'Fellowship' from NoelW: French in Egypt

It's intriguing how Curt keeps coming up with themes that force us to delve into the unfamiliar regions of our unpainted collections. I found it hard to come up with anything like an original idea, but rooting around in the dusty recesses of the lead Alps, I found  this telling image of a wounded French Trooper being brought in for treatment. The figures come from the Perrys' Napoleon in Egypt range, which (pretty much like all their figures) includes some beautiful sculpts of some exotic uniforms.

I've painted the trooper in the Kleber uniform of the 9th Line Demi-Brigade (scarlet jacket, bright green facings). Here's the posed shot (using three of the palm trees I posted earlier this week):

A rear shot:

a side shot:

and a closeup:

'Water Feature' from Noel: A Walter Feature

Curt’s idea for bonus theme 4, a Walter Feature, at first seemed a little odd to me. But then I thought: it’s Curt – the strange man who annually invents three months of torture for himself; the man who paints in meticulous detail exquisite figures for some very peculiar subjects. He’s testing us. He’s come up with this theme to really sort the Guelphs from the  Ghibellines (look it up!)

I thought about Walters for a while. What about a Walther PPK? Perhaps too small for a centrepiece. Could I come up with something suitable for Walt Disney? A Mickey Mouse missile, perhaps?

Then I hit on it. Sir Walter Raleigh. Who could be a stronger character for a Walter theme than the man who invented the potato? Where would snacking by the TV be without him?

So I picked the iconic scene where Sir Walter lays down his cloak on a puddle for Queen Elizabeth I. There were rumours about these two, of course. After all, what woman could resist a man with a sodden cape and a potato in his hand? (Even if, sooner or later, he was inclined to lose his head). So perhaps the famous occasion of the puddle and the cloak occurred at a clandestine meeting of some kind.

My next problem was that I don't have a Walter Raleigh figure in my collection. Not even something close. Never one to let historical accuracy get in the way of a good idea, I postulated an evening when the Queen takes part in a masque at Hampton Court, a pageant based on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. In it Liz is Gloriana, the Faerie Queene herself, whilst Raleigh takes the role of the Red Crosse knight, who is enamoured of Gloriana. For the pageant Raleigh would dress in antique armour, whilst Liz herself would be in her finest garments. Then after the show but still dressed for it, the Queen of England meets up with her romantic warrior.

So for Raleigh to show proper obeisance I chose a kneeling man-at-arms from Perry’s C14th Carroccio set. 

The model is clean shaven, though, so I had to fashion a Raleighesque tash and beard from green stuff. This is in his younger years when he’s a little more hirsute, rather then the dapper primnesss of most of his later portraits.

I placed him kneeling by the cloak he's just laid down:

The Liz I figure is, I think, by Wargames Foundry though I’ve not been able to track it down in a catalogue, so I may be wrong. It seems to be a simplified form of the “Ditchley Portrait”. (It's apparently by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, a name which means nothing to me, dated 1592 and in the National Gallery):

I did my best to replicate that portrait in painting the model. The trouble is if you get too detailed, it easily becomes a mess.

Also it was fashionable in the C16th for women to have extremely white skin, as the portrait shows. If you try that on a 28mm model, she either looks like she’s only been undercoated or she's a wannabe zombie. So my Liz is a little healthier looking than the portrait.

The set is scratchbuilt. Thick card and wallpaper from my daughter’s crafting supplies for the walls and the Tudor arch (properly called a four centred arch I believe), scribed balsa for the door, mdf offcuts for the steps, foam from a playmat for the base, a puddle of superglue and varnish, and a cloak fashioned from tissue stiffened with white glue.

I’m pretty pleased with the result, though there are some obvious areas which could be improved. Here's a slightly wider angle:

Once I’d seen the finished model I realised an alternative title might be “Sir Curt and the Lady Sarah”, as I guess this pretty much represents their roles, as far as I can tell from the Snowlord’s posts. At least, it may well be Sarah's Choice...

I also thought of “Queen Eilizabeth and Sir Water Raleigh”. See what I did there? Making the puddle the main feature. But that seems silly.

I think that's just 10 points for the 2 figures, plus the bonus. Not sure if the terrain is worth points, as it's more of a setting than fully reusable terrain, but just in case: it's a 4" wall mounted on a triangular base of sides 10", 8" and 8".

