decided to paint the numbers and cross since the decals that came with it were black and wouldn’t stand out very well. Maybe what I really need are some tiny stencils. I Haven’t decided whether the fuel cans (and some other bits and pieces including stahlhelms and a rolled up tarp) should be glued to the side(s).

I’ve only recently started drybrushing stuff and my technique needs some work – but hopefully good enough for the old geezer viewing at 2 foot test. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and it was quicker to paint than I expected. The gunner was painted along with the last group of Heer so he would be ready to take his spot.

One 28mm vehicle and one 28mm foot figure for a total of 25 points - That's 5 submissions for 2019 - not going to keep up this rate after the winter break.

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Well, I must say this is more than pretty darn good for someone who has been away from model vehicles since the early 80s. Great work, Pete. Your Hanomag certainly looks the business and seems ready to make its victory lap around Paccadilly Circus. 

I look forward to seeing more from this project.

-Curt

From LeeH - Resin Ruins (25 Points)

As previously stated I am making quite a bit of tabletop terrain this Challenge, specifically ruined buildings for Frostgrave. However, I also have quite a bit of resin terrain that I have been collecting over the last few months and two of these are now complete. The buildings come as individual wall sections and I could have painted them as such to allow more flexibility when placing on the table. However when I was cleaning them up if quickly realised that any jogging of the table and they all fall over, so I decided to mount them as whole buildings on foamboard bases. This has the added benefit that I can just pull the whole building from storage and plop it down on the table to throw together a quick cityscape. 

The Church building is a simple rectangle, so more of a chapel than a church, but it has some nice features and is quite detailed. The other building in a similar style of brickwork but the walls have clearly suffered the ravages of time (and ice) and are therefore much lower. 

These resin models are made by Debris of War and were very reasonably priced. They didn't need much cleaning up and were pre-primed when I bought them. However I have adopted a paint scheme that starts with a black primer so I re-primmed them before starting on them, and hopefully, they will match the rest of my buildings in colour scheme if not in architectural style. As with my other buildings, I filled the interior with tallus in a range of sizes from large to small, along with a few suitable scaled bricks to represent fresh sections of stonework that have fallen to the ground. 

The church is slightly over volume of one terrain square (4"x6"x9.5") while the other building equates to a third of a terrain square (2"x5"x8"). I'll let the umpire adjudicate this but I'm guessing this will earn me about 25 points and get me one step closer to completing my frozen cityscape. The next set of buildings will be more of my scratch-built/bluefoam models, some more complex than others. 

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Very nice work on these ruins, Lee. They look both suitably frosty and grave-like so a big win on both accounts. I especially like the attention to detail, like the snow collection on top of the walls and broken pillars. Very evocative.

I'll go with your math as mine is, as you Brits would say, rubbish. So, 25 points it is!

-Curt

From NoelW: Epic Imperial Guard at Mudry’s Mesa (188 points)

The jungle here is tougher than any we have previously encountered, almost as if every element of the vegetable environment conspires to impede and delay our progress. Even the local brush bristles with problems.

Unexpectedly we stumble upon a creature of the isle, an unshaven wanderer who seems as confused as we are. Each time he starts to speak, he interrupts himself with some odd musings on the precise colour of khaki or the exact green of the underside of the banyan leaf in mid-autumn. Yet his meandering steps lead us steadily upwards, till we see emerging distantly from the tree-tops the muddy Mesa he calls his own – which would be pretty impressive, if he didn’t call the mudholes, mosquitoes, westerly wind and birdsong his own, too.

We soon leave him. Our last glimpse sees him measuring the size of grit specks on the slopes, mumbling something about inauthentic groundwork on the windward slopes of an igneous pillock (possibly misheard).

Around the mesa we see yet another miraculous display: hundreds upon hundreds of golden warriors, stretching into the misty distance, some driving horseless carts, as bright as the sun’s own carriage in the firmament of heaven, each the size of a house and bearing cannon the size of chimneys.

