The Brush Dreams of Ronin 28

So what will I paint for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge? Curt has asked each of his brush ronin to give themselves a par, a goal based on his points system.

I promised getting this to Curt yesterday but I underestimated my recovery time after a quick