From NoelW: Challenge Island, the Sequel: It’s madness, I tell you! Absolute madness! (60 points)

Well, here we are in the throne-cave, in the heart of the Snowlord’s Mountain vastness, a cavern awash from stem to stern with tides of gold: golden coins, gold plates and gold cups and gold saucers, gold teeth (some of them still attached to their owners), statues of gold, pillars of gold, gold canvasses covered in golden paint, frogs of gold, mould of gold, untold gold – maybe you get the idea. The Snowlord has a hoard.

In my haste to show him how much I revere the great and Snow-bedecked Lord (it must be snow, surely, that flecks his shoulders) I trip over a gold fish, and fall prostrate before him (I’ve had prostrate trouble for quite a while, actually).

“No need for grovelling,” he says, “but always nice to see it.”

Hastily I try to stem the Snowlord’s embarrassment by stashing the fish in my codpiece, but it wriggles down the leg of my hose and escapes through the hole in my sock.

“Oh mighty Lord of snowballs and Master of ice cubes, oh beneficent and most generous –"

“Haven’t you left yet?”

“Not entirely, no.”

“I thought you’d be halfway across the seven seas by now. Sea three and a half at least..”

“No, oh most helpful, and did I mention 'generous', Lord –“

“Look, cut out the grovelling, will you? Save it for the Visitors’ Book on your way out. Next!”

“No – but – inexecrable lord – there was – ahem – mention of treasure…”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but have I not already bestowed upon you one of my fiercest rays of sunshine, the mighty Andbhag (see here:)

and his even mightlier cuddly warhound the cute little warpoodle Tiddles (likewise:) 

Yet you ask more of my ineffable bounty?” *

“Well, it seems to me in many ways, quite effable,” I venture, “We were simply wondering if we could help recycle any of this surplus gold that’s getting in your way.”

“Do you know what I really fancy?” said the SnowLord, “Can you guess? What, do you think, might go well with a little fava beans and a nice chianti?”

“Anyway, as I was saying, if you could just let us have a map of the way home….”

“A map? A map? Didn't you record your journey here?”

“Sort of, but my second in command made little sketches all over it of everything  we encountered on the way, and the arrows sort of obscured all the detail, and then Andbhag needed something to clean up after Tiddles, and we’d run out of rags – er –" - I consider the way the Snow Lord is chewing on his club - "the short answer is ‘no’.”

“That’s the short answer, is it? Well, my advice is to go back to the place you last came from – Roundwood’s Tower, wasn't it? Once there, figure out how you got to it, and retrace your steps. Then from the next place, figure out where you came from…”

“I get the idea – but it took us days to get here. To do that whole journey again, that will take ….”

“…you well away from here. Guards!”

Valiantly we decide not to take up any more of the Great Snowman’s precious time. Luckily we're escorted off the premises by on honour guard of very friendly, red-coated military types who help us find the way out. They seem so amicable, we let them escort us the many miles back to – ah! How well I remember the many, many attractions completely missing from this dark, foreboding Tower!”

I think it's time for a balloon.

“Lady Sarah! Lady Sarah! Any chance of a quick lift? We’ve a champagne bottle, and there may still be something in it…”

(*For readers in the UK, other chocolate bars may be available.)

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I’ve enjoyed the constraints of Challenge Island so much, I decided to double my fun. Having complete the trek to Snowlord Towers, I decided I wanted to repeat the journey in reverse, so that’s what I plan to do if it can be managed in the time that remains.

To make things that bit more interesting, I’m hoping to create a command base or similar small vignette at each location. Some will be tougher than others, though. However, I still plan to finish various forces that are on the stocks, too. I doubt can make all this match up perfectly well, but I’m going to fit things together as much as I can.

So I’m aiming to do the whole island, reversing the route I came by, although there won’t be any points for revisiting locations, so this route is, quite literally, pointless.