Now I just need an idea for the final challenge. This, I think, will be even harder than the Walter challenge. Let me think: "Pillowslip"....

'Mercenary' from NoelW: Medieval Irish

This one was a bit of a problem for me, mainly because it seems just about every military unit might be considered mercenary in some context or other, so I'm spoilt for choice. On the other hand, nothing visually exciting suggested itself.

So I decided to paint some new figures I'd been given for Christmas, the Irish in Perrys' Wars of the Roses range. These clearly are mercenaries, brought over to boost the final flourish of Yorkist dissent in 1487, in the rebellion against Henry VII headed by Lambert Simnel, the Young Pretender. It ended with a crushing defeat of the Yorkists (boo! hiss!) at the Battle of Stoke Field. These are characterful figures which I'm really fond of though, unusually for the Perrys, some of the sculpting seems a little rough. Perhaps it was just the castings I received. Anyway, as usual, they paint up extremely well.

I like the "saffron" robes that the kerns (the lightly armoured warriors) wear, both for their unusual style and colour. I really enjoyed painting them, though most of the subtlety of shading is lost in the photos.

Here's some kerns attacking:

And some defending:

The heavily armoured troops, gallowglasses, generally wear heavy chain or quilted gowns, and carry massive weapons - two handed axes and heavy swords, making them formidable on the battlefield (but quite easy to paint!)

Here's the command:

The banner is a hand-painted saltire of St Patrick. It was apparently the arms of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, who recruited the bulk of the 4500 troops who took part in the battle. I don't think it's very historical for a C15th banner to look like this, but I felt that something unusual for "foreign" troops would be appropriate. If I can track down the correct standard for Kildare, I might substitute that.

I believe there were Irish troops recruited in other Roses' conflicts, but have no reliable info on that possibility. I guess the same figures can be used against Tudor English for several decades, though it would probably be stretching too far to incorporate them in Montrose's Irish of the Civil Wars, which was what I'd been hoping.

And here's (almost) all of them in a wild charge:

There's 29 figures (there were 30, but somehow one has slipped off the painting table). So that's 145 points (and maybe 1 for the flag?) plus the bonus.

'Sport' from NoelW: A sticky wicket

In last year’s challenge, I painted six Yorkshire cricketers for my Sealion/Walminster/interwar project. This year, I’m completing the team and I’ve painted Sarissa’s pavilion as an HQ. The Sarissa model is excellent, as always, and also includes two sight-screens. I also scratch built the wicket. I plan to lay out a pitch, but haven't done this yet.

Six of the figures are made by Sloppy Jalopy  completing the set I began a year ago.

They’re painted in the colours of the Yorkshire team of the 1930s. 

The batsman at the centre of the photo is Wargames Foundry, originally from their Darkest Africa range. He’s been on the lead pile for around 15 years, I think.

With these, I’ve now a full team of 11, plus a twelfth man and an umpire. Now I need some opponents – which would be painted up as Lancashire, but actually be German fifth columnists. (If anyone knows of suitable figures, I’d be keen to hear).

I guess some Challengers will understand cricket about as well as I understand baseball, even though both games are essentially the same – one player throws a deceitful ball at another who tries to hit it with a stick. If he misses, he may be out. If he succeeds, he scores by running, unless he’s hit it so far he gets a bonus score. Meanwhile the fielders try to catch the ball or return it to a key spot on the pitch before the batter is able to reach that spot. (There’s a more amusing description here)

Using Sarissa’s dimensions (7.9 * 5.7 * 5.9 ins), the pavilion fills 265 cu inches, which is more than the 216 of a 6x6x6 cube. However, obviously it doesn’t completely fill that space due to roof slope etc, but there’s also the two sightscreens, so perhaps 20 points is a fair guesstimate. Plus 7 figures = 55 points to add to the bonus.

'Reconnaissance' from NoelW: Reconnaissance in the Desert

I quite liked the idea of finding some Italian Wars figures for this bonus round, so I could title it "Renaissance Reconnaissance" but I couldn't settle on any. So I had to settle for a different set of Italians, in the Western Desert, some time around 1941, I guess.

