For Thursday - Yet another new Army - DaveS 182points

So, having nearly completed my War of the Roses forces, and started a Vanguard force, my FLGS got in a supply of War and Empire 15mm Ancients.  So, since my friend Adam has been bugging me to play ADLG since he moved to Bournemouth to London about a year ago, I decided that I was going to have to get a force.  And paint it.  Almost makes me wish I had signed up for the squirrel/butterfly/too many projects challenges as well.

The models are nice, easy to clean, and I have tried to make this a "quick and dirty" painted army.  Therefore, everything has been painted in block colours, and a wash of Agrax Earthshade applied. (this isn't quite the talent in a pot that Devlan Mud used to be, but it's close and my Devlan supply is drying up pretty quick).  I'm happy with the effect on massed troops.

The Whole Mass of Troops

The Poor Infantry

The view from the Front

Roman Heavy Cavalry

Cretian Archers

Slings

Overall, I'm happy with this as the start of the army, especially since this is the first time working in 15mm.  So, my reckoning makes this..

18 bases of 4 Legionaries = 71 models (1 base is waiting for a standard bearer)

2 bases of 3 Heavy Cavalry = 6 cavalry models

4 bases of 2 Light infantry =  8 models

For a total of 79 infantry and 6 cavalry in 15mm, which I think is 182 points...

Oh, and some cats.  Because they tell me that if I put up their pictures, they will stop climbing on my desk, and flicking models onto the floor.  And because cats.  Obviously.

Great looking Romans! The legionaries look splendid and the cavalry look great,for a fast finish I think they're excellent, I've also moved over to agrax earthshade and your right it's not as good as devlan mud but it's done a grand job on these chaps,the basing is also really good. While Toby is not convinced I should give you anything with your display of feline affection,I agree 182points it is!

All the best Iain

From NoelW for Thursday: A rose by any other name (65 points)

(I don't know why, but two of my posts were going to be titled with quotes from Romeo and Juliet this week - the palm tree post would have been "palm to palm" from the sonnet where they first meet. Fortunately, I changed my mind!)

My final offering this week consists of a few more medievals - some of my favourite figures to work on, even though medieval battles themselves can sometimes be boringly similar - slogfests, in many cases. But I just love the spectacle of banners and caparisons and coats of arms.

I also particularly like Perry plastic medievals. I assemble far more of them than is reasonable, and always have some on the go. This time it's more men at arms for the Wars of the Roses, but with half an eye to adding figures to the Burgundian army, too. Here's half a dozen of them:

And another seven:

You'll see I painted one leader figure in the base livery of Henry Tudor in case I want to use him as a dismounted hero figure in some context, such as a skirmish game. Otherwise, he'll act as a captain within the Tudor contingent at Bosworth.

And, for those who like such things, here are some of the better individuals:

  Finally, three mass shots:

That's 13 figures, so 65 points.

As the end of the Challenge looms, I'm wondering which other projects from the many I've begun I should try to close down before time runs out. There are at least nine squirrel-worthy projects that might temporarily grab my attention, but I don't know where I'll find myself next. I'm pretty sure I'll reach 5000 points, which is great as it's twice my target. But I might even be able to stretch a little further than that, once the drugs kick in...

More lovely Perry plastics! It's a great set and you've done a fine job on them! Of course you could get the mercenaries set and add some of the Perry 16th century heads and maybe the Warlord plastic landsknechts and unleash your inner squirrel into the great Italian wars! 65 points it is!
All the best Iain

From NoelW for Thursday: An orcward post (270 points)

My second post this week is a return to Lord of the Rings, one of my favourite gaming arenas. To support the warg riders I posted before, today's offering is mainly a mass of ugly orcs. I'm hoping they'll be followed by another batch before the Challenge ends.

But first, four barrow wights. These are nice castings, though I'm not sure why I've two sets of them. I really like the blue and silver combination though, as usual, my poor photography makes them look rather lighter than in reality:

My notion of the LOTR orcs is dressed in all sorts of rags and scavenged garments, so they would be multicoloured but overall essentially be dark and filthy, with armour that was battered and rusty. There’d be a strong degree of uniformity across the army, despite all that underlying variety, and Tolkien's descriptions (which, as is usual with him, are not very precise) emphasise the darkness and filth of orcishness, so that's what I'm going for.

For priming I experimented with the zenithal method as advocated by Tamsin (thanks, Tamsin), but I didn’t get it right. Possibly I had the spray too close to the figures to get the best results or I chose bad angles. It did produce some interesting shading on a few figures, and so I've used washes in a few places to take advantage of that. But mainly the effects were unreasonable, so I had to ignore the shading that resulted and overpaint uniformly. I will, however, persist with the experiment.

