From IainW - Lance Spezzate 28mm 80 points

Just back from a two week trip to Morocco, that wasn't planned before the start of the challenge so Ive missed commenting and posting  Im afraid but at least Id managed to hit my target before I left , there were a couple of units that still needed some work, so this is the first one. Not that long ago I hosted and played a couple of great Italian wars games, Fornova and Agnadello, I resolved that I needed more Italian pike and a unit is primed, some way down the painting queue and also some heavy cavalry that were more Italian and less gendarme like. Now, when I say recently, a quick look at the blog reveals it was April 2024, so not too bad, in the meantime I was gifted a pile of second hand assembled and black primed mounted plastic perry later knights by Des who realised that there weren't that many cavalry in the war of the roses, I gratefully accepted them, I had to add swords to them and swap a few heads but all good and mixed in was some metal Perry command, so with a little clean up, swords, additional priming and with the addition of a few more riders I now had 32 mounted later knights, so four units.

I have then  the first of my lance spezzate, professional heavy cavalry employed by the Venetian state, mounted on 45mm x 60mm bases from warbases and as usual eight to a unit, I've gone for some in darker armour, which seems correct, judging by contemporary art and helps to break up all that shiny steel colour, less elaborate than full on gendarmes but still later knight heavy cavalry, with flags from Petes flags, lovely things in their own right!

 Three more of these units and a couple of archer cavalry (another kind of heavy cavalry)

8 x 10 gives me 80 points

Hopefully one more post!

All the best 

Iain

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Great to have you back with us for the final push to the finish, Iain! Wow, what a wonderful gift of knights you received. Your modifications, priming and painting have really done them proud as they look fantastic in all their varied livery and coloured lances (and as you say, those banners by Pete's Flags are the chef's kiss). Well done!

- Curt

IainW 28mm - Late Roman shieldwall unit (50 points)

 Last Late Roman shieldwall unit, like the other units second hand black tree design figures, nice to paint, although being second hand I now realise upon painting them that there are a couple of later dark age types with longer hair, no belt and a slightly different dress, but with the same shield, spangleheim helmet, mail and spear I think theyll do, no doubt Goths press ganged . Speaking of the hand painted shield, I only realised it was a cavalry design after Id painted it,whoops!

Like the other infantry units,all individualy mounted on 1p pieces and sabot based in a warbases 120mm mdf base, still got to finish an archer unit then this little army is complete.

10  x 5 gives me 50 points

Last post, I'd like to thank Greg , Curt and all the team, its been great fun as always and I forgot to mention the charity I contributed to in December is for Refugees which are no doubt even busier in the eastern Mediterranean now.

All the best 

Iain

From Millsy:

Good to see another Late Roman post in this Challenge. Seeing your work and that of others like JohnS has kept the fire alive for my own efforts, so thanks for that.

You've done a smashing job on these, particularly the lorica sclamata which I have a hankering to add some of myself. I'm tempted by the BTD stuff and might dip my toe in there. If they come out as well as yours have it'll be worth the effort.

50 more points racked up. Great choice of charity too BTW. Nice one mate.

Cheers,
Millsy

From TeemuL: Bifröst civilians (25 points)

I'm not sure what I can finish this week, since I'm away the whole weekend on a basic scout wilderness training (loosely translated) and if I manage to finish minis and take photos, I write the text beforehand and photos later and if I don't, then I can happilly just leave the finished entry as ready and this one as draft. Almost like free fire period, but too soon. And while I remember, thank you Sander for minioning our Saturday crew, I'd hoped to see more of your output, but sometimes life is what it is. Last minute edit, I have managed to finish these, but I still haven't packed for the weekend... The choices we make.

