'Epic Fail' from MichaelA - Predator

If it bleeds we can kill i!

Epic Fail?  A title that could so easily have been referring to my contribution for this bonus round as I was totally stumped for ideas when I first read it.  Still unperturbed I took it upon myself to indulge in a bit of web based research only to lose an hour of my life chuckling at the great many de-motivational posters that appear when typing in said title – people can be so cruel, but then again people can be so stupid!    Humour was going to be important in this round, something mildly absurd that it draws a smile over the most cynical of faces.

I considered famous military blunders of which there are many; the Charge of Light Brigade, Little Big Horn and Maginot Line to name but a few.  In the end it came down to using miniatures that I already had and in this case I fell upon the Dogs of War set from 'Rogue Miniatures'.
(group)

This seven piece team of exquisitely sculpted mercenaries, armed to the teeth with a vast array of weaponry, bore an uncanny likeness to a certain team of commandos.  A team that was last seen on a mission in an unspecified Central American jungle only to find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial trophy hunter;  I refer, of course, to one of the Austrian Oak’s finer celluloid outings – Predator.  I have to confess that I love this film, probably because I was of a very impressionable age when it received its theatrical release in 1987 and there is one scene, above all, that qualifies it to represent in the epic fail round.

How is it that a crack team of elite Special Forces troops manage to 'unload' vast quantities of ammunition into the jungle and miss everything?  For a full sixty seconds* the team decimate the rain forest faster than a logging company and fail, epically, to bring down their target!
 *I know because I timed it!

"No blood, no bodies... We hit nothing!"

Still not all was lost as a splatter of lurid, green blood on one of few remaining plants in the vicinity suggests that the Predator was now, at least, be sporting a flesh wound!  Yes this was cinematic gold and hugely entertaining nonsense, held together with some fine script-writing that proffered such memorable lines as,

"I've seen some bad-ass bush before, man, but nothin' like this."

"You lose it here; you're in a world of hurt."

and the immortal,

"Get to da Chopper!"

So my contribution to this round is made up of eight (I had considered just painting seven and claiming an additional five points for a 'cloaked' Predator,!) 28mm miniatures on a scenic base and is intended as a homage rather than an actual representation of the infamous scene; especially as devotees of the film will be quick to point out that it was Blaine, the self proclaimed "god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus", whose untimely end prompts the ensuing 'lead fest', with Sergeant Mac Eliot picking up, "Ol' Painless", a hand-held M134 Minigun, and firing off two hundred rounds - Epic Fail!