From NoelW: This week I painted a complete army!

Although it was only 2mm:

I'm developing rules for 2mm land battles that interleave with Warlord's Black Seas naval rules. My rules are pretty simple, as the idea is to cover joint land/sea operations, in which the naval game is the priority. I'm thinking about the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia (1808-9), for example, much of which involved island hopping with various actions involving transporting land forces back and forth, bombarding of besieged fortresses and so on. But there’s no shortage of joint operations in the Black Seas period – in the East and West Indies, the Mauritius campaign, actions against pirates in the Persian Gulf and the Barbary corsairs of the North African coast, the French invasion of Egypt with actions around Alexandria and along the Nile, several Russo-Turkish wars, the Greek War of Independence - the list is temptingly long.

At 2mm, there’s little point in trying to represent all these different armies in their specific detail, so I’m creating “abstract” forces, roughly Napoleonic in appearance, built around brigades of four battalions/regiments. This one is the blue army, currently representing Sweden. Next will be the green army, for Russia. I’ll hope to follow that with a more irregular force to represent the Ottomans/Mamelukes/Greeks/Tripolitans and so on. Then a Red force for Britain and maybe eventually white and black, too.

At this scale, I’d be hopeless at trying to represent either plausible uniform facings or flags, so each brigade has battalion flags of the same colour. Effectively the “battalions” are counters representing the current strength of the brigade, with attrition of the brigade represented by removal of a battalion. The idea is closer to a board game representation like Risk, rather than a true figure game.

In painting I took most of Curt’s always useful ideas, (thanks, Curt) though not delivered them nearly so well. I blame the figures I’m working with! Curt has beautiful, custom-printed 2mm figs, whereas mine are Irregular – perfectly serviceable, but rather undefined sculpts and somewhat variably cast, too. A little irregular, in fact. 

I shouldn’t complain, though – I was lucky enough to buy these at a show where the reseller was clearing them, and sold me several thousand figures for £30! This single army contains about 500 figures, for example, and takes up less room than a single battalion in 28mm so if you want the “mass look” and aren't looking for detail, there’s nothing better. Or cheaper.

As is usual for me, my final offering for the Challenge is quite large, but also a hotch-potch of bits and pieces. Lest you think I've had a sleepless week, I should point out that several of these pieces have been ongoing throughout the challenge, only completed in the last few days.

Going up a couple of scales, I finished the artillery for my 15mm French army for Minden. This is progressing slowly (2 years now, and counting) but slowly getting there. 8 guns of different calibres:

Moving to 28mm, I painted four resin walls that had been colonising the bottom of a terrain box, using a painting scheme I hadn’t tried before, looking for something like sandstone. And, actually, I’m quite pleased with how they’ve come out: basically an initial wash of slightly thinned Citadel Contrast, drybrushed with Vallejo’s Pale Sand. One thing that I think has improved these quite a bit is to paint and flock the bases in the same style as my 28mm figures.

Next, a Warbases Rolls-Royce armoured car, painted for the Western Desert. I found this model a bit of a pain to assemble correctly, partly because the apparently comprehensive online instructions aren’t perfectly clear about a couple of details, but mainly because of my awkward fingers. I shall rely on my wife for all future model building.

As this is my only contribution this time round to the Bolt Action side duel, it brings my total here to 785, so I defer once again to StuartL. Next Challenge, young man, I promise I will paint you into a corner!

Next, a Scorpion. That’s not another armoured car, but rather an actual stinging arachnid the Rolls Royce might accidentally run into in the desert. This, I think, is a Citadel figure possibly from their pre-slotta days and will join my D&D/Frostgrave monsters. (Look how good its camo is - you can hardly see there's any figure there!)

Moving on to human figures, I finished a few more for my Punic Wars collection. A herd of 21 Warlord Cisalpine Gauls:

and a contingent of 9 Carthaginian Citizens (Victrix):

My original plan had been to paint dozens of Ancients, for a side duel on ancients but these are all I’ve managed in the whole challenge – a mere 150 points, so apologies to all concerned. (Just noticed the bent spear, too, presumably happened during photography - so I need to replace that now. A general's work is never done...)

Another command base, this time Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

I’m not sure who sells this model, but it’s clearly a Copplestone sculpt – a beautiful piece of work. I’ve now two Ruperts, not being able to resist this second model, so one will probably double as Prince Maurice of the Palatinate.

And finally, a smattering of Italian Wars figures. Here is Niccolo da Tolentino:

and again with a few companions. 

Tolentino was a condottiero most famous for winning the Battle of San Romano (1432), immortalised in Paolo Uccello’s painting of that subject, from which the Perrys took the image for one of their Mounted Italian Command (from their European Armies range).

Together, this gives me imaginary points in this last post of 451 and takes me to a final tally filling 34 of my 46 rather over-ambitiously planned slots. Though some of these additions are rather less than I’d hoped, and the overall total of imaginary points for the Challenge as  whole is rather less than I’ve made in the non-Quarantine challenges, I’m still pretty pleased, as there's only 3 projects in my list of "projects I really ought to finish one day" which have not progressed through this Challenge. (Final details below).

Thanks to Curt, as always, for his hospitality, forbearance and brilliant contributions. Thanks to every one who has posted for some great painting and a fair haul of good ideas. Thanks to everyone who has given me comments - always uplifting, and often giving that necessary kick to motivation. 

That's it till November, I guess. It seems a long time to wait. I wonder if lockdown will be over? And, who knows, maybe I'll have painted my entire collection by then... (Excuse me, there's a knock at the door. A big black van and a couple of men in white coats. I wonder what they want...)

FINAL TALLY:

Project	New Task	‘Points’	Old Task	‘Points’
Agincourt
AWI	Farmstead	3	US Butterfly British 16 foot	30 80
Black Seas (1/700th)	2 merchants	20	25 2mm units	150
British in Egypt: 1801			Generals de Rolls’ regiment	30 60
Cape Wars	12 infantry	60
Carthaginians	21 Cisalpine Gauls	105	9 Citizens	45
Crusades	Command group	20
ECW	4 walls	2	Prince Rupert	10
French in Egypt: 1801	Guns	50	Command Gun crew	75
Frostgrave/fantasy	3 Treemen	24	Frankie Scorpion	5 5
Italian Wars	Niccolo da Tolentino	10	4 miscellaneous infantry	20
Lord of the Rings	Swan Knights Denethor Hama	60 5 5	Harad cavalry Harad infantry	60 45
Minden (15mm)			8 artillery pieces and crew	96
Ottoman
Peninsular War			12 Spanish	60
Republican Romans
Sikh/Afghan Wars	Command stand 8 Irregulars	15 40	11 irregulars	55
1860s British IF	Command base	15	Union rebasing	0
1880s, the Sudan	Buildings	15	18 British	90
Walmington/Sealion	6 landing craft	30	3 Civvies 6 zombies Bandstand	15 30 2
Waterloo			Congreve rocket	20
WW2 Desert	3 trucks 39 Afrika Korps Rolls Royce A/C	30 195 10	15 Italians	65
Zulu War	NNI Frontier Horse Natal Carbineers	30 60 50	Pearson & Chelmsford 4 foot	25 20
TOTAL		854		1093