From DallasE: Legionaries of Legio XIII Gemina (76 points)

Having painted a load of hairy Germanic tribesmen so far I thought I'd change gears for a bit and work on some Romans. For this week's entry I've completed a unit of 15 Legionaries of Legio XIII Gemina.

The models are a mix of monopose metal Foundry and Warlord Games figures, with a couple Warlord Games plastics thrown in. Fortunately the plastic Legionaries mix in really well with the much older Foundry sculpts. 

The command group are all Warlord metals. Sorry about the lion on the vexillum, I really wasn't feeling it this morning and it kind of looks that way. But it's a lion, I swear. What I do really like is the metal mask worn by the standard bearer. Pretty freaky.

The shield decals are water transfers from Warlord Games. I'm really impressed at how well they came out. They make my previous handpainted shields on the veterans look pretty sad. But these are easy to apply, fit well (even on the old metal Foundry shields!) and look the business.  

I picked Legio XIII as it was one of the longest serving Legions (having been levied by Julius Caesar in 57 BC and hanging around till the 5th century CE), it served in Germany after the disaster at the Teutoburger Wald, and 13 is my number on my beer league hockey team, the Kyle Wellwoods. So there.
 

The legion gained their cognomen "Gemina" (twin) after being reinforced with veterans from other legions following Actium and the end of the Civil War against Mark Antony.

You can hardly tell the WG plastic figure (front centre) from the metal Foundry ones!

I think they look pretty good and being individually based, can be used for skirmish games as well as ranked up for WAB. I'll stick 'em up in the cabinet and call these done.

Scoring:

15x 28mm foot = 75 points

Till next time, enjoy the (long, for some) weekend!

By Paul the Stand-In Minion: 

Good stuff! I've been enjoying your tribesman, so I'm delighted to see some of Rome's finest advance proudly off your painting table.  Noting my own current Caesarian Army project, I'm particularly thrilled that your lads hail from a Legion raised by him - perhaps your Centurion was a new recruit in mine force :-) And speaking of Teutoburger Wald, I just finished listening to Harry Sidebottom's "Give me Back my Legions" which is worth a look too.  The decals look good, but never second guess your older hand painted ones! And take bonus denarii for your hand painted vexillum too! Ave!

From DallasE: Tolkien and Hairy Germans in the Fantasy Stack (45 points)

Hi everyone. Trying to sneak a second submission in today, starting with some command  (C, S, M as we used to say) for my Germanic tribesmen. These are resin models from Warlord Games.

These dudes actually mix quite well with my Foundry models, after I cut off the integral bases. The models' feet are stuck straight down to the bases.

These guys seem to be quite fond of their severed heads, no??

Not to be outdone, the carynx-blower has a head hanging off his belt too. Nice models. 

Over to the Fantasy stack now with a couple of ancient Citadel models from their 1980s Lord of the Rings range. 

This is Boromir, from the ME21 "Boromir of Gondor" blister. Nice model in the old chunky Citadel style.

The other one is Aragorn, from the BME1 "Fellowship of the Ring" boxed set. Also a nice model but slightly gangly compared to Boromir.

Here's the whole crew from Citadel, with Aragorn and Boromir done that completes my old-school Citadel LotR collection. Good to have 'em done.

So on to the scoring:

5x 28mm foot                        25 points

Fantasy Stack                        20 points

Total                                        45 points

Thanks for lookin' and see you next week!

Looking good there. Love the small freehand on the Germanic there. Having painted some of those in previous challenges, I can say I might need to update my painting now after seeing yours :D

45 more points for you here!

Kyle

From DallasE - Hairy Horsemen in the History Stack (140 pts)

Hi all, back again with some more Germanic tribesmen for my new project. The models are again from Wargames Foundry.

There are twelve of these chaps in the unit and they came with command as well! Above we see the leader (in looted Roman kit), standard bearer, and horn blower.

 

The rest of the bunch are in a variety of poses. I hand-painted the shields using ideas found on the Internet. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there's no real primary sources of shield designs as none have survived in a condition that would indicate how they were painted.

