EricM -28m Late Romans and The Last of the Slaves to Darkness

I had planed to shift away from the late Romans for a bit, but the last group of Limitanei had to be finished.   These are all Wargames Foundry figures.  While they are nice sculpts I have come to hate the figures.  Most of my trouble is self inflicted.  I decided to base the close order foot 4 to a base and paint them on the base.  It seemed like a time saver.  I cant say that it saved time but it did make painting them no fun.  My second issue is I discovered that I mounted the second rank shield men with their shields in the wrong position.   They should be over the head of the kneeling front rank.  At some point I may go back and correct the shield placement but that would also require re-basing, but as I type this I am realizing I perfectly happy with them the way they are.

Some close ups of the heavy foot

The supporting light troops

The second unit I completed this week was the last of the Games Workshop Slaves of Darkness set.  The sculpts are a marvel but it does require an engineering degree to figure out how to put these guys together.   GW should be confidant no one will have the production skill to pirate these guys.  They have really taken their model kits to a new level.  For example one model piece includes the riders left arm, shield , reins and half of the horses head.  It was a little counter intuitive to me but once you get used to the methodology they went together nicely.  Lots of detail (maybe even too much)

 They ended up a little more gray than I would have liked.  I think i started a shade too light on my gray highlights.

A couple close ups

I really like these figures but I am glad to be done with them.
 
Total for the week 24-28mm foot  5-28mm-Mounted.

Thanks for looking 

Eric these are marvellous, love the shields, just about to start a late Roman army myself . As for the Slave of Darkness they are brilliant

From PeterD 1/2400 Scale War of the Pacific Ironclads (12 points)

Peruvians in front, Chileans in the background.  It turned out that only one shot of the Peruvian squadron  on its own came out, but my group shots have the Peruvians in the fore.

To follow on from an earlier post I have 4 of the major warships from the War of the Pacific fought between Chile and Peru from 1879-1884.  Back in the earlier 80s the Yaquinto board game "Ironclads" described it as a "Chilean-Peruvian Banana War", which is surely a misnomer as it was fought over the Atacama Desert where very little grows and certainly not bananas.  The key resource at stake was actually nitrate deposits from guano deposits at the large sea bird nesting sites,  yep....it was a war fought over bird sh*t.  Actually this war is also known as the Saltpetre War but 10 years earlier peru and Chile had allied  against Spain was in the Guano War.

Independencia leads Union

In addition to the Huáscar from my earlier post, back from the Peruvian fleet included these two vessels the Ironclad frigate Independencia and the unarmored corvette Union plus other oddities on the work bench.  

Independencia was armed with big rifles on pivots bow (8") and stern (7") plus 6" rifles on the broadside.  She was the Peruvian navies second most important ship after the Huascar but was written off after running aground in the war's first action.   Union was an unarmoured corvette packing a useful armament.  

Spot the doofus moment.  Note how the Blanco Encalada has more smoke and a flag.  I decided that I needed to fix this!

On the Chilean side of things we have the two central battery ironclad sisters Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada built in the UK and completed just three years before the war began. They were named for naval heroes from the Chilean War of Independence, Cochrane of course being the Scot who was the inspiration for Horatio Hornblower.  They packed a punch of 9" rifles and feature the angled gun ports to give wider arcs of fire.  Cochrane survived until 1934 but her sister ship was torpedoed by the torpedo gunboat Almirante Lynch in the Chilean civil war of 1891 and was one of the first casualties of Mr Whitehead's invention.

Coinage added to give idea of scale.  Canadian quarter at the bow, loonie at the stern.

These are all Tumbling Dice 1/2400 model, and again I'm very pleased with these casting.  The Cochrane class come packaged in a pair, as do Huáscar  and Independencia.  Tumbling dice don't make specific models for the unarmored ships so I've used more generic models for these, including Union and HMS Amethyst. 

Look carefully, I've fixed the smoke on Blanco Encalada and took her flag off int he process.  Easily fixed however.

I seem to be following trends this Challenge as 19th century South American wars are on an upswing.  The Perry's released figures for a slightly earlier war across the Andes and there's a recently published set of rules for the land operations of the War of the Pacific.

These TD models have been scored at 3pts a pop, so that's a whopping 12 points for me.

Good things come in small packages. These are great, also 2nd best name for a war ever after the war of jenkin's ear.

From PeterD 28mm 18th Century Civilians (10 points)

Another quick and small post from me, two 28mm foot figures.  There are another pair of 18th Century gentry from Front Rank.  As with my previous post these were great to paint and I had a lot of fun on these two.

I've christened the fellow with the stein JP which can represent Jean Pierre or Jan-Paul depending on which side of the Rhine we're fighting over.  The name comes from a JP that my Dad and I met in the bar of Dad's sailing club (although I think that similar characters inhabit bars of course clubs, cricket fields, dart clubs and rock hound club houses).

Nothing much to add, I dressed these two less ornately than the lady and gentleman in my prior post.  The figures were cleanly cast, had the right level of detail for me and were easy to pose together.

Anyway that 2 28mm figures for another 10 points as I crawl towards my 500 point goal.

These are lovely. Standing there discussing the South Sea Bubble and the price of chocolate and mace. 

From NoelW: The Red and the Black: Sander’s Sand Dunes: (550 points)

We climb these sandy sand dunes and gaze to the beyond.

Well, there’s the sea again. Hello, sea. Long time no sea.

