'Fellowship' from RayR: Gandulf

Can't believe the Challenge is nearly over for another year???

This being the final Bonus Round " Fellowship"

As soon as I read the name Fellowship I knew my entry would have to be from

Lord of the Rings. I've got a box with all sorts of odds and ends from Games Workshop's range.

Gandulf here was at the bottom still sitting in his red backed blister pack begging to be painted up!

To be honest he was originally bought to be painted up and sold on ebay

many years ago, but I never got around to it.

Another reason for painting up Gandulf was he was quite an easy paint, being all white!!

But the most important was Gandulf was the defacto leader of the "Fellowship" in LotR, not Frodo

and if our defacto leader the SnowLord, Curt himself put on a white wig, he could be Gandulf!!

This entry will be winging its way over the Atlantic soon as my Curtgeld

so a few more points will come my way, only if Curt laughed at my Gandulf/Curt pun that is.

'Water Feature' from RayR: Napoleonic Landing Party

Its Bonus Round time once again. This week the theme is "Water Feature"

I was going to paint up a Native American canoe or a few empty 15mm boats, I mentioned it

to Postie. who had a lightbulb moment.

Hence the boats...

I gave him these two British Napoleonic Landing boats a few years ago, I think

 I bought them on ebay??

So I'm unsure of who makes them?

They could be AB???

There are 19 x 15mm figures

1 x small gun

and of course the 2 boats

They're based on stiff card, that I stuck a few lolly pop sticks to, to stiffen the base

up even more. Then they're coated in pollyfilla, to create the wave effect.

Hopefully they won't warp?

I thought they'd be easy to paint gluing the figures in place on the boats first.

Oh how wrong I was!!!!

It took me double the time to paint these as it should.

But I'm pretty pleased with the results.

So that should be

38 for the figures

2 for the gun, its not that big really...........Oi, none of that either!!

16 for the boats

50 bonus points

106 in total???

'Mercenary' from RayR: Baron de Kronberg Hussars

This was probably the easiest bonus round in this years Analogue Hobbies Painting 

Challenge,"Mercenary"

I could have painted loads of figures for this round, I bet most of us could have?

I chose to go back to my 15mm Beneath the Lilly Banners French army.

The Baron de Kronberg Hussars made their first appearance in the French army in 1692.

They had 2 squadrons and were commanded by a Hungarian in French service called Baron de Kronberg or Cornsberg. They were later in 1693 known as Mortani. 

They were a shortlived unit when Kronberg fell into disgrace and left France. In 1697 they ceased to exist.

Now here's the dodgy thing, There is no information on their uniform at all.

So I made it all up!! Shock- Horror! I thought red and yellow coats looked cool and it'd be a  complete contrast to the rather boring grey coats of most

of the French army.

The figures are from my favourite goto for the 1690's Essex Miniatures!
This is the same unit that Sir Sidney Roundwood recently painted up in the Challenge!!!

'Sport' from RayR: Lacrosse

Its Analogue Painting Challenge Bonus round again and I've gone all 

Native for the "Sport" Bonus round.

I will admit to being stumped at what to paint up for this round, I even considered 

and placed a few bids on ebay for some various Bloodbowl figures. I pretty glad I lost the bids!

I remembered back in the midst of time, 2012 to be precise I painted up some 15mm Indian 

villagers here. Some of these were playing Lacrosse, so a seed was planted.

I had a few (ok, a lot) of unpainted Indians wallowing in the dead lead pile, so I went to work

with a scalpel, file and drill, chopping off warclubs and such and came up with these 4 chaps.

The goal was quite a simple build, its made out of the three straightest twigs

I had in my Twig box, painted, inked and drybrushed and  stuck on a Warbses base

and will be used as decoration 

in any games we play involving an indian village.

He's my fav, not a lot of conversion work on him I'm afraid, he came straight of the 

packet of Redoubt Torch carriers.

As did the chap on the right.

All 4 figures are from Redoubt Enterprises.

Just for interest, here's how I made the Lacosse Sticks.

I cut and bent some soldering wire to shape.

Then folded a piece of plasterboard scrim in half, I fed the wire into the fold and 

and cut to shape. I then had to cut a thin fine line and glue it to the bottom of the net.

Easy!

Well it wasn't that easy, I super-glued my fingers together 3 times!!

Oh the things we do for the hobby!

'Reconnaissance' from RayR: That way

Its Bonus round time again. Curt seems to bamboozle me each year with his choices for

bonus rounds and this year, its no different.

I always try and use figures I've already got or I can use in any of the periods

I already own. Luckily I already had these figures in my unpainted pile. 

The figures are from Redoubt Miniatures Scout pack, with 1 addition, the chap with the white face.

Obviously as they're a Scout pack the fine fellows would have been sent out to recon

the area or track their enemy, but they can also be used as normal warriors.

I really like the Redoubt Indians, they're so full of character and life.

I tried out the Army Painter Strong Tone on these, its a bloody godsend!

I shall be using this a lot more often from now on.

30 points for the figures plus an extra 5 for the luvvly shading plus the Bonus round bonus of 50 points makes a grand total of 575 (Editor: WTF?).

'Monstrous' from RayR: Monstrous Trio

Here's my entry into the Monstrous bonus round.

Frankenstein, Dracula & Death

All three are from The Dr Who collection from Black Tree Designs.

This was for me another difficult round, unfortunately I couldn't find anything to

fit into it from my lead pile. So a quick email to Black Tree and these naughty boys

arrived in the post a few day later.

I do like the Frankenstein and Death figures, I'm not so keen on poor old Vlad.

He's a bit of a bore really being all in black.

But what other colour can he be?

Dracula

Death once again a tad on the black side, but hey what you gonna do?

'Childhood' from RayR: DAK 1/32

Back in the 70's when I were a whipper snapper, I was fascinated with history and anything related to soldiers, strange eh?

I had a massive collection of books that I used to copy and draw soldiers from. I'm not that good at drawing but used to love it. I also, probably like most of you reading this, had a rather large collection of Airfix 1/32 scale WWII figures.

Me and my brother Lee, used to spend hours setting all the soldiers up, behind Lego barricades
and a home made wooden fort our Dad made for us, then we'd take turns to throw marbles at each others troops.

Any you knocked over became casualties of war. We'd always end up with the heavy machine gun figures left. Or the "Laying downers" as we used called them. Trying to turn them over using a marble from 4 feet away is very hard!

My favourite troops were the DAK, or as I used to call them the German Africa Corps 

(Corps as in corpes) I was fascinated with them, (still am I suppose) especially the German army uniform, but mainly the German helmet and field cap. They were always my first choice when picking out an army, while my brother loved the British Commandos. I used to own a FOW DAK army, which I very stupidly sold at a show one year, bloody idiot!!

I do still have my collection of old bendy Airfix figures, but decided not to paint them, instead I bought 20 odd figures from ebay for the colossal sum of 99p and chose my 

two favourite figures to paint up for this round. 

Not sure what I'll do with these?

Maybe paint the rest up?

My favourite ever pic of the DAK.

Drooool!

I wrote a post about this pic back in my early blog days

Take a look if it floats your boat!

'Music/Musician' from RayR: Dancing Duo

Col Bill does it again!!!

For me this was the easiest Bonus Round " Musician"

It was the only round I knew what I'd paint as soon as I read the list.

The figures are from Col Bill's Depot Battalion sold as "17th Century Musicians and Dancers"

 And can be bought here for £5!

These will be non combatants in my Donnybrook adventures.

They very nice sculpts and well worth every penny!

More please Col.