From: Jeff B, Level 2 - Chamber 1 - Adventure's Landing (50 points)

The dark steaming jungle lies directly to port, the sunlight dances off the clear, shimmering, and bright aqua surf. The young LT wonders if this beach landing be contested or will it be a cake walk as his commander boasted? As the oarsmen struggle against the heat and humidity the French Naval Landing artillerists are cursing their wool uniforms. They soon, like the Legionnaires already inland, will discard the unwanted and inappropriate items and exchange them for locally made lighter fabrics. The excessive humidity deteriorates the European theatre gear rather quickly.

For this beach landing challenge I have chosen a French Naval Landing gun crew from Askari Minis. They are in the 1890's -1910's Naval Uniforms and are kitted out for a landing party in support of French Marines, Sailors, and Legionnaires fighting the infamous Black Flag Pirates of Tonkin. (I have Black Flag gunners on the painting table now!)

The small artillery piece is a French Mountain Gun, also from Askari Minis. However, this model is about 20 years old, Al has since made an even better retooled version of this gun that I will surely have to get. Askari Minis new retooled gun link.

I've painted this crew for my buddy Dan from the Last Stand Boatyard to be used for my favorite rules set The Sword And The Flame, though he's also a fan of the rules set, The Men Who Would Be Kings.

Chamber 20 pts, (4) 28mm figs x 5 pts = 20, (1) 28mm gun x 10 pts (it's a small gun, possibly only worth 5 pts?) - Total for this chamber: 50 Pts

What fine-looking Tars. As for the scoring, a crew-served-weapon is a crew-served-weapon ang gets 10 points if it's 28mm!

Tamsin

From Guy B: [The Hatchery] A Viking bondi maiden. [Sarah the Sorceror 25 points]

As I desperately searched around in my minis collection for suitable models for the hatchery, I came up with a blank. I could have painted 'Randy the wonder cockerel', but as he doesn't lay eggs, I decided best not to...

I went for a pagan maiden, a Valkyrie. The model is from the excellent Bad Squiddo range. The shield design is unashamedly stolen from Lagertha. She's a simple paint job, with a combination of contrast with highlights and washes. 

So I call upon Sarah the sorceress, teleport me to the next room! Onto the Armoury! (5 points plus 20 point bonus).

 

from SidneyR: Oldhammer Chaos Knights from "The Knights' Solar" (30 points)

 

And so the final week of Challenge XI begins... A time of frantic painting, brush-wielding and  a collective finishing-up of the grand plans which we all made, way back in mid-December.  Am I the only Challenger to have fallen "a bit behind schedule" with the painting tasks and Chamber-completion?  

I doubt it, fellow Challengers.  I doubt it... but fear not - your secret is safe with me, dear friends.

So after "The Guardroom", I've passed through "The Orcs Nest" (which I painted some orcs and a demon back in February) and I've arrived, finally, at Level 3 and "The Knights' Solar".  A place for knights and their knightly quests...

I prepared these two Oldhammer Chaos Knights in December.  I felt it was very much time to finally get these guys painted.  I can't remember when I bought them.  Perhaps at some point in the early 2000s, or maybe even earlier than that.  They're lovely figures, but quite chunky and from the heyday of Citadel Miniature's "Realm of Chaos" figure sculpting style.  One of them seems to be wearing some chaos-inspired samurai armour, with - horror of horrors - a broken and blunted katana.  I thought he, or indeed perhaps she, would look good in Khorne red (though, sadly, no skulls, Barks).

The other Chaos Knight looked much more Elric-esque to me, with a splendid dragon crest on his helmet.  I decked him out in Slaanseh purple and a deeply insane shade of yellow - good contrasts, I thought, to his Khorne-worshipping samurai friend.  

One of the things I like about fantasy figures is that you can get away with the figures being slightly differently sized.  I very much doubt anyone will be saying to me - "Come on Sidney, your broken-katana wielding demonic samurai looks a bit over-scale to me.  And look at that unhistorical lamellar armour..."

After weeks of late-seventeenth century painting fun, it's been a real pleasure to paint something different.  And so, on to the points:  Two 28mm figures, at 5 points each (10 points total), plus 20 points for "The Knights'Solar" making a total of 30 points.

....and finally, the Altar of the Snow-Lord is just about in sight.  Will I make it there in time...?

******* 

From Chris K - US Vehicles in 1/56 - 90 points

 Hello - time to come in from the cold!

In Real Life, I'm a high school teacher here in the UK, so the last month has been almost comically busy with the return to the new normal. This has meant that the batch-painting of vehicles has had to take a back seat. 

Frustrating? - yes. 

Insurmountable? - NEVER!

Please find here a modest collection of vehicles intended to act in loose support of my US 92nd Buffalo Soldiers as they move up through Italy...and a little something extra, too, for the Sherman 105 doubles-up as a British Firefly IC!

I've claimed 90 points for this, as it's really three full vehicles (20 points each) plus two hulls and one chassis (10+10+10) - that seems a fair bid to me.