Yes, we’re all getting a little sea-sick – sick of seeing the sea, that is, when we’re aiming to be at the top of that mountain that seems to recede even further every time we make a decision. Like my hairline. Or life. (Life! don't talk to me about life!)

From the top of these dunes, it’s hard to tell which sea we’re seeing. There’s certainly a sea of something milling around. Is it the Red Sea?

Or is it the Black Sea?

It’s neither, of course. We’ve found two more armies. What a surprise! Were you surprised? I was surprised.

Here they are battling away directly in our path, blocking the beach and any prospect of boat-based rescue or even a little sandcastular architecturing. If we try crossing that strand we’ll be trampled to death like ants under a pirouetting pachyderm. What we need is the unexpected arrival of interventionist aerial transport…

And lo! from above there descends upon us a melodious voice, lyrical as the sound of a karaoke angel: “Would you like to fly in my beautiful balloon? Way up in the sky, in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon?”*

Would we? Would we ever! All this sand is way too much for us delicate warriors - let's away out of here! Where are you heading, Lady Sarah? 

Rousell's Sandhill.

Oh. Great.

---

None of my planning for the Challenge involved any Lord of the Rings figures at all. However, I ambushed myself in a previous post by submitting some Minas Tirith Gondorians and so now I'm committed to working through as much of my backlog of LOTR figures as I can during this challenge. Like an idiot! (No thanks, I've already got one).

I'd been working hard on more Gondorians, but Sanders’ requirement for “red” was a good reason to work on the Easterlings, too. So here are both. This creates a long post, photo-heavy, so I've tried to keep the text down, and only included one photo per topic for most of them.

The main aim here was to get figures painted suitable for the tabletop - so artistic creativity is not much in evidence. The only figures I've given particular attention to are the Gondorian Citadel Guards and the two Easterling command figures.

Even so, the red and gold combination for the Easterlings is rather effective, I think. Essentially I undercoated them white, used Blood Angel red Contrast paint for all the cloth, painted the armour and shields black, varnished the lot, drybrushed the black with gold, gave all the gold a flesh wash (which makes it more bronze-like and dulls the shine) then highlighted some of the red with Foundry British Red Coat Light, and the “bronze” with touches of gold. A little more colour for weapons and quivers, and that was about it. Although a simple approach, I like the results, especially in the mass.

The archers:

Sword and shield:

Spear and shield:

And command:

The Gondorians more or less follow the GW colour scheme: black, white, silver; though I’ve kept the decoration of the specialist units relatively simple. The bulk of the troopers, hand weapon and spear:

Archers

Command figures and three crew to man a trebuchet (yet to be painted)

Citadel Guards

Guards of the Fountain Court

All in all, that's a tidy 104 figures. Almost certainly, that's going to be my biggest post of this Challenge.

*(A popular music reference to tease anyone who can remember the 60s.)

Scoring: I’m not sure if the two flags are scorable, as they’re integral to the figures. Otherwise: 104 x 28mm figs = 520; Sander’s Sand Dunes: 30 pts: Total 550 pts

I feel a little sick. This is a monster entry and some really nice work on these guys. Couple of point for flags as well Top effort that man, now please stop and take up chess

From SamuliS: Grenadiere (72 points)

Continuing with my Flames of War army update here is another platoon of grenadiere to replace some minis painted nearly ten years ago. Still with a very much late war flavor due to all the camo smocks and varied equipment, but without Panzerfausts or StG44's like all my other more newly painted grenadiers.

 
With these ready I now have enough MG armed infantry to fully replace the old models I painted when I got back into the hobby. After that it's just AT guns left and I have more or less everything updated from the infantry side!

Paintjob is fairly simple with a basecoat, fairly stark highlight and a brown wash to mute everything down. Fast enough to do large forces in a reasonable time and the colours pop enough when viewed on the gaming table. Some highlights are a bit stark and rough when viewed up close, but with smaller scales I find it hard to get a good balance there.

6 bases of 4 infantry, 2 HQ bases of 3 infantry and 3 Panzershrek bases of 2 infantry which adds up to 36 minis for 2 points a pop and bringing me 72 points closer to my goal!

Love these, great basing. Must improve mine now

DaveS - Slow going (40pts)

My start this year to the challenge has been a lot slower than my first one.  This has been due to a combination of work stresses, having started devoting time to some exercise again, and, if I'm honest, playing computer games rather than painting.
One of my goals for the challenge was to get my American Civil War Unionists done for Sharp Practice.  They were built a little while ago, and full of enthusiasm, using the airbrush to get the base blue down, followed by washes and highlights.  And then I stuck.  They sat on the desk, mocking me, and I couldn't seem to get on and get them done.  So I decided that if I could get ONE group done, it would be easier.  And it was.  I now feel like I have a grip on how I am going to paint them, and should be able to drive through over the next few days.
So without further ado, my first group of Union Infantry.

There are another 32 of these with trousers and coats already painted, plus skirmishers (and officers I've yet to buy or build!).  But for now, this should be

8x28mm Infantry = 40 points

These are lovely, as it's Gentleman's plus Tamsin's and Ray's rules I will take it that these were only primed prior to the challenge starting

Thursday's Minion

Morning all, I was expecting to be minioning yesterday in Dave's absence but the other more efficient minions stepped up, and are still stepping up. Cheers.
The list looks very light tomorrow so get painting