From SanderS: Mars Exulte! Mudry's Mesa (173pts)

Hoi,

Onwards to Snowlords Peak we travel, passing by Mudry's Mesa we need to paint something inspired by another Challengers entry from previous Challenges. Last year Noel has painted a cr*p load of figures much as he's doing this year and amongst them were some awesome Romans. Now I have always had a keen interest in the Roman/ classical era, but just never had the courage to start painting the huge numbers of troops needed to portray the conflicts of Rome in any serious manner. I have a 1:72 army for Hannibal in the cabinet at school but never did finish the Romans needed to fight them.

Anyway, I ended up buying a bunch of Victrix/ Warlord plastic frames with a Roman Civil War idea in mind. In order to get the kids at the Heroquest club interested in Historical Wargaming I am thinking of making cards for a Roman hero and a small group of soldiers to help him fight in the ongoing civil conflicts in Rome during any change of power. The Caesarian period or the Claudius-Nero period, being high amongst my favourites.

I already have some painted gladiators and a few sprues of Gauls are ready for construction as wel.It's fairly well possible that I end up doing something like the Footsore Gangs of Romegame eventually but for now this is as far as I will go. Let's take a closer look at the figures okay? Now usually I like to err on the side of historical authenticity with subjects like these but I felt like going a little crazy and using colour schemes for the scutums (scuta? scutii?) so I painted four units of 5 figures each with a distinctly different scheme. Each unit also has at least one leader model (sometimes 2) and I used Renedra/ Frostgrave bases in order to recreate the pavements of Rome, while it's not really visible in my (really bad) pictures: the bases have several layers of colour including a mossy green that also shows on my pavement mat. Okay so let's look at the figures themselves.

The Black/ Praetorian unit. I painted these to accompany Cato and Macro (I have been reading Simon Scarrow's latest book Blood of Rome while painting these).

 Since I am not capable of painting on the eagle wings or the lightning bolts (believe me I've tried) I did as many non-wing designs as possible.

The Green unit: actually this is my rendition of the Legio X Gallica (or 10th Gaulic Legion) the boar on the shield is a transfer the rest is painted on. Also, Benito has mentioned that we have prove that most Roman soldiers wore off-white tunica's under their Lorica hamata or Lorica segmentata. I think this to be true as well, but I also have learned through an experimental archeologist, Bernard van Daele, that the richer soldiers were allowed to buy and wear their own tunica's and those often were red. so I included a few other coloured tunica's for diversity.

 My favourite bunch of the lot are the Yellow unit, mostly due to the fact I love these yellow and red shields with the horsey on them. The horse and waves are again a transfer.

The last unit is the compulsory Red-shield-unit. I used all at rest poses for them because I am going to use them as the NPC guards in scenarios if and when needed. 

Well that's the plastics done with, mostly...I also have some white metal Foundry figures from two of their character sets painted up for general use. There's a guy on horse (basically he's an emperor, but I've forgotten which one) he's talking to a high ranking officer, tribune or legate.

There's a cornicen and standard bearer from plastic which I have done up in different schemes as the units above so they can be used with any one of them. Then there's 3 more white metal characters. Among them are 2 high ranking officers and a nobleman in toga.

What amount of points does this entry leave me with? Well 26 foot figures and one mounted figure should be good for 140 points and together with the 30 bonus points that is a total of 170 points. These should see me pass the 1000 points mark and on my way to the end goal of 2000.

Cheers Sander



That's a great looking bunch of Romans you've painted here Sander. As there are a couple of hand-painted shields I've added a couple of points.

TamsinP

Noel Makes the Summit of Snow Lord's Peak

Two strapping janissaries crest the summit, huffing and puffing, with what looks to be a huge soup tureen strung on pole between them. The lid on the soup pot opens and Noel emerges, striking a pose much like Heinz Guderian surveying Poland from a panzer. 

This week's Snow Lord's Peak brought to you from Mount Columbia, Alberta.

The Snow Lord looks pointedly behind Noel. 'Where is your entourage? I was expecting a larger party with you.'

