From JuanM: 28mm Spanish Gladiator & British-Crewed Breda (32 points)

Juan, a veteran Challenger, joins us and submits these two fine entries for his debut this year.

Here are my first entries to The Challenge.

The first one is a 28mm gladiator, a 'Hoplomachius', from Brigade Games. This is a fantastic figure from Paul Hicks, the first one for another project I want to begin with my club´s mates. So here is 'Viriato', an Spanish gladiator. It has been a true pleasure to paint him.

The second one is a 28mm Italian Breda AA gun with British crew. This model is from Offensive Miniatures, a very nice one that I expect to use in my games of "Chain of Command", in scenarios based in the Dodecanese Campaing; for that reason, the crew are from the RAF Regiment.

Beautiful work Juan. You've such a smooth style with the brush, it's always a pleasure to see your work.

These two subjects, separated only by around 2000 years, will give Juan 32 points (including a bit extra for the great arid basework on the Breda). Welcome back Juan!

From StefanosS: 28mm Napoleonic Italian Infantry (117 points)

From Stefanos:

Here I is my completed 2nd Btg of Italian Kingdom, 1st Line Regiment.

22 28mm figures, almost all are from Crusader miniatures, the two wounded from Offensive Miniatures. Fanion is from Flag Dude

1 French Voltigeur in greatcoat (see top image) by Perry Miniatures.

Lovely work Stefanos. We've had a lot of Napoleonic Italians entered during the Challenge which is a nice change of pace. I've not seen a close-up of Crusader naps before but they look quite nice - the sculpts have an almost Foundry look about them.

This battalion with their lonely voltigeur and banner will give Stefanos 117 points.

From Curt: 28mm Napoleonic Artillery Casualty Marker (15 points)

Here's another Napoleonic casualty marker I've made up. This one depicts a knocked-out French 12-pounder along with an unfortunate crewman and soldier. I plan to make more of these kind of vignettes to indicate damaged units, or particular spots that have seen hard fighting.

This is a relatively new 28mm resin and white metal set from Offensive Miniatures. The pack includes two separate models, but I cut them up, rearranged them to fit and added a Perry casualty to compose a larger scene.

A sobering scene, to be sure, but one I would assume to be fairly common during that period.

I'm going to give myself 15 points for this one.  Next will be some more markers and finally, perhaps the last of the Normans...

Prototypes of 28mm Napoleonic Unit / Casualty Markers

Like a lot of gamers, I like to keep the tabletop clean of dice, measuring tapes, rule sheets, pets, soft drinks, etc., but I know that concessions have to be made for marking unit status and displaying other game mechanics. Nonetheless, I really don't like casualty caps, especially anything plastic, as they seem to break the aesthetic of the painted miniatures and scenery. I've always liked the look of casualty figures, but in several rule sets a unit can take numerous 'hits' so it can seem that there is a cloud of casualties following along, and if they get too close to one another confusion can occur in determining to whose casualties belong to what unit.

So I'm playing around with how to compress as much unit information into as small a space as possible. Here are a few unit status markers that I've mocked up that combines a small vignette, a 'fin' for mounting a unit ID card, plus a few slots to fit small (7-8mm) six-sided dice to track hits. 

Here is a shot of the base showing the ID fin and the slots for the D6.

These were built on 50mm steel bases with bits of plasticard to build-up the slots and fins.

These two castings are from Offensive Miniatures. I quite like the wounded drummer boy.

The slots work reasonably well to keep the dice all in one spot and prevents accidental mix-ups when units are compressed together in a scrum. For a game such as 'Black Powder' the dice can be of different colours to track Disorders, 'standard' hits and Shaken status. We've also come up with a simple protocol to move the stand from the back of the unit to the front to keep track of which stuff has been activated - pretty straight forward stuff really.

Foundry Rifle officer with Perry plastic British casualty.

I've noticed that Litko has a new casualty base featured in Jim's Lab that has a numeric dial which looks quite promising. If I could get them to prototype one that incorporates a couple dials in it then it naturally would be able to track two different sets of information and I could get rid of the dice - something to ponder...

Victrix plastic British officer along with a Offensive Miniatures drummer casualty.

Victrix plastic French officer with a Perry infantry casualty.