From NoelW: Is this the finishing line? (680 Points)

So my target with this last post is 669 points, which, if achieved will scrape me a bare 5000 points for the whole Challenge. Let's see:

Firstly, 27 Carthaginians to oppose the Romans I've previously posted (Victrix figures, Little Big Man shield decals):

And then, the remains of my 15mm Austrians, who've been waiting since this time last year. There's infantry (jagers, line and grenadiers), a total of 75 figures:

And "Hungarian", or light, cavalry - one large regiment of hussars and two smaller ones, plus a regiment of uhlans, 55 figures:

Then there's the remainder of the orcs I began somewhere on Challenge Island (17 GW figures):

When I buy artillery set, I've a bad habit of painting up the gun crew but leaving the guns alone - they need assembly, and are boring to paint. (I give the crew the nearest possible substitute gun from a different army). So I've a backlog of guns. Here's 8 of them:

These are all 28mm Perrys British Napoleonic guns. The 4 on the left are from the British forces in Egypt. To prevent the wheels sinking in sand, they were protected by wood tied to the rims. The other 4 are from the Waterloo period.

Finally, a little bit of point grubbing. The following three pictures are are "finished", as far as it goes. The first is a single velite who failed to attend the muster in a previous post.

These are four of the sepoys I finished along with a previous post, but, as you can see, they're Ensigns without their standards. I was hoping I'd figure out what they should be carrying, and make the flags, but have not found relevant info, so the figures stand alone.

And finally, a xebec. I'd painted this by week 2 of the challenge but, as you can see, it still lacks rigging and sails. So, technically, it's not finished so maybe not pointworthy. It's smaller than a Black Sails brig.

Whether the sepoys without standards and the xebec without sails are legal for points, I'm not sure. The velite is merely a figure missed from a previous post.

So, what's the scores on the doors?

8 guns at 10 points: 80 pts
75 15mm infantry: 150 pts
55 15mm cavalry: 220 pts
27 28mm Carthaginians: 135 pts
17 28mm orcs: 85 pts
1 28mm velite: 5 pts
Sepoys and xebec Any bonus points??? I leave this to my trusty minion.

TOTAL:  675 points

Huzzah!!

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Good Gravy Noel, do you ever sleep?! You know, I really can't process all this right now, it's all so bewildering and... numerous! I'll simply say, wow, 5000 points, this is tremendous output Noel. If you went pro you've put a few Far Eastern sweatshops out of business.  

Let's round this mob to an even 680 and call it a cease fire? :)

Amazing. 

-Curt

From NoelW: A spell of discomfort: Fran’s Fjord (30 points)

Luckily, the rocks we land on are blunter than most. However, I stumble in dismounting from the basket and land on my head, jarring me awkwardly.

Fjordtunately it seems to have no effect. We watch the balloon sail effjordlessly away with Lady Sarah but we can’t affjord to waste time, as we’re anxious to get on our way homewards. We’ve been on this wretched island more than a fjordnight, and despite our best effjords it’s beginning to nibble away our fjorditude.

What do you mean, concussion? I’m perfectly comfjordable. I had an unfjordunate bump but that’s just one of the misfjordunes of balloon travel. Hencefjordth, please mind your own business! Let us hasten from this confusing place to the comfjords of the fjordification on Bromley’s Butte, fjordthwith!

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Today, to satisfy Fran’s very particular demands, I’ve two submissions: one a 15mm sci-fi and the other for 15mm Imagi-nations.

Firstly, there are 12 more xenomorphs, incipient nasties to join the fully fledged aliens I submitted last time I was here.

Secondly, for my third vignette, I’ve Napoleon on a camel. My current Imagination/alternate history idea is Napoleon’s invasion of India, following on from his invasion of Egypt. There’s a problem with this. In 1798 his troops wore the uniforms of the revolution. In 1801, fighting the British in Egypt, they wore the remarkable uniforms of the Kleber regulations (anyone fancy a Frenchman in a pink uniform?) But what would they be wearing by the time they reached India in, say, 1803 or later?

Moreover, as I want to fight the whole campaign, from 1798 to around 1805, how many different versions of the French army will I need?

I couldn’t make my mind up. I love the Perry figures (28mm) for the 1801 period, but I’ve some 15mm figures (mainly Minifigs) for the revolutionary period, as well as Ottoman and Indian troops in 15mm primarily intended for the SYW. It’s a mess, obviously. Not helped by the fact that I stumbled across Lancashire Games 18mm figures for the period which included this Napoleon. 

I know Napoleon was short of stature, but I’d really love this figure to be at least 28mm. So my current plan is to fight the invasion of Egypt in 15mm, then the 1801 period in 28mm, then assume that the British are defeated in 1801 and the French army is then resupplied from the home country, so I can conduct the invasion of India in 15mm using the revolutionary figures. At which point this model will be at their head.

Scoring: 12 x 15mm aliens, 1 x 15mm arab, 1 x 15mm rider: 30 points



And Noel continues to retrace his steps around Challenge Island in style. Nice work mate!

TamsinP

From Curt: al-Docherty and al-Millsy's Flying(!) Camel Artillery - for 'Docherty's Dock' (55 Points)

Mu'tamid al-Millsy steps back and grimaces in expectation of the coming catastrophe.' I don't know brother, this seems to be a very bad idea...'