Some years ago I bought this set from Warbases, a bunch of simple civilian minis originally for my son, who disliked the overly detailed GW minis I offered him to paint, but then his interest shifted and these sat for some time. AHPC is good opportunity to paint some fine metal minis and give a nod to a long time sponsor of the challenge. Bifröst is original miniature range by Warbases, created based on the needs of the owners, if I understood correctly. Similar to Perry Miniatures, I guess, nice to have an own company to make miniatures if you miniatures. :) While the range is quite wide, this set is quite general and usable on many games, worlds, battlefields, eras and so. Very nice from gamer point of view, a bit problematic from a squirrel point of view (see later).

I based these on small Renedra bases, which come in some of the Perry boxes. I like these smaller bases, they don't take too much space, but are large enough to keep miniatures standing. And as these are civilians, it is nice that they don't take too much table space. I have in the past used 25mm bases, so these are much smaller and "a new idea" to me. There's some sand to hide the metal base, brown wash and highlight and some tufts. I have not painted the eyes, at the moment I believe that with my skills the minis look better without the eyes, at least on models this style.

Characterful but rather simple minis, there are several layers of clothes on some, but still quite easy. I painted the guy with a sack as a jester even though he is missing the bells, but otherwise he looks like one. On the website he is described something as a "shady character", but naturally I painted first, read second. I gave him (and others) quite dull, muted colours, they are civilians - not brightly coloured soldiers or nobles. Jester is clearly not part of the royal entourage - at least yet, may be when he gets couple of coins and can buy brighter clothes.

The farmer should have a shovel, but my version came like this. And again, I checked the website after painting, so didn't realize that. Now he is just holding a stick, which I guess is good enough to poke the ground. The plague doctor wears all black and silver mask, the holy and pure material most likely protecting him from the disease.

Two ladies have a bit more colour, but not much. One is selling frest meat (still with fur or feathers) and another one is just looking important. These are mainly painted with just a basecoat and a generous wash - I only used brown, green, blue and purple washes using them on many different colour. The black robe being exception, black cloak is highlighted with couple of shades of grey. I bought some new grey paints recently and they seem to be too light when used straight from the pot. I need to do some mixing or buy a darker grey. It's a pity that paint pots get empty or dried.

I'm not sure if these count as a squirrel, since I have already painted "28mm General Fantasy" squirrel and these are not that much different. But Squirrelmaster General has been quite generous, so I'll try and be happy with his rulings. Scoring wise this is easy 25 points for 5 minis, no skulls, but couple of females for Sarah.

 

 

 Teemu, this is a brilliant set of NPC civilians to be used with any and all RPG like games and as table dressing. Your painting really enhances these venerable sculpts so thanks heap for sharing these with us.

 

Cheers Sander  

From DaveD - 1 Tachanka, 2 Tachanka (100 points)

This week sees some more mobile firepower in the form of Tachankas . On the WW1 eastern front , RCW and in the Back of Beyond the roads are often poor quality or virtually non existent. Likewise internal combustion vehicles are likely to have poor maintenance a lack of spares or just fuel . Just the thing to get around these issues of course is a horse drawn carriage - and let’s stick a Maxim on it . High speed manoeuvrability and Dakka Dakka . What’s not to like.

3 would of course be a better number , but 2 will do for now! 

28mm options seem fairly limited or overly expensive. Warbases have filled a nice little niche , offering the Tachanka as an MDF kit for £5  , then crew and horse as seperate items . I am not of fan of the Warbases horses so I have used Pendraken 28mm draft horses , which are nicely proportioned and have correct horse furniture . (link -draught-horses-red-h02) The warbases crew figures are little stumpy , but they work well enough on the carriages.

The MDF kit for the  carriage is neatly designed and goes together well enough in a short time . For the crew I had to take a file and knife to them to scrape off the shoulder boards as my Bolos don’t have those . 

These should provide my cavalry force with some decent firepower 

A bit of extra work was done to make some reins from garden twisty wire about 300mm folded in half this is fed  through a hole drilled  through the drivers hand and then the loose end attached with solder to the bridle at each side the the middle horse .The traces from the horse to the carriage are made from thin black card . I had an interesting delve into how the horse furniture and attachment were generally done , and most seemed to have leather rather than rope or chain that I could see so the black card looks to have done a decent job replicating it . 

