From IannickM: 28mm Biblical Canaanite Spearmen (120 points)

Woah! Another new entrant on the Challenge board - most excellent! Iannick has dug himself out of the Montreal snow and sends in this beautiful unit of Canaanite infantry.

From Iannick:

Well it took a while but here's my first submission; a unit of 24 28mm biblical Canaanite spearmen (circa 1450 BC). The figures are Foundry, they are based on 50mm Litko bases. 

The colour scheme is obviously conjectural, and purists will probably say that my blue and red are too bright. But with all that skin I wanted some vivid colours to create contrasts. I used a very limited palette however of red, pale blue and raw linen to give them a unifying theme, a colour scheme I will repeat with most of my infantry units. Canaanite spearmen were usually semi-trained militia or conscripted peasantry.  

Tribal days tradition dictated that the infantrymen supplied their own equipment. While some rules treat them as open order, others do not. So I went with what I thought looked better, in this case close order. You will notice my lack of desert terrain, it's next on my list of things to buy! 

This is my second Canaanite unit, those interested can have a look at my blog for some pictures of my Canaanite slingers, which were finished last week but were not entered in the competition because they were started before the starting date.

Brilliant work Iannick! I really like the vivid colours you've chosen for this unit - they're really a treat.

This unit of spearmen will give Iannick 120 points in his opening gambit. Lovely stuff and welcome!

From ScottS: 15mm Numidian Light Horsemen (60 points)

Scott from Aberdeen finally has heat in his house and so sends in his first volley of figures to celebrate.

From Scott:

This weekend was my first opportunity to get some painting in this year, so I chose to something I could start and finish in a couple days. 

Four bases of Numidian Horsemen for my putative Punic Wars project. 10mm figures by Pendraken, nice enough, although I would have preferred a third pose. 

In hindsight, I'm wondering if there are too many figures per base, but hopefully they're disorganized enough to look like light cavalry.

Great work Scott. Personally, I like the look of the four figures per base. I think you're right in that their formation should give indication to their battlefield role. 

These 15 horsemen will give Scott 60 points for his entry on the Points Roster. Welcome aboard Scott!

From IanW: 6mm Napoleonic Italian Regiments (110 points)

From Ian:

It seems like these have taken forever to get to the finished stage. Every time I have sat down to paint something has either stopped me or cut the session short.

I have eight Italian Napoleonic Regiments, most for service in the Peninsular where I will be fighting my next battle. These and the others will also see service in Russia. I have as such used the pre 1813 flags, Baccus supply the flags but do not inform you which are which on the sheet but Warflags website helped out here. 

So I present the Velite Regiment that really did not have a standard but I could not resist and use one of the other Guard flags. These seem to have worn bearskins so I used some Baccus Grenadiers for the job.

Two Regiments of Legere, the first and Second in nice bright colours.

Last up five standard Ligne Regiments, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th. All eight regiments are very colourful and the skirmish troops are in green so these should stand out on the table among all the blue of the French.

All told that's 219 infantry figures. I still have about eight foreign regiments of infantry to paint as well as quite a few cavalry, not including any Polish regiments. 

I hope to get the infantry done before the challenge finishes. Next up for the French though will be five Regiments of Hussars and yet more command.

Brilliant job Ian, these really look fabulous all arrayed en masse. 

This formidable force of Italians (is that an oxymoron?) will give Ian 110 points to add to his total. Great work! The race is getting quite tight between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th postions...

From TamsinP: 28mm Anglo-Saxons (131)

From Tamsin:

Well, those naughty Norsemen from my last entry clearly needed someone to take them on and send them running back to their longships. And who better than a Saxon Earl, his standard bearer and 20 of his bloodthirsty thegns?

The figures are 28mm plastics from Gripping Beast. It would have been nice if the sprues had come with Dane-axes, but they didn't. Never mind, at least they had enough spare axe hands for me to use - I ended up lopping off spear hands to give myself for thegns with axes.

