From MartinC - Iranian Air Power and Iraqi Command and Control (140 Points)

Firstly I would like to thank Curt, this year's challenge was my first foray into the blogosphere and my first real contact with like minded individuals for many years. It has been the most fun I've had with my hobby. I have painted a ridiculous number of figures covering 2500 years of history, I have received countless pieces of invaluable advice, I have learnt a whole new painting style which I really like, I have new favourite manufacturers (Aventine and Hasslefree), I have spent a bleeding fortune on figs and painted nearly all of them, I'm still pretty bad at photography, I have discovered the joys of broom bristle spears, grass tufts, thinned down paint and super sculpty, and I appear to have accidently invented battles on flying carpets. Thank you all, it's been the least boring winter since I was 7.

So this week I have built and painted the opposition to last week's Black Ravens, The Sultan of Baghdad's Flying Carpet Corps. These are the Sultan of Basra's Eagles. The Sultan of Basra was the good guy in the original Thief of Baghdad (the one who got the magical flying horse - and that may follow). These have carpets with only archers or carpets with only halberders. There is also a magician to provide dust devils and fireballs.

Eagles

Sultan and Body Guard

Magician

 Archer Carpet

 Halberder Carpet

The figures are a mix of Black Tree Design (they arrived in 48 hours as opposed to the 7 weeks for the previous order) and Gripping Beast Plastic Arab Warriors (also arrived in 48 hours). The carpets are again Super Sculpty.

Still working on rules, elevation is a issue as height is an advantage and therefore all units will end up high up which defeats the objective.

I also built the transport for the Sultan of Baghdad. I wanted to do something different for this figure and thought about other forms of transport, balloons, eagles, dragons, dirigibles etc. but instead I decided a man of his power would need to flaunt it. So I present the Floating Court of the Sultan of Baghdad. The Sultan has kidnapped the Sultan of Basra's beautiful daughter Fatima and has her chained to his chief torturer Mustapha. He is protected by his 2 nubile Nubian bodyguards and has brought along a slave girl for "entertainment".



Fatima

The cushions, vases and recliner are made from Super Sculpty and the tables are cut off roofing nails, the dog tooth pattern on the carpet hasn't shown up too well on the photos.

The Sultan is a BTD Dr Who villain (can't remember who) but I liked the figure and the mask and robe look suitably sinister. The rest of the retinue are Hasslefree. The carpet is 10cm x 10 cm and a little unstable so I pre-drilled a hole and nailed it to a wooden baton, when in doubt use a hammer. I tried to make the clouds interesting but had issues with dying / painting the cotton wool so will do that again.

This is about 135 points, unless Curt feels generous about the points for the floating court, and puts me though my 2500 goal, which is nice. That means I've exceeded my initial target by 150%, also nice. Next stop daylight and gardening, although maybe one more unit and if I can find a table big enough a shot of all I've painted.

From Curt:

I've really loved this little Harryhausen foray of yours Martin - it's so wonderfully creative. I think you need to add a Cyclops and perhaps some skeleton warriors. Great fun.

Congratulations on hitting your 2500 point target. An impressive feat for your first foray.

Finally, I'm delighted you've found the Challenge so enjoyable. As you say it's a great way to share time, be productive and have a few laughs with people of a 'singular character'.  I can't think of a better way to spend the winter! :)

From MartinC - Iraqi Air Power and Roman Infantry (234 Points)

As my lead mountain has been extensively mined during the challenge, I have been a bit in limbo for a couple of weeks, trying to find something to paint that got my creative juices flowing. There is a reason why I have 3 half painted armies and you all know what that is.

Last week's flying carpet post really got me thinking about aerial battles in the Sinbad world, so I have scratch built the Caliph of Baghdad's Flying Corps, the Black Arrows (better names appreciated but I don't like the Rocs). Each carpet carries an archer and a spearman. This gives them missile and melee capability with the spearman acting as a spotter, using his shield to protect the archer and fending off the enemy. I also have a though that the carpets could charge into combat like jousting knights.

The figures are Perry Mahdists but some of the heads are ACW Zouaves, the spears are mainly from ACW flag bearers with the sleeves trimmed back, the shields saxon, bows wire and quivers from, well no clue there. I removed the bases and drilled holes though the feet to pin them to the carpet. As we have seen in the Challenge already black and red do work well together for the paint job.

The carpets are made from Super Sculpty and look a bit too much like they were bought from Trotters Independent Traders rather than the souk. Overall this gives a very light figure so they are mounted on a wire spear offcut in a cube of wood. These bases are on simple card at the moment whilst I work out how to change elevation. I have now run out of packing material and so cotton wool has been used to bulk out the clouds.

Paint job is a little rushed, I got excited to see them completed, but overall I think it's a cool unit. Plan to buy some proper Sinbad type heroes to give them an opposition and a Caliph to lead them on a storm cloud with lightning bolts, however time is tight to buy and receive suitable figures before end of Challenge.

I have however spent most of the week on this unit of 16 Republican Roman Triarii.

I'm pretty sure that this is the best unit I have ever painted. The figs are Aventine and a few North Star of unknown manufacturer. The Aventine guys are very muscular and have very determined faces. However both types have massive feet, more gibbon than human, hence their commander will be known as Hylobatidae Moloch.

There were only enough metal spears for half the unit so the other half are bristles from a yard brush. The ends were squashed with pliers and a cotton grip was added. They look good and hard to tell apart.

The shields designs are hand painted and not an onerous I as thought, with practice I could get quite good at this. Overall I'm proud of this unit.

Finally I have completed this unit of 10 velites. They are on round bases and have an officer and a musician. Not sure whether to re-base these last 2 figs and reincorporate into the heavy infantry. There were a lot of musicians in the army I purchased and the infantry are supposed to have 2 joint commanders, which is just stupid and can't be how it really worked.

The javelins are bristles and I drilled the shield hand to hold a 2nd javelin.

The shields have a hand painted stag motif, couldn't find an equivalent shield design on the web but animals such as a boar design were common.

So that's about 210 points plus any generosity Curt feels towards hand painted shields.  I remember when that was almost a points bomb, now it feels like I've brought a knife to a gunfight.


From Curt:

Martin my man, those carpet riders are off-the-hook brilliant!  So wonderfully conceived and executed.  You should be very proud of this unit - it's a corker.

'Hylobatidae Moloch' is a fantastic name and made me laugh aloud in the office (we have a fairly taciturn bunch here). Even though the feet may be virtually prehensile I still like the castings and you've done a cracking job on them. I really like the white shields with gold motif - very sharp - and speaking of which your broom-brush spears look fabulous. I also like that you added the second javelin with your velites. I've done this with some of my Dark Age figures as well and wish that more figure designers would sculpt light troops with the 'extra ammo' they would have had.

A wonderful entry - thanks for sharing it with us!