From TeemuL: Unknown adventurer (5 points)

Yes, I am alive and not vaccinated. I have also moved to a new home, unpacked most of the stuff and started a new job. I painted also the first mini at the new home and have only about 100 unread entries in the Challenge XI.

But you want to know about the mini. Unfortunately I don't have much to tell. I primed and glued to the base this fellow during Challenge IX, but he had a broken sword, so I didn't paint him back then. I glued a plastic sword blade (Numenor sword) on and painted him during the last few days. I have lost or misplaced my notes, so I don't know who he actually is, I believe him to be a Ral Partha or Prince August sculpt.

Earthly colors in general but some bright ones here and there to remind of his age.

Edit: He is a Prince August Half Orc Thief 2, CH29B.

from Ray R - Ol McDonald had a......................

Farm!

Its all about the animals for today's post.

These will be used for any 25mm period I paint up but mainly for the D word!

First up are some Warbases Mouflon Sheep

Again from Warbases some Anglo Nubian Goats!

Warbases again this time for some Geese.

Chickens from Warbases and Pendraken.

Tad blurry, but Warbases yet again, we have some Deer

from RayR - Haitian Revolution - French Line

 I had a massive stroke of luck back in March at the Skirmish wargame show. I was having a chat with Stu from Col Bill's aabout my new project the Haitian Revolution. He then said he'd just bought some part painted at a show the day before. So we both went out to his van and he pulled out a giant bag of figures!!!! A right princely sum was duly handed over, saving me a fair few quid and saving the Col the time in unbasing and stripping the figures.
I cannot say that I painted these entirely, because I didn't, they'd nearly all been prepainted but been bashed around in the bag and mainly needed a bit of TLC.

So a little TLC was given, I based them on Warbases 25mm round bases and voila! They ready to go.

There was also 4 command figures with a flag already attached! To say I'm pleased is an understatement!

AdamC: USS Chesapeake

Here is the USS Chesapeake one of the first US Navy ships built in what would become the Norfolk Navy Yard (called Gossport at the time). Originally she was planned as a 44 gun frigate at Washington’s requests (he wanted one of the big ships built in Virginia) budget and supply issues had her rerated as a 38 gun frigate.

 

Sometimes Chesapeake was rated as a 36 gun frigate and seems to have been the smallest of the original Six frigates.

Her stern is quite handsome.  Chesapeake had one capture in the Quasi-war taking the Le Jeune Creole (16 guns) after a chasse lasing 50 hours!  That was probably both epic and boring.

The huge eagle of figure head is also quite striking she makes a beautiful ship. Chesapeake active during the Barbary war but is most famous for her actions relating to the War of 1812. She had the misfortune to be involved on the receiving end of the Chesapeake-Leopard affair taking fire unawares from a British 4th Rate and then submitting to having her crew mustered as if she were a British merchant. 

Chesapeake made a cruise in 1812 but only captured some 5 British merchants and she did not have any opportunity to engage a ship of equal force. In 1813 she sailed out of Boston under the command of Captain Lawrence to challenge the HMS Shannon to combat. Lawrence had every opportunity to avoid combat and slip away as a raider but chose not to.

He also refused to maneuver for advantage while closing with the Shannon and chose to fight Nelson's in Nelson's fashion and "Lay your ship close alongside the enemy." As everyone knows the Shannon won the battle (though not without some hard knocks) and Lawrence expired with the words "Don't give up the ship." He uttered these words as the ship was being given up and I have always been puzzled by hero worship that Surrounds Lawrence. He is of the Heroic captains you can take in Black seas but Isaac Hull and others who won battles are ignored. English writers probably like him because he was brave and got defeated in a satisfactory manner.

From PeteF: Mixed Bag of Elves for SAGA, Old School Figures and Lizards Rebased (50 points)

Photography Helper

This week's hobbying involved a bit of rebasing and finishing one more unit for SAGA Age of Magic.

The rebased 25mm Napoleonics are Foremost casts that my Dad painted back in the day. There were just enough for three bases which will do for a small french battalion for the Quatres Bras project. So here is the 3rd Battalion of the 108th ligne. The Foremost poses are really nice - I think they were taken over by Hinchcliffe and that you can still get them from Hinds Figures.

The next bit of rebasing was these eight lizards that I used to test out contrast paints and a Kings of War colour scheme last year. In the end I went with firey red, orange and yellow lizards - with not stripes of spots - rejecting the greens and blues. They'll do OK as one point of warriors for SAGA Age of Magic.

The elves are also for SAGA Age of Magic and I've based them on magnets so they can also be put on a metal tray for Kings of War - making a troop of elf palace guard. They got colour shift green armour and I had some fun trying out different Celitc-y designs on the cloaks. I'll field eight of these elves as a point of warriors or maybe 2 points of hearthguard, depending on which faction I choose for them. The factions in SAGA Age of Magic are generic fantasty types: Great Kingdoms, Lords of the Wild, Undead Legions, The Horde, The Otherworld and Masters of the Underneath. So you can play the same miniatures as a few different factions while you figure out which one you like best.

I'm definitely getting the urge to add more Minifigs to the Quatres Bras army (13 battalions, 3 1/2 batteries and a bunch of cavalry to go) - so I'll work on that in the coming weeks... although one of my wargaming friends is talking about Dracula's America and those figures look great.

From MartijnN: QCWk4, Scaling up again..

The past two weeks have been rather hectic and I have been unable to follow the Challenge. I have however just managed to complete a task this week.

First, though, I 'd like to share a memory with you. Last week my father died, rather unexpectedly. My Dad was 81, so I guess unexpected is not entirely true, but somehow you think of your parents as immortal, and there were no signs that he would go so soon. My dad was my best friend. He was not a wargamer in any sense, but he was the one who bought me my first Airfix soldiers when I was a little boy, and he was the one who took me to the only shop that sold tin model soldiers in the Netherlands in 1980, the Boutique De La Grande Armée in The Hague. I think he also bought me my very first wargame figures then, and I still have them. Of course, for a lad of 12 or 13, they had to be the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, and they are Hinchcliffe 25mm. They are still based for the WRG 1685-1845 rules:

The second figure from the left in the front row was painted by my dad as a example; ruining it with a home-made wash was all my own idea, some years later...

Thanks dad for introducing me to a lifetime passion!

As I live in Belgium and my parents in the Netherlands, getting to my parents' and back was not straightforward. Still, both before my journey and since my return I have been able to do some painting.  The weekend before last I had found an unexpected treasure in my pile of shame in the shape of 8 Essex 15mm late Roman clibanarii. I did not remember buying them, must have been sometime in the nineties when I was building an army for the Newbury Fast Play Ancient Rules we then used at our club in Delft.

So I decided to paint them up, using contrast paints, apart from the metallics (which obviously is most of these figures...) which are a mixture of Citadel and Vallejo.

I have based these on a single base, for I am looking into To the Strongest and into Aurelian, the ruleset by Sam Mustafa.

So there you have it. I'll track my way back to the posts of the last week and add some comments here and there!