From IainW: 28mm Napoleonic Austrian artillery and limbers (360 points)

In an effort to balance the Napoleonic arms race in my shed I am happy to present eight Austrian artillery pieces, three horse artillery pieces, two from Eagle miniatures and one from Perry. Two 12lb from Eagle and three Frankenstein cut and shunt home cast 25mm Prince August carriages with some eBay purchased wheels from long ago and plastic/resin barrels.  I needed to lengthen the carriages aa the Austrian pattern is longer than the French. The crews are a couple of Eagle figures and the Perry handlanger team that have been promoted from hauling guns to crewing them! The other team are from Trent miniatures sold as revolutionary Austrian artillery crew, although to my mind they're more like seven years war but they're done and the Austrian artillery branch were notoriously conservative! They're a bit chunkier than Perry but nice figures, the Eagle figures are less good in my opinion and I won't be buying them again as they cost the same as Perry but at least they're done! The four limbers started out in two cases as 25mm British limbers that I ended up with when purchasing a load of bits of artillery for my war of three Kingdoms armies and were knocking around when I needed to have some Austrian limbers but wasn't able to spend any money! With the addition of foamboard box and resin wheels,  a new central pole I had two Austrian limbers, two spare warbase mdf French limbers got the foamboard box treatment and I had four limbers. I just needed some draught horses, three spare renaissance Hinchcliffe draught horses got me started, the other five are home cast Prince August 25mm horses with the addition of Perry plastic horse heads and necks that you get spare with their medieval horse sprues. The riders legs started out as British light dragoons, the torso's French chasseurs with the detail carved away, the arms are from the Austrian cavalry set and the heads are Austrian Landwehr, all Perry. With the addition of string, card, wire and a few spare bits of 3d tack, I  merely had to stand back, pull the handle and cry "give my creation life!" Or not as perhaps I got a little carried away, but they are undeniably Frankenstein limbers!

There's also a spare French draught team that missed it's comrades' post but is here now.

Eight times thirty gives me 240( artillery)

Four times twenty five is     100(limbers)

Plus the draught team            15

Total                                          355

So that goes towards both my total and the Napoleonic duel, next up probably more Napoleonics but I have started some late Romans! 

All the best

 Iain 

Well, limbers seem to be becoming quite a feature this Challenge, Iain, and these Austrian pieces are very much the part. I really like your artillerymen too, they look great in their indeed somewhat obsolescent outfits, and I'm sure they will serve you well. However, I am really taken with your creative  kitbashed/ DIY/converted limbers, and you have certain given them life! I feel that such a valiant effort and great result should be rewarded, so I'm rounding your total up to a nice round 360. Excellent job!

Martijn

From SanderS: A futuristic take on the Maritime Theme (33 points)

 Hoi,

And so we wander into the Maritime Department of the Library. Now I do not have any real blue navy vessels to paint in my collection at the moment, but I did have a few space SHIPs to paint as part of a commission.  So I guess these will have to do, even if it is only a small entry this week while working on a bigger entry for next week. 

The vessels you see here are part of the Space Dreadnought 3000 range made by Kalistra. The game is a very strategic game rather than the usual tatcical games, there's a big part of the game in which you have to deploy your fleets (= nautical term) and supply vessels etc, before fighting out big battles in space. 

The pictures below show a Deep Space station which I have painted (as per instruction of the client) in a generic way so it could belong to either faction or be neutral. 

 Next up are 3 pirate vessels which are rather "organic" in nature (think Tyranid Bio-ships) and I painted them in the colours specified by the client (i.e. green, yellow and white). 

I must confess that I like the space station best and really had fun doing all the lights, glass domes and other bobs and bits. 

Regarding to points I have no idea what to score them, my browser doesn't show the lables for Challenge entries on the righthand side of the main page anymore so I couldn't look them up. But I guess I would go for 10 points for the station and 3 each for the smaller craft so 19 points together. That coupled with 20 bonus points would make 39 more to add to the roster. I guess it's up to our masterful monday minion to decide! 

Cheers Sander

Not really your usual masterful minion, but it's Monday Martijn for you I fear. Those spacecraft look fabulous, Sander! The yellow is great, and the all the little details on the Space Station really pop. Excellent work and your client should be well pleased with them. However, I feel the link with the Maritime section is just a little too tenuous for me. There is very little wet or offshore about these models, in the spirit of the Library section, and placing these on the shelves here would definitely get me a reprimand from the Head Librarian. To soften the blow a bit, however, having checked the dimensions I will score the smaller craft as 10mm vehicles at 6 points each and the space station as a 20mm vehicle at 15 points for a total of 33 points. Well done Sander!

Martijn

P.S. don't forget to mark your draft post "Monday", in case you get to deal with a replacement minion who could easily have overlooked it ;-)

From SimonG: 28mm Roman Legionaries Throwing Pila (Local History, 60 points)

For my next submission I am pleased to offer my first stand of classic Imperial Roman Legionaries -- in this case all in the act of throwing their pila as they approach on the hapless barbarians (or in my case more likely a horde of rebelling jews!).

These are very nice multi-part plastic figures from Victrix with shield transfers from LBMS. Perhaps the only criticism would be that they all seem to have the same face! Clearly consistency in appearance was a big deal for this legion.

The figures have been based on a 120x60 2mm base for Impetus -- these nice big chunky bases really give you room to set up a nice mini diorama. I especially like the fellow that is leaning forward having released his pilum.

I do tend to find that strict uniforms such as these really take a lot of time, to which adding the challenge of doing faces in recessed galea -- still it was a lot of fun and the finished effect paid off well! And I do love a nice manicure (surprisingly hard to photograph hands and feet and bring out the nail details!)

