From TeemuL: Ancient Greek Hoplites (40 points)

Classical Greek Phalanx for Hail Caesar from Warlord Games, or Classical Greek Hoplites. Or Ancient Greek Hoplites from www.immortalminiatures.com. Life is hard, when you are "trained" by Games Workshop products.

Yes, a new frontier for me, perfect excuse for squirreling. I have painted some WWII vehicles and handful of Spanish Civil War miniatures, but mainly different fantasy or scifi. Not a single Napoleonic miniature has passed my painting table, but they might in the future... So I have never painted historical miniatures really, so these ancient Greek warriors are something new to me. I bought them couple of years ago from a sale (less than 10 euros for a box of 40), when I thought I don't have enough to paint... I was just getting back to hobby, and the big GW games didn't attract me at that time, but they are by far the easiest to find an opponent, so I'm on that path now.

I was expecting to get one piece miniatures in this box, may be separate shields or something, but I was wrong. That was one of the reasons I didn't start these earlier. They were not that difficult to assemble, but since there were different helmets etc in the box, but no instructions, I was afraid I'd build them wrongly... After a bit research, I think everything goes, they had mixed helmets and so on. I still haven't figured out if some of them are (or need to be) champions or something, but since I'm not expecting them to end to the battle field any time soon, I'm not taking too much stress on that.

I put four of them on a 40x40 base, that I read from somewhere. Someone wrote that 6 is good. I guess it depends on the rules, but I'm just expecting them to look nice on the shelf. And I think they look rather nice, painted with AP Barbarian Flesh first, then using GW Retributor Gold to pick up shields and armor and then some off-white white, yellow and red to the clothes and they were practically ready. I painted the spear stuffs quite light, I think with all the flesh and gold, brown would have looked a bit mess. I added transfers to the shields, they were a bit messy, but that was just me trying to be quick and ending up using thrice the time... They were not separate ones on the back paper, they were all on one film, which would have been good idea to cut before dumping the piece of 8 decals to the water... And I did that after gluing them into two rows, back row was bit difficult. Some of them are ok, but most of them are not in the middle, they have torn a bit or there are air bubbles under them.

On the bases I tried for the first time Citadel Texture Agrellan Earth, which gave a nice Mediterranean feel to them, I think, but it also shrunk a bit more than I hoped for and the plastic bases can be easily seen. Next batch I need to put something to hide them. And next batch will have transfers, which are properly assembled. Yes, I'll be painting more of these in the future, not necessarily in this Challenge, but soon anyway.

That's 8 28mm Hoplites for 40 points.
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To finish, a selection of Greek Hoplites from M. Teemu. Known for the diversity of his dishes, Teemu is one of the select band of chefs inducted into the ranks of the Chevaliers of the Squirrel.

M. Teemu continues in this vein with a surprise assortment of Greek Hoplites, best enjoyed with an ouzo, or perhaps a Finnish vodka. The elegant bronze finish is a fitting close to an evening of culinary delights. 40 points for Chef Teemu!

Ev