From NoelW for Thursday: Wargs and warships (170 points)

This is my last post this week. It has two parts. Firstly, here are 13 Warg riders from Lord of the Rings. Some are metal, some plastic. I painted them in two batches, so that the drybrushing of the wargs created rather different browns, as if they were different breeds. I may add a couple more, perhaps with grey or black fur.

The orcs I found a little difficult to give a satisfactory look. The definition on some of the figures is not perfect, and if you simply paint everything dark and dirty, as seems realistic, the figures as a whole tend to look a mess. I may go back to them at some point and brighten a few elements of some of them, although I’m reasonably happy with the overall effect as a group.

13 28mm mounted figures is 130 points. 1 squirrel.

Like many gamers, I’ve been seduced by Warlord’s Cruel Seas. So the second part of this post is my first attempt at painting MTBs. I’m not a naval gamer, so my approach here has been to copy some of the ideas of others, with the aim of making each ship slightly different so they can be readily identified in a game.

Looking at the photos it seems reasonably obvious I need a better cloth for the sea. This looks far too calm!

I think the going rate for these 1/300th models is 8 points each, so that’s 40 points, I think. And another squirrel.

Great looking orcs and wargs! The dry brushing technique works really well and they're nicely varied! Great to see you getting into cruel sea (I have to admit to being tempted!) They look really good too!
Once more Toby and I are in full agreement with your numbers 170 points it is and another very impressive output for just one week!
All the best Iain

Thursday Dave S And now for something completely different 18 points

So, I've reached the point where I have painted basically nothing but archers since before christmas, and what wasn't archers, was the archer models with billmen arms.  So, with just a small set of Welsh skirmishers and the Captains to paint, I've decided to break it up with something else.

I've been looking at Vanguard by Mantic for a while, and when several of us decided to take the jump, I went with the Northern Alliance box set.  Snow themed forces, with the option to take elves, dwarves and humans, as well as the special stuff, what's not to like.

I've decided that I wanted to paint somthing BIG to begin with, and so, I put together and paitned one of the Snow Trolls from the box.  These are PVC, and I have to confess I hate the material.  I also had a problem with the torso of one of the Trolls in the box, but Mantic had not only replaced that part, but the whole bag with nearly half the models in it, within a few days of me reporting it.

So there he is.  Looking at the photo, I can see the mold line that I missed when I was cleaning him up.  But overall, I'm happy with him.  I've no idea how many points he is.  He is in theory heroic scale 28mm, but the model itself is huge compared to a normal 28mm, so, I'll leave the points to the powers to be.  To help, here's a scale shot.

This troll also represents my first attempt at making a snowy/cold base.  I've used appropriately coloured tufts and army painter snow mixed with PVA glue.  While you can't see it in the photos, there is also a cracked ice pool by his right foot, made with crackle medium, and then cunningly concealed by the photo angle and snow around it.

The second model that this week has seen painted is a more normal sized Witch, that I got from Bad Squiggo Games.  She will do double duty as both a leader in my future Frostgrave force, and also a Priest for my Saga viking force.  She was going to be used as my entry for the Mercenary bonus round, but unfortunately, I ran out of time, so here she appears.

I have tried to make the feather shawl work in a slightly different way.  Rather than my usual highlighting, I have simply covered it with a number of purple washes, aiming to cover less of the shawl each time so that areas that would normally be most highlighted have the most layers.  It's worked better in person than under the camera, but it has proved to be a good way to give the all black model different textures.
So 5 points for her, plus whatever the troll is worth.

Lovely looking witch! The troll is fantastic and a big change from all your archers!
So 5 points for your witch and a 54mm figure is 10 points but as he's a bulky chap let's add a couple of points,oh Toby says three so we can avoid the uneven number,that gives you a total of 18 points!
All the best Iain

                     
                 

From NoelW for Thursday: A drop of Burgundy (120 points)

I had some odd Wars of the Roses foot figures lying around, oddments, really, left over from other units or acquired from Bring and Buys. Having painted some cavalry that could be used both in WoTR forces and possibly in a Burgundian Ordonnance, I decided to paint these spare infantry similarly in a blue and white livery to give similar flexibility. For Burgundians they should really have the red saltire, too, but that would remove their flexibility, as would committing them to any particular faction in the WoTR by painting on a Lord’s badges. Instead, the figures can be alighned with a particular force through standard bearers/ensigns whose flags can be changed.

