KenR : 1/700 WW2 Prince of Wales (120 pts)

 

Round 2 of the Italian Wars failure is a bit bigger than the first, its 20 cm longer and 4 cm wider in the base for a start ! Its a continuation of my build of the ships I need to run a Bismarck chase campaign, and looking at that picture of the ship charging towards you with a 4 gun main turret it could be no other than HMS Prince of Wales.

Sailing out to meet the Bismarck with HMS Hood, Prince of Wales was not fully worked up and mechanical failures would prevent her performing to maximum capability when in combat with the German Battleship and sadly the Hood was sunk in that engagement.

POW was to take part in the chase of the Bismark and then see active service escorting a convoy into Malta before being despatched to Malaya where she met her end along with HMS Repulse, when attacked by Japanese aircraft.

I have painted the ship in her Denmark Strait colour scheme of overall dark Admiralty Grey with wooden decks. A bit drab compared to the dazzle scheme in Malaya but I wanted to keep the ship in sympathy with the Hood model I had done before the Challenge began.

The kit is from Tamiya and was first released in 1975, I have to say that its showing its age, especially when compared with newer manufacturers like Trumpeter and Flyhawk. I was pretty disappointed with the overall level of detail on a ship of this size. I'll definitely go for other manufacturers for big ships in the future. Its painted up nicely and the subtle weathering has come out nicely but there could have been so much more on it (there's no door to get into the main superstructure and stuff like that drives my tiny engineering brain mad. In the future I might get another KGV with a mad load of photo etch on.

The ship is mounted on a 42 cm x 10 cm base which will be the standard size for all Capital ships for my rules system. Points wise I've stuck with 120 as for the Bismarck, the ships are pretty much the same size.

I'll finish off the pictures with a snap of Hood and POW together.

I'm going to try and stick with one small ship per week until the end of the challenge, I also have Prinz Eugen built but found when I got to the bottom of the box there was no decals, so I've had to order some, which meant that got put to one side and in the meantime I've built HMS Ark Royal so I'm hoping to get them finished as well before Challenge End.

Oh and some Italian Wars.

HMS PoW certainly had an eventful if short and tragic service history but you've done her (him?) proud.  I have always wondered about her name, as she's not actually named for a person but an empty title. Apparently she was laid down as Edward VIII, but he'd abdicated before launch and she was christened as Prince of Wales (Eddy Eight's former title).  There wouldn't be another Prince of Wales until Chuck in the 1970s, and you'd think they'd pick a name that didn't bring to mind the royal family's most embarrassing skeleton.

After all the troubles you've had it's great to see a second ship this week Ken.  I agree that rationing these out one per week is a good idea, it also means you might ACTUALLY PAINT SOME ITALIAN WARS STUFF YOU GREAT LUMMOX.  But I also want to see the Ark shortly.

Lovely work on this venerable kit (I can remember 1975....), on table top no one is going to notice the missing small details that drive your engineer's mindset batty.  Wasn't it just last week that you were kvetching over fiddling photo etched details and now your bewailing that there aren't any.

RossM: 15mm Roman Archers: 16 points

 This is my forth entry and again includes Early Imperial Romans - auxilia archers to be precise. 

The figures are from Essex Miniatures and are slightly more slender than their Plastic Soldier Company compatriots. They do however, fit in well with the bulk of the army and are clean sculpts given their age. 

The two stands here depict a full stand of western Sagittarii as well as light infantry or skirmishing units. Both will see use primarily in ADLG but may also be used in Hail Caesar in the future as well. 

In terms of Challenge points these are worth

8 x 15mm Infantry = 16 points

This takes my running total to 61 points from 500 (12.2 %) so best get a move on and paint some more tin!

Cheers for now

Nice work on the Sagitarii Ross.  They are vintage figures, but still look good and will provide useful fire support.

Darrell H, Anglo Danish Command Bases (30 points)

I've been quite enjoying flitting backwards and forwards; at one end painting bits and bobs and then in deep again with the time consuming Thematic Byzantines units. 

This week I took a well deserved break from the colossal painting session which produced the last unit of Varangians and settled on just six miniatures and adding some shield transfers and painting in the armour on more Byzies! 

First though, I have a bit of confession. Three shields of the five on the models were already painted from a "Painting Shields Step by Step/How To" article on my blog a few years ago. The shields were sitting around and as they were painted up in an Anglo Danish style it just seemed to be silly waste not to use them. I;m OK with the  expected points reduction. To be honest, I've enjoyed the challenge so much this year that if I were to get zero points I would still have a smile on my face.

OK, here we go then.....

Command Stand 1:

Command Stand 2:

Command Stand 3:

So, that's six miniatures (and some very snazzy basing ;.) ) plus and points to be taken away for using old shields....so a max of 30 points? I couldn't in good good conscious pass using the shields by as the army is now complete and they would otherwise have been a waste of both money and time. 

First off Darrell, these command bases are fantastic, some of your best work IMHO.  Lovely shading and trim on the tunics and great armour effects (love the gilded ridges on the last standard bearer's lid).  Your basing is also top notch, especially for the pair on the rock outcropping.

Full points for fessing up on your shields, I can't imagine leaving those lovelies in my bits bin for five years without using them.  Nor can I imagine them looking so nice after five years kicking about in my bits bin.  I am very much a reuse and repurpose minion, so no points loss here.  Are the flags commercial like your others?

Looking forward to seeing ore Byzantines from you next week.

KenR : 1/700 German Destroyer Z21 (40 points)

This weeks Italian Wars failure sees me do another two ships on my WW2 1/700 Project, I promise I will get some 28mm Spanish done before the end of the Challenge, honestly.

