Prepping the Theme Round

Hi All,

Just as a quick administrative note, as I mentioned in the Theme Round post, I'm moving all the theme entries to the Bonus Theme area of the Challenge blog. Your entries have not been lost, just moved for publication tomorrow. Don't feel you need to recreate them - it's all good! :)

Thanks!

- Curt

From JP: Early Saxon raiders (60 points)

  

I have always been fascinated by the Dark Ages, be it Tolkien's works and Farmer Giles of Ham or  Franz Bengstonn's The Long Ships (the book, not the movie) or later inspirations driven by Sub-Roman Britain. Along the way I have read some fascinating books like Marc Moris' The Anglo-Saxons and Thomas Williams' Lost Realms. 

Of course Bran Mak Morn and Worms of the Earth have also fed into my mind emporium... 

Anyways, that's my excuse for this distraction from Marians and Cimbrians... Victrix put out a set of rules called Pillage (not sure about their playability yet) but I am hooked on Midgard Heroic Battles. The Victrix Early Saxon and Sub-Roman Britons Pillage forces have been irresistable purchases in spite of my love for metal. As I assembled them in December, the need to apply brush to figures was overwhelming and I have interwoven them into my other projects. I will doubtlessly buy Picts and Scots as they come out (yawn, bloody typical gamer I hear you all say).

I started with the easiest chaps, skirmishers:

Then some basic Fyrd - using the small shield as they are still 'warband' in orientation rather than 'shieldwall'.

Points:

12 28mm foot x 5 points  = 60 points

Thanks for looking folks!

JP

A great Dark Age entry JP, I do like the gritty rough and ready look of these early Saxons. Your choice of natural colours is inspiring as it gives these miniatures real historical credibility. Another 60 points for the tally for you.

Cheers Sander 

From KristoferD: Skirmish level completed (74 points)

Hello again fellow enjoyers of tiny painted things!

On this the 27th day of the challenge I'm happy to announce that I've completed the first milestone of my challenge target. That is to complete a playable force of Swedes for By Fire and Sword. With a fresh unit of reiters and two commanders (one shamelessly stolen from the upgrade set) I can now field enough miniatures for a skirmish level game.

First we have the Lieutenant Colonel (who gets promoted to colonel when the force scales up to task force level).

Technically the stand comes with another banner bearer on foot, but I swapped him out for the military advisor who was a stretch goal from the second edition Kickstarter. He most have spent most of his career fighting in the Northern Wars given that his piece of paper seems to be a map of snow. As a matter of fact, it looks a lot like my neighbourhood this week.

We then have another unit of Reiters which I've painted largely like the first unit.

Looking at the pictures I might have gone a little bit overboard on the highlighting on the hats. Maybe I'll go over that again later if it turns out to bother me, but probably not given that it is not as apparent when looking at them on the table instead of through a screen.

The Reiters and the Lieutenant Colonel complete the Skirmish set from Wargamer as mentioned. I first misunderstood the entry in the Armies I book as needing at least two commanders for a Swedish skirmish force. But the excellent Army Creator made me do a double take and realise that the second one is optional. Given that BFaS is an alternating activation game, having an additional commander (who constitutes an additional activation) is a very strong option. I also suspect that the glass cannon that is the Swedish in BFaS really need this. So I pushed ahead with the expansion box and added a major (or possibly another lieutenant colonel depending on how many points your willing to pay at task force level) to the weekly quota.

I also took the liberty of swapping the flags around so that the senior commander gets the biggest flag. It's only right given that he already has the biggest hat in the army to go with it.

Finally, let's do a group shot of the Skirmish force because I simply can't resist showing them off together.

And a tally for the minion. Thank you for your efforts Sander!

(12 + 3 + 3) * 4 = 72 points for the mounted 15mm miniatures
1 * 2 = 2 points for the single infantry man with the snowy map

Resulting in a total of 74 points.

Also, thank you for all the nice comments on my previous posts! They make me very happy. 

 

Crikey, another whopping entry of gorgeously painted 17th Century Die-Hards. I love how the sabbot bases make these figures multi-usable for different systems, if need arises, and give a very nice scenic feeling to them as well. 

Cheers Sander 

From TeemuL: More Slayers! (30 points)

As promised last week, here are the rest of the Slayer group.

POV: Opponent

So six more GW Slayers, one of them is a banner bearer, but since the original banner never came to me (these are all second hand purchases), I needed a replacement. The banner is a piece of Age of Sigmar Magmadroth, in the Old World the skin could be from dragon for example. Very simple solution and even simpler paint job! No fancy heraldy or unit numbers, just clear and brutal annotation that "We Killed A Red Dragon!"

POV: You

I experimented with hair/beard colours again, so here are two oranges again - one of them is familiar from last week (the darker) and one is new one, so there are now three different orange dyes in the group to bring up some variation. Some of the highlights are quite yellow, especially in the photos. In nature they are not that bright, I'm not sure if that is good or bad. The axes look good, there are two layers of different metallic paints, but I guess the lightning and photographing is what matters here more. One more additional detail of my tip last week, using similar colours and then one wash to cover them all helps hide small errors on painting, too. 

