From DougM - I think I have a case of the Vapours* in the Vogsphere (220 Points)

One last push this week...  again, all 3d printed, this time in 28mm, and for your delectation we have some of Imperial Japan's finest efforts. With suitable efficiency, and a Civil Service of many ranks, (in which admission and promotion could be won by beating your superior at Go), I present your Manchurian Candidates, a Type 89 and a Vickers Crossley armoured car.  I do love the Type 89 shot trap of a flat front, and the Heath Robinson nature of the armoured car. Suitable for early campaigns in China. 

Where would an army be without a fleet of bureaucrats ensuring strict compliance with camouflage schemes and making sure there were no unauthorised modifications? No sandbags or welded on track links for Japanese Armour. And of course, you need transport for the inspections. So the Kurogane Type A (looking remarkably like Noddy's car), and the later Type B, which is a US 'Pickup' or an Australian 'Ute'.

I have been playing Chain of Command games set in Malaya in 1941, and these are noticeable for the use the Japanese made of their light armour versus Commonwealth forces with virtually no anti-tank capability. I had already purchased 2 Type 95 Ha-Go tanks, but I thought I might try and print my own. Of course, in case of fails, better print a few, so with these 4, I now have 6 Ha-Go for a game system where more than two would be an extreme rarity. 

Finally, I mustn't neglect my Normandy Panzer Divisions. 12th SS Panzer were equipping with Panzerjager IV in June 1944, though none saw the first actions in the week after D-Day. Just in case, though, and an extra SdKfz 250 is always useful.. 

Not sure if the barrel isn't a little over-scale, but otherwise, nice little prints. Something else totally unsuitable for Bocage country, but well capable of bullying Shermans in more open terrain.

* those of a certain age will recall those one-hit wonders, the Vapours and 'I think I'm Turning Japanese' - recalling all the lyrics 40+ years later just goes to show how much spare capacity there is in the human brain.

10 x 28mm vehicles @20 plus 20 for the Vogsphere = 220 by my maths. And the Japanese armour is another Squirrel point for a total of 11 so far.

1/200 WW2 Japanese Aircraft

1/200 WW2 US Aircraft

1/200 WW2 British Aircraft

1/200 WW2 German Aircraft

1/144 WW1 British Aircraft (not quite enough for WW1 German Aircraft (doh!))

28mm German Armour

28mm Japanese Armour

28mm 12th SS Panzer infantry

28mm Indian Mutiny Sepoys

28mm Dr Who

28mm Austrian Napoleonic

From the Vogsphere, it's into the Great Abyssal and the inner ring...  how many can I zoom around in the next 4 days I wonder?

That's a great set of Japanese vehicles, Doug! No need to worry about having six Type 95 tanks - it just means that you'll have to expand your infantry forces so that you can play "Big CoC".

Tamsin (covering for Greg who has a household emergency to deal with)

ps Yes, I do remember The Vapours. For those who don't, but are intrigued by the reference:

From TeemuL: Oldhammer time [Vogsphere] (90 points)

I have been slowly painting my WH40k Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard) army, which consist of some vehicles and metal-only infantry. I created some back story for them a year or so ago in Challenge XI: the Imperial Reenactment 7th. Here is a short quote from the original text: "For those who don't know, they are like theater act or LARP players in the 40th century, they are used to rise the morale of the citizens, advertise the military for the new recruits and provide some entertainment for the people. Some of them are civilian volunteers, some are actual guardsmen on leave, on punishment, on reward, on commission, retired or misplaced. -- Several time Imperial Reenactment 7th (and others like this) have been incorrectly ordered to real battlezones - the administration of the Imperium is not very clear, efficient or correct in many places. So sometimes they arrive on real warzone, they even might have some live ammunition. Sometimes they have blanks. Sometimes they have live ammunition when performing a play... "

Eagle-eyed from you will notice, that there is a small error, of course they are not from "40th century", that is a mistake made by me. Anyway, because of this backstory, I will propose a claim to the Vogsphere planet, which calls for Bureaucracy and/or Black Comedy. This entry probably fills both of the criteria. And since I'm currently located in the Challenge Star, I can easily use the Great Abyssal and move myself to the Middle Ring, where Vogsphere is right next to the Abyssal. Nice and easy.

