From TomC: Back in Blue [Limbo] (220 points)

Hello everybody, belated Happy New Year, very glad to see a lot of great progress so far from fellow contestants, hopefully Santa has been good to you all over the year end! 

As always, thanks to Curt for organising the Challenge, to the Minion team for volunteering and to Tamsin for her helpful instructions (errors in following which being entirely my own fault!).

These will be a familiar sight by now for many challengers - Warlord Games’s Epic American Civil War infantry, certainly it seems I’m not the only one putting paint to these this year! These are from the free sprue attached to Wargames Illustrated a while ago, plenty enough to have kept me going!

I started these before AHPC XIII, for which my first entry was the commander and artillery piece, which also come on the frame. Seems fitting to open another Challenge with the rest! Having given these infantry a once-round of blue, I put them on hold for the duration of the challenge… and then the subsequent two years… still, not the worst offenders in my pile of potential!

I painted these the old-fashioned way and, for my sins, without any metallic paints, so I really didn’t do myself any favours in the planning phase! This was compounded by issues with the recommended paints, Night Blue (glossy, which I realise now I cannot bear!) and Andrea Blue (suspiciously thin), which led to me to redo the blues with various Citadel offerings.

Not content with the problems I’d caused for myself, I continued by being unable to find the paper banners which came with the magazine at the critical juncture. Doubtless, these will resurface at an inopportune moment, but for the meantime I did my best to freehand the stripes on Old Glory and cobble something together for the regimental banner. This was a combination of Games Workshop decals I took apart, reassembled and painted over. I appreciate that whilst this has some of the right elements (eagle, shield, NFL logo), it does perhaps look a little modern… at least there’s something on the flag!

I did some minor work on these before assembly, there are only a couple of variations of ‘strips’ provided by Warlord, so there is a risk of repeating stands quite quickly. I delayed this by cutting some of the strips in half to mix them up, if I recall correctly, there are a couple of points where this can be done with a minimum of grief, and I do think it helps break up the repeated sculpts. Probably not possible with the Epic Waterloo collection alas!

In terms of scoring, there are 100 wee lads in the unit, at 2 points a head being the going rate for Warlord’s ‘Epic scale’ infantry. The commander and gun above are just included for completeness, so 200 points for the submission, with an additional 20 for the ‘Limbo’ bonus category that these sadly neglected Federals hopefully merit! All in, should be 220 points?

As a final note, my laptop has failed and so I have resorted to the mobile for this post - apologies for any issues with it as a consequence!

TeemuL: Yes, Warlord's Epic scale indeed is 15mm or two points a head, so you got yourself a nice haul of points here. You have now accomplished your target of 250 points in just two entries and in less than a month. But don't worry, me, myself and the whole Tuesday crew encourages and expects you to continue painting until end of March.

The models themselves look nice, you have found a nice blue in the end. I hope you find your flags, too. Your cutting the strips and reorganising the troops a bit gives quite natural look on the force. I have to remember that when I make some experiments with that scale and the freebie sprues from WI magazine myself. :) Compiling a post using mobile phone is very painful, I feel you. I forgive you for not adding any labels and added couple of suitable by myself. Feel free to edit, if needed.