From TomC: Victory At Sea USN [Maritime] (34 points)

 Ahoy fellow challengers, like the Loch Ness monster, I've been out of sight for a while, sorry I haven't been able to comment on all your wonderful work!

 I at least have a contribution to offer, this week is another brace of ships from Warlord Games's Victory At Sea starter set, USS Northampton and an accompanying Fletcher-class destroyer, both hopefully wet and offshore enough for the Maritime section.

 As a bit of context, the Northampton class, of which this was the lead, were all built in the '30s under the auspices of the Washington Naval Treaty, which restricted both their weight and armament (and which was also quietly disregarded by the Japanese navy). Northampton herself had a busy career, first with Enterprise for the Doolittle raid and Midway, with Wasp at Guadalcanal (where she was lucky not to be torpedoed), then Hornet at Santa Cruz, before being torpedoed by Japanese destroyers in her first surface contact at Tassafaronga. 

The photos I've seen of Northampton in 1942 show a simple single-colour scheme but there's a series of images of Northampton in 1941 in this unusual camouflage scheme with a fake bow-wave and countershaded forecastle. Couldn't resist! 

For completeness, there are some liberties I took with the scheme for my own amusement, the orange lifeboats in particular but also the edged smoke stacks (it's a lot of grey otherwise!). Tangentially, the teak deck is a bit of a guess, I couldn't find many images of such things and I have previously had mixed results from eyeballing colours...

The destroyers in Victory at Sea aren't named, but one can never have too many of them! I'm trying to keep them all distinguishable, luckily the Americans had plenty of different schemes to choose from, this being one of the simpler.

 This makes just over half the American vessels from the starter set, which definitely merits a group shot.

In terms of accounting, although the scale is off, the cruisers are c. a 15mm vehicle for 8 points, the destroyers less so at 6 points. Together with the Maritime bonus, that should make 34 points, otherwise known as very slow progress... onwards!

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Sadly for you Tom, you are stuck with a minion who is, in general, quite ignorant of all things naval when it comes to historical gaming. I will happily charge into all sorts of new periods, but when it comes to ships from WW1 and WW2, I may remember the names and some high-level info about the battles, but am otherwise laughably ignorant...

All this to say while I love these pretty ships, I have nothing to offer as commentary...although so many seem to come to a bad end. Torpedo in her first surface engagement? That sucks...

Fine brushwork here, and great effect of the water vs. the ship. I have seen people struggle with the names of the ships cast right on to the bases, but you seem to make it work nicely! Well done, 34 points for you.

Polite reminder: please use the labels when composing the post! This helps ensure the data/meta data etc. for the Challenge meets the requirements of our Cthulu-like statistical gods...

GregB