So first up this week is this German Destroyer from Trumpeter Models. This is Z21 which was one of the last named German Destroyers before they switched to a simple numbering system. The ship was named Wilhelm Heidcamp who was a crewman on the SMS Seydlitz during WW1 and he was badly burned opening water valves to flood the rear magazines on the ship after a British shell started a large fire.

Z21 was sunk quite early in WW2 at the Battle of Narvik in 1940, as flagship of the German Destroyers committed to that Operation by the Germans Z21 was caught moored in Narvik Harbour when a group of British Destroyers attacked and the ship was torpedoed and sunk. Her Captain Hans Erdmenger had the foresight to moor the ship to an undamaged freighter in the harbour after the hit and is credited with saving a large part of the crew as this stopped the whole of the ship from rapidly sinking.

I am very impressed with the detail on the Trumpeter models, they carry much better detail than the Tamiya equivalents and come with a small set of photo etch to give some nice detail on parts of the ship.

The colour scheme is a very basic one, Z21 was sunk before the more exciting dazzle style camo was common and was only ever operational in this basic light grey scheme, however I do think that this has given the weathering a better chance to shine and I'm really happy with the effects on this ship.

 Points wise its another 40 for this model, base wise its on the same as my other smaller ships which is 22cm x 6cm. next up for small ships is another German Destroyer the Z25.

I am very glad that you managed to get these photos uploaded Ken, the end results were certainly worth the effort.  If you aren't following The Challenge FaceBook feed this was a major hassle which took until the wee hours of this morning for Ken resolve.  Lovely weathering and sea effects.  I fully agree that the plain Jane grey shows up the weathering well and your water looks suitably grim and numbing as befits the North Sea and Norwegian waters.

 

From Matt T - Elephant Sized Hole - [ 40 points ]

One of the attractions of the Khwarazmian Army is the option to take an elephant instead of a unit of medium cavalry. When i bought the majority of the lead from Gripping Beast I also picked up one of their Timurid Elephants.

When they arrived the Elephant crew were on the chunkier side compared to the rest of the army. I think if I had painting them they would have looked fine on the table, but while they were on the painting desk and my focus was 100% on them the difference was niggling away at me, so I decided to convert mine.

It turned out to be a bit more work than initially planned but when you have fallen down a rabbit hole I figure you may as well keep going and see where it ends.

I kept the initial elephant but sourced a howdah from Aventine Miniatures. It initially looked like it was floating in space so I used some wire to create some ropes attaching the howdah to the elephant. The mahout had a head swap so he echoed the light cavalry, as well as some milliput on the feet to create boots. The crew in the howdah are from the same range as the earlier medium cavalry I posted from Aventine Miniatures. Fortunately the body's come separately from the legs, so I attached them to some plastic legs I had and used some milliput to make a simple tunic around the join.

Anyway, this is my elephant. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.

1 x 28mm Elephant and 3 crew = 40 35 points

Gotta have a Heffalump if the list allows and yours is truly lovely.  I do like the armour on the beast and the howdah conversion looks really good.  Plus you got to fall down a research rabbit hole, one of my main reasons for keeping my armies historical.

Consultation with fellow minions indicates that the elephant counts as a vehicle for 20 plus 5 each for the crew make a total of 35.  However, I'll add a few for the conversion, armour and casework.

From AdamC Hurin Book and Dark Age Irish 110 points (1 Squirre)

 So this is very one is very much an interpretation on my part.  I for my book entry I am using the Simarilion and Children of Hurin because I am that sort of Nerd.   

Hurin Thalion (the steadfast or strong) possibly the greatest and most tragic of Tolkien's legendarium.   I used a Wargame's Atlantic Irish figure here.  He has the high crowed helm Tolkien seems to like.  the figue has no armor but we can imagin that tunic is actually a sure coat hiding mail. 

He wields an axe because that is the weapon he used at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the battle of unnumbered tears.  Hurin and his bother Huor an the men of Dor-Lomin formed a rear guard in the Fen of Serech where as the last man alive he discarded his shield and cried: Aurë entuluva! (Day will come agai) as he slew until draged down by overwhelming numbers (after killing at least 70 foes). Things when rapidly down hill from there for our hero as he watched Morgoth play merry hell with his children and allies.

I decided to do the cloak in dark green but the tunic in a yellow. Most depictions of Hurin seem to favor dark colors (black) but I liked the idea of him in bright colors (a light in darkness as it were) and I couldn't find anything to contradict this idea (someone will now do so I have no doubt 😂)

Next up five Irish warriors from the same set.  4 of them represent up class warriors though perhaps not the top echelon.

The fellow in the center is clearly of a lower order with his small shield and dagger back up weapon.

I'm pleased with the skin tones I got here. Presumably these fellows are going without shirts (or armor) to show off they're fine additions to my dark age Irish warband.

In Saga Wolfhounds are the icon unit for Irish warbands. I have some already but it's nice to add some more since they came in the box.

There are ten dogs in all plus the handler. With a javelin. 

The dogs fur and the handler's skin came out well a point of improvement in my painting (if I may say so)

Points Hurin is a 25 mm figure so 5 points plus another 20 as my book entry.

The Irish are all 25mm figures 10 dogs and 6 men for 80 points assuming the dogs get full points. The Irish should also net me another Squirrel point 

So another 105 points in total. Hopefully I will have an age of sail entry for next week. 

A fine collection of warriors of myth and history Adam.  I recognize those GB Irish warriors as I have a few in my army, although I've yet to paint any hounds.  Nice work on shields and yes the time taken painting these shows.   I am bumping your score up by a few points in recognition.