Photographing these is a bit annoying since it is difficult to figure out which side is front and which is not. The minis are from different sets, so probably some are meant for diagonal and some for horizontal slotta bases, but I just try to live with it. Yes, the common Old World problem, or is it First World?

My Squirrel mind is fighting my Hoarder mind, because I keep thinking of getting more of these, since they are so nice to paint and I don't have all the differents sculpts yet... Anyway, these six slayers should give me 30 points.

Participation fee: I decided to donate 20 euroes to WWF Finland for Finnish Nature. Our government (quite racist far right - we have gone far from that smart, young, female prime minister we used to have during covid) has decided to cut the benefits of people and destroy the nature "to save the country". I haven't figured out how harming both the land and the people will save anything (expect the personal benefits of the leaders), so I'll try to do something to save the land.

 

 

Another great bunch of Slayers, that vibrant orange for their haircuts really works out well! Good to see you bring something positive to the Wildlife of your country Teemu. 

 

Cheers Sander  

From SamuliS: Saxon Cavalry ready to defect from the First French Empire (104 points)

Finally kicking off this painting challenge from my side as well! Back after a few years hiatus to what I think is my 11th challenge after first participating in 2013! And the first entry now is actually part of a project that I started in the 2015-16 challenge so more or less a ten year anniversary for this!

Starting off the challenge this year is a selection of Napoleonics to wrap up my Saxon army for the 1813 campaign. We were originally planning to play the campaign starting around 2016-17, but after years of heavy Napoleonics gaming we started to move to other interests and the army newer saw the gaming table and some units were left unpainted. Moving forward quite a few years there has now been a renewed interest in Napoleonics at the club with a lot of fresh faces so I decided to dig up the remaining miniatures and paint up a few additional units. Nice change of pace as well to return to 18mm scale as I haven't painted smaller scale in several years despite it once being my main scale with Napoleonics, Flames of War and Team Yankee making up much of my gaming. Miniatures are mostly AB Figures 15/18mm Napoleonics and I suspect at least some of the command figures are Campaign Game Miniatures.

Fitting nicely with the Empire theme as the First French Empire was really on it's last legs in 1813 and throughout the campaigns the disillusioned Saxons (as well as some other French allies) started defecting to the Allies speeding up the crumbling of Napoleons forces. The Leib Kürassiere painted here were the last Saxons to desert Napoleon after the Battle of Leipzig signaling the end of Saxonys alliance with France.

 

 

Unit sizes are quite small as with the ruleset we are now using the units are smaller than we used to play with. Personally I'm not the biggest fan as I like the spectacle of massive amounts of minis on the table when playing big battles with larger units, but it has definitely helped get a lot of newer players into Napoleonics as you don't need to paint hundreds of minis to field a Division of your own. And for me of course it helped speed up the process of painting the missing cavalry units into the army. I'll get around to bringing the unit sizes up to the same as the rest of my collection at some point, but for now I'm all set for 1813. 

 Leib Kürassiere

Prinz Clemens Regiment

 

 Hussars

 

16 cavalry figures in 18mm scale coming in at around 64 points  with another 50 added for the Empire theme.

Next up some Fantasy minis with a return to The Old World! 

 It is great to have you back with us Samuli and with such nice and crisply painted Saxons indeed. These do look the part and I really like your colourchoices. Do have a great Challenge and can't wait to see those Fantasy miniatures!

 

Cheers Sander 

From JP: Oh no, not another D&D Vignette ! (20 points)

Every year I paint a Ral Partha vignette, I love these little beasts as they are a memorable dip into my youth.

This year is the last in the current batch - must order more from the US, but they come in very pricy after shipping, customs and duty! This Thunder Mountain vignette is 25mm and called 'At Death's Door'.

So :

                                                    I wonder what's behind this door?

Looks like treasure!

Ogres are too dumb to be sneaky...

Or are they?

The DM says... you are surprised on 1-20, roll a d20 please. LOL

The view from above. Death's Door indeed...

With thanks and fond memories to Frederick C - It never changes, not even 50 years after he drew this!

My donation goes to its usual monthly sources: Amnesty International and House of Cats Ernesto - working to save and protect animals in Idlib, Syria for a decade, through war and hell - check Ernesto's out.

My points are meagre, but it was fun:

4 x 25mm figure=  20 points.

Thanks for looking! 

Meagre points or not, I like this vignette a lot! What a great dynamic way to pose these old school figures and your painting helps bring them to a higher level indeed. Great entry JP!

 

Cheers Sander 

From the Saturday Minion a great many things...

 Welcome dear Challengers to another great day in that greatest of Hobby Events our very own nook of the wargaming world: the AHPC! 

 We have a great mix of styles and offerings for you today amongst which are:

- JP is on a roll and brings us some Old School RPG goodness and some Cimbrians

- Samuli has some excellent Nap[oleonics in the cue for us

-   Teemu keeps on Slaying it!

And possibly more to come who knows? Keep those brushes moving people and get your entries in to your local minion of duty!

 

Cheers Sander