From AdamC: Fantasy Civilians and Dire Wolf (29 points)

Part of the Bones III set some civilian figures two dwarves, a halfling and a half orc. I imagine they are at or least near a tavern.

My favourite the brew master... who is doing a quality control check of the product. He's an old gray beard and probably dispenses wisdom with the ale.

With his armor and big hammer I figure he's probably an retired adventure who also provides security at the tavern.

The Dwarven butcher this odd fellow looks more like he's comforting a pig who has been threatened not the fellow who is going to turn him into pork chops

Look at that hug he's giving the pig... this is one strange butcher.

The halfling cook.  Perhaps he's the one who threatened the pig?  I like civilians doing civilian things and this guy is perfect.

I can just imagine a line of hungry patrons waiting for the soup from his copper pot.

This one is interesting one its a half ork merchant.  Not a roll most people would cast a half orc in.   Hes a bit of a dandy with his slashed sleeves and bright yellow codpiece.

Clearly he is taking advantage of his racial strength bonus to save on the over head of porters or mules.

Finally we have a dire wolf a very large miniature with lots of great texture for painting on his fur.

New to him is a regular wolf form Northstar I painted a few years ago.  You can see I've improved. You can also see he's huge by comparison. I'm not sure how to score this one.   The halfling is a little smaller than normal but the "butcher is almost two figures." Lets call the halfling a 20mm so for points the other three civilians are 25mm so that 15 points... then there is the pig maybe 2 more for him?   The dire wolf is quite big for the scale lets call it 7 points (scoring as at 40mm)?   if my suggestions are take the total would be 28 Points.  Robert I leave it to you to judge if this is fair.

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Not only is the dwarf checking the quality of the brew, he seems a might displeased with the results! Must be a skunky brew?

The dwarf with the pig does seem an odd pose. Perhaps there was a spot of pig rustling preventing pork put on the menu? Certainly the pig does not seem all that concerned to be held by a dwarf wielding a meat cleaver.  

The halfling fellow looks like he belongs with the crew of the halfling hot pot:

Which does not exactly raise my faith in halfling cooking.

Is this half-orc merchant putting all his skills into Intimidation? "GROK SAY YOU BUY GOODS NOW!"

Enough chit-chat. Based on the Snowlord Wolf Accountancy Methodology, verified by Millsy to a p-value of 0.00034981, dire wolves get scored as 40mm (7 points). Now, the halfling may be small, but the half-orc balances, so that and the dwarves come to a wash of 20 points for 4 28mm figures. Animals score as 15mm figures, so there's another two for the pig, coming to a grand total of 29 points.

From GregB: 28mm Franco-Prussian War Infantry & Artillery (145 points)

28mm Franco-Prussian War figures from Wargames Foundry.

Well, this second submission for the day may be a bit repetitive - more Franco-Prussian War material! There is some more artillery for the Prussians, but we also switch over the French side, with an infantry unit for the French Empire. These are 28mm figures from Wargames Foundry's Franco-Prussian War range, sculpted by the Perry brothers.

Prussian Reserve Artillery

Ready to fire! Prussian reserve artillery in 28mm.

I had already done one artillery piece for the Prussians during this edition of the Challenge, and had not expected to ad a second.  But the gang at Wargames Foundry, while generally very nice, have this way of screwing up orders a touch (and also not replying to email, but I digress...).  In an order received last year, I found this Krupp gun in the box, even though I had not ordered it. It's packing code is quite similar to that of some figures I did order, but did not receive...

The crew figures are spares from other guns.

Anyway, we got it all sorted eventually. This is different from the other Prussian artillery I have painted for the FPW setting, as this is one of the larger 90mm guns that would have been part of the Prussian's Corps-level artillery reserve.

The finest product of Krupp's foundries...

The Prussian artillery - rifled, breech-loading guns - was very, very effective in 1870, and this 90mm piece barely qualifies as a black powder-era weapon.  I had planned to basically have reserve artillery be off-table for my 28mm games of "Black Powder".

The basket seats on the gun carriage make me chuckle...certainly a unique look.

But a free model is a free model! I had spare Prussian crew from the other guns, so I thought I would throw it together.  I'm sure we'll find a use for it on the gaming table - even just as a marker to show the game is about to be over as the Prussian Corps artillery is about to open fire...