My storage trays box for these is now completely full . So I guess that’s it for now . I do have a larger boat to complete , but not sure that will be this side of challenge end 

My Bolos army has 3 large battles coming up in our ongoing campaign, so wish em luck.

Points 

2 x 28 vehicles = 40

6 x 28mm crew = 30

6 x 28mm horses =30 

2 guns = 20 

***

More tremendous hobby engineering here Dave, and the subject is one of those bits of kit that are icnonic for a given period. You see these, and you immediately think "Russian Civil War". Well done. Also a nice touch that you touch the time to remove the shoulder boards from the crews, as of course those symbols of Imperialist oppression are just a no-go in the fight for the brave new future. 

I am sure they will look amazing in your approach game - but the only fate I will ever wish on Bolsheviks is to be mowed down in droves :)

A slight adjustment to the points calculation, as the guns and vehicles are together on this complicated little assemblage, but you still end up with a tidy 100 points - and a fitting cap to this incredible project!

GregB 

From LeeH: Abandoned peasant wagons - 40 pts

I’ve been a bit remiss in submissions the last few weeks, and it's entirely my own fault…well, not entirely, but I am partially culpable. The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy, both in work and around the games table, pushing painting into last place. Add to that a winter cold that just won’t give up, and you have my rather poor excuse for not finishing anything for a few weeks. I now have several jobs on the painting table, but only these Carts and Wagons got finished in time for today. 

These are all MDF and produced by Warbases. I plan on using them as abandoned wagons or even makeshift barriaciads which is why I have not put them on terrain bases as I have done with other models. These are for use with the 1812 Retreat from Moscow stuff I have been working on, but I guess there's no reason they couldn't also feature in 1939/40... a cart is a cart at the end of the day, and the design hadn't fundamentally changed that much in the intervening century

More Winter War Soviets are on the way for next week. Their 90% done, but waiting for bases and varnishes to dry means I won’t get them finished, and I don’t want to rush and ruin them.   

As for scoring, technically these are 28mm Vehicles, but I think it's a bit cheeky claiming 20pts each for these. Is a vehicle still a vehicle without a power source (in this case, a horse)?? So I think I'll leave the scoring for the umpire to adjudicate on this one! 🤣

From DaveD . Sorry to hear the winter bugs are still at you . You have a hobby with so many distractions , it’s a hard life 😆. But good to see some output . The warbases carts are nice simple little pieces , so I will give ya 40 altogether. Pretty sure Rays lads will be nicking these for for firewood ? Will you do a burning one ?😆

From RobertT: 28mm Wars of the Roses 20 figures (104 points)

Perry plastics have a lot to answer for!  I think I had my first bash at making and painting their Wars of the Roses figures when they first came out.  Inspiration and dread combined in equal measure.  I have been gradually reducing my pile of plastic with various degrees of success.  AndrewG's Northampton Project provided the inspiration for another attempt.  I am having a go at painting the livery for the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford.  The attempts are not shown here!  One day I will get to Andrew's level.

In the mean time here are some of their well willers / henchmen.  I live a couple of miles away from the village of Paston in Norfolk and have some individually based figures for the various fights Sir John Paston and his wife got themselves into.  His retinue of 10 figures shown with the yellow / white banner is probably the maximum he could afford.  His livery of Yellow and White is interesting as it breaks the most basic rule of heraldry that there should only be one "metal", gold / yellow or silver / white but not both.

The Duke of Norfolk wanted some of the properties that Sir John had "inherited" from Sir John Falstaff so he sent his knights to get them.  In this case I have chosen Sir Thomas Waldegrave with his red / white livery.  I have tried to give the knights brighter steel armour than the rank and file but I am not sure that my photography will pick this out.

The flags are from Freezywater 25mm scale but perfect for 28mm.