I've gone for a slightly more uniform look in terms of clothing for these than I did with the Vikings, and didn't bother with adding on pouches, knives etc this time. Shield designs are once again hand-painted.

The last pic is a close up to show the detail on the rear of the shields.

Lovely work Tamsin. Overall, how did you find the Gripping Beast plastics to work with? I have a couple boxes awaiting my attention and I'm curious to what can expect.

These 22 Saxons will give Tamsin a base of 110 points, but, as her last entry, I'm adding extra points for the hand-painted shields, so 131 total.

From MichaelF: 15mm WWII American Infantry - 'The Big Red One' (48 points)

From Michael:

With the weapons platoon finished I'm almost done with 'The Big Red One" for the challenge. Next are the Mortars and some HMG to finish the project. All the wheels and tracks will come later after I played a couple of games with them and I'm still interested.There is also plenty available to borrow for a game. 

Also painted a spotter team for my off  board artillery. I have some 15mm Artillery in other armies but I always find it very odd to have them on the table so close to the fighting troops so I'll leave them out.

Last week I had holidays and I spent a lot of time painting. I did a bit of the math and I can now officially declare myself MiniSlow. I managed to do 50 figs and I realized it takes me about 35 minutes per 15mm fig from prep work to varnishing. Some of the guys here would easily paint up four armies in a week. I guess I need to skip some steps and paint a bit less detail if I ever want to increase my painting numbers. Or turn off the internet here, that will double the output as well...

Very nice work Michael. You are definitely showing off your fine brushwork and your camera's macro capability with those last few shots! Mad skillz my friend. I have to agree with your comment regarding your reticence of having artillery modeled on the board - it just seems very odd considering the deployment and ranges they typically operated at. 

This group will give Michael 48 points. 

From TimG: 54mm Tratvian Cavalry (180 points)

From Tim:

Recently emerged from the trackless Tratvian steppe is this Cossack Regiment.  These are 54mm Armies in Plastic figures painted in my usual 'toy soldier' style and topped off with two coats of floor varnish.  As the Tratvian Army will eventually include three such units, I was able to mix and match from several sets in order to have matching poses (of troopers and horses).  

This is the 2nd Regt, the 1st can be seen here.

The only light conversion work concerned the standard bearer whose sabre was replaced with a florist wire flag pole.

Very cool regiment Tim. They look like they could serve as the honour guard for Liberace!

Adjusted for basing these Tratvian horsemen will give Tim 180 points. Well done!

From MikeP: 28mm Pulp & Fantasy Adventurers (25 points)

From Mike:

Here's my third entry, 5 28mm figures, quite a mixed bag. 

You might be forgiven for thinking that this group shot is The Doctor's latest gang of companions.

First up is an Ottoman commander from The Assault Group.  I call him The Sultan of Swing.   I got him as a freebie from TAG during their very generous promotion last year.  I finally got him painted up and think I may even dig out my Ottoman army and refurbish it.  Pete at TAG is a great fellow and I just sent him an order for some of his samurai and for more Ottomans.  Generosity and great sculpting should be rewarded, I think.

Next up are two Wargames Foundry figures from their Realms of Faeire series.  My intention for these two dangerous ladies is to use them as what I am calling Galadriel's Scouts, an elite group of wood elves who will help protect the Elven realms from Orcs and Uruk Hai in my Middle Earth gaming.   I am hoping that they will count as part of your Tolkien exemption to the Challenge's historical focus.

The lady covered in flowers was terrific fun to paint and a real step out of my normal comfort zone.  For me the challenge is not about volume so much as giving me the impetus to try new and different things.

The last  part of this group of five are the first figures i've finished from a bunch of Bob Murch's Pulp Figures.  I've wanted some of Bob's figures for years and I am quite happy with them.

This duo will play a role in my Weird War Two campaign that I am collecting figures for.   Readers who want the backstory can visit my wargames blog.  In brief, these figures are a married couple, Burton and Alberta McAskill, a hunter and Great War vet and his wife, a rancher's daughter, from Alberta's Kananaskis country. 

