From NoelW: This Altars everything: Altar of the Snowlord (90 points)

Grovelling before the Awesome Lord of All Things Snowflaky Titchy’s bloodspattered party of hardly adventurers sacrifice a snowman in his honour.

“O Great and Merciful bringer of chilblains and sniffles, O Mighty Hailsneezer, O Spitter of That Sort of Chilling Rain that Goes Right Through You, Snowboarder on the Celestial Tundra of the Darkest Cumulo-Nimbus, Bringer of Mighty Avalanches and Trivial Snowglobes, O Glorious Dribbler of Icicle-Breath, we abase ourselves before you. We beg the smallest of microscopic teeny weeny little favours from your Allpoweful Snowangelness – yea! it’s such a small favour you’d probably be able to do it in your beauty sleep, which, we understand, you need a lot of, but who are we to judge? Please, Great Arbiter of All Things Frozen and Slippery, help us to rid the Chambers of Challenge of these evil undead recidivist reactionary revenant sergeants who’ve invaded our fair and otherwise virtually conflict-free lands. Oh, and here’s a bit of treasure for you.”

Hoping the Snowlord doesn't recognise where the treasure was discovered, the party empty their pockets, heaping trinkets of gold and silver, diamond and Wensleydale before the feet of the mightily snoring Overlord.

He stirs!

Or does he?

His little finger moves. He groans with the effort. He’s about to open one eye.

Or is he?

He rolls over in his sleep, shaking tender snowflakes from his hair in a way which in no sense resembles dandruff.

He breathes a great gasp of rasping icy breath, raises one mighty finger in their general direction – not sure what that’s about – and lo! before them stands a group of rather bedraggled figures.

“Oh no!” says Getrude. “Not more elves.”

But it is. A group of elves, brushing frost from their delicate brows, and mumbling some song about hey nonny nonny northerners.

“We are the magical elves of the Tyger Woods,” says the tallest elf, plucking on a harp and gazing at imaginary stars (they are a couple of miles underground, after all). “With our arcane and unfathomable powers, we can banish all unwanted creatures, all evil, everything nasty slimy and creepy crawly. Be not afeared of the yucky! And that treasure will just about do, thank you very much.”

“No need to part with your hard-earned treasure,” growls another voice from a darkened corner of the Snowlord’s cave. “We can do the job merely for honour, i.e. for half the price.”

For a moment they look like dwarves, this hitherto unnoticed group of armoured warriors skulking in the depths.

“We are the noblest warriors ever to grace the ungrateful soil. We will dispense with these unholy intruders for you.”

“Hang on a minute,” says the lead elf, breaking a harp string. “We were here first. If there’s any heroic rescuing to be done, we’re the chaps for the task. Hey nonny nonny.”

“We, however, are the greatest wielders of katana, naginata, passata and carbonara the world has yet to see. We will slice these bony intruders into the dusty atoms they came from.”

The samurai draws his sword.

The elf sharpens his harp.

And, right on cue, there’s a bony knock at the door. Minute by minute it seems increasingly insistent and increasingly bony.

“Gerald thinks,” says Getrude, “this might be a good time to find our way back to the Caverns’ Entrance. We don’t want to get underfoot as these two groups of clearly mighty warriors carry out the task the Snowlord has charged them with.”

“Wait until the skellies charge in, then whilst the elves and those tinned warriors take care of them, we can sneak past.”

“You just keep on thinking, Butch. Is everybody ready?”

The door opens.

And there we must leave them.

Does the party escape with their lives, wending a cautiously confused way back to daylight, to discover they’ve accidentally neglected to clear a few rubies and sapphires from their pockets – but they’re only little ones, who’s going to miss them?

Do the elves and samurai fight it out amongst themselves for the honour of being the first to be overrun by the impending undead?

Or do they, perhaps, unite and resoundingly smite the bony invaders, clearing the Chambers of Challenge once and for all, and sending a resounding message of doom back to Challenge Island, whence they came?

To find out, tune in again this time next year, when everything will be completely different. I hope.

I’ll leave the last word to Scruff -

“Woof!”

***

In the olden days, when my kids were young, the whole family played Warhammer and, between us, we had just about every GW fantasy army. Then GW moved the goalposts once too often, the children grew (somewhat) and the family interest in mass-family battles waned. Most of the armies deserted to Bring and Buys across the UK, though my wife held on to her much-loved dwarves and elves.

Both those armies, as nature dictates, still have more unpainted figures than painted, and for many, many years I’ve been meaning to complete a couple of outstanding elven units for her (Waywatchers and Scouts) which each had four figures missing. Of course, my painting style has changed over the years, so the task of matching the remaining figures to the existing unit became harder and harder, and therefore less and less likely.

Meanwhile, one of my favourite wargame arenas, the Samurai of the Sengoku period, also languished for very similar reasons – painting samurai has to be a careful labour of love; there’s no point in a speed painting, get them finished as soon as, approach if you’re wanting samurai. The whole idea has to be to build beautiful armies, so I've kept putting them off. Eventually, I'm going to get around to learning how to procrastinate more effectively.

So, the Snowlord challenged me to work on both these neglected areas. And, actually, the challenge has proved a great stimulus. Rather than trying to amass as many points as possible (which has been my approach in the last two challenges), I’ve been directed to apply myself to two particular challenges which have daunted me over many years, and which I dearly wanted to work on.

It was our wedding anniversary yesterday. According to one website, the 46th is celebrated with presents of Games. It turns out, though, that it's also the WoodElven anniversary. My wife was delighted to find I’d completed her two outstanding units, and the paint job I’d done was good enough for her to be unable to distinguish the newly painted figures from those done a dozen years ago.

Here's the rear of the two elven groups, 4 figs in each.

Here are the scouts integrated in the full unit:

And the waywatchers: 

And I have discovered a renewed enthusiasm for my samurai. Okay, this little command base is only a small step forward, but I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s Perry Miniatures Tokugawa Ieyasu command group. I’ve largely followed their painting, plus details from the relevant Osprey, and I’m quite pleased with the results, though I’ve not been adept enough to render the mon on the Ashigaru with convincing skill – merely a gesture in the right direction.

So I’ve now laid out quite a few more samurai to be working on once I’ve polished off my last few figures for the Challenge.

Thanks, Curt. I’m really pleased you gave me this challenge.

Scoring: 8 elves and 5 Samurai, plus 2 flags = 67 points

Not a Noel points bomb, but magnificent nonetheless. As for points, you forgot to include the 20 for the Altar, which takes you up to 87. I also think you deserve some extras for the freehand pattern on the Daimyo's robes and for the lacing on the Ashigarus' armour. Let's call it 90 points total.

Tamsin