78th Ligne

The 78th Ligne, ready to take their place in the French battle line.

And finally, we get back to the French! I just love the French uniforms from this period, really a central motivation inspiring me to get into this setting in the first place.  While I like painting the Prussians, really I am painting the Prussians just so I can paint the French!

Incredible detail on these wonderful 28mm sculpts from Wargames Foundry.

I just love the whole presentation - the red kepis, the baggy red trousers, the epaulettes, the blue coats...wow! What a great uniform - and this is the uniform of the regular troops!

NCO exhorts his troops as they prepare their deadly Chassepot rifles...

There are 24 figures in the unit - I'm doing relatively small numbers of castings in these units in order to allow for a bit more of them on a normal size table, and to make the overall goal of a "Black Powder" game more realistically achievable.  20 of the figures are used to represent the main unit, with four individually-based figures available to represent a mixed formation where a portion of the unit is deployed as a skirmish screen.

Individually-based figures used to mark out/represent skirmish screen to the front of the unit. 

The 78th Ligne was present at the opening battle of the Franco-Prussian War, Wissembourg, which would see a French division hold through most of a day against elements of a Bavarian and several Prussian corps.  The flag was printed out from Warflags (I have yet to find a source of French flags for the Franco-Prussian War - if someone knows of one, please leave a comment).

In terms of points, this submission has 27 different figures and one artillery piece, all in 28mm sized, so I believe this works out to 145 points.  The points are great, but even better, I am that much closer to meeting my goal of having enough units painted for a game! My painting focus is not always great (see previous entry), but a project that I have been working on for a year is starting to close in on an important milestone...so I hope I will have more FPW stuff next week...      

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En avant! Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! Shoot down those dastardly Prussian artillerists!

As we've discussed, I'm not sure you should have the artillery off table, at least not until the Republican period battles. The Prussians would push it right up into rifle range, and they lost a lot of artillerists to rifle fire before they learned how to pull back. The French should have the opportunity to neutralize the Prussians.

I very much agree, the uniforms are splendid. Though the Guard, in their bonnets de police, are a lot less imposing in 1870 than they were in 1859.  

145 more points up on the board! Keep 'em coming. 

From GregB: Epic 30k Super Heavy Armour (18 Points)

"Super-heavy" tanks in 6mm from the 14th Space Marine Legion, the Death Guard

Back to some Horus Heresy and 30k material for this week with my first submission - specifically Epic 30k, the 6mm-sized-mass-battle version of GW's science fiction games.  There are two "Fellblade" class tanks and one "Falchion" class tank, and they are all painted in the markings of the 14th Space Marine Legion, known as (charmingly) the "Death Guard".

Lovely little private sculpts - in metal, with great, crisp details.

The Horus Heresy setting features lots and lots of tanks. Lots! Yay! This small scale is ideal for deploying masses of tanks, so playing 30k in "Epic" is great fun! While models exist for these beasts in the regular 28mm size of the game, getting more than one or two of those beasts on to a regular-sized table is hard.  On the other hand, in the small size of the models in the "Epic" game lets you put whole squadrons of these monsters on a regular table, and do so with comfort!

I had painted a fair amount of Epic 30k material back in a different Painting Challenge...I think edition VII? Anyway, good to have some sci-fi breaking up all the historical stuff!

I love the silhouette of the Fellblade...just a bonkers tank.

As with my 10mm FPW figures last week, these are models have been painted "on the side of the table" - something I work on while other projects dry, add a layer here, colour there, and then they finish at some point.  This sort of semi-scattered painting approach may slow me down a bit overall, but I find it makes the painting more fun in general.  Particularly when the "side of the table" thing is very different in either subject or scale, it adds some variety overall.   

This angle shows some of the additional heavy weapons mounted in both the front hull and the side sponsons.

Byron already has a great a collection of Death Guard Space Marines for Epic 30k (and in 28mm too), so these are somewhat superfluous in terms of our overall group...but I do like the Death Guard, already had a few infantry and vehicles painted myself. I already had these specific models too, with their Legion iconography was sculpted into the doors, so I thought I would paint them up as intended.  I mean - how could a game where the Death Guard deploy three super-heavy tanks be better? Why, one with six super-heavy tanks, of course! I'm hoping Byron's troops won't mind the company...