As I’m planning a vignette-like base at each location, here’s the first, for alternate history of Napoleon in India:

The mounted general is Hutchinson, from the Perrys’ collection for Egypt, whilst the foot figure really belongs in a later period and probably a different theatre. So I’ve painted his cape, which should properly be blue-grey, as if it was made from local Egyptian white cloth, as worn by many of French officers and troopers in that time. I'm not sure who manufactured this model.

Here are their junior officers:

and the sepoy grenadiers they command:

All Perrys, of course. 

Pointswise, that’s 10 28mm foot and 1 mounted, so 60 points.

From DaveD - Noel returns to knocking em out - lovely vignette pieces there Noel.

and with that the Wednesdays Minion is signing off - i leve you with Martin to bang the rocks together tomorrow

From NoelW: Childe Noel to the Dark Tower came: Roundwood’s Tower (105 points)

 (I want to make it clear that “Childe” in the title is used in the medieval sense of a young man of noble birth who has not yet become a knight, and nothing to do with the mental age of someone who spends most of his days painting little toys and thinking up puns.)

We sail towards the Dark Tower of Roundwood, which looms through the clouds beckoning, spiky and ominous. The final stage of our journey, the last stepping stone at the foot of the Snowlord’s Peak, the one remaining deathly challenge between us and infinite treasures, it leers against the sky like Sauron’s bad tooth. I gaze at the oncoming monolith with a sense of awe. For my companions it's more like a sense of “or”:

“We could land there, I suppose. Or we could simply give up and go home.”

“Or we could start all over again. It’s been such fun.”

“Or we could abandon all hope of treasure and join a nunnery.”

“Don’t you mean ‘monastery?”

“Which do you think would be most fun?”

I must admit, watching the sky fill with the tower's looming ominosity, part of me has some sympathy for the trembling knees and knotting intestines of my loyal companions. But I’m made of sterner stuff, for in the Land of Make-Believe the man with an imaginary friend is king.

As a flock of rooks – I’m pretty sure that’s what they are – scatter before the balloon, I make one of the rousing speeches I’m so famous for:

“Don’t look now, but those birds are an omen which tells me this balloon will carrie us out of misery. It may be near dark, but this is the end of our journey: the ring of that tower is our final destination. We may not have arrived here as soon as we hoped, but now, 28 days later, this descent will bring us all we deserve. This is it!”(*)

For some reason, my companions find something disturbing in my words. But it’s too late to turn back now. As the dark of creeping night seeps across the tower, the balloon sets us down, and with shadowy rooks circling us and stone trembling beneath our feet we clamber hesitantly onto the roof, waving our goodbyes to the good Lady Sarah (who seems quite keen to be on her way, for some reason. Perhaps she’s run out of champagne).

On the distant horizon, outlined in the blood-red sunset, at last is our long-sought goal, the Peak of the Snow-Lord.

Dum Dum Dah!!!

(*Just in case when reading this para you were wondering whether they've recently upped my medication - there are thirteen horror film titles here. Can you spot them all?)

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A favourite project which I keep coming back to is Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. In 1799, following the loss of his supporting fleet at the Battle of the Nile and his failure to extend the invasion into Syria, Napoleon abandoned his army to return to France. My imaginary variation on history has Napoleon succeeding in Syria and, following in Alexander the Great’s footsteps, as Napoleon fantasised, eventually reaching India. This allows his armies to fight various nations and tribes along the way: Turks, Persians, Arabs, Afghans and so on, eventually to meet Wellington somewhere in the Punjab.

So here are a few of the figures I’m adding to this campaign. There will be more.

2 French Generals, Rampon and Damas

a spattering of sepoys, from the Bombay contingent that came to Egypt as part of the British 1801 effort to oust the French

An Ottoman character group, Apparently Janissary regiments treated their soup tureen and spoon with reverence similar to that European regiments reserved for their colours.

Points: 2 cavalry: 20pts, 11 foot: 55, Roundwood's Tower: 30 points: Total : 105

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What a great collection of figures here Noel!  All of the figures look top notch, but the Janissary soup pot has such great character that it has to be an instant favourite!  I don't know about everyone else, but for me one of the biggest joys of the challenge each year is seeing such different, cool, and odd ball miniatures such as this one. 

- ByronM