They are based on 3mm MDF from Warbases as I find that easier to pick up with 60mm frontage and 50mm deep.  The basing material is a huge bag of crushed coral I got when I was 16 (over 40 years ago now) to do some Wake Island games with my Airfix Marines vs Japanese.  This coral is stuck down with a mixture of brown paint, matt medium and water.  Matt medium works as well as PVA but doesn't shrink or warp. Then grass is stuck on.

The standard bearers are using pike arms from the Perry mercenary set and I had to trim down the pole.  I have just spotted that the spear point on Sir John Paston's flag is not straight.  I am not going to re-do it though.

I am still working on my photography and there is still too much shadow.  Hopefully next year it will be better. 

The grand idea is to be able to play with Never Mind the Billhooks or something like that.  The number of figures on a base doesn't actually matter in my mind as casualties can be counted next to the unit.

By my reckoning that is 20 blokes at 5 points each = 100 points. 

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Sylvain: You beautifully combine history and painting in your post. Your recipe for making bases will also come handy to many challengers, I'm sure. I'm going to add an extra 4 points for the flags. Génial!

From MartinC Fat pTony Not a Typo (200pts)

 My twin themes of Napoleonic Bavarians and Blood Bowl continues

We use Valour and Fortitude to fight Napoleonic and ACW battles. The rules prefer you to have limbers on the table, but they are big so we have moved to 2 horse limbers

3 Bavarian ones, the limbers are warbases and the horses Pendraken

And 3 Russian ones

Not feeling very verbose today so on to the blood bowl stuff. Boxed set comes with 2 teams, these are the Tomb Kings. Like all undead teams they are ok at tackling and rubbish at everything else

This is a crappy picture

My Mexican undead team is short of good players, they lost badly today, with most getting injured at least once. So they needed a mummy, but they are Mexicans and none Egyptian mummies are hard to find. I picked up this one on Etsy

He is quite chubby, and will be name Fat pTony

Finally a wraith star player, she can't have the ball and is there to spook out the opposition

She is named Gretchen Walter

Scores on the doors

16x28mm blood bowl players = 80pts

6x 2 horse limbers ( 5 per horse and 10 for the limber) = 120pts

Total = 200pts

Nice work here Martin.  I love to see limbers on table, even if I seldom represent them myself.  Find looking team you have, and I agree with the simplified teams.  yet another Blood Bowl team, what's your team count up to now?  I can't see enough of the Tomb King players, but I like Fat pTony.  I don't know what effect Gretchen will have on your opponents, but she scares me plenty!  I agree with your nose counting, so 200 it is.

From PaulSS: Sir Henry de Hastings - 70pts

The yuk thug

This week I've not been so productive as we have been re-modelling the hobby room, but I have managed to scrape enough together for a post.

First up, Sir Henry de Hastings supporter of Simon de Montfort in the Second Barons' War. Sir Henry commanded the Londoners at The Battle of Lewes, so I have depicted him on foot with a bannerman.

The figures are from the Wargames Atlantic Foot Knights set, while the standard is from Footsore.

While I was splashing on the yellow and red, I added a few more Serjeants to the collection, again all from the Wargames Atlantic range.

This little vignette is of a Medieval equivalent of a food truck, the cook is a 3D print from Reconquer Designs, while the oven, cooking fire, stool and sack are from the Victrix Market set.

The cobblestones are from Wills Scenics and the base is a vehicle base from Warbases.

More 3D printing with a couple of boats from TCWminiatures3D.

A recent refight of the Battle of Rochester highlighted that we cannot have enough boats, so I added these to a recent order to check them out. Great pieces for the price!

The sacks are from the Victrix Market set while the chest is from TT Combat. 

The last few pieces are "shot" markets for our Midgard games, the Wargames Atlantic Peasant Levy frame contains these arrows that are useful for making the markers.

Six 28mm figures and a couple of 28mm vehicles will add 70pts to the total this week.

From DaveD .Paul , I do like the red/yellow colour combo - it works well .The vignette pieces add some real character and those boats do indeed look the business .70 pts it is .