From IanW 6mm Napoleonic Infantry 59 points

Well this is my first Thursday submission and these took longer than expected. Again these are for my son's British Army and he will have over twenty battalions to punish my French with. Command and Colors Napoleonic's is a great gateway drug to get someone into 6mm gaming.

From left to right we have battalions from the 88th Regiment Connaught Rangers, 42nd Blackwatch, 59th (2nd Nottinghamshire) and 62nd Wiltshire. Each battalion has 28 infantry figures and between them they have 3 officers so points wise it's no bomb at 59 points.

We set our battalions on 60x60mm bases, British I always base in line and most units have the four figures out front as a skirmish line. The dice cells are to show the remaining strength of the units, most older units are missing these.

A close up of the highlander battalion, the kilts were fun to paint! I last did kilts for a friends demo game. Have been putting these off ever since.

The figures and flags are from Baccus though in the case of the regimental colour I have in some cases added a little paint to help show the folds in the paper.

OK that's as close as you will get with these boys, the dotting of the tartan has come out quite well though I did not do the red on the hats or socks!!

By comparison the standard British infantry are much easier to paint. I have just a few more British infantry battalions in stock but these will be the last of the challenge. I hope to get some heavy cavalry done before the end and some of my Prussians as well but next I am back to the French SYW.

MilesR: Ian - these are amazing little chaps and I'm astonished you even attempted tartans in 6mm - madness.  +2 points for the unique basing mechanism.  Superb work!

From PeterD for Thursday 28mm SYW Buildings

The two new buildings.  The figures were completed before the challenge

La Belle Alliance in the rear, cart shed to the left and farmhouse to the right.

Much to my own surprise I have stuff to post this week, and am in fact holding back on figures that I could post saving them for next week.  Plus I've made in roads into projects for each of the next three bonus rounds.  This happens when one's kid is in grad school; and one's wife is across the country looking after a mother post surgery.

What I am going to post this week is two more of the marvellous 28mm mdf kits from Sarissa precision.  These will feature in my Seven Year's War project for Western Germany

Close up of cart shed, the interior wall is half timbered with brick fill, basically it's a cut down version of the end wall.

First up is the Cart Shed from their English Timber Framed range.  It bears a close family resemblance to the farm house that I posted last week and painted up just as nicely. My only mod was to once again add black card stock to the windows to hide what's inside, although the wide open barn doors leave less to the imagination.  These doors also left me a challenge as the etched detail on one interior wall is clearly visible from outside.  I put the kit together in a wild rush of excitement and perhaps should have painted the interior walls first, but I think I managed to make it all look OK.  

Backside of the cart shed.  Should probably do a quick wash over the brickworks.

Next up is the La Belle Alliance Inn from field of Waterloo, and from Sarissa's Old Europe range .  They've done a number of buildings from Waterloo and I quite fancy the Chateau at Papelotte and the Church at Placenoit for future projects.  My model is both south east of Flanders and in a different linguistic zone, so I have google translated the name to Die Schon Allianz.  No mods other than the black card stock and different colours of paint, although I did include the optional shutters and a sign.

Die Schon Allianz, again needed a wash on the bricks

I ran possible names past StefanK, and he noted that French wikipedia says that the name refers to a marriage between a beautiful young woman and the grumpy old owner.  Meanwhile English wikipedia notes that the woman acquired the ownership of the tavern and two other buildings via inheritance from 3 of her 4 husbands!  I did up the sign on card stock featuring Hogarth print from his Before and After series, it seemed to fit.

Quite happy with the sign but need to regale bottom right corner

These two buildings were painted from bare mdf with out priming, I find that if I maintain a light touch the mdf gives interesting textures through the paint.  I've also had discussions with Sarissa on the whole prime/don't prime debate.  They say that the detail will hold up unless I apply the primer with a trowel and that they've been known to get a kit painted up badly and then prime it and repaint it without losing details.  Good to know, but I'm not planning to try that!

This shot shows that the roofs lift off and that the two timber framed ones have upper floors that also life out (note the cut out on the upper left corner)

Upper floors lifted out.  The rafter system is very good.  Note that the cart shed's interior wall is only on the ground floor.

I converted the dimensions on the Sarissa sight to king's noses and the math shows that Die Schonn Allianz is 194/216=90% and the cart shed is 98/216=45% of a cubic terrain unit respectively.  The Hessian Erbprinz Regiment was completed just before this challenge and I think started just at the end of the last challenge!  I finally got around to adding unit labels and flags and they have yet to appear in the blogosphere as a finished unit.

Byron and Curt were asking about the scale of the buildings so have two shots with Hessian Erbprinz Regiment to show that they look good with 28s.