Firstly, we have an M8/M20 Greyhound (Rubicon):

(The non-turreted version isn't pictured here - I forgot!)

Next, to work with the sneaky recce element above, an M18 Hellcat (Warlord Games):

Now this is an M4 High Speed Tractor (a beautiful model from RKX Miniatures with additional stowage from Rubicon):

And finally, the US Sherman 105mm, which (due to the awesomeness of Rubicon kits) can be re-hulled as a British Firefly IC, which here I've painted up in Polish colours. After a LOT of thinking and planning, I worked out that the differences in shades of green could be mitigated by a cunning combination of blended weathering and some artistically arranged Warlord Stowage on the glacis plate, necessitating a shift of the Firefly's insignia to the upper hull:

And here's how the sausage gets made:

Here's to the sprint finish, eh?

Thanks for all of the inspiring work, Everyone!

- Chris K

AdamC: Three Buildings for 15mm scales (3 points)

 These three houses started as life as Christmas decoration that I picked up for $5.00 from Target when I was shopping last December. 

They started out as bare mettle (tin?) with no details. I added some wooden coffee stirrers as beams.  

I added some trim to the windows and painted some bricks on the chimes. 

Here they are next to a 15mm house form JR miniatures.   They look pretty good next to it especially as  they were such a bargain. 

They make a cube of about 4x4x4 inches so I would calculate them to be worth 3 points (6x6x6 inches being worth 5 points).  

from RayR - Warfare Miniatures Ottoman Tribal Cavalry, bow armed. 90pts

 

My penultimate Ottoman unit for this years Challenge.

These 9 Warfare Miniature figures are painted up to represent a rag tag Tribal bow unit.

Ottoman Cavalry force

Unit of Elite Sipahis of the Porte - armoured, lance, pistols and shield - 3 models
Unit of Drilled Balkan Timariot Sipahis - armoured, lance, pistols - 6 models
Unit of Drilled Anatolian Sipahis - spear, bow - 6 models
Unit of Recruit Tribal cavalry - bows - 9 models

One more unit to go!

Once again the are 2 part figure.

Made so you can make up a variety of poses with just 9 figures.

I tried to keep them plain looking with no real bright colour.

So my 9 figure Tribal unit shall earn me

90 points

9 x 25mm mounted figures @ 10 pts each 

From Curt: 2mm Napoleonics (55 Points)

Here are a few additions to my 2mm Napoleonic collection which I started a few years ago.  

This project stemmed from spending years reading battlefield accounts and looking at drawings describing the formations used during the Napoleonic wars. I've always been fascinated by the 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' aspect to Napoleonic tactics. How line defeated column, cavalry smashed lines, squares bested cavalry, etc. So I wanted 'gaming pieces' to reflect these formations on the tabletop, at a ground scale that was somewhat closer to reality. What you see here is essentially a wide-angle perspective of how armies may have looked in the field, which oddly appeals to my lizard brain.

Here we have a force of Austrian infantry arrayed in line, a regiment of French cavalry, a deployed battery of French artillery and a command stand. The 'smoke' markers are simply layered MDF painted to suit.

In my collection I have each unit illustrated in the various formations in which it could have been deployed. So an infantry unit will have bases depicting it in line, column and square; cavalry are in lines and columns of squadrons and artillery are shown both limbered-up and deployed with their trail of caissons and wagons. Here are five battalions of Austrian line infantry arrayed in a 3-rank line formation.

A regiment of Imperial Dutch Lancers in a 2-rank line, ready for the charge. I love dudes in pink.

As you can see with the artillery battery below, I wanted to reflect the depth of these formations which can be quite striking. Often, we think of a Horse & Musket battery as being simply a line of big guns, whereas in fact a deployed artillery battery was a tremendously deep column, with successive lines of caissons and supply wagons servicing the guns. I find reflecting this on the tabletop to be really interesting as one quickly discovers that these formations need a lot of space to both deploy and maneuver.

A French upper level command stand.

In addition I put together a pair of Built-Up-Area (BUA) tiles to represent a quasi-Germanic aesthetic. Again, like the other figures here, these building models are from Forward March Figures. I tried to mimic the organic flow of an older city, with its streets and avenues sprouting from all over the compass. 

I had fun making the various parks and green spaces. Sarah says she wants to have coffee in the bistro next to the Cathedral. :)

I also made a few trees for the bases using my tried-and-true method of clipping figure foam packing into roughly spherical shapes and gluing brad nails into them to serve as trunks. I then coated them with Liquitex, give them a quick paint and drybrush and presto, 2mm scaled trees!

As to points, well let's just use the established matrix for 2mm bases, even though these are substantially larger. So that would give me 5 points for each infantry (5), cavalry (1) and artillery base (4), making that 50 points. For the Built-Up-Area, each base is only 4" square so let's keep it simple and call it 1/4 of a terrain cube, so 5 points. 55 in total and my 11th 'Squirrel Point'!

- Curt