The Fellblade, with its bonkers twin-main guns, and demolisher cannon, AND heavy bolters, AND quad laser weapons (on BOTH sponsons!) is one of the most heavily-armed vehicles to be found in the 30k setting (or, at least, thing that it is still a vehicle, as opposed to Titans).  It's bananas, and they are a lot of fun in Epic 30k.  Even if you are commanding just two of them in an Epic 30k game, when it is your turn to shoot...you are doing a LOT of shooting. Fun!

The Falchion - super-heavy-tank-destroyer extraordinaire!

If the Fellbalde is meant to be a kind of "general" battle tank, the Falchion has a much more specific purpose - it is a warped 30k-vision of a super-heavy-tank-destroyer, featuring a massive energy weapon (and, you know, still with the quad laser cannons on the sponsons, one presumes to let the crew have some sport while the big weapon re-charges).  The Falchion tries to knock out enemy super-heavy tanks, and also has sufficient firepower to severely damage or even knock out Titans.  Just look at that bonkers weapon! Oh man, I love the 30k setting...the very best, crazy sci-fi designs, brilliantly done.

A view of the bizarre machinery powering the Falchion's main battery.

These are not technically-speaking, GW models - because GW has, generally speaking, been a pack of sh*t heels when it comes to the management of the Epic game (and their other specialist games) - so these are private sculpts.  But I am hoping my fellow "Evil Empire" side-duellists would allow this GW-inspired material to count towards my duel score...

In terms of scoring, these models are 6mm-sized tanks - but they are quite big, so I am hoping perhaps they could count for two-tanks-each, giving a total of 18 points? Robert will figure it out. 

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Woah! It's like the misbegotten hellchild of a Mark V and a A7v, but turreted like the tank from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. All very WTF, man. 

However, the stark white works, and works very well on these. A very simple scheme, well executed. Especially since white paint seems to be my bete noir right now.

However, scoring was difficult. GregB neglected to put anything to give me an idea of the scale of the thing. So, when the Bosun is done with PeteF, we clearly have to bring another miscreant before the Minion's Mast. From my Google search, these things were more like 4x the volume of a 6mm Rhino-equivalent. So, I scored them as 15mm vehicles.

Bosun, for his sins, give GregB a hearty twenty four points. And may the Snowlord have mercy on his brushes.

(READY Friday) From PaulSS - Hundred Years War French infantry (60 points)

Here we go again with another dozen French foot from the Perry Miniatures plastic sets. These represent a small retinue of militia spearmen led by a sergeant. All the arms and most of the bodies and heads are from the Agincourt French Infantry 1415-29 set while a few of the bodies and heads are from the English Army 1415-1429 set.

While painting some of the English archers from last weeks post I had done one of them in a green and brown livery that I really liked, so, decided that I wanted to do a whole unit of troops in that colour.

A few people have asked about the colours and technique I use. Everything unless noted is from the Vallejo Model Colour range.

The livery green is Reflective Green while the livery brown is Flat Earth, the secondary colours for the other clothing are Basalt Grey, Field Drab, Russian Uniform and Stone Grey. The spears are Chocolate Brown and a lot of the leather is Saddle Brown..

Everything is blocked in as a base-coat and washed with Army Painter Strong Tone (water based one) and after dried the base-coats are re-applied and one or two highlights added by mixing in a lighter colour to the original colour.

Once these are dried the detail is picked out by brown-lining with Windsor & Newton Peat Brown inks.

Hopefully nobody is getting too bored of all these Hundred Years War figures I am doing for the challenge, apologies if you are but I've only got 48 foot and 18 horse left in the backlog and then I can make a start on something else.

These should also add 60 points for me to the Hither do I Challenge Thee (SD4) duel.

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Only 48 foot and 18 horse left? My God, man, your lead pile is running dangerously low. You'd better send off to the Perrys and stock back up, tout suite!

Another 12 spearmen put 60 points up on the board for you. You and Adam really are duking it out this week. You'd best take advantage of his bye period to get some heavy horse for your force!

From AdamC: More Crusader Infantry (70 Points)

So the Norman/Crusader army was finished for purposes of the Lion Rampant duel but I have more troops in the box and so here are most of what is left (the rest will be seen in the Mercenary Bonus Round)

I originally planned to do these in an alternative livery but then decided this would limit may mixing an matching option with this army

So I repainted them the same color now I can take the 10 men in light armor and add the two Pavise men from the crossbows to form a full unit of foot sargent.