So yes, these are metal miniatures from Games Workshop, 20 years old or so and most likely sculpted by the Perry twins. These are all Valhallan models, even though I do have other planets represented as well, Imperial Army is very open minded. I have painted them in bright primary colours, so that the spectators can spot them easily. I used Contrast colours over white undercoat. The basing is my usual method, glue sand over black base, wash with brownish wash and drybrush with grey, quite easy and quick (excluding the drying times).

Some might wonder why 8, why not full 10 and where is the heavy weapons team? Well, last year I painted couple of heavy weapons teams, which I can use as a unit of their own or use as part of the squads - giving me some flexibility.

And since we are getting closer to the Challenge end, I'll add another group (no planets this time) to this post. When I first joined this Challenge, it was Challenge V, and I mostly painted some LotR and Blood Bowl minis (before neither of them was rebooted) and Oldhammer (before the Old World was exploded). Lots has changed in the GW world during that time. Lots has changed in my world since that, too. I have painted some 40k minis and some Epic minis, but mostly I have been painting non-GW stuff, while I used to paint GW-only stuff. There are multiple reasons for that, but I have not abandoned none of those old friends - I have painted some Blood Bowl in this Challenge and I will give you some Lotr stuff too, but now I present some Oldhammer. These are Black Orcs to join my Orcs & Goblins army, which is slowly growing.

There are four identical plastic minis and one metal mini, maybe a leader of the group or something. I tried to follow the simple, bright and clear colours of the 80s and 90s so they can easily fit my existing units and I think it worked ok, all the way to the Goblin Green bases. Coat d'Arms provides nice selection of paints, identical to the old Citadel paints from the previous century - all the way to the thin reds and yellows which won't cover white, even straight from the pot! :)

I know Black Orcs should be black, but I have always liked them green and think Black just means Big... So they are rather green, with mostly red equipments again nodding to the their past.

This post gives me two more squirrels, 22 skulls (9 from Black Orcs and 13 from the guard) and 85 points (13 28mm miniatures 5 points each and 20 for Vogsphere).

Two of the skulls

My personal Squirrel count: 15

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

- 6mm Epic Imperial Fists

- 28mm ADD Boardgame

- 28mm Runewars Waiqar

- 28mm Blood Bowl

- 28mm Simians

- 15mm Mid War Germans

- 28mm Age of Sigmar Sylvaneths

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Imperium

- 28mm Warhammer Fantasy Orcs & Goblins

From Millsy:

I never cease to be amazed by your bold and outside the box colour choices Teemu! In my wildest, cheese-fuelled dreams I would never have conceived of painting Valhallans in a colour scheme like that. It has made my morning so kudos to you mate.

I really like your orcs too and the hand painted checks (which I can attest are a nightmare on a compound curve) are awesome. Have an extra 5 points to go towards some therapy :-)

From MartijnN: Houses on Vogsphere (57 points)

After our second visit to Coruscant we move on to Vogsphere. Now I really struggled to find a figure to match its theme of bureaucracy until I remembered this 40mm 3D printed figure from Iain Lovecraft's The Frost. She is labelled as a Sigilist, but besides the fact that I cannot really grasp what that is supposed to mean, anyone wielding an impressively oversized quill pen and a large book must be a bureaucrat. So here she is:

I must say that I quite like painting larger figures once more and I am happy how she came out. I mostly used Contrast paints again.

Next there are some 3d printed terrain items. Now some of these were printed on my FLM printer some time ago. I printed quite a large number of terrain items in one go, mostly scaled down to 10mm scale. However, as soon as I started painting them I discovered that my printer was not really properly dialed in. In hindsight, I should have tried different settings, as layer lines are really visible and not all prints have come out well. In many cases, the shapes and details are not sufficiently defined, which means that paints will flow everywhere. However, it seemed a shame to toss them all in the bin, and from a proper distance, like say, three feet, they still look sort of OK. The town houses are from the Leichheim Kickstarter and in 10mm scale, while the desert house is from Evan Carother's Empire of Scorching Sands and is printed in 28mm scale. The well is also 3d printed, but I can't remember where I got the model from.

Leichheim Blacksmith

This is actually a resin print

Leichheim Scholar's House

Leichheim Watchtower

All in all, I guess that the terrain items will more or less fill 1.5  6" cubes, so I propose 30 points for them. The sigilist is 40mm so 7 points, and the Vogsphere planet bonus adds another 20 points. 

So 57 points to take me to the brink of  my target! And another squirrel!

Very nice buildings, Martijn. As you asked, a sigilist is a wizard whose magical power uses symbols.