Instead, I relied on Army Painter Dark Shade to do most of the shading for me and provide that army uniformity over the many different colours I used on each figure. I picked out some colours with selective highlighting but limited it to a few instances per figure. I definitely didn't want any colour to "pop" and attract the eye. My orcs are a morose, miserable, muddy mass. Armour was painted silver them washed with flesh wash for a rusty effect.

The end result is not the most beautiful army in the world but even so quite convincingly a mass of evil ragamuffins. Here are two of their captains:

And a smattering of archers:

And finally the marauding mass itself:

That’s 50 orcs and 4 barrow wights = 270 points  

What a great mass of orcs! Suitably gritty,dirty and rusty! They work really well! The wrights are great! The ethereal blue and highlighted black works really well together! 270 points it is,a slightly dirty boom!

All the best Iain

From PeterD Curtgeld and Other Traditions.(20 points)

Lighting's not the best.  I may need to touch up the facial details too, he's looking too mono-hued here.

Time to pay the piper, so here's my Curtgeld for the Ninth Challenge.  He's an officer from the French Dillon Regiment from the SYW.  The figure is by Front Rank and I really love the pose with hat off and sword out.

Front Figures paint up very nicely.  The raised buttons and lace work are very much appreciated.

Dillon's was a famous regiment in the 18th century, part of the Irish brigade formed after the Glorious Revolution (or War of English Succession depending).  recruitment cam originally from Irishmen wanting to change the British Monarchy back to a Catholic Jacobite, although the percentage of actual Irishmen diminished over time.  The colonelcy passed down through the family and many officers were Dillon's themselves. After valiant service in the Wars of English, Spanish, Polish and Austrian Succession, the SYW and the AWI, it was disbanded after the French Revolution.  Incredibly some officers then formed Emigre Dillon's regiments paid by George III and serving with the British.  So Irishmen who joined the Irish Army to overthrow George III, ended up serving George III to defeat a Republic and reinstall the Bourbons.  The intellectual contortions required for this defy me.

Beyond the regular Curtgeld tradition, there is another challenge tradition that seems to have fallen by the wayside over time.  There have been several cases of Challengers Curtgelding Cut with figures representing Bob Dylan, despite (or perhaps because of) Curt's fervent anti-Dylan hatred.  To rectify the recent tailing off of the tradition, I therefore present Robert (Bob) Dillon as my Curtgeld for this challenge.

By my count this will take me over my 500 point Challenge Target with 3 weeks left to go.  This figure also adds 5 points to my BP side duel total,

Well he's a delightful chap,I thought all Curtgelds were Orks and goblins  this year but  this one is a bit more decorative! Bob gives you 20 points!

All the best Iain

From NoelW for Thursday: Cross my palm (100points)

Three short posts this week.

Continuing to push on with long-outstanding terrain, I decided to paint up and base the clutch of palm trees I’ve had waiting for two years. These will provide shady cover in the Western Desert of WWII, the Sudan, Napoleon’s Egypt and the Crusaders’ Holy Land.

I’ve based them in singles, twos and threes, a total of 40 trees on 19 bases. Some bases are metal, some plastic offcuts, some unwanted CDs. Each was textured with filler, sand and glue and then painted with Vallejo Sand Yellow (70.916), then drybrushed with a white/sand mix. It seems odd to paint sand the colour of sand, but that’s what I’ve done. Some of these bases now seem a little dark to me, so may need a bit further lightening, but the results are quite pleasing, I think.

I couldn’t find a way to photograph the whole lot in a single shot, so these are various angles and samples. Although there are four different species of tree, all the bases look pretty much the same. (The green things hanging from some of the trees are coconuts. Apparently they are a yellowy-green colour as they grow).

Once I’d got into I realised I’d collected far more palm trees than anyone might reasonably need. I’ve so many it’s really more of a forest than a desert.  I’ll never need to use them all at once – and storage is going to be an issue, too – so some of these will probably find their way to a Tabletop Sale, I expect.

For the purpose of points, if you regard them as one job lot and shove them all together, that would be 6” x 15" x 20", that's 1800 cubic inches, making 8.3 cubes, or 166 points. However, this is perhaps rather unreasonable, as only 5 of the stands are 6” high. If I calculate the volume of each stand separately then they sum to 1506 cubic inches which is 6.97 cubes or 139 points. As always, I leave the final arbitration to our generous-heart minion.

Boom a palm tree bomb! They look great,a very large oasis,or possibly on the edge of a middle Eastern city, or a Carribian island, you just need some pirate ships and crews,no,next week is fine!
Points wise I think I beg to differ as there is considerable space around the trees,I only say this as I have a pile of trees and have been trying to work out a fair way of calculating the area they take up,I will be generous and call them 5 stands so 100points to your total!