MilesR: Well, well Peter - you're becoming a real estate titan in miniature.  We should discuss financing options as I have several products that - oh wait that's a discussion for another time.  These buildings look fantastic  and I love the poster on the end.  The Sarissa products are really nice but you've made them even better.  My only gripe is that you're forcing me to do math by adding your infernal fractions together.  Lets see .9 plus .45 equals -500 points.  It's math so it must be right.

Oops I made a mistake, it actually adds to 1.35 which equals 29 points (when one includes the 2 bonus points added for the poster.

From BenitoM: British Airborne - The Last Stick Lands (45 points)

With this post, I’m almost done with the British Airborne Project, or at least with the core elements of the platoon. Today I bring the platoon’s third section, with a different configuration to the previoust two: instead of showing a rifle and a LMG team, it features two Bren Gun teams.

Each LMG team has a three-crew served Bren Gun and a private armed with a Sten submachine gun. This section is led by a junior leader and is reinforced with a sniper team (already introduced to the Challenge in the latest Bonus Round).

In this case I decided to have a team in movement...

... and the other deployed and firing.

Note I'm using square bases to identify the NCOs and officers from the rank and file in the platoon.

The models are a combination of Wargames Foundry and Warlord (both metal and plastic), but as you can see the fit together nicely, while showing a wide range of different combat gear.

With this entry I add another 45 points to my Challenge score (9 models x 5 points), breaking the 400 points mark.

As mentioned earler, with this section I finished the core part of the platoon (three sections plus the platoon HQ) for Chain of Command. 

However there are still some additional support units to be finished that will be brought here in due course. Nonetheless I’m already thinking about other additional periods for the second part of the Challenge, to help reaching my  750 points target for this year.

MilesR: A very nice squad of British Paratroops.  I like the use of base shapes to designate commanders and use something similar myself.  Another 45 points has been added to your tally as you march towards your goal of 750 points!

From NoelW for Thursday: No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post (430 points)

Yeah, sorry, but this post is just more of the same. Basically, you’ve seen it all before. Not even a hint of a squirrel point. So – a quick glance – then move along there, please.

Firstly, here’s the last batch of my Caesarean Romans. 20 figs. They look exactly like the other two batches I’ve posted already. Which is the point, of course.

That's the last of those. However, there's an ugly clamour of Imperial Romans in the box at my elbow, so they might be in with a chance of a brush with my Vallejo once I've stopped seeing red.

Secondly nearly all I’ve left of my Austrian 15mm infantry. There’s a few figures still lurking which I might squeeze in, but the bulk of the foot are completed with this post.

They consist of two German line infantry battalions in caskets (helmets),

forty jagers (in grey),

and four conflated battalions of Grenadiers, both German and Hungarian. Total of 165 figs.

So that's now 362 Austrians painted that I didn't have at the beginning of the Challenge. Cavalry and perhaps guns will appear somewhere along the line. 

I promise next week’s post will be much more interesting. Even exciting.

Well, perhaps not quite exciting. Maybe it'll be Zulus? Maybe men at arms from Agincourt? Perhaps a couple of Fallout monsters? Or barbarians from the Frostgrave universe? Even I don’t know what will happen. Oh, the thrill of expectation!!!

20 x 28mm foot @ 5 pts = 100 points.

165 x 15mm foot @ 2 pts = 330 points

Total: 430 points

MilesR: Now this is a very nice points bomb, Noel.  I especially like the 15mm Austrians and think you've done a marvelous job with them.  Well done, Sir!

Thursday's Minion is Substitute!!!!!!

There's a new minion in town and I'm here to post challenge submissions and chew bubble gum and I'm all out of bubble gum.

That's right, I'm bringing my own unique form of order to this madness as I wade into to being a substitute minion for the day.

Why a picture of Napoleon on a T-Rex?  Seriously, you actually asked that question?  The obvious answer is because it's cool.

You may see more of this later on.......

A few housekeeping items:

1) This year there are a lot of substitute daily minions, which is great that people are willing to help, but they often don't know who is supposed to be posted on which day - please remember to put the day you were assigned in the title of your post.  There are some minions who live on the Chesapeake Bay and look kind of like me who get cranky when they have to figure out who they should post.  I'm pretty sure this frustration doesn't result in any docking of points.  Well, I'm pretty sure.

2) If you have submissions that qualify for a side duel please make the individual posts and be clear which side duel(s) they are associated with - it really helps with tracking who's submitted what to which.  Lets not add to Paul's sisyphean task of tracking these side duels by forcing him to actually read all of these posts.  He does have access to guided missiles and I really wouldn't be the one to piss him off.

Ok enough of this adminutia rambling, lets get on to the days posts for Thursday.