First, day of the challenge found me sat at home looking out the window at thick fog, with nothing particularly to do, apart from sit at my painting station and start duabing paint on a few figures. The question, where to start with the girls - the hard-hitting but colourful nobles, the elite bodyguard, warmachines (slave drawn chariots), the tribewomen or the masses of humble pilgrims? As this a project over the next six months, where I'll be unable to set anything to one side to draw either breath or inspiration I've decided to get the boring rank & file stuff out of the way first - human pilgrims.
Rank and file month #1
Third Edition Warhammer states for Amazons, you should use Human stats, with no particular add-ons to give them a fravour for their enviroment. So here's my first ten figures:-
I'm not using Citadel 'C' series Amazons for pilgrims (as my pockets aren't that deep) but, Celtos female Gael warriors http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/Celtos/The%20Gaels.html, as they scale up pretty well with the originals, I like the figures and my take is - they're representing one of the out-laying settlements which have their own culture away from the temple, where they deal with the mundane as they see fit and only refer back to the temple to receive news, require help or their fix! I also don't have an issue with new alternative figures for Oldhammer.
Now, being humans, with the representative point values - this little lot with the musician is only going to come in at ninety nine points at most, with shield, light armour (this ones the stretch as they're not really wearing a great deal) and carrying a spear (5+1+2+1= 9) which, if, I continue on the same course will leave me well short of the thousand point target for the end of the challenge, thus as I tend the paint in batches I'll likely paint more than the required ten figures this month.
Here's a couple of close-ups so you can see just how heavy handed I am, on the table top from about three feet they look fine.
To make-up the points I've done another couple of batches from start to finish, here's the second batch.
All together with the first batch.
Third batch
With the other batches with a first coat of varnish, gives me a total of twentynine figures painted and roughly just under three hundred points (288) with banners and musicians.
All based up and ready to go.
The intended victims of my endeavors for next months challenge will be more pilgrims, this time utilizing Foundrys Amazons, these are much more Hellenistic/Greek looking, which will provide a solid spear block, they came with Spartan shield designs, which has to go, I'll try to mould designs or leave smooth to paint similar features.
Here's my attempts at altering the shields useing a combination of green stuff and liquid green stuff - the liquid didn't work so well, you can see the original design beneath. Overall happy with the results, but I really should have taken more time and worked on smaller batches rather than one big push, which would have given time to mould more shield designs and stopped the material going lumpy towards the end!