All the best Iain

From PeterD Seven Years War 28mm( 60points)

I continue to be a one hit wonder here with my ongoing progress on the SYW project.  I have two items in this post.

I can't remember which are the 8 newly painted figures, so here's the full 24 man battalion

First up are the final 8 members of the Nassau Prince Louis Regiment, completing the regiment that formed my Mercenary Bonus round post. Here's the full 24 man battalion, all Front Rank figures with flags printed at home based on images found at Kronoskaf.

Generally the French Army's foreign infantry regiments seem to have been better rated than the native french regiments.  The reasons differed by nationality with the Swiss being professionals and the Irish being more Anti-British.  I suspect with the German regiments it was due to the officers, as these regiments offered opportunities for ambitious gentlemen who might not meet the criteria (French speaking and Catholic) required for the "French" regiments.  It is worth noting that the two premier french generals prior to the SYW (Maurice and Berwick) were both foreign and both bastard sons of foreign Kings.

Close up to show the unit tables at the back of the basing.

A quick note on unit organization.  I've opted for 24 man foot units with 12 man cavalry and 16-18 man light infantry units.  For the formed regiments I've put a unit table on each base to keep the regiments straight, with the unit name and a small pic of their flag.  This should especially aid the  French army which should have  many infantry units in grey/white.  I have of course got 4 French regiments in 4 different uniforms and only one wearing white to date.

From the other side of the hill, we have Ferdinand of Brunswick and escort.  The allied army in western Germany was a truly polyglot affair,  mostly Hanoverian with contingents from Britain, Hesse, Brunswick and Prussia and generals from Brunswick who were also Prussian officers.  Since the Brits paid for the whole thing it was known as His Britannic Majesty's Army in Germany.

Ferdinand of Brunswick was lent to HBMAG by Frederick the Great in late 1757 following the Duke of Cumberland's epic defeat at Hastenbeck and the overrunning of Hanover by French armies.  Ferdinand quick turned things about with a strong campaign that saw him move from east of the Elbe to west of the Rhine in 1758.  He followed this up with a major Victory at Minden in 1759 and kept the army in the game for the rest of the war.

He's accompanied by one of Prussia's Black Hussars, one of several Prussian cavalry regiments serving in Western Germany.  This is the third time I've painted this uniform, and in the third scale.  In high school in the 70s I put French Shakos on Airfix British Hussars to do the regiment in 20mm Nappy's.  In the 80s I had the regiment in my 15mm SYW army, and it served well in some truly epic wargames.  Both figures are Front Rank 28mm and paint up very nicely.  Front Rank does a very good job with making the lace work standout and thus easy to paint.  I also like the horses, which are large look powerful.

By my count that's 8 foot at 5 points a pop, and two cavalry at 10 points each for 60 points.  These will count towards both me total and the BP duel (although that point is moot given the lead Alex has built).

Lovely looking lace wearing mercenaries! I liked the original unit and the additional troops are equally delightful!
 The command stand is simply splendid! Dynamic and nicely based,60 points it is!

All the best Iain

From Guy B: : Thursday - Lighthouse (missed the bonus round) 10 points

I've recently been playing a number of games of Cruel Seas. I ran a game at Poldercon 2019 for which I painted up several ships. I'll post these next week - I was unsure what to cost them as.

One of the items I didn't quite get painted in time for the Poldercon demo was a Lighthouse. The model is by Warlord Games. I started with a grey primer undercoat which was dry brushed with Army Painter Spaceship Exterior followed by Vallejo Off White. The finished model looked a bit dull, so I added a red stripe.

Finally, I did the windows on the top of the model. The glass was painted a dark grey, then each window painstakingly picked out in white. Once dried, I then went around and each window painting it blue, starting with a Prussian Blue and adding a little bit more white each time. I'm quite pleased by the effect, which I wanted to be at twilight.

The rocks are from a railway company (Faller, I think). there were bought 'as is' so I've not painted them and I'm using them for show, not for points.

Warlord also has a ruined lighthouse, which I'll have to paint up to match this one for our games.
Points - I'm not sure. It's not quite a 6" cube so I'll tentatively suggest 10 points. There would have been a bonus of 50 points if I'd posted last weekend, but guess who misread the bonus round dates? Oh well, there's always the next one...


Lovely finish on this lighthouse, you're dedication is evident in the painting of the windows! I really like the red stripe and look forward to the ruined version coming through at a later date. It's oh so easy to miss the bonus rounds which most of us have found to our cost! So no extra 50 points but 10 points to your total!

All the best Iain