From Kerry T - Old Iron Boots - or A little man tries to set a high standard!- Avatars of War Dwarf standard (30 points + Limbo)

 Morning, afternoon and evening all.....

Its great to catch up with you all once again and also say hello to some new faces. Thanks once again to Curt for allowing me to take part in this my fourth challenge. For me, it has to be the highlight of the wargaming year and not only have I benefited from and been enthused by the wonderful support from the participants here but I've also now caught up with a few in the flesh meeting several of the guys on my trip to Parizan wargames show last year. I've also been fortunate to make new friends in Millsy and Kent Galpin and though we've never met in person we've been meeting online most Tuesday nights for a paint and chat.

I've got off to a slow start this year and this is my first entry. I've set myself a target of 2,500 points this year simply to try and gain entry to the 10,000 career points club. To that end I've spent much of the holiday period painting a multitude of horses in the hope of making the challenge of producing weekly entries less onerous. If only the challenge went on for longer - I'm due to retire from work the week after the challenge ends! Hopefully I'll get there with a mix of figures that reflect my butterfly tendencies and wandering ill-disciplined brush. My plan is to knock off a decent chunk of my unpainted ECW cavalry leadpile, add to my Italian Wars and Reconquista projects and hopefully shoe in some Napoleonics, WW2 and make a start on my main 2025 target, a 100 Years War Medieval project. As always I'm likely to jump from one thing to another in the hope of keeping productive and I suspect some figures that didn't make earlier challenges may push their way up the painting queue.

This was the state  of my current Limbo entry this time last year

A dwarf standard bearer from Avatars of War

I really struggled to get to grips with this having bought it a few years ago. My intention was to have it lead my Dwarven hoard into battle. Fortunately in the past few days, despite the hot NZ sun, the Vallejo hasn't dried on the brush and I've managed to get it finished

Here's the man accompanied by a few Oathmark dwarves just painted

I'm not sure how such a little man is going to handle such a high or big standard, the standard bearer himself seems to be wearing a huge amount of metal which I assume must be a deliberate attempt to make him him as heavy as possible . When he unfurls that huge banner, its obvious, like it or not- the slightest gust of wind is going to turn him into an involuntary kite surfer and drop him off in the next valley!

From a practical perspective he's going to struggle to stay on the table so I felt it was necessary to make him his own base

He's even got his own base

I also painted a few hangers on from some plastic Oathmark figures to keep him company 

In reality, for the tabletop I think he's probably best grouped with some Oathmark metal command figures I painted last year and shown below

Better still perhaps the Dwarf King's banner even

The Kings banner

My Dwarven army is growing - pun intended!

Couldn't resist the group shot - to be clear its only just 5 Oathmark figures and Old Iron boots the standard bearer that were painted for the challenge

In summary

6 x 28mm foot Figures at 5 points each = 30 points

Limbo bonus  at 20 points

Total points = 50 

1 Squirrel

Many thanks and Happy New year to you all

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Lovely to have you back with us Kerry! 

I always enjoy seeing your various project as not only are the fantastically realized but they're all something I'd like to play. Such eye candy.

Love this standard bearer. Like so many things in the world of fantasy this is over-the-top silly, which of course makes it completely awesome. I like your new blue variant much better than the original red, so good choice there, but better yet is the mini-diorama you've made for it. What a terrific centrepiece for the army. As an added bonus I'm sure these guys get great 5G reception. :) I'm going to give another 5 points for that great, honkin' standard as it's the size of several dwarfs in of itself.

A great opening for your fourth Challenge Kerry. Keep them coming!

- Curt