From StuartL - Normans and Japanese

Hi all,

When Challenge X finished and Curt suggested the Quarantine Challenge, I thought it was a great idea. If folks are going to be kept indoors all day, they can at least have fun painting. Here in Japan we don't have a quarantine yet. We probably should, but the government is really dragging it's heels. So far they have done nothing and it seems like they have already run out of ideas. Despite the virus arriving in Japan fairly early on, the rate of infection was really slow and people didn't seem to care that much about it. Even now, when the number of sick people seems to be going up every day, the trains are still packed and everyone dutifully goes off to work. At my place of work a guy showed up to work running a high fever, spent all day at the office and only went to see a doctor after he finished. Luckily he just had a bad cold, but everyone was very angry with him. When confronted about it by HR, he told them that he had a lot of work to do so couldn't take a day off, (Actually he could have, the company is pretty good about sick days), so he had decided to come to work and risk spreading a potentially deadly virus around the busiest department in the company. Great.

So, while I live in constant fear that I'm going to be infected by some workaholic with a report to finish, I am spending my free time getting some paint on some minis and trying to take my mind off the impending doom that awaits me when I go to work.

This group of 14 Normans for Saga comes from one of Wargames Foundry's sub-websites (Casting Room Miniatures I believe) and Conquest Games. Size wise, they go together fairly well. The plastic Conquest figures have longer spears cast in their hands while the Foundry minis have smaller, razor sharp, brass spears glued into their giant mitten-like paws. I undercoated these just before the QC was announced, but most of the work was done on them since last weekend.

My lead and plastic mountain is pretty large, and a fair part of it is minis for Bolt Action. With the QC I decided that I would try and reduce the pile a little, and even offered up a side duel for people to paint any minis from the era of the Bolt Action Rifle (roughly 1825-1955-ish). The duel is still open if anyone fancies joining in. Any scale, any minis, any nation, just so long as the period fits, you can score points (using the standard AHPC system). These 12 Japanese infantrymen are my first attempt to lower the unpainted count and score some points.

To accompany the rifle squad above, I have a light mortar team, an officer, a standard bearer and a flame thrower as well. All of the minis are from Warlord Games.

For my own records, that's 14 Norman and 17 Japanese 28mm figures at 5 points each for a total of 155 points. This represents about 1/4 of the minis I painted in Challenge X and I did all these within just one week.

For the Bolt-Action side duel, 17 Japanese figures gives me 85 points on the score board.