From ByronM: 28mm Great War Highlanders & Challenge Desperado (80 points)

From Byron:

Here are two more submissions for the challenge, first up is another unit of Canadians for my Great War project.  

This unit is made up of a rifle section of 10 brave men from the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) 16th Battalion along with their leader.  Also included here is the big man that I am using to lead the 16th Battalion in games, a level III big man, who very appropriately can be called the man with the plan, since the model actually has an attack plan on it.

The figures are a mix of the Great War and Musketeer lines as they fit together size wise wonderfully.

It still bugs me that I can not paint the kilts on these guys though as they are almost entirely covered by the kilt aprons that they wore into battle.  I did paint the tiny little patches that peak through as the 3rd of the 4 different regiments that went into making up the 16th Battalion.  This tartan is of theThe 72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and is a dark blue and green tartan with white and red striping through it.  

The Seaforths provided almost 1/2 of the men that went into making up the 16th CEF Battalion, and as members of the 16th were part of almost all of the bloodiest battles in the war, including Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendaele.  This holds true for all of the component parts of the 16th though, and is the reason that I chose to represent them as one of the Battalions in my CEF force.

The second submission included here is the miniature being used as my entrance requirement for the challenge.  It is a Foundry wild west figure that I felt had a very similar look and feel as the crazy old coot played by Edmond O’Brien in the 'Wild Bunch'. 

I know that the figure has an eye patch and that Edmond didn’t in the movie, but I still felt the figure worked and didn’t want to try and carve it off and try to sculpt an eye. I tried to keep the colours close to seen in the movie and from the side where you don’t see the eye patch, I think it looks pretty damn close.

I muddied him up a bit with pigments mixed with alcohol which provides a cool effect in person, but doesn’t show up well in a photo.  I was told about using them wet to get mud effects and they work pretty well, the only issue being that they go on wet and pretty much invisible….  hence using alcohol instead of water so that it dries faster so that you can tell where you applied it about 20 seconds later rather than a minute later.  I figured the alcohol suited the crazy old coot better anyway.

Hope you like him Curt.

Another excellent unit of Highlanders to add to your burgeoning force of Canadians - great job. Just as the others, these are wonderfully painted (very nice work on the Glengarry caps), though I feel your pain for not being able to paint the tartan on the kilts (I had the same reaction when I discovered that they almost always had them covered with the khaki apron). I really like the Jock officer with the iPad. 'How do we break through the Hun trenches? Hmm, I think there's an app for that...'

And Edmond is fabulous with his hoary grey beard and single mad, mad eye (even though the eyepatch is an indulgence he's definitely rockin' it). He will be a great addition to the 'Wild Bunch' that is gathering strength in my display cabinet.

These Highlanders along with 'Edmond The One-Eyed Coot' will give Byron 80 points, enough for him to meet his Challenge target of 1000 points. Well done and Congratulations Byron!! 

Do you have a new target for our last three weeks?