As they appear a formidable force, and obviously very busy, it seems more than a little impolitic to trouble them with the minor difficulties of our small and poorly armed band. Beyond the mesa we can dimly make out the shadow of the vaunted peak of snow to the north-west, but that field of golden warriors fills the fields between us, and we wouldn’t want to disturb their manoeuvres, so, reluctantly, we turn away from the peak, and head south.

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For my second entry, I was inspired by Millsy’s GW Epic Imperial Guard, submitted near the beginning of Challenge IX. 

As usual for Millsy, this was a hugely impressive submission, both in size and quality, but it also reminded me of my own Imperial Guard army, created in the very early days of the Epic game. In the 80s my two sons and I collected just about every Epic force that GW released, but with the usual lack of foresight, eventually parted with them, lured by the glitter of new armies.

I was particularly fond of the Imperial Guard, and Millsy’s creation revived that itch. However, these days the only way to get Epic models is Ebay, and prices are generally not the cheapest, so I held off.

My eldest son came through for me at Christmas – he had bid for almost every Imperial Guard offering on Ebay, and struck lucky with a couple, enough for a core force. Meanwhile, I’d stumbled across Alternative Armies’ own 6mm armour which is close enough if you’re not too worried about “authenticity”, which I’m not. I want a nice looking army, not necessarily composed of kosher models.

So this submission is both inspired by last year and is a recent purchase. The army is known as the Sunwasps. They’re a Faction of the Imperial Guard little known in the heart of the Imperium, for their independent tactical creativity led them to be dispatched to its rim. There, largely forgotten and entirely neglected, they must forage amongst alien resources for replacement equipment, especially armour, so their appearance barely conforms to the dictats of central control. Moreover, they’re a fiercely independent force with their commanders strongly committed to the Tactics of Mistake* (at least, that’s my excuse), so, though nominally loyal to the Emperor, it’s not unknown for them to find themselves opposed to the same marines they fought alongside a year ago, as political interests oscillate in the Imperium.

Here's the four heavy tanks:

plus the other vehicles:

Rather a lot of Rough Riders: 

Beastmen and Inquisitors:

Troopers:

And the whole thing:

I've put various transfers on most of the vehicles to identify them on the battlefield, though there's no system there. And I've not decided whether to use the flagpoles, which implies some organisational principle for flags, or remove them. 

That's 4 heavy tanks, 21 other vehicles (50 pts), 30 mounted figures (30 pts), 156 foot (78 pts) and 30 for Mudry’s Mesa = 188 pts total.

*For those not in the know, the "tactics of mistake" are documented in the Dorsai novels of Gordon R. Dickson.
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Fabulous entry, Noel. I'm very much enjoying your Island entry preambles, as they really help to set the mood of your submissions. 

Yes, Millsy's past Epic entry was excellent and I'm sure he'll be delighted to find that his work inspired you to reacquaint yourself with one of GW's better game systems and create these for us to enjoy.

I like your background for the Sunwasps - with them being in some neglected backwater, having to come up with their own workarounds for vehicles and equipment. A hardened, resourceful but loyal force to the Emperor, no doubt.

Is all the armour from Alternative Armies? They look quite good and are very similar to their 'official' progenitors. Must look those up.

The Sunwasps, along with the bonus of Mudry's Mesa will give you 188 points. Lovely work, Noel!

-Curt

AdamC: Cooke's Crevase Part 2: The Tell (15 Points)

Visiting Cookes Crevasse a second time on my way back from Douchery's Docks.  I had originally conceived of this as a larger rendition of my previous visit

But this shape (which comes form the same package) had a number of areas that needed to be filled to keep it from looking too artificial.  It then occurred to me that I could make this an advantage by calling this a Tell (some times spelled Tel) rather than a Hill.

I added some scraps of rock that I've scavenged from my yard and which I believe were part of previous counter tops or similar stone accents that the last renovation used as fill and floated to the top in rain storms.