Foundry also supplied a bunch of wicker shields, which are a real cheat because you just paint them... like wicker :-)

Germanic tribesmen apparently wore very little armour and almost none wore helmets. However the cavalry were supposed to be upper-class kind of peasants so may have been a bit better equipped. Their horses were slow and awful though, at least according to Tacitus and Caesar.

A shot just to prove I painted the back ends of the models too.

These were actually a real faff to assemble as the riders really didn't want to stick to the horses' backs. A little JB Weld (two-part epoxy) set that right though.

Points tally:

12x 28mm cavalry        120 pts

History stack bonus        20 pts

Total                            140 pts

Next up I have another unit of Germanic tribesmen infantry (the bases arrived, yay!) or maybe something completely different. I'll get back to you on that.

Dallas
 

Great job Dallas on more Ancients here! And I love seeing the freehand on the shields there. Never easy but always adds so much to the models. 140 PTS for you then!

Kyle

From DallasE - 28mm Ancient Germans! (Overdue and Returns - 110 points)

Hello again Challengers! For my second Challenge entry I'm submitting more progress on my new Early Imperial Romans/Ancient Germans project. How does this make it into "Overdue and Returns" if it's a new project? Well, because these particular models have been sitting unpainted in a Plano case for longer than I can remember! Maybe 10 years...? They are Wargames Foundry Germans of course... but there's more to the story...  

When I first moved to Winnipeg in 1999 and began tabletop historical wargaming in earnest, I was an avid user of websites like Bartertown and TMP. Eager to get into the Imperial Roman period, I spotted a deal on two painted armies offered by a seller - Early Imperial Romans and Ancient Germans. Of course, being the Internet of the '90s, pictures of stuff for sale were hard to come by, so I asked the seller who had made the figures. "Foundry" was the answer so I pulled the trigger and bought the lot. What arrived, though, was decidedly not made by Foundry... maybe "a" foundry, but definitely not Wargames Foundry. So I tuned up the paint the best I could with washes and highlights, we had a game or two of WAB with them, and I moved them on. But I always wanted to have nice armies of Romans and ancient Germans in 28mm.  

Fast forward 25 years or so and here we are! As I said these Germans were obtained in a trade I think and have been sitting in a box for 10 years or more. So it was time to get them painted and get another new insane project further down the road to completion (!)

Unfortunately my models didn't have shields, but these were purchased from Warlord Games along with decals, which (amazingly) fit the metal shields quite well!

(The two models at right were painted pre-Challenge as a test of my "flesh method" so aren't counted in the total). I think these Germans turned out OK and are certainly a great improvement over the lumpen proles (Minifigs maybe?) that I'd bought back in the day.

So I'll count points for this lot as follows:

18 28mm Germans                90 points

Overdue and returns room     20 points

Total                                     110 points 

Here's the project progress so far! Unfortunately there will be a slight delay in resumption as I've run out of 20mm square bases but more are on the way. Ave Imperator!

_____________________________

Bartertown. Wow. Now, that takes me back - I'm sure I have some figures in my collection that originated from that much-loved site (and I'm sure a few of them are of the same dubious provenance as your first 'Foundry' lot).

Fabulous work on these hirsute Germans, Dallas! You 'flesh method' looks ace and I particularly like the striped and chequed trews of some of the heroes. I look forward to seeing more on this project over the next few months. Well done! 

- Curt

From GregB - Byzantine Varangian Guard - 62 Points

Varangian Guards prepare to take to the field in the name of the Emperor of Byzantium!

After a slew of Space Marines, we turn to a completely different ongoing project - my 28mm Byzantines. Here we have a unit of Varangian Guard, the elite mercenary guards of the Byzantine Emperors. These are 28mm metal figures from Gripping Beast, with flag and shield decals from LBMS.

Some fine swordsmen, present and correct!

Darrel H has already covered the Varangians earlier in the Challenge - and done a totally amazing, lights-out job on the paint work, holy cow - go check it out now if you missed it - but this particular unit is a fun one to have on hand in my collection, and I have been waiting for a couple years to paint some up, focused on other, more basic units to build and paint first.