Tamsin

From StuartL Around And Around We Go - From Noel's Comet to Vogsphere - 122 Points

Hello again,

This is my final post for this week and should see me completing the middle ring of the Challenge XII Quadrant. My last quadrant entry was for LV426, meaning that the next step on my journey is Noel's Comet, and the theme of friendship (and writing a LOT of words).

I didn't know Noel all that well, but I was sad to hear of his passing last year. We crossed brushes a few times in the Squirrel side duel, with me narrowly beating him in the first duel back in 2019, only for him to take the title in the second duel in 2021. He always struck me as a good humoured chap and it's a shame that I'll never have a chance to compete with him again. So, I gave my entry for this step on the challenge a bit of extra thought before I selected a mini. There are two parts to this story, so I beg your patience before we get to the mini itself.

Way back in the time-before-time (circa 1998), a friend of my younger brother was selling off his various GW collections. At the time, I was getting back into the hobby after a short hiatus and wanted to get going quickly. Picking up an already built army seemed the best way of doing so. So, I bought his Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen and played a few games with them at my local GW store. (Middlesbrough, UK, if anyone cares). My brother's friend had already painted them in a rough and ready style, so I never saw a need to paint them myself. Moving on a few years, I emigrated to Japan, leaving my hobby collection behind. Over the years, I had my parents ship more and more of it over to me. By that time, I had bought several other armies and the Lizardmen ended up shoved into a box at the very bottom of the to-do pile. One of my friends in Japan wanted to make the move from 40K to WFB and asked if I had any minis I could part with cheaply, so I sold him the Lizardmen and he happily took them off my hands. Over time, he added some extra models to the army as well. At some point after that, he passed on the minis to someone else, using the money from the sale to but whatever the latest hotness was at the time. Shortly after this, GW decided that the Warhammer Fantasy game wasn't worth supporting and decided to blow up the setting and start a new system. The owner of the lizardmen, another friend of mine as it happened, tried a couple of games of Age of Sigmar and decided that it wasn't for them, selling the Lizardmen to me at the end of 2020 along with a lot of other minis. So, after over two decades, these models had had 5 owners and effectively 1 coat of paint in all that time. Last year I painted up some Skinks from the collection, but it went back to gathering dust for the most part.

The situation worldwide over the past couple of years has been truly dire and it has affected nearly every facet of our lives. Personally, I haven't been too put out by the various stay-at-home instructions as I am quite content to do hobby stuff by myself. One of my close friends however, hasn't been doing so well though. He runs a small teaching business and as you can probably imagine, Corona has been a massive headache to work around. Clients have cancelled classes, teachers have had to be trained to teach online, etc. My friend has always been a bit on the anxious side, and the stress from work, the worry about contracting the virus, the lack of real social activities and all the rest has not been good for him at all. To try to take his mind off things, whenever the case numbers have subsided, I have invited him to my place for some games and a chat. While my friend enjoys games, he has never been one for the complex rules or intricate strategies that I enjoy, he likes something simple where he can push his minis around the table, roll some dice and not have to think too much. In addition, he always liked the rank and file look of the old WFB setting and we got to talking about how GW may be bringing the old game back in some fashion. Neither of us really trust GW to do a good job and make rules that we both enjoy, and that got me thinking. I could probably knock together a set of rules that include the simplicity that my friend likes with the strategic planning that I enjoy. I spent a few weeks over the summer jotting down ideas, and once we had the opportunity I invited him over for a few games of my new system. It's not really my system, it is a rough mash up of Warlord's Hail Caesar, WFB 6th edition, the orders phase from the old Epic game by GW and other bits besides. At the time, I simply used card movement trays to push around some old WFB minis, but both my friend and I had a blast playing. The minis in question? My old Lizardmen. 

So, as a set of models that have been passed from friend to friend for years and with the intention of playing a game to help my friend relax and feel less anxious, I present the first of my newly repainted Lizardmen.

The figure is a metal Saurus warrior from back in the late 90's. I wanted to do something different from the usual greens and blues I see used for Lizardmen, so I asked my friend to look at some pictures of real world lizards on google and pick a colour scheme for me. I wanted to steer clear of the usual metallic colours I use for weaponry and tried to paint the sword as a piece of sharpened jade, giving it a coat of gloss varnish to make it stand out.

And after all that explanation, I am kind of tired, so the rest of my middle ring journey will just be a couple of quick entries below.