I'm fond of this theatre, probably because of the early Airfix 8th Army and Afrika Korps sets (in the first issue, of 1962) which still have a certain strange charm. The Perrys' 28mm plastic sets are a wonderful modern version, and have led to an excellent expansion of metals in that arena. So here's an Italian scouting party from that Perry range.

Meanwhile, a Warlord Humber scout car is on a similar recon mission. With a similar degree of effectiveness, it would seem.

A Stuka's eye view:

The Humber model is intended by Warlord for Operation Market Garden, driven by Brigadier "Joe" Vandeleur, but I've transmogrified it to somewhere in Libya. Ideally it could do with some decals to place it in that theatre (the reg number on the side is - er - 'hypothetical). I was quite pleased with the radio aerial - the first time I've tried to do this with a vehicle - though it's barely visible in the photos. It's a bristle from a paintbrush, placed with delicate precision and only the minimal amount of swearing.

Here's a close-up:

Here's a couple of close-ups of the Italians. The cap badges are a real fiddle to paint.

Some sources seem to treat the colours of helmet, jacket and trousers as pretty much identical. Others make them quite different in colour. I like treating them differently, as if there's different amounts of wear or exposure to the elements, and using the different shades makes them look a little more like campaigning troops than pristine regulation dress, I think.

Pointswise, there's six 28mm foot (30 pts), 1 vehicle (20 pts) and the building is roughly 6x3x3 inches, so 25% of a cube (so, 5 pts). That's 55pts plus the bonus.

'Monstrous' from NoelW: Who is the monster?

I've this idea of doing a version of Frostgrave Archipelago using miniatures from the Greek myths. Here are my first three attempts: Theseus, Ariadne and The Minotaur. Rather than just arrange them on the table, I wanted to give them a sort of labyrinth diorama setting, so I built this little model, more suggestive of a maze than an actual maze (you don't need the thread, Theseus, just look over the wall!) 

The maze is built from plaster of paris moulded sections. I've had the moulds for years, and never put them to good use, so this was a bit of an experiment. I decided on a ragged base of mdf to fit the idea of a semi-ruined maze, so that the whole model is meant to be evocative of the story, rather than very literal. The walls were assembled from pieces according to a rough plan, then glued into place, undercoated black and then drybrushed and given a little flocking to suggest moss.

Having made this preliminary model, I'm now thinking that at some point I'll build several cells along similar lines, designed to interconnect in different ways, so that the islands in the Archipelago can contain "real" mazes. (Though I understand that a maze and a labyrinth are different things, really. The former is intended as a puzzle, but the later is a meditative or spiritual pattern to be contemplatively experienced. So perhaps The Minotaur was a Cretan god).

The myth of Ariadne helping Theseus slay the Minotaur is well known. In it the Minotaur is clearly the monster. But less well known is the rest of the myth, in which we might well judge Theseus to be a monster, for he grows tired of Ariadne, and abandons her alone on the island of Naxos, where she is prey to the lust of the wild god, Dionysus and eventually bears him twelve children. (She's a little shy, so slightly out of focus here. That's deliberate, of course).

Meanwhile Theseus goes off performing more heroic feats, a bit like Hercules, founds Athens and seems to spend most of his spare time abducting women. So - hero or monster?

I don't know how many points to suggest for the labyrinth model. 

Its base is an irregular triangle, with one side about 8 inches, and the other side of the right angle 6 inches, with its highest point about two inches, so perhaps it occupies about half of a six inch cube? 10 points? 

Plus 15 point for the three figures, which are Wargames Foundry. 

'Childhood' from NoelW: Escaping the Nightmare

Every child has a nightmare, a horror that's particular and personal to them.

Sometimes we’re pursued by those horrors. Sometimes it seems we can’t shake the nightmare. Out of nowhere, without warning, it’s on our heels.

But family can protect us. Family can tell the nightmare to stop.

With the love of family, with the help of friends, we can put distance between ourselves and our childhood horrors.

 We can escape.

The figures are all from Perry’s Cape Wars range – one of my favourite ranges, currently - except for the boogie-man who is a Frostgrave figure. 

'Music/Musician' from NoelW: Mongol Drummer

I've had these two figures for years, and never really been sure what I was going to do with them. The Mongol commander clearly needed an army - which I don't have - and the drummer probably belongs to some army I've no knowledge of (Polish Renaissance? Turk?) but looked vaguely oriental to me. So this challenge gave me the idea of making a command stand for an army I don't yet have - probably a sort of fantasy Mongol/Hun wild cavalry army. 