I love the character of these sculpts. Don't the poses make you flinch, just a bit? Here comes a two-handed axe!!

And I did not even expect to be painting any Byzantines during this edition of the Challenge...but you know what they say about plans...anyway, I am planning a visit to Winnipeg in a couple of weeks, and as part of that, planning a game with the guys. Dallas and I were texting, mulling possible options for a game, and we settled on having my Byzantines finally take to the gaming table to battle his Normans. Great! And, he casually asked "if I had any Varangians painted"?

"Clear out for the wind up!"

So naturally I tore into my pile of shame, dug these figures out, and got cracking on them! In response, Dallas found some unpainted Normans in his pile, and before you know it, a mini-Challenge-within-a-Challenge was born...and here is my part of it! This unit is modest in size, but the Varangians hit hard, and this will do just fine for a game of Warhammer Ancient Battles. 

Banner bearer.

Tried to make the commander's outfit a touch fancier...

Gripping Beast metal figures are so strange...they look odd when they come out of the blister...strange proportions...but when you start painting them, I find they have so much character, and I just love them. While I could do without the separate weapons for the figures, I overall really, really loved painting these...except, of course, for the shields. 

Fighting now, drinking later!

The shields have LBMS transfers on them - no way I could hope to freehand designs like that - but wow, are they ever a massive, massive pain in the @ss to work with. I wish these were available as waterslide transfers...the peel-stick-water system these things use is fiddly as f*ck, and the results can be pretty uneven, and you will still need to paint the edges - and do so carefully. Even a liberal dose of Mircosol only does so much...anyway, I got there in the end, but I continue to wish for waterslide transfers for shields...

"Charge - and leave some room for the axes!"

Anyway, these 12 fellows in 28mm will be good for another 60 points. They are present and correct, and ready to swing swords and axes at some Normans! Can't wait to get these out on the table in a couple weeks time, while visiting my friends in Winnipeg!

Wait, those aren't Space Marines, what gives? Ah well, they look fantastic anyway, hopefully they will perform well against Dallas' Normans. I have thrown in a couple of bonus points for the effort you made with the shields, that sounds like a right pain in the posterior.

From Micheal D -- 28 Burgundian Pike (145 Points)

This time last year I was finishing up a Burgundian Ordinance army for use in Warhammer Ancient Battles. (Yes, I still play WAB!) I had been inspired for years by the work over at Je Lay Emprins and the excellent Perry minis for the range. So, I painted up some pike, longbow, knights and retainers and took them off to Cold Wars where they performed up to their historical reputation as perhaps the most overpaid/under performing army in European history. This past November I brought pretty much same army to Fall In where they fared equally badly. As anybody who runs a pike army on the tabletop will tell you, when it comes to tweaking your list the answer is always "Needs More Pike" So I cut back on the fancy Gendarmes, got rid of back rank longbow men, and put the points into more bigger blocks of pointed sticks. So here are the new recruits.

So there are a total of 28 figures here for 140 points. 

ByronM: Thanks for the awesome entry Micheal, and yes I agree, "I feel the need, the need for more Pike" <said in a Christopher Walken voice>.  No matter how they perform on the table, these figs look good on the table and that is far more important!  There is nothing worse than wargaming with unpainted or poorly painted figures, you miss at least 80% of the joy of the game! These are lovely looking pikemen, and I like the guys done in quarters, they look great.  

As for WAB, it's a great little system, certainly better than were GW has been going lately!  It has all the best parts of Warhammer, and drops all the worst bits (crazy insane heroes that are better than whole units, and magic that destroys whole units for 1/10th the units cost), I call that pure win, and is the reason there are large groups that still play it.

I would have liked to hear a bit about the banners though, where are they from and could we get a side shot? Be nice to see them.  I may have even been able to grant a few bonus points, but I have no idea if you made them or bought them, or anything, which is a shame, as they look good from what I can see...

EDITED: Home made banners (and nice ones at that) give you a bonus 5 points.