From SamuliS: 28mm Napoleonic French Battalion (182 points)

Samuli sends in another beautiful Napoleonic battalion for us to enjoy, this time its the French 21st Regiment of Line.

From Samuli:

Here is my next batch of models for the painting challenge. The 1st Battalion of the 21st Regiment for Waterloo. Perry plastics with some metal regimental command figures. Nice minis although I'm not too happy about the heads being attached to the torsos.

I quite liked painting these guys as the more ragtag appearance and many different types of equipment make them a lot more interesting to paint. As usual I've painted them with Vallejo paints and finished up with Army Painter dip and basing products. The flag is from GMB Designs again. Getting the whites to look good was surprisingly hard. Now I have a couple of layers of grey and white finished with army painter quickshade. Looks OK enough, but still got a lot of room for improvement. Maybe on the next batch.

I tried to paint all the backpacks etc. slightly differently to add a bit more variety to the unit. I think the extra effort makes the unit look quite nice and maybe a bit more realistic.

My points target starts to look a bit optimistic with all the university work and work obligations starting to pile up. Next up some Brits again to at least try close the gap.

Really lovely work Samuli. I particularly like the cowhide backpacks and the overall campaign grubbiness of these fellows. 

The 21st Line will give Samuli 182 points. Well done! I look forward to seeing the upcoming British...

From MichaelA: The Seven Samurai in Greyscale & Ninjas in Black (80 points)

First, I have to apologize for my lag in keeping up with submissions as of late. It seems that Work and Adult Responsibilites have recently conspired to make Hobby and Carefree Fun almost non-existent. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to correct this and catch up over the next few days.

Now, in regards to Michael's entry here, I must say that I'm a little speachless so I'll let the man himself describe his submission:

As always I'm never sure where the time has gone, but I did manage to complete my entry fee for the challenge. 

Having been blown away but the ingenuity and beauty of Curt's 'Great War in Greyscale' project, I've been harbouring a notion to have a go myself, and when  the theme for the challenge was anounced as Samurai an idea started to form.  Like a good many I adore, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and this wonderful piece of cinematography became the inspiration for my own greyscale project.   Now I'm hear to tell anyone who listens that this isn't as easy as it appears and I certainly should have given the palette more consideration before diving straight in; as a result there is a definite blue hue that I had't envisaged.

I just couldn't resist a spot of hollywood red blood on the drawn swords and, now that it is complete, I'm jolly pleased with the results.  I now present them to you, as a group, as my entry fee for the challenge.  Yeas I know Curt only asked for a single figure, but I don't think that I could bare to break up the group.  Just for his continued hard work and heroic efforts in managing the challenge, I can think of no better recipient for the 'Seven Grayscale Samurai'.

The Ninja, were an impulse purchase when I was ordering up the Samurai and if I'm honest I was rather hoping that they would be a quick fix, points wise, but not a bit of it.  By the time I had given them three shades of black, my eyes were starting to cross, but we got there in the end.  Both the Samurai and Ninja are Perry Brother's sculpts and although required a fair bit of tidying up were, as always, a joy to paint.  

Wow, absolutely gorgeous work Michael.  I'm very flattered by your nod to my greyscale project. I certainly will agree with you that the whole greyscale thing is a lot more tricky than it may first seem being that there are a bewildering variety of grey shades/tones/hues, each possessing its own 'warmth' or 'coolness'. I think the cool blue-grey tone you used here is wonderfully suited to the Samurai theme, especially as seen through Kurosawa's lens. I especially love the addition of the muted flowers, the 'Seven Samurai' design on the sashimono and the blood on the katanas. They all pay such great homage to Kurosawa's film. Bravo and Thank you very much!

Michael's beautiful work with The Seven, their sashimono and the five Ninjas will give him 80 points.

From PhilH: 28mm American Jeeps & Ronin #33 (55 points)

From Phil:

No doubt Gharak will have a few hundred points waiting in the wings. But here I am with another motley collection. First up, some transport for my commandos, two rather grubby jeeps. I only had one suitable driver, which is a pain. I had some fun magnetising him on so both can serve as battlefield litter. They have been in the box for a year, they were picked up ages ago in a sale. I wouldn't normally base vehicles, but these are a bit tiddly - they are metal West Wind sculpts, which I think are 1:60. The bases hopefully give the illusion of more size, offset the bases on the miniatures a bit and stop you placing troops too close. The Commando alongside is for scale only, he was painted a long time ago. I had them finished then managed to drop one and mangle the windscreen. I mostly got it back into shape, but it needed a good touch-up. 

Also, my entry fee. Samurai seem to be an excuse to get the colours out and I really fancied the challenge of doing yellow. So you get a very yellow samurai! I added a bit of freehand to break it up, but I couldn't quite face doing the design all over. He is from the Perry Miniatures unarmoured set.

Those jeeps are great, but I agree, they are a bit like clown cars compared some beefy 28mm figures. Perhaps you can make up a driver in a Shriner's outfit! Beep Beep!

The samurai is gorgeous. I love the yellow / red combination (like the lads above!) and the flower pattern is amazingly well executed - bravo and thank you!

These two jeeps, driver and Ronin #33 will give Phil 55 points. Great job!

From MilesR: 28mm ACW Infantry & Artillery (180 points)

From Miles:

Sorry I haven't been more prolific but my son's robotics teams have been taking a lot of time.  One of his teams just got invited to compete in the World Championship so the season will be going on a bit longer!

I have managed to finish another 24 figure Confederate infantry regiment (28mm plastic Perry's) and for a minor variation I've also done 2 confederate guns and crews (Perry 28mm metals) - 8 crew figures and two guns.

World Robotics Championships!? Wow, that is a really great way to be preoccupied. Congratulations to your son, Miles, you must be very proud.

AND great work on these Rebs. Even with your coaching hiatus you've managed to put a good dent in your ACW project.

This group of Confederate infantry and artillery will give Miles 180 points, enough to put him within striking range of his points target.