Always keep your nails clean!

For those of you that want to get this look at home I offer the following link 😅💅 !

With last weeks submission we took a lift on Sarah's library cart to the local history section -- which is quite apropos as this group of legionaries have just been posted to Judea after a long cold winter shivering off the Isle of Thanet at Rutupiae (Richborough Roman Fort). I can just about see the fort from the roof of our house here in Sandwich and so I think qualifies well as local history!

Points wise I have eight 28mm figures plus the location bonus for a total of 60 this week. Next week we should encounter the enemies of these Romans for the first time in this challenge!

More excellent painting on these Imperial legionaries, Simon! As their faces look rather alike, I suppose this is a Roman band of brothers? Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quintus, Sextus, Septimus and Decius with their dad? Gotta love those imaginative Roman first names.  Anyway, they look very good together. Speaking about imaginative, the ancient historian in me flinches just a tiny little bit at the Local History connection, as I think we know very little about the actual garrison of Rutupiae (still a very impressive fortress, I have been there and loved it), but hey, who am I to argue with fingernails like these? So, 60 points for you.

Martijn

From PeterB: 2nd Edition Spam and Orks - 145 points

The mission to recreate an experience from the 90's continues. I am abandoning the library stacks for the week and just concentrating on painting some models. Some nice primary colours on some nice repetitive units. So, firstly I present to you 20 Goff Orks from the 2nd Edition starter box set. A close friend donated most of these to the cause. He had a large stash of them hidden in his loft and was quite willing to let me have a bag full. (Handed over to me in a plastic carrier bag at a wargame show last year like some underhand deal.) I am still keeping a good eye on ebay for an old style dreadnought but to no avail (I did used to own one but sold it to buy more Space Marines). So for now I have custom made my own base out of a slotta base and some sprue cut offs and printed out a replica of the original starter set cardboard dread.

Next up are some Terminators I rescued from my collection.(Or for their full title, Space Marines in Tactical Dreadnought Terminator Armour) I have spent a big chunk of this week stripping off multiple layers of paint off old models in my collection instead of painting. In the previous millennium I would paint models as quickly as possible to get them on the table to play, so my painting quality was terrible. I would change my mind on a paint job and just paint over it. So, these models had a good thick layer on them and had lost a lot of detail. These models definitely needed a strip and a repaint.

I had forgotten how skulltatstic all these models are, at final count the sergeant has sixteen skulls on him if you are including the four atop his banner pole. (One either side in the middle and one either end).

Finally some tactical marines and an Apothecary. I had to strip these as well and rebuild them. These metal models had plastic arms glued to them from later kits that I had added to make them match the look of my later plastic Space Marines. Luckily I never throw out any spare bits and so had a good delve through my Space Marine bits box and fitted them out with proper old school backpacks, arms and weapons to give them that old school back cover image of 2nd Edition rulebook look.

Scores on the doors (I will endeavour to actually get it right this week)

20 x 28mm Orks. 20 x 5 = 100

5 x 28mm Terminators 5 x 5 = 25

4 x 28mm Spam 4 x 5 = 20

Total = 145 points

Ha, seeing the word spam in the title I didn't really know what to expect, Peter... and it still took me a minute to discover what you meant by spam! However, needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. There is a special charm to these retro models, and you have certainly done them proud. I must say though, that I admire your determination in getting these ready (again) for the tabletop! A very fine job. I agree with your score total for your entry, earning you another 145 points.

Martijn

From TeemuL: Undead Cavalry (40 points)

No Library topics this week, but I managed to empty one miniature box again, hurah!

These are Death Knights for the RuneWars miniature game. The game itself is (close to) dead now, born in the aftermath of Old World collapsing, but minis are still available here and there, often in discount. I bought the starter box some years ago with my friend to see how it works. We played two games and decided, that the game is ok, we ordered more minis, split the starter and started painting minis. I think it was 2021 and the third game is still in the future... Anyway, with these I have managed to paint all of my Undead minis for the game, so the excuses are few now.

The colour choices are the same as the other units, bright blue rags and purple/violet/pink shields and protective plates. And these being knight, lots of metal and some bone colour here and there. I painted the horses yellow, because why not? These are skeleton warriors from a fantasy world, so I don't have to worry about how the horses look in the real world. And I think yellow horse is not that far away from the reality anyway. Naturally blue and yellow work well together, so no issue with that, either.

I used Citadel Contrasts for the most part except Citadel metallic paint for the metal parts. Quite quick and easy, especially when I'm not aiming for the perfect neatness with this army - originally I opted to go with Contrasts, because I wanted quick results so I could game more and not worry about every mistake. The base is Agrellan Badlands, drybrushed with bone colour.

I should have fixed the base edges, but I do that next... The minis are soft boardgame plastic and I have often had difficulties to paint them, because the paint doesn't stick to them, but I had no issues with these.

The fourth emptied box, this one quite large, so good progress. I guess I should be painting the Space Marine Heroes boxes if I really want a good finished miniature vs box size ratio.

These are 28mm cavalry models, so four of them should give me 40 points. There are 5 skulls per model, their head, weapons and breast plate of the horse, so 20 skulls in total.

Rather small entry, but I'm writing this on Friday, because I'll be travelling the next seven days. Thus the entry of next Monday will be quite small, too...

These are very nice indeed, Teemu! I agree that the colours work very well together, and the yellow horses are a nice if somewhat unusual touch. But, hey, they are undead, who knows what happened, right? Good to hear that you have emptied yet another box! I don't know the game, but it sounds you are ready for your next one. Well done! Have a safe journey, and that's 40 more points in the bag.

Martijn