Perelandra has a theme of oceanic, so I painted up a mermaid. The figure is from Reaper Bones and is pretty tall as it is mounted upon a large rock. The figure itself is about 40mm not including the scenic base. I chose bright blues and greens for the mermaid and orange and yellow for her clothing, making for a very colourful entry. The scales have been drybrushed with silver to give them a more piscine appearance.

The next stop on the tour is Coruscant, famed for it's Imperial nature. So for this I painted up some old Empire WFB minis. I painted a Mordheim warband a few years ago and simply copied the colour scheme for these guys. As Mordheim is a particularly gritty game, I chose fairly muted colours for the uniforms, with just a splash of bright red for visual appeal.

And finally, we have Vogsphere and it's bureaucracy. I'll admit that this one gave me pause, but I eventually found what I think is a suitable mini. Most people never see the bureaucrats that make the rules, they just have to deal with the paperwork they create. Usually some jobsworth has a list of rules that they make people follow with a perverse sense of power. So, official looking nobody with a long set of pointless instructions? That I can do, thanks to the masses of Reaper Bones minis I still have in my stash.

"All adventurers wishing to hunt down the dragon must wear a high-vis vest and flame retardant safety glasses at all times. No swords, spears or axes are permitted unless the owner has the prerequisite license obtained at least 3 weeks in advance, and no blade may be more than 20cm in length. Armour must conform to ISO-45001 safety standards. Finally, everyone must have their mandatory tetanus shots in case of dragon bites."

And that should finish off the middle ring and this post. 

For my total, that is 1x 40mm mini and 7x 28mm minis for a total of 42 points. In addition I can add 4 challenge quadrant planets for a bonus of 80 points, bringing me up to 122 for the post.

Despite having a few GW minis here, there are no skulls. Weird.

Great story and great work on the old Lizardman Stuart  I like the scale tones that  you've used.  You are certainly rocketing around the rings here, so good on you for that.  I really like the bureaucrat figures with his hat and scroll, but I'm pretty sure that he's reading the instructions for the SPREADSHEET of DOOM.

From SamuliS: Panzerhaubitze rolling into Vogsphere (44 points)

Back to a scale that I've probably submitted more minis in than in any other, though this time with a new era for me in the challenge. I've played Flames of War for quite a while now and it's probably been my most played single game for the last 10 years or so. So naturally when Team Yankee originally came out I was intrigued, but sort of figured that while the setting interested me the ground scale maybe looked a bit odd and I was more interested in larger scale battles of battalion sized forces or larger due to that being closer to what I've dealt with as a reservist in the last years. But last autumn a Team Yankee bug really bit our club and with most of my gaming friends picking up armies I succumbed as well. I was on the fence between picking up a French wheeled recon force or starting a West German armored unit, but looking at store availabilities I finally ended up with the Germans. I have most of the base units already done and I'm now starting to round out the different support options to add some variety.

Having lived in Germany and done quite a lot of business with Germans I can vouch for the cliches about their bureaucracy levels being true. I think I'm probably still marked as a resident in Aachen as you had to report moving out at the city hall and they only allowed you to do it a few days before your departure. When I tried to do it about a week in advance the lady complained that I should come back later which I declined to do so I'm pretty sure I'm somehow still marked as living there. Now another area which is well known for bureaucracy is the military and this applies to any sort of company manufacturing military materials. I'd imagine the discussions related to Germans buying American military gear during the Cold War and not too long after the end of WW2 would have been quite a bureaucratic nightmare for the ordinary person so with that slightly long winded explanation I'd think these are a suitable example for my next planet on the Quadrant map with a landing on Vogsphere ;)

 

Three 15mm vehicles and the next landing point come to around 44 points if my count is correct!

That's a cheeky explantion for Vogsphere, but I'll allow it as you're still a resident of Aachen. I really feel these should be off-board, but they look great.

Barks

From RayR - Vogshere/Bureaucracy - The Clergy (65 points)

 

Vogsphere: Bureaucracy; Black Comedy

What the hell's Vogsphere were my first thoughts when reading the Bonus rounds this year, after a quick google search, I found out its the home world of the Vogons...

 

Not a clue? And I'm not inclined to find out anymore! Moving on to Bureaucracy, during last week's Covid, I had a Netflix rampage and watched all episodes of The Last Kingdom, one after the other, it took a few days, but I'm still here to tell the tale.