Noel rubs his head, not wanting to meet the Snow Lord's eyes, 'Right, well, knowing that there was treasure that would need to be split up I decided to, ahem, reduce my footprint a little. You know, it's absolutely astonishing how treacherous the cliff sides can be coming up here...' 

The Snow Lord arches his eyebrow and smiles knowingly. 

Noel clambers out of his pot, flourishes a bow to his janissaries and looks around. 'Hmm. I thought it would be, well, more peak-like up here. It's sort of flat.'

The blue creature nods and grimaces a bit. 'Martin was just up here and wanted to take a few rock samples. I think he went a little overboard.' He gazes at the surroundings which are flat as a billiard table. 'Lady Sarah's going to have a few choice words when she get's back. Maybe I can get some of the local stone trolls to help me out...'

He shrugs and turns back to Noel. 'Anyway, you spoke of treasure, so I assume you need me to help you out with that?'

Noel nods, 'If you could that it would be brilliant. I have to get back so I can paint another zillion figures tonight in order to make everyone feel like a bunch of pathetic underperformers.'

The Snow Lord closes one eye and ponders. 'You know, I think I have the perfect task for you. This should be absolute torture. I want you to focus your work on ONE figure or vignette for ONE week. None of this I painted an army in an afternoon nonsense. Just work on one thing for one week. It can be anything you like in any scale, but it has to be a single figure or something on a single base.

Stupefied at the unattainable task at hand, Noel girds his loins to face his fate...

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I look forward to seeing what your labours produce, Noel!

-Curt

From ByronM - A visit to Piper's Peak - Kingdom Death nightmare ram (45 points)

As I continue having fun blundering around the island, I came upon Piper's Peak, and the challenge was to come up with something mountain based.  Hmmm, what to do?  As luck would have it I just very recently received a package from Kingdom Death with a copy of the new Nightmare Ram model.

The nightmare ram is a creature that lives on or near the inverted mountain range, and while the base of the inverted mountain is the highest area from the ground, and the peaks nearly touch the ground, I still think a mutant plant turned mountain goat should qualify for a mountain creature, no matter how screwed up the actual mountain is!

The nightmare ram is the living spawn of a parasitic plant. It subsists on the salt of creatures which it metabolizes to power the glowing bulbs that grow atop its tough horns and the large lantern organ it carries outside its body. They are sensitive, lonesome creatures that carefully cultivate beautiful, hidden gardens containing the plants that produce them. They will often beat trespassers into a pulp and use them as salt-rich fertilizer.

Like any fruit that has been picked, their life span is short.

Well, that's not disturbing at all, is it....

I was not really sure what to do with the nightmare ram, but felt most of it had to be flesh tone, but wanted it to be fairly pale and gray since they are in the shadow of the mountain most of the time.

I also wanted to have the stone face that the hands are holding up show as paler than the flesh so that it is easy to see as stone.

Beyond that, I knew I had to have the pods on the horns and the lantern glow.  Since the glow comes from the parasitic plant that forms the ram, I wanted to use something other than the yellow I use for all the lanterns in KD.  I decided to go with a cold blue effect as I felt going with a warm colour would not work as well against the flesh and fur.

I like to imagine that this is mother natures revenge against vegans, as it is a plant the beats people to a pulp to grow more of its own kind in their bodies.

While KD is a 35-40mm scale game, and while this guy is quite large, I think just counting him as a horse is good enough, as he is not quite big enough to count as a monster in this scale.  So I should score 15 points for him, 30 points for Piper's Peak, and hopefully some nightmares and squeels of disgust by the people that view him.



That certainly is a beast to give you nightmares, Byron. Great colour choices - the blue glow works really well against the flesh and fur shades.

TamsinP

From AdamC - US Navy Quasi-War for Black Seas (40 Points)

Three new United States Ships ready for service against French (or whatever navy my friends decide to build).

To the right and left are a pair of brigs while the center ship is a conversion a ship rigged sloop of war.

