From PeterB: 28mm Zulu war (500 points)

When I first signed up to the challenge I had a great plan. My painting tray has been since the beginning of lockdown, been covered with a large pile of plastics. Built and undercoated, but not painted. Staring at me for the entire of lockdown. Constantly mocking me for not painting them. I refused to pack them away as then they would never be painted. I love painting fantasy and sci fi and I really want to paint historical, but I end up getting intimidated by the need to be accurate. (I know, I don't actually have to be accurate, people like Daniel Mersey have encouraged us now that we just need to do our own thing.) So when the challenge started I decided they would definitely get painted, they would be done. Then I got carried away with the challenge planets and had a whale of a time painting all the fantasy and sci fi. It was Tom G who asked in the Facebook who asked if anyone else had gone off course from their original painting plan. My reply?

"My project has been tossed aside like Superted before Spotty came and rescued him and took him to a magic cloud."

Well, challenge planets completed, I had no more excuse, I had to paint them. So, for the historical grognards (I'm looking at you Ray) I tried my best to do them justice. Then, you know what, I really enjoyed painting them.

Fire at will!

"You mean your only plan is to stand behind a few feet of mealie bags and wait for the attack?"

Thousands of em!

"Can you move your leg?" "If you want me to dance..."

I have worked out by making half size units as per the rules, two boxes from Perry miniatures and a couple of free sprues of Zulus and Brits from the cover of Wargames Illustrated (see if you can spot the odd ones out) you can play a game of The men who would be Kings. I love the blue book rule sets from Osprey and the fact that you can set up a game with pretty much just two boxes of plastic really appeals.

The Zulu's were easier to paint, but the Brits I actually used 15 different paint colours (although the photo's don't show seem to show this) but once I got on a roll painting them in batches of about 12 at a time I really enjoyed it.

So points wise:

• 48 Zulu's in 28mm scale, 48 x 5 = 240
• 51 Brits in 28mm scale (There are 52 pictured but I actually painted one as a tester before the challenge) 51 x 5 = 255
• Millsy: Anything this epic needs rounding up to 500 for cool factor along

Total points = 500

From Millsy:

I love a good points bomb and this one is a corker! Congrats Peter on smashing through your Challenge prep backlog and in some style too. For me this is exactly what modern plastics are all about, the ability to bring hordes of miniatures to the table at a bearable cost but without sacrificing the quality of the end result.

The entire submission is mind blowing but the thing that stands out for me is the balance between variety of shield designs and poses amongst the Zulus. There's a huge temptation when diving into something like this to get a bit lazy and just "get it done" but that's certainly not the case here.

A mahoosive 500 points for your totle. Cracking effort!