From AndrewS: 20mm Nubian Infantry (200 points)

In an effort not to let Kent rest on his heels Andrew comes in with this great entry featuring Nubian infantry for his Hail Caesar collection.

From Andrew:

These were given to me as part of my Christmas Present from my boys. This year I want to build Several biblical period armies for myself and KevH to play with Hail Caesar. I decided to start with the Nubians as a long time adversary of Egypt, they were top of my wish list this year.

These 48 figures are all Hat 1/72 Nubian Infantry, and these have been split up to make three light infantry warbands. I have had do some conversion work to a few of the figures as the box sets lack enough spear/javelin-men in the boxes. A relatively straightforward task of taking a sharp scalpel and removing the clubs before drilling the hands and replacing with a blunted dressmakers pins. These 3 warbands took 8 hours to paint from scratch and I spent another 2 hours on the bases. 

I have kept the painting too a base colour and highlight over the primer. At this scale two colours can often be more effective than full 3 colour work and certainly at gaming distance there is no significant difference.

These 3 units will form part of the 1st Division so I have colour coded the loin protectors, in this case they are all green, however each unit has its own pattern, one with plain another with a stripe and the third with a series of dots so as to be able to distinguish them apart.

I have also given each units shields a different set of colours, one is plain hide another is brown and cream and the third brown and white as further definition. As with the Skraelings I decided to use the stipple effect to represent the hides, I was quite pleased with the final results. 

The hardest choice too make was for the bases something I do like to have just right as they can make or break the look of any army. With these being a step down from my usual painting style also a little bit of extra work on the bases give a better overall finish to the whole army, also I have been researching and at the time of the conflicts Nubia was a very fertile land, so I did not want to have the bases feel too arid.

So I raided my supply cupboard and mixed a blend of three various coloured flocks, to give a look of sun bleached grassland and a dryer feel as they will be played with on a desert table. I also scattered patches of rocky ground throughout the bases, painting them as bits of sandstone so in brown shades rather than the black and grey usually seen. They were then finished with a few tufts used sparingly.

What a great gift from your boys, Andrew! They look fabulous and I really like the basework you've gone with as the colour-tone works well with the figures.

These three units of Nubian infantry will give Andrew a cool 200 points, with a few points added for his conversion work for the spearmen and the great hide shields. After a little over two weeks into the Challenge he is less than 100 points away from his initial target. Well done Loki!