The Brigs were a work horse ship for Convoy escort, anti-piracy and commerce raiding in the period. There rig gave them the ability to sail closer to the wind than ship-rigged vessels but also made them faster than for-aft rigged ships when running with the wind.  These could represent the USS Norfolk or USS August or any of a number of similar ships used during the Quasi-War or War of 1812.  They can also work as small merchants since brigs were

This ship-rigged Sloop of war is a conversion used by taking two brigs and gluing them together. It has 22 guns making just qualify as a 6th rate under royal navy and game rules.  It’s a sloop rather than a frigate because all the guns are on the spar deck.

The masts were tricky I used a Brig for mast as the main mast, but I am not entirely happy with the results since I had to use some spear pieces to make it taller than the mizzen and foremast.  I used a bit of wood to brace the connecting point. It looks a little like repairs have been made, it works.  She'll probably serve as the USS Delaware .

I now have a fair little squadron of US ships.  Points Brigs are 10 Points each, I think the sloop of war should probably be 15 points considering its larger size and the conversion work giving me 25 points.  The Sloop has three flags and the Brigs each have two I'll let our stewardess judge how many points if any to add.


I have to say, Adam, that you really come into your own when painting ships. Lovely work on this trio. However, your maths is slightly off:  2 x 10 plus 1 x 15 = 35 points, plus the flags and conversion.

TamsinP

From MartinC - These aren't the Greeks you are looking for (60pts)

Cringing in terror, and the shocking bad breath, from the Snowlord I dived to the very bottom of the Lead Mountain and found my Archaeans. Mixed in with them were some Macedonians so I thought I'd practice on them, so that the Snowlord was proud of his tribute.
These are Foundry and I picked them up at the Border Reivers show years and years ago

The bronze has come out too shiny on the pictures and as I wasn't paying attention they have bronze not iron spears. Still overall they are OK

Scores on the doors

11x28mm infantry plus hand painted shields = 55+

You had me all confused at first, marking the post "Ready for Curt" - I thought it must be your Snowlord's Peak challenge piece. Which is why I didn't mention it in my list of scheduled entertainments.

Anyway, enough of that blather. Very nice work on these ancient Greeks - I'm giving you  few bonus points for the hand-painted shield designs.

TamsinP

From Curt: A New Project: The Cross and the Crescent, Malta, 1565 - Turgut Reis 'The Drawn Sword of Islam' - for Awdry's Atoll (152 points)

I've been plinking away on this submission since the beginning of the Challenge and so I'm quite happy to finally see it off my desk and 'going live'. 

I've had an interest in the Ottoman empire since my university days when we studied its collapse after the end of the First World War. My curiosity was rekindled a few summers ago after reading Roger Crowley's excellent '1543' on the Siege of Constantinople, his 'Empires of the Sea' and Tim Willcocks' 'The Religion' which recounts the siege of Malta in 1565. This fascination was further stoked after a recent vacation to Malta where we toured the fortifications of Valletta and took in its wonderful (and brand spanking new) national war museum. It was after this visit I felt committed to doing something hobby-wise for this period.

Sarah looking across to Fort St. Angelo from near Fort St. Elmo.

A cross-section model displaying elements of the Maltese fortifications.

A wonderful selection of Ottoman arms and armour from the Great Siege.

So this will serve as the first instalment of a new project where I hope to dabble in the period between the 15th and 17th centuries where the Ottoman Empire posed its greatest challenge to the West. This will roughly span from the Siege of Constantinople in 1453 to the second Siege of Vienna in 1683.

230 years may seem to be a fairly broad brief, but I think the uniforms and equipment of the belligerents did not vary too much during this time, with only gunpowder arms becoming more prevalent in the later period. 

As to colour and interesting subject matter? I think I'll be absolutely spoiled for choice, what with silk-clad Janissaries, Christian knights in full plate, fierce Barbary pirates, winged hussars...the list goes on and on. It should be a feast of colour and options.

Over the past few years, I've been collecting miniatures and terrain for this project and  finally thought it high time to get something accomplished.

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For his location on Challenge Island, Michael asks us to create a vignette whose base is the same dimensions as the humble Compact Disc. 

Accordingly, this post features the Ottoman commander, Turgut Reis, reviewing his troops before the walls of St. Elmo. 