Their expertise in working with the RCMP on a series of grisly and eldritch events in the 1930s, including the Werewolf of Kicking Horse Pass, has brought them into Project Alice, the Empire's secret war effort against sinister occult forces stirring in the Reich.

Great work Mike! I'd usually not accept the fairies as they are really outside the Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' oeuvre but you did such a nice job on them and who can't admire the sylvain support garments provided to their archers (how she draws and releases a bow beggars the imagination). 

These five will give Mike 25 points. Well done!

From Greg: 28mm Colonial British Cavalry, 10th Hussars (40 points)

From Greg:

This submission features some figures representing the British 10th Hussars in the Sudan with improvised lances. The figures are from the amazing Perry Miniatures Sudan collection.  

The Sudan was not a friendly place to British cavalry.  While the terrain in the Sudan was generally "open", the ground was broken and hostile to horses, poorly suited for massed maneuver.  Certainly getting into any kind of "stirrup to stirrup" formation for any length of time was impossible - and the available to calvary units were spread thin, so even if they wanted to attempt something like that, nothing Napoleonic was really possible.  

Even worse for the horse troopers the dervishes frequently hid themselves amidst the broken ground, unafraid of the horses and would spring up out of nowhere to knock out the horses by using weapons against the animals' knees, unhorsing the riders (and worse) and generally making massed cavalry charges an impractical and unsound notion.

To counter these surprise appearances by the dervishes the British cavalry units would go into the field with large lances, even though they were not formally "lancers" - the long spears allowed the riders to have a go at the dervishes hiding in the terrain, and at least give the fierce Madhist tribesmen something to think about before springing a surprise attack.  

These submission should have been a "six-pack", but two figures were casualties of the piece-of-shit Krylon primer (photo attached). It is hard to see in the pictures, but the figures essentially look like mounted wannabe-Nurgle syphilis couriers thanks to the scratchy, blotchy finish of the bad primer.  Oh well, can't make an omellette etc. etc. But my prior stated views of Krylon stand - particularly in light of losing some Perry figs to the menace. Fuck you Krylon.

So my Colonial Sudan British now have a bit of cavalry support.  I have some more lads from the 10th Hussars - with swords only.  They will follow along soon, ready to face the Madhist hordes...stay tuned for that submission...

Lovely work Greg, though I'm sorry to see those two casualties. Could they be salvaged with some Dettol, or Agent Orange or some such nasty stuff made from rendered baby seal oil and ground unicorn horns? 

I really like that dappled horse btw. 

These four cavalry will give Greg 40 points.

From ChrisP: 15mm WWII American AT and HMGs (132 points)

From Chris:

So more US in 15mm finished! It has turned out that they are pretty good to paint in between doing other things, paint a colour on these then go off to do something else, like paint other things, or do things around the house, etc. Or entertain Smaug....

This time, first up we have a Heavy Machinegun platoon of 4 Browning M1917 HMGs, and a command team. Painting is the same as the ones which I have done before, nice and simple.

Then we have an Anti-Tank Platoon made up of 3 57mm guns, as well as their supporting infantry which in this case is a command stand and three bazooka teams, Lots of small, scary anti-tank!

But for your bigger problems, you can't really argue with the 3" gun (see top of post). A repurposed anti-aircraft gun, firing a high velocity shell and later in the war firing HVAP rounds which were shown to be quite capable at penetrating the larger German vehicles, even King Tigers at close range. The platoon of Tank Destroyers is three carbine teams and 4 3" guns.

Lastly, going from very large, to very small. A single sniper stand, taking aim at some unlucky Hun from behind a fencepost.

Some great additions to your collection here Chris. I particularly like those 3" AT guns (and I didn't know they were originally designed as AA guns - interesting).

This collection will add 132 points to Chris' total. Nice job!