 I also used some aquarium gravel to represent rubble spilling form exposed areas.  In 25 mm this makes a good terrain piece for Frostgrave (I'll may add some snow or ice using cotton balls or something similar) or as part of a pulp adventure in the middle east and it will still works for 15mm games in North Africa or the Middle East.

 Dimensions not counting the base its 7"x8"x3 inches that last number is the height and I'm viewing it as an average. As you can see in the top isn't level but this is provably close to what you would get if you smoothed everything out.

So those dimensions come out to just a bit over 75% of the volume of at 6" Cube so I think ti should net me 15 Points?  Again I'm notoriously bad at estimating the points for terrain. On to Hawken's Hill and a project that has languished built but not painted since Challenge VI.

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Your interest in geological features is rather 'telling', Adam. 

Mic drop.

Hookay... You are really rocking the shipping packaging this week, Adam. I especially like you sourcing the flotsam of previous reno projects to add a filler. Very creative work, well done!

-Curt

From PeteF: Millsy's Millpond - Old School Minifigs Prussian Landwehr - The Fightin' 3rd Westphalia (171 points)

It is always a pleasure to revisit my wargaming roots and paint some true 25mm marvels, cast in a lead alloy that reflects an approach to health and safety that also gave us lawn darts. Back then, from time to time my brother and I would commandeer the dining room for a day or two, lay giant boards across the table, deploy my dad's Minifigs and our Airfix  and battle it out with dice (and notepads, detailed accountancy being an important part of 1970s/80s wargaming).

The French army is my main "focus" but if you like the 100 Days, surely you have to have some Prussians? Sometime last year (2018) a gentleman out east was breaking up and selling their (mainly) Minifigs collection to pay for their healthcare (the US health system really sucks). Their illness meant that they were unable to continue painting and collecting. In addition to the unpainted French I picked up enough Prussians for three or four battalions. The collector had a ginormous collection including a Waterloo battlefield - there are still some painted pieces of his on EBay (nicely painted Minigfigs are generally out of my price range).

These casts of 2nd generation 25mm Minifigs had a lot flash and lumpy bits to cut and file off (lead alloy dust... mmmm!) - they were fun to research and paint. The Prussian army was not nearly as colourful and diverse as its Anglo Allied and French counterparts. The books have them in a lot of blue coats and greatcoats. The only other colours on these are green (for Westphalia) and white (for the 1st battalion of the regiment). There were 22 regiments of landwehr on the 100 days campaign - each with 3 battalions - so I should probably shift to a different scale if I want to represent them all.  That said, if you know anyone looking to unload their Minifigs...

This is another small step to painting all the Minifigs (not just mine - they must all be painted). It is also a step along the Path of History  and my second stop on Challenge Island. But now I foresee a balloon ride in my near future might take me on a different path.

I experimented a bit with the painting - doing more contrasted highlights on the blue than I usually try and simply applying a black (nuln oil) wash to the white trousers. I blacklined the straps, which I don't typically do - it's very time consuming and easy to screw up. I added the crosses and discs on the hats, which are not part of the cast. Overall I like the effect although I might try something different with the flesh colours next time (fortunately not a big part of these casts).

I hope the original owner would be happy with this paint job. 5 x 24 infantry (120 points) Millsy's Millpond Challenge (30 points) with at least 10 bonus points for pre-1990. These might well be pre-1980 for another 10 points. 10 points for the background story. So 170 or 180? 

Happy New Year and may the next decade be one of paint and prosperity.

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Oh, another unit of old school Napoleonics? Yes please! 

That is a very sad story about the original owner who had to sell his collection to pay for his healthcare.  Definitely not a situation any of us would like to face. 

These look brilliant, Pete. I think you nailed the iconic Prussian Blue and I like how your blacklining really makes the details pop - something that benefits these more minimalist figures.

So, 171 points, which includes all the Millsy's Millpond fixings, plus an extra point for the brave banner. 

Lovely work, Pete!