Turgut Reis, 'The Drawn Sword of Islam' (known as Dragut Reis in the West) was one of the chief Ottoman commanders during the siege of Malta. He's a fascinating character with a storied career.

At the age of 12 Turgut apprenticed as a cannoneer, advancing to the rank of master of siege artillery. At around 30 he took to the seas and over the next 50 years became one of the most successful corsairs and fleet commanders in history.

After impressing the Sultan with his dash and vigor, he succeeded Barbarossa in 1546 as Ottoman supreme commander in the Mediterranean. He harried Christian coastlines, captured islands and cities, took tens of thousands of captives and made himself rich on the spoils of war. He became Bey of Algeria in 1548 and later took Tripoli from the Knights of St John in 1551. By the time of the Great Siege of Malta Turgut was 80 years old but still very vital.

Fittingly Turgut met his fate facing his old adversaries, the Knights of St John. During the siege of St Elmo he was hit by a piece of flying debris from a nearby cannon shot. Tenacious facing death as he was in life, he held on for six days, just long enough to receive the news that the fortress had fallen.

The vignette I've come up with has the mounted Turgut and his bannerman moving through a group of Janissaires, with a unit of Algerian corsairs in the background.

These figures are from The Assault Group's Renaissance Ottoman range. Great models with loads of character.

So, what's with the two Janissaires carrying the cauldron? Great question! I was a bit perplexed as well. After a bit of reading what I found is that in order to foster greater elan, where every janissary thought of his brothers-in-arms as family, the corps’ military vocabulary and symbolism drew heavily on that of the kitchen. 

For example, the janissary headgear, called a börk, was decorated with an ornamental kaşık-lık (spoon holder), to show that all janissaries were messmates. Domestic terms were also applied to the janissaries’ ranks and organization. The corps as a whole was called the Ocak (hearth) and each orta (regiment) was commanded by a çorba-başi (head-of-soup) who in turn was assisted by a sekban-başi (head of hunting-hounds). Non-commissioned officers bore such titles as sakka-başi (head water-carrier), karakullukçu (scullion) and aşçi-başi (master cook). Finally The sultan’s title among the janissaries was bizi besleyen baba or ‘the father who feeds us.’

The pride of each orta was its great copper cauldron called a kazan.

On the march, kazans pots were carried in the place of honour at the head of the regiment. In camp, they were placed in front of each çorba-başi’s tent to serve as a rallying point. The worst crime any janissary could commit was to allow his regiment’s cauldron to be captured by the enemy. If a kazan was lost in battle, all the regiment’s officers were dishonourably discharged and the orta forbidden to parade in public with its replacement.

Napoleon had his eagles, whereas the Sultan had his soup pots! 

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Another interesting thing I discovered was that it was not uncommon for Ottoman units to have very ornate finials atop their standards and headgear. These were often crafted to depict their specific administrative role or branch of service. 

So I thought it might be visually interesting to try to incorporate a few of these into some of my units. I tarted up a finial for both Turgut's standard, (a relatively straighforward crescent and orb) and a rather more ostentatious galley for his fierce corsairs.

A blob of miliput, plastic rod and a card

3D printer to the rescue

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Accompanying Turgut, is a mixed group of Barbary corsair spearmen and archers.

My thanks to Byron for making up these sabot bases according to my whacky design.

These models are from Footsore miniatures and were an absolute joy to work on. Though they are targeted for around the 7th century I think they can easily be used for periods right up to the Renaissance.

I really wanted to reinforce the mixed composition of much of the Ottoman force, so I really went to town with the varied colours and patterns.

As to points, we have Torgut and his bannerman, five janissaries and fifteen corsairs, which should come out to 120 points. Then if we add the 30 for Michael's location that should give a grand total of 150 points. 

My great thanks to Michael for the providing the inspiration for getting this done and to all of you readers for patiently indulging me with this long post. I'm very stoked about this project and hope to have some more figures to show you in the coming weeks.

Thanks again!

Curt



Good, golly gosh that's a lovely collection of figures. A stupendous start to your new project. I'm going to add a couple of points for the standards.

Oh, and don't worry about the long post, it's shorter than the tale I'm writing for my Snowlord's Peak entry.

TamsinP