The drummer has what we'd probably call "kettle drums" but more accurately are "nakers" - an ancient word for an ancient kind of drum, which in turn has led to an analogy in common parlance whose origin most of us probably aren't familiar with. (Which reminds me of the origin of "to freeze the balls off a brass monkey", whose origin is similarly innocent, the monkey being a brass plate on which iron cannon balls sat. In cold weather, the two metals shrank at differential rates, with the consequence that the iron balls fell off the plate).

Apologies again for poor pictures. Bad lighting, which doesn't really do justice to the figures, but you'll probably get the idea pretty well.

'BFG' from NoelW: Mughal Cannon

A simple entry for this theme: one massive cannon plus crew from Indus miniatures.

These are lovely figures, delicately designed and easy to paint up well. They're a slender casting, reminding me of 20mm plastics a little, though they're a full 28mm in size.

In my case they're going to be conscripted into an Ottoman army, to oppose Napoleon in Egypt, one of many projects the Challenge is helping me progress.

'Flight' from NoelW: Napoleonic Archipelago

Surprisingly little is known about Mary Wollstonecraft’s journey with her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, across Europe in early 1815, on their way, as it turned out, to stay with Lord George Gordon Byron in Geneva the following year. There she was destined to write her frighteningly convincing first novel, “Frankenstein”, in which life is restored to the dead.

Not much is known, either, about the extent to which she inducted Shelley into her twin – but, it would seem, related – interests: in the novel science of paleontology and the somewhat less scientific speculations on the animation of living tissue through the application of galvanic energies. He had been, of course, particularly interested in creation myths and, indeed, in Natural Forces in general – witness his expulsion from Oxford for keeping a pet bear in his rooms. What is, however, well known, is that these interests, once kindled, grew rapidly, so much so a later genius of another generation, Charles Darwin, dedicated his “Origin of the Species” to the Shelleys.

We also know that early in their European wanderings the Shelleys spent several weeks in a farmhouse near Brussels. And we’ve scrappy records in Mary’s journal of days spent happily rooting in the limestone quarries that dot the lowlands of that region, prising “stone worms” and “rocks near the shape of ancient eggs” from the white pits and chalky cliffs.

As the chateau of Hougoumont lies in the heart of Belgic fossil country, is it unreasonable to suggest that this was the “farmhouse” where they spent this time? Might their tentative experiment applying tendrils of “galvanic current” to the apparently lifeless relics of ancient creatures have been conducted in the very stables where fierce conflict would rage only a few months in the future? Is it then unreasonable to further suggest that, in order to lighten their load for further travelling, they many of those finds and nascent experiments in these barns and sheds? And is it so far fetched consequently to speculate that perhaps, some of their experimentation had in fact, proved surprisingly successful?

If so, we might have an explanation for the so-called “flying dragon” so many claimed to have sighted on that fateful battlefield of June 18^th, veering into and out of the smoke-filled skies? Might those sketches made by Ensign Frederick Davis on that day, so often subsequently dismissed as the nightmare imaginings of a delicate consciousness sent awry by the horrors of war, have here found a plausible, even rational explanation?

So that you, dear reader, can decide from the evidence uninfluenced by the prejudices of the narrow-minded and complacent, we reproduce those sketches below …

The “flying dragon” pteranadon is a plastic toy from Poundland, which actually takes paint surprisingly well, even though the detail is not that well defined, I was pleased how nicely it’s come out. The two Napoleonic figures in flight before it, are Major Thomas Reignolds of the Scots Greys, and Major de Lacey Evans (both of whom died on the field of Waterloo in unclear circumstances). They’re by the excellent Perrys. I was very pleased with these, though didn’t manage to get a decent photo of de Lacey Evans.

The setup was just a silly idea to give me an entry for the theme, with a flying monster (who will appear when I get my Frostgrave/Ghost Archipelago game going, and progress on the Napoleonic collection, with two junior offers in flight before the enemy. (Do I get twice the points for submitting two different meanings of the word?) But now I'm wondering about a whole new setting, of Napoleonic prehistorics...

2 X 28mm cavalry figures: 20 points, 1 x pteranadon in no particular scale: 5 points, perhaps?