From StuartL - Altar of the Snow Lord Addendum/Offering to Sarah - 25 points.

Hello again.

After completing my entry for the Altar of the Snow Lord, I find myself deep in the Chambers of Challenge, with a long trek back to the surface. This seems like the perfect time to call on the tireless services of Sarah the Sorceress, so I guess I need a female mini as tribute.

For this offering, I have a mini that was painted up alongside my Naga for the Altar. The model was sculpted for me by my friend who converted the Naga warriors and will be used to represent a specific individual on the gaming table. The mini isn't particularly accurate to the real person in question, but as my friend made it for me as a gift to go with the Naga, I intend to make good use of it.

Ursula Graham Bower MBE was a British Anthropologist who moved out to India in her twenties to live among the Naga tribes. She studied their language, culture and way of life, while staying in one of their villages for several years.
Though the Naga would generally have been considered savages by her peers back home, Ms. Bower said that they always treated her with immense kindness and respect. Due to some local religious beliefs, some of the tribespeople believed she was the reincarnation of a young woman who was thought to be a god. (The young goddess in question wasn't dead, but was languishing in prison for encouraging her followers to perform human sacrifices and to rise up against the British). This misunderstanding probably made it a bit easier for Ms. Bower to be welcomed into the Naga villages.

Ms. Bower was living with the Naga when the Japanese invaded, and volunteered with the British Indian army to organize the Naga to assist with the war effort. I have no idea if she actually saw combat, but she did join some patrols and was on the front lines for quite some time.

Ms. Bower got married to a British army officer who proposed to her rather unexpectedly. He had heard stories of this strange British lady who was living amongst the Naga and decided that she sounded like just the sort of girl he'd like to marry. He took leave from his post, trekked out to the village where she was living and after spending a couple of days together, asked her to marry him.

After Ms. Bower left the Indian border region along with her husband, she moved to Tibet and then lived in Kenya for a while before they returned to the UK, carrying thousands of photographs, reels of film and a collection of items to be displayed in a museum.

There is a two-part interview with Ms. Bower on YouTube, in which she talks about her life in India, it is well worth a watch (though it runs for almost 2 hours). She published a book called the Naga Path about her experiences and there are a couple of books written about her by other historians.

No side duels here, but this model should score me 5 points for the figure and 20 as an offering to Sarah. While some people may have believed Ms. Bower was a goddess, she had no magical powers, and so is ineligible for the extra bonus points. This comes to the total of 25.00 points if my math serves me correctly. I'll be heading back up the Chambers of Challenge to the Aquifer for now I think. 

From StuartL - The Altar of the Snow Lord - 60 points

Hello everyone.

After a blitzkrieg pace through the Chambers of Challenge, I have finally arrived at the Altar of the Snow Lord. Reaching this room is the culmination of a month's worth of painting until my brushes glowed red hot and my arms ached from the stress of turning a hundred minis to reach every last spot. Well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. 

So, the challenge set for me by our icy overlord was:

Okay Stuart, last year you were working on a WWII Far Eastern Theatre project. Let's see you complete another unit for that collection. Once done, you will have met the challenge and will receive your prize.

Fair enough, a unit for WWII in the far east. No problem. 

Actually, when Curt was setting the challenge, I suggested that I could not only paint a unit as above, but it would also be one that most people didn't know about and that, more than likely, no-one had seen on a gaming table before. Hopefully the minis below support that small boast.

As well as quite large selections of troops for the Normandy and Russian campaigns in Europe, I have assembled quite a lot of minis for the Far Eastern Theatre, focusing mainly on the attempted invasion of British India by the Japanese army, followed by the British counter-offensive. In terms of models and rules, this theatre doesn't really get a lot of attention. Sure, you can find Chindits and Gurkhas easily enough, but those were relatively elite groups within the British Indian army. Personally, I am more interested in the other, less elite, but no less important troops that took part in the conflict.

In 1944 the Japanese army launched Operation U-Go, an offensive aimed at entering India through the border with Burma. Planning for the offensive had begun in 1943 after the Chindits had (rather ironically) proven to the Japanese that it was entirely possible for infantry units to advance through the dense jungle and hills along the border. In March, 5 Japanese infantry divisions advanced into the Northeast India regions of Manipur and the Naga hills. The British Indian army had been expecting an attack by the Japanese, but had no idea where or when it would strike. The sudden advance by the Japanese army quickly pushed into the border regions and several British Indian divisions were encircled and trapped in the areas of Kohima and Imphal. 

Fighting in these regions would last for nearly 4 months and saw 10s of thousands of casualties and the eventual shattering of the Japanese offensive force. Conditions were harsh, and food, medicine and ammunition were in short supply on both sides. 

But, it is to neither of those two armies that I have turned to for this challenge. Instead, I have painted up some of the locals from the region, the Naga people. 

The Naga were a group of tribes that lived in the jungles on the edge of India. They were headhunters and farmers, eking out an existence in the harsh climate and on land ill suited for agriculture. Fierce and independent, it was only the arrival of the British that tamed them. In exchange for a cessation of all headhunting (it still happened from time to time), the British supplied the Naga with medicine and heroin (Yes, the Empire did some very questionable, if not downright evil things). This brought relative peace and stability to the region and by all accounts, the Naga had good relationships with the local government representatives. So much so, that when the Japanese invaded, the Naga warriors signed up with the British as scouts, messengers, guides and even soldiers. Among all of the tribes, there were supposedly only two Naga who went over to the Japanese, the others siding with the British.