 

Watching the series, made me realise just how much influence the Clergy had over political decisions during this period of English history.

The definition of Bureaucracy is "a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives."

So these 9 figures fit the round perfectly. The figures were gifted to me by my old pal and old Challenge painter FranL. He sent these to me in the post a few years ago, so I thought it was high time I got them painted. They're from Conquest Games and sold as Benedictine Monks and Nuns.

Rear view

From left to right

Brother Martin, Brother Miles and Brother Paul

L to R

Father Curtis, Brother David and Brother Lee

L to R

Sister Natasha, Mother Tamsin, Sister Sarah

Bonus round 20pts

9 x 25mm figures @5pts

65pts

 

****

 

Great work Ray! While of course we would be assured that such spiritual people are in no way bureaucrats, any short analysis will show that organized religion is indeed home to towering empires of bureaucracy! Nice to have these figures, they would make great accent pieces, or even targets/objectives, for a variety of different games in quite a number of different periods. Also nice to have a shout out from Fran! Well done. 

 

GregB

From TashaH: Quite Literally A Plague Doctor (Vogsphere) (35 points)

When Tamsin dropped me off on Vogsphere, I started thinking what I could paint for Sarah’s Star Yacht to get me off the planet, as I had nothing to fit the criteria. My 3D printer has chosen not to work, so that was not an option. 

Then, I started thinking. That can be a dangerous thing!!

This Plague Doctor figure is from WizKids. Now, how on earth does it fit into this planet? Well…

 

Plague Doctors are most associated with the Black Death (even though this is a historical inaccuracy). 

...Plague doctors practiced bloodletting and other remedies such as putting frogs on the buboes "rebalancing the humors" as a normal routine...

- so there you have it, 'Black Humor'. 

 

I'm pretty sure I've met the challenge for this planet by being incredibly literal and, if not, we can discuss the bureaucracy surrounding Plague Doctors. (but ugh!)

This miniature really challenged me. I struggled a lot with it. I'm happy it is done and on the shelf.

28 mm figure: 5 points

Planet bonus: 20 points

Maelstrom bonus: 10 points

Total: 35 points

 

Off to Corsucant...

It's a bit of a stretch, but I'll allow it (I have to really, as we did discuss it earlier today!). Black isn't the easiest colour to pull off, and I must say that you've done a good job of it for a novice figure painter. 35 points it is!

Tamsin

ps I added the labels for you!

From GeoffreyT: Clowns, Bins and a Ripe Witch (Vogsphere + Earth + Lune) (111 points)

This week it seems, I am in a sector of the quadrant for which my miniature claims are somewhat paltry but bonus points will abound. 

VOGSPHERE - Black Comedy

From Cybertron, I drift anticlockwise around the middle ring and appear on the planet Vlogsphere.  Looking for black comedy miniatures, I need go no further than my favourite Eureka miniatures brand.

These 28mm meat-cleaver clowns on unicycles remind me of bad guys from a Roger Moore era Bond film.  Dangerous and frightening killers with overly complicated methods that comes unstuck with a bit of lateral thinking by 007.

This bunch of clowns are quite bright (in colour), indeed so bright I had to photograph them in the near dark to get a half decent picture.  To get this effect I used predominantly primary colours and white.  I have kept secondary colours to a minimum, but they are there in small amounts.  By using a few contrasting colours a brighter image forms, it also saves using black-lining to delineate areas.  I also added some patterning with dots and stripes, because thats what clowns have, but again kept in to a minimum.  This is because patterning mutes the colours when viewed at a gaming table distance.  Patterns scale badly from full size to miniature.

From the reverse.   

These guys are quite big for 28's.  Much bigger than usual fare from Eureka.  This is an image of the largest one, held with a ruler on a bit of a backward tilt to make it look bigger than it really is.

As much as I protest, they are largish 28's and not 40mm, so 4 of them does not constitute enough for a squirrel.  Maybe the big one could be classified as next scale up.

Next up is another black comedy miniature from Eureka (28mm).  I painted him up as a Napoleonic era Ghost for The Silver Bayonet game.

I really love the way he is looking backwards at the water pouring out of his horse, it gives an impression of sudden realisation, that just perhaps, there may be something wrong with his horse.  It is a great theme for a ghost who doesn't realise he is dead yet, kind of like in the naff 80's romantic film Ghost.

