From AndyM: 28mm SYW Imagi-Nation Regiment der Altefritzenburg (130 points)

From Andy:

Part of the reason for entering the Challenge this year was as a driver for a big 28mm ImagiNation game I'll be playing in May for which I've committed (more likely over-committed!) to paint a lot of 28mm SYW types to expand my existing ImagiNation Army of Altefritzenburg. My battalions are organized in companies of twelve with three musketeer and one grenadier company to a unit, officers out front and a stand with ensigns, drummer and NCO. So here are the first two musketeer companies of the Erste Regiment der Altefritzenburg.

The figures are RSM Austrian musketeers. These are the preferred choice for the bulk of my units. However, I'll be using Minden for command figures so the two officers out front are Minden Austrians. 

Beautiful work Andy! I love these figures with their green goats and red turnbacks and cuffs - wonderful. I have a bunch of Minden castings waiting in the wings and seeing yours makes me chomp at the bit to get stuck into them. I'll also have to check out these RSM models as they look quite fine as well. Thanks for showing these to us.

The Erste Regiment der Altefritzenburg will give Andy 130 points.

AndyM: 28mm SYW Limbered Artillery (90 Points)

First, my apologies for those in the queue waiting for their entries to be posted. For some reason Blogger is being very obstinate for me these past few days. I'm getting odd errors which are taking an inordinate amount of time to work through and is causing delays in getting pages posted. Please bear with me...

From Andy:

These are the limbers and bits I needed to add to a collection of beautiful figures give to me last November. I'll be posting them on my blog soon. To supplement them I wanted to do limbers for the guns and a colonel. The entry for the challenge just consists of the limbers themselves and the Master of Artillery. The limbers and horse are Irregular, the drivers are Minden (lovely figures) and the Master is Irregular. He is much bigger then the others but I have a backstory to explain his giant size!

I've attached pics of the full battery 'in transit'. I THINK the guns are Foundry but not sure. The guards are Huzzah Miniatures from Fighting 15s. You can also see the Minden colonel I painted as commander of this new contingent.

The 'guard' bases have a curved front to allow the gun to 'bend' when in column of march. An idea shamelessly stolen from my mate Essex Boy!

Not a huge entry but it gets me in double figures and clears the decks for the main effort...

More coming soon!

Lovely work Andy those Huzzah figures are gorgeous and the Minden stuff is superb as well. I also quite like that curved base idea (I'll be stealing that, thank you!).  So, what is the backstory for the difference in scale with the Master? 

This excellent battery of guns will give Andy 90 points. Well done!

A New Prize Sponsor: Fife & Drum Miniatures

Yesterday I was contacted by 'Der Alte Fritz', owner of Fife & Drum Miniatures who, completely out of the blue, has very kindly offered prize support for the Painting Challenge. For those who may not be familiar with the range, 'Fife & Drum Miniatures', whose 30mm figures focus on the American War of Independence, was awarded 'Best Historical Miniatures Range of 2011' by the Miniatures Page. Fife & Drum also carries the wonderful Minden Miniatures range which focuses on the armies of the Seven Years War. Both ranges are sculpted by the ridiculously talented Richard Ansell.

So again, a huge thanks to 'Der Alte Fritz' for his generous support of the Painting Challenge. Huzzah!!

In a few days I'll post more details on the various prizes in order to whet your appetite and spur you all to more heroic bouts of painting madness!

Entry #7 to the Lead Painters' League: 'A Message for Der Alte Fritz' - Seven Years War Prussian Command Stand

I found that one way to gain a few extra points in the Lead Painters' League is to submit a newly painted team for each week's match. One certainly has the option of submitting older stuff from your existing collection (and foregoing the extra points), but that, to me, seems kind of against the spirit of the exercise. In fact I've been really enjoying the whole process of planning my entries and getting them prepared for the coming week's match.

Anyway, as things would have it, this past week work and life conspired against me and I had very little time to work on any hobby projects. Subsequently Friday rolled around and I only had two figures out of the five completed, and the deadline for submission was 6 am Saturday, my time... Damn. I knew I either I had to pull an all-nighter to get them done, or eat crow and submit an existing set of figures (which I was loath to do). After mulling it over I resolved to forego sleep and stick to my guns in an effort to submit a newly-painted entry.

The lovely Sarah, bless her soul, made me two espressos to power me through the night. So  I started in, furiously painting like a man possessed in an attempt to beat the clock. By 4:30 in the morning things looked promising, with the colours mostly done and the figures based. I only had to finish the groundwork and do a bit of highlighting. Well, when I next looked at the clock it was 5:45 and I blearily realized I had 15 minutes to compose the vignette on the backdrop, photograph it and arrange the images for transmission! Yiiikes! By this time dawn had just broke, but being that it was an overcast day the light was quite dim and the pictures turned out rather crappy. I had no time to set up any lights to reshoot so those were the pics I had to go with. Dammit Janet.

So, if you go to the LPL to take a look please accept my apologies for the execrable photos. I have a suspicion that for all the midnight oil I expended I'm going to get smoked due to lousy presentation. Oh well, as Keitel's Feraud in The Duellists would say, 'La!' 

Anyway, enough of my wingeing, as a consolation I took some time today to reshoot the figures in an effort to show them in a better light (literally).

This is my first effort at painting Seven Years War figures. These are gorgeous 28mm castings from  Minden Miniatures, sculpted by the talented Richard Ansell. The figures are quite slight, almost willowy in their stature, but they have a great sense of presence and lots of character. The detail on them is VERY fine which I found quite challenging to paint. Nonetheless they were loads of fun to work with and I look forward to doing some more.

This vignette will serve as a Prussian command stand. The mounted cavalryman I have painted to depict a member of the Zieten Hussars while his dismounted counterpart has been done up as a trooper of the Szekley Hussars. The 'Prussian' infantry officer is a bit of a bodge. He's actually a French infantry officer but I reasoned that the cut of the uniforms were very similar amongst the combatants so I thought I might be forgiven for this bit of heresy.  My personal favourites are the groom and the blacksmith re-shoeing the hussar's mount. I'm particularly taken with the sculpt of the groom who's seen here firmly holding the horse's bridle while gently stroking its neck with a calming hand. Brilliant stuff. The mounted hussar is actually from another set so I had to do some light modifications with greenstuff to create some saddle harness on his horse. No real biggie. I might swap out the mounted infantry officer for a figure of Frederick The Far Better Than Average at a later date, but this will work for now.

I have a few options for what I want to do for Round 8 but I better get a wiggle on so I don't get caught out late again...