From SimonG: Jewish Mounted and Archers in 28mm for Arrakis (90 points)

"Dune, Arrakis, a desert planet" ... an apposite description for first century Judea and we are back with my ongoing Jewish Revolt project with some support for my larger warband -- archers and a smattering of mounted soldiers.

The archers are a mixture of Crusader and Gripping Beast, and the mounted are Crusader. Head swaps and some cloaks are from Anvil then I added bow strings and arrows, strings for tzitzit plus the cloak details such as the flow onto the horse for the mounted figure which were modelled with Milliput.

Stringing bows is one of those modelling activities that gives me the most pleasure. It's almost like problem solving to work out where to take the thread -- It's pretty annoying how impractical and inconsistent designers are in their sculpting. For example I'm not sure that one in ten figures displays any consistency between the length of the draw at full tension and the length of the arrows in the archers quiver -- the former is always so much longer! And don't get me started on resting the arrow inside or outside the bow at the grip!

I really liked the thread of the bow-string on this one

Unfortunately no easy way to thread the string here,
doing two lengths and joining tends to make a mess

LHS is an example of two strings, hand ends up as a blob!

I also discovered that doing resin head swaps on metal figures is a lot harder than on plastics -- there are some quite suspicious (lets say exceptionally hirsute) neck lines among this lot. I will say however that there’s a pleasing lack of fiddly tack on the horses which made painting them a breeze!

Suspiciously hairy chest on this one

Anyway fiddling with thread and necks besides these came out well -- although having tried to make sandals out of brass wire and milliput I'll say that once was enough (the archer with the cloak)

This little group should add another 80 points to my total (six figures at 5 each plus three mounted at 10 and the 20 point bonus for our dodging the worms on Arrakis)

Next up a superhero -- although a real person this time plucked from history and symbolising resistance to imperial might (read into that what you want in light of current events)

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I always enjoy seeing updates to this project, Simon. It's such a unique and colourful period, easily capturing the imagination. I particularly admire all the extra effort you've taken in customizing these figures in order to make them your own (especially the bowstrings and head swaps). Definitely worth a few bonus points to your total, I think.  Lovely work Simon!

- Curt