Initially I tried painting him in full colour, with ethereal edges, it was cool idea, but didn't work.  Then I painted him in the typical GW Aethermatic blue often used for etherial things.  That didn't really work either.  There was not enough contrast between the etherial blue and the watery blue.   Finally I settled on a quite bright white (whiter than I would do white clothes).  So ultimately I have painted this guy three times.  I'm still not happy with it, but the paint on him is getting pretty thick now and I'd have to strip it off to try again.  I was happy with the water tho.  For that I did a thin wash of dark blue over a very light grey primer.

TERRA - Earthbound

From Vlogsphere I penetrate the inner ring, by travelling travel through the Great Abyssal to Terra, where I present for you something that is earth bound.  That something is garbage, bound for landfill in the earth.

The bin metal outsides didn't take much effort, but I fiddled around a bit getting the garbage done.  I used a burnt umber base coat with a flesh wash then detailed in a bunch of the shapes with random colours and a few stripes.

I think these resin castings are from rubicon models.  They are a nominally 28mm scale. 

Hopefully my paltry tally of three widgets for 'Terra' is offset by what I'd like to think is a quite poignant observation on the earthbound theme.

LUNE - Witchcraft

Finally for this week I have an sacrificial offering for Lune.  This is again a 28mm Eureka miniature "Witch in a tree" from their rather funky Avalon Burning range.

When I saw her in the catalog, I was intrigued how she would be attached to the tree.  When I received the model, I was no clearer on this matter.  Initially I glued her so she was hanging by her feet, as her hair was pointed, thus I assumed the hair was hanging downwards.  Then on closer inspection, I noticed her boobs were hanging in the opposite direction to her hair, and therefore there was either some powerful witchcraft at work, or I had this witch glued on upside down.

Close up of boobs to show direction of gravity as intended by sculptor

Eventually it dawned on me she must be hanging by her hair.  I assumed this would hurt a lot, unless the hair wasn't just hair, but somethings stronger.  Therefore I painted her as if she was a fruit on the tree, ripening up.

For her skin tones, I used some contrast paint diluted by glaze medium, then highlighted the flatter areas with solid colours.  The colours came out subtle and nice, but the overall texture isn't as 'solid' and clean as I like my minis to look.  But good to try a different way.

I shaded her from green thru to red so she looked like an apple, but I did it all a bit too vertically and without much transition, so now she looks more like an Italian flag. Finally I glued some green vine basing material onto the tree and called it done.

POINTS

So what does all this add up to.  That is a debatable question.

Four oversized 28mm clowns = 4*5 = 20 points, is the big one worth more?  or are they mounted on unicycles for a cheeky 10 points each?

A ghostly 28mm cavalry man with half a horse (is that 3/4 of a cavalry piece ?) = 3/4 * 10 = 7.5 points

3 widgets (1 point each?) = 3 points ? 

A witch in a tree.  She is true 28mm scale, but is about 40mm to eye from the foot of her tree = 7 points?  Or is she a 28mm mounted fig, mounted in a tree for 10 points?  Or since I added foliage, is she now a terrain piece for 1 point?   Should I get a flag bonus for the dodgy ripening apple attempt that looks like an Italian flag ?

Three locations, Vogsphere, Terra and Lune = 60 bonus points.

A total of 100 points maybe ?  I'm not sure.  I have left some tricky decision making for Barks the Thursday minion.

SIDE CHALLENGES

No squirrels.  Sad face emoticon.

However, my one of this two of that approach to painting has given me some more strong progress in the alphabet soup challenge;

U is for Unicyclists, G is for Ghost, L is for Landfill and A is for Arboreal Witch.

I'm tracking pretty well in the alphabet soup side challenge and will give an update on the tally and my progress around the planets when I have a shorter post sometime.  But at this stage if you are still with me, you have probably read enough of my ramblings.

From here I will probably go back past Terra, through the Great Abyssal to Klendathu on the Outer ring. It is on the challenge packed outer reaches where I would like to resume my hunt for challenge planets, but is going back outwards allowed? 

Kind Regards

Geoff.

A very impressive and spooky variety show today, Geoff! Eureka coming up with the goods yet again. As much as I wish to run screaming from your clown posse, I respect the bright colours and the dots and stripes. I'll shell out 28 points there which may yet score you a Squirrel. Your half-horse has a nice water trough so that is another 10. I'll chip in 3 for the useful earth-bound garbage, and 10 for the gravitationally-affected witch. And, yes, you may go back to an orbit further away.

Barks