'Hot' from RichardC - 'Napoleon and Ozymandias'

 

As soon as the bonus round themes were announced, I started coming up with ideas. Some rounds were obvious, others have undergone three or four changes. The “hot” round is one of the former.

I bought this Brigade figure of Napoleon in Egypt way back last summer (I think the one day of sunshine we had inspired me). The figure is very nicely sculpted, although the camel did have a fair amount of flash to dispose of. I was, however, stumped about the basing, as I felt that a simple sandy base wouldn’t have the oomph factor.

I was watching a thriller on tv where a vital clue turned out to be the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 

I had my idea for the base. Originally, it was to be a 54mm Pharoah painted as a statue, but then I spotted the “shattr’d visage” on the Element Games website. I hacked off all the large scarab beetles (or I thought I had – one escaped, and was only spotted after the painting started).

Many thanks go to the Awdry Towers Photographic Studios.