'I think it's brilliant.' Dawood al-Docherty reaches forward with his lit linstock. 'If the thrice-damned French can have flying horse artillery then why can't we have the same, but with camels?!'

'Yes, I understand, but I'm just concerned about the 'flying' part...'

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These figures were from a Westfalia Miniatures Kickstarter for Napoleonic Persians, way back when they were still doing Napoleonics (sniffs in pained remembrance). Wonderful Paul Hicks sculpts. They were an absolute pleasure to work on and I hope they get a smile from Dave and Millsy. Thanks Dave for the location challenge, it was great fun!

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Guest minion Byron checking in today to get a submission in for the Snowlord.

What lovely figures here Curt, and while your painting is top shelf as usual, what really gets me is the colour choices and usage.  I am horrible at picking colours and figuring out what goes with what.  I would not think to match some of the colours you used together, but they took great on the figures.  They look like something you would see in real life.  Great work!

I also look at this and think, hmmm I really hate painting cavalry, how much would I hate painting a camel?  After are they are just bigger, smellier horses that spit at you, right?

As for the flying camel artillery... I think something was lost in translation on these two fellas!  But then again given who they are, does that surprise anyone???

Regardless, great little diorama style piece.

- ByronM

From NoelW: Negotiating Cooke’s Crevasse (36 points)

Camels not being the most reliable forms of transport, we break down almost as soon as we’ve left Docherty’s Dock. We park for the nineteenth time, while the camels consider whether this would be a good place to found a camelopolis. This time we're in a narrow crevasse filled with debris which threatens to drop unwanted weighty material on us at any moment.

Here we notice a twittering bird, dancing very excitedly in the rubble. Our resident expert (in just about everything), Lance Corporal Knowall, valiantly identifies it as a European Stonechat, that peculiar bird whose call sounds just like two stones being banged together*. This one is tweeting excitedly about a stone buried almost completely under other identical stones. It looks like a very ordinary stone amongst mile after mile of extraordinarily ordinary stones and we can’t see any reason why anyone, or anybird, in his right mind would be so excited about such a lump of debris. But his frenetic tweets are as pitiful as a fragment of progressive rock, so Sergeant Watson digs it out of the sand.

The bird goes wild, tweeting madly and pecking at it like a tiny little hammer, chipping off pieces of encrusted earth and shards of stone, inspecting each one as if it was a piece of amazing discovery. Chip after chip, it’s almost as if the bird is writing on the stone, row after row of peculiar signs appearing, like a paleolithic takeaway menu. It would probably make fascinating reading if only (a) we were at all interested in stones, (b) the developing text didn’t look suspiciously like an academic paper and (c) we had ever learned to read.

Lance Corporal Knowall heroically advances to the stone and gives it a hefty kick.

“That there stone’s been buried in this crevasse for tharsands of years,” he concludes, emphatically.

Sergeant Watson inspects the stone, and then the Lance Corporal, treating them both with the same enthusiastic disinterest.

“How on earth can you tell, Knowall?”

“Sedimentary, my dear Watson.”

We bury him under the stone, and spying the Snowlord’s peak in the vague distance, head west.

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*A real bird, actually. No, it really is. Go on, Google it.

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As part of my Napoleon in Egypt project I’m planning on skirmish games and maybe even some form of RPG (Napoleonic D&D?), because I’m interested in a bit more than just the military aspects of Napoleon’s invasion, and I’m also keen on slightly off-the-wall, even exotic, elements for games. So I’m finding models to use as Napoleon’s “savants” – scholars, engineers, scientists and artists whom Napoleon brought with him to investigate what Europeans tended to think of as “the mysterious east”. The Rosetta stone was one major, if accidental, discovery of the expedition so the stone’s importance could make it the focus of several possible scenarios.

I carved the model from blue insulation foam, in rough imitation of the original, but I didn’t try to reproduce any hieroglyphs or cuneiform, just made random graphic scratches in the surface. If you’ve every seen the original in the British Museum you’ll know that mine is overscaled, and a bit greyer than the original. I made it this way partly because the modelling was easier, and partly to give me a model which might plausibly be used in other game settings, such as Frostgrave.

The stone was discovered in 1799 whilst excavating a fort at Rosetta. The figure I’ve painted alongside might be one of the savants, or he might be Pierre-François Bouchard, who made the discovery. I’ve used a model from Perry Miniature’s ambulance set, which I take to be Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, He'll revert to that role when I've managed to paint up his ambulance-camels.

I’m not sure what might be a reasonable score for the stone. It’s about 1.5”x 1” x 0.5”. In terrain cubes, this would be approx 1/14^th of a point, I think, so perhaps you can be generous and round that up to 1 point?

Scoring: 1 28mm fig 5pts, stone 1 pt, Cooke’s Crevasse 30 pts = 36 pts total.

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By Paul:
I'm going to have to defer to our resident Geologist to verify the classification of the rock in question.

The Rosetta stone was such a critical component to unlocking the Egyptian language that your homage to it will be awarded 2 points (and yes I have seen it in fact). Unfortunately, the French Expedition's use of the Sphynx's nose for target practice then reduces that back down to 1 point - so a total of 36 points it is!