At first armed only with muzzle loading muskets and their Dao swords, the Naga took on the role of guiding British patrols through the jungle, keeping watch for advancing Japanese units and rescuing downed airmen. Eventually they would receive supplies of more advanced weapons from the British reserves, but they always fought well regardless. That the British took a rather more relaxed view towards headhunting when it was directed against Japanese troops also encouraged the Naga who saw it as an important coming-of-age ritual for young warriors.

Warriors from the tribes would often decorate their skin with tattoos made from tree sap pigments. Only those who had been a part of a headhunting raid were allowed to tattoo their skin in such a fashion. They would traditionally wear necklaces of precious stones, bones and feathers, and wore kilts and wraps of dark cloth with colourful stripes. I have tried to show these elements of their culture through my painting, particularly giving them all tattoos across their faces and torsos.

Of the Naga, Field Marshall William Slim wrote, "Many a British and Indian soldiers owe his life to the naked head hunting Naga, and no soldier of the Fourteenth Army who met them will ever think of them but with admiration and affection."

When I first started researching my Far East project, I was unable to find any miniatures suitable for the Naga tribesmen. Luckily one of my friends is pretty good at sculpting, so I supplied him with a bunch of Zulu sprues from Warlord Games, figuring that their near naked appearance would be a good starting point to build from. My friend did not disappoint and produced these 8 unique miniatures for me. He added earrings and necklaces to some of the models, extended the loincloths into kilts and wraps, added leg wraps and changed the hairstyles of the models. He even managed to get one in a kneeling pose. All in all, they came out very nicely and I hope that my paint job is worthy of his efforts.

If anyone is interested in the battles of Kohima and Imphal, I recommend Road of Bones by Fergal Keane. It is very well written and covers a lot of the events of India in Spring 1944 in all their tragic detail.

So, I hope that the miniatures receive the Snow Lord's seal of approval. Hopefully they also match my boast of being largely unknown and never seen before on a gaming table. 

By my calculations, there should be 40 points for the minis and 20 for the chamber added to my total. No skulls, even though they are headhunters, (Heads were kept at the tribes village), but they do add a Squirrel to that tally.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 666

Skullz - 371

Squirrels - 12

From: NoelW - 15mm for a change (320 points)

This week I decided I'd do something different, to give a bit of variety to the painting and the posts. I find having lots of projects on the go keeps me much more motivated than sticking to one single project all the time, although it does mean that every project takes much longer to complete.

In January was lucky enough to buy part of a second hand collection of 15mm figures. Quite a few were painted, many of which I can't really use, but there were also the remnants of an unpainted lead pile, too. Excitingly, they're going to allow me to work on a project I've wanted to do for a while, but didn't think I'd be able to get to, because I'm basically a 28mm gamer yet it would be too expensive to carry out in 28mm. 

I also fancied a rest from lots of 28mm ECW and zulus. So I decided to paint some of the unpainted part of this 15mm collection. Already painted are much of an Indian army and a useful eighteenth century British army. But no sepoys. So that's what I decided to work on. I also fancy the idea of a massive siege, such as Seringapatam, though this would have to be SYW rather than the early Napoleonic period. For such a game I'll need guns, guns, guns. And, luckily this lead pile has quite a few - though, less luckily, not many gunners. 

The figures are all early Minifigs. I've a catalogue dated 1983 which lists them all, though they also seem still to be available from Caliver Books, who cast them to order I think. They may be getting an order from me. 

So that's what I've been doing this week. And here's the first results. 

There are 19 guns, some for the sepoys, some for the fortress. (I'll probably have to make a fortress, too, so that might take a while!) There are more guns to be painted, too, so they might appear next week.

One feature of developing from an existing collection is the need to paint in a similar style to the figures you've bought. In this case, almost all the figures are painted in a relatively simple style, generally a clean, wargaming block-painted approach with no shading or highlighting, and rarely any detail. So there's not much room for sophistication, which is exactly what I needed for most this week, in contrast with the detail I tried to put into my Bonus post. 

As well as the sepoys, there's a battalion of "Tippoo Sahib's Regulars", who would be part of the defending forces against Wellington at Seringapatam. I decided to paint these because they sounded interesting and colourful - red turbans, purple robes, black equipment. These will have to act as generic Indian troops for the SYW for the time being.

I like the idea of Seringapatam and Assaye - which is what these sepoys are intended for - but I don't have an early Napoleonic British in 15mm. Maybe this is an area for future expansion...

For my next post I'll probably return to the ECW, though I'm enjoying the productivity of these very simple 15mm figures, so maybe it's going to be a bit of both. 

There are 4 sepoy battalions of 20 figures, 12 gun crew and 30 of Tippoo Sahib's men, making a total of 122 15mm infantry.

That's 19 * 15mm guns @ 4 pts and 122 infantry at 2 points: total 320 points.

Hoi Noel, that is a nice surprise indeed! What a colourful lot you bring us today and so well  painted as well. I too have a small Wellington in India project (in 1:72) but nothing as nice as these. I do like your Sepoys and the guns are cool too.  320 well deserved points will be awarded this evening!