There are also 4 Armoured Foot soldiers perfect for a strength point of "Hearth Guard" in Saga.

 The could also function as a unit of Men-At-Arms on foot (with two friends borrowed form the aforementioned mercenary unit, you should see Saturday.  Shields are all done by hand as is my normal process. These 14 Crusader Infantry should net me another 70 Points.  I might not have an entry next week as some work is being done in the house that will disrupt my painting space but I hope to be back at it the following week.

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And now we move from Samurai to Crusaders. More folks in livery! 70 points of brushwork.

I think I may have to do a bit of accountancy and stats math on the Lion Rampant contributions by Friday's challengers. Or, just decide things the old fashioned way - have Paul and Adam's Lion Rampant retinues fight it out.

Excuses, excuses. House renovations, wives, kids . . . where are your priorities, man? Ok, one bye week, but I expect an entry ready to go on 15FEB!

From PeteF: Sam-mew-rai Warband (30 points)

Almost 2 years ago I was introduced to Warlord's Test of Honour at a gaming convention. The game's host put in a ton of effort that added atmosphere and enjoyment to the game - flickering tealights in the buildings, coloured stones in a rice bowl for activations (instead of cardboard counters in a bag), beautiful Japanese buildings and he gifted a professionally painted samurai figure to participants.

I was hooked - and even though I had no opponent a Test of Honour box was on its way to my gaming table to my Shelf of Shame, where it resided until the beginning of Challenge IX. My cunning plan was to persuade my son to be my opponent (as I write an anguished cry of "How many rules ARE there????" emanates from the living room) by painting up a clan with a theme around something he likes. And he likes cats - this one in particular, who serves as inspurration for the colour scheme.

Anyway - here is the beginnings of an Imagi-Nation Cat Clan unknown to actual hisstory.

Their boss, a fearsome Samewrai, is armed with a deadly Catana.

Scratch Built

These purrfectly poised Ashigarmew (that's enough! Ed) are three to a base and operate as a team.

The starter warband is rounded out by a pair of bow armed Ashigaru.

Bowmen paws for a shot at their enemies

Normally I get the Osprey, ask questions online and count buttons so it was a fun departure to paint something ahistorical. I discovered that Samurai only armoured up for big battles - so in any case the idea of a skirmish between armoured Samurai clans is unrealistic - a skirmish between the Cat Clan and their yet to be painted mortal enemies (ideas for a theme welcomed) doubly so.

The "loyal spearman" are Furmidable Opponents

We'll see how the teenager's introduction to a skirmish game goes. I fear Fortnite is too much competition. I noticed that Test of Honour is on Warlord's clearance list so maybe the game didn't catch on - there is always Osprey's Ronin  to fall back on - it looks like an interesting ruleset.

In case you think painting a few cat mons is a bit eccentric then consider civil war tails - a gettysburg diorama in which the soldiers are cats.

In their first game they lost by a whisker and the leader needed the first aid kit

6 x 28mm infantry (all from Warlord/Wargames Factory) for 30 points and 1 squirrel point for Sam-mew-rai (I said ENOUGH).

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Samurai miniatures have always fascinated me, though I fear I lack the patience for all the intricate work the armor entails. Even the slashes and puffs of Landsknechts are a bit much for me. A samurai skirmish game sounds interesting, though I wonder if they lack the visual appeal you get en masse.

Speaking of crewel and unusual punnishment . . .  

Bosun, trice up the gratings, get the cat o' nine tails out of the bag, call all Challengers to the mast to witness punishment!

I said a cat o' nine tails, not a fluffy fox! Who do you think you are, Bosun? The Spanish Inquisition and their comfy chairs?  

Very well, give that man thirty points, and put your back into it!

The Friday Follies - Part V

Due to the polar vortex freezing the Snowlord's bank accounts, we have been forced to sharply curtail unnecessary expenditures. Sadly, the accountants were never happy with the amount of monies expended on guest minions, and not useful things like more miniatures or additional politicians to lower the VAT so applied.

As a result, this week's guest minion has not been engaged. Instead, bask in the finest of dank memes, stock imagery, and clip-art based commentary no money can buy.

Crewel and unusual punnishment, of course, is always on the menu. See our first entry in

The Analogue Hobbies

Friday Follies

Part V!