The 22 figures are all Perry designs, some from their plastic sets, some metals and two of their older sculpts still, I think, being sold by Wargames Foundry, though these have been languishing in my collection for many years. Here they are:

 And here are the standard bearers.

The flags are detachable using an approach I picked up from an excellent blogger who goes by the name Olicanalad (another Yorkshireman, as it happens – we’re all full of good ideas). Each flag is wrapped around a length of plastic tube which can then be slid over a wire “pole”. His original post is here,   though he uses brass tube, which is a little more stable than my plastic, but more difficult to work with and more expensive. The main problem with this system is that flags tend to rotate around the central pole, but a little bluetak inside the tube can fix this.

Without the Burgundian flags, they look like this:

 And, if used for the Wars of the Roses, they may be given flags like these:

I assembled the Burgundian flags for this submission, but the WoTR flags had already been assembled.

Finally, there’s an Irish mercenary. He should’ve been included in the Bonus post but he’d sneaked off the painting table, concealing himself in a fold of cloth (so he says – I suspect he’d deserted for a drop of the hard stuff, as mercenaries seem apt to do), so he appears here as a unit of 1.

So that’s 23 figures at 115 points, plus perhaps a couple for the flags?

                                                     

Lovely universal soldiers and an admirable approach to flags that I have also adopted!
Great colours splendid body of men!
So,23 28mm figures will give you 115 points,

plus four flags would give you 119 but as Toby abhors odd numbers we shall round it up to 120 points!
All the best Iain
                         

Thursday Martin N It's a StuG life 25points

Continuing on with my Panzergrau phase todays offering is a early StuG D.  While the diminutive Panzer I's and Panzer II's or their larger brethren the Panzer III's and IV's all have their individual appeal it's always been the StuG which impressed me the most. With its small shilouette and the boxy shape it simply looks both futuristic and menacing. And a StuG in the dark Panzergrau livery of the early days of WW2 is simply the king of 'Bad Ass'... in my books anyway.

Development of the Sturmgeschütz (Assault gun) dates back to a 1935 memorandum of then Colonel of Artillery Erich v. Manstein. In it he postulated the development of highly mobile armoured vehicles armed with infantry guns to close support the infantry. Thanks to this memorandum in which he also laid down the principles of how this new weapon should be used, Erich v. Manstein is often referred to as "Vater der Sturmartillerie" or father of the assault artillery. Several trials had already been conducted within the Reichswehr but the resulting vehicles offered too little protection to the crew to stand a chance on the modern battlefield.

The new concept proposed by v. Manstein called for a fully tracked, fully armoured vehicle armed with a short barreled 75mm cannon. Despite it's intended main purpose of attacking entrenched infantry or bunkers a decent anti-tank capability was also part of the requirements for the gun. Thus unlike with the development of the Panzer III which was (for ostensibly logistical reasons) to be outfitted with the rather poor 3,7cm gun instead of the already available and much better 5cm gun, Erich v. Manstein made sure that the Sturmgeschütz would stand at least a chance against other AFV's of the time. But still an Anti-Tank role was not the intended purpose for the new vehicle.

As early as 1937 five pre-production vehicles made from untempered steel were produced and supplied to the "Sturmartillerieschule" (Scool for assault artillery) in Jüterborg. Due to the untempered steel they were not fit for frontline duties but were used as training vehicles as late as 1941. In 1939 production of the Ausf. A begun. It was based on the Panzer III chassis with its characteristical six road wheels, unlike the pre-production variant which had eight road wheels, armed with the short 75mm Sturmkanone L/24 and had a (then) respectable frontal armour of 50mm.
In May 1940 a slightly improved Ausf. B was put into production.

During the invasion of Poland in September 1939 no StuG's were yet available for service but their lack ably demonstrated the urgent need for a weapon of this kind to support the infantry. Its debut, albeit in still very low numbers, saw the StuG in May 1940 during the attack in the west. As little as two Sturmgeschütz-Batterien (Assault gun batteries) saw service here. It was only in Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the soviet union, that the StuG saw service in any significant number. Due to a lack of tanks the assault gun units found themselves ever more often employed in an anti-tank role for which the short 75mm cannon, which incidentally also was the main armament of the early mark Panzer IV's, proofed ill suited.

But the StuG adapted only rather slowly to this change with the Ausf. C and D only seeing minor improvements on gun sights and communications equipment. It was only in 1942 with the introduction of the Ausf. F, which saw the introduction of the Sturmkanone 40 L/43 (later L/48), that the StuG was upgunned to meet its new demands. Armed with this new gun the StuG was finally able to take on any allied armour and it is in this role that most of us probably think of when thinking about the StuG. Instantly the rubble filled streets of Monte Cassino, or the close quarter fighting in Normandy or the epic battles on the eastern front spring to mind.

The even later but most numerous Ausf. G saw mainly an increase in defensive capability with an up armouring of the front to 80mm, the addition of a co-axial machine gun and later the remote controlled top mounted machine gun.

The common Stug-Nerd, to which class I count myself, may have noticed I'm using a resin Warlord Games Ausf. D to field alongside my Germans destined for the invasion of France. Well, to my defense, it's the only real early production StuG in 1/56 scale that I'm aware of and frankly it comes close enough to a Ausf. B for me to not loose any sleep over the matter. It's a nice enough kit and went together quite effortlessly but I'd really wish for someone (Rubicon I'm looking at you) to produce an early war StuG in plastic. I'd probably sell a kidney to get hold of at least two...

While the camera was out I took the chance and staged a few shots of my new toys. Imagine a column somewhere in France in 1940 on a secret mission to retrieve some invaluable art treasures to decorate the homes of the influential and heinous back in Germany...

Thanks for your attention. Stay safe!

                                                            

Gorgeous Stug! My first model was an airfix Stug so they hold a place in my heart,strange for an armoured vehicle but there you go! So that's 20 points for a 28mm vehicle and as Toby reminds me 5points for both the crew figure and the additional stowage! Lovely finish!

All the best Iain

From NoelW for Thursday: There’s tharsands of ‘em (205 points)

I’ve presented a couple of long posts recently, so I thought it was better this week if I submitted separate posts, as seems to be good practice for many. This first post is the largest, in terms of points.

In last year’s Challenge I painted a large number of Zulus, mainly Warlord figures, which are fair enough in their way, but didn’t really excite me. Then the Perrys released their own zulu plastics, which are truly beautiful sculpts, and offer a huge range of poses and possibilities, too. So I bought several boxes, and this post delivers almost the last of them, except for a few of the casualty figures, which I may never bother with, because there are more than enough of those in this post. I’d saved most of these, and the firing figures, till the end as I’ve been building up several regiments. The assegai-armed figures here are supplements to two existing regiments, both married regiments: white shields and red and white shields. Both could belong to different regiments, so there’s some flexibility here.

Firstly, red and white shields:

Now, white shields:

One of these I built as a scout, which illustrates the versatility of this set:

Firing figures and casualties who, in an inversion of history, seem to be defending Rorke's Drift:

And the lot:

That’s 41 figures, so 205 points. And another squirrel.

                                                           

Terribly impressive,these look great, and more posts yet to come! 
Both Toby and I entirely agree with your estimate so 205 points it is!

All the best Iain

Thank God it's Thursday!

It's Thursday and I am relieved to say we now have more than one post.

I'm now as happy as Toby, Thursdays new mascot and Toby says paint!
We have Zulus,Lord of the Rings,a Stug and some War of the Roses coming up and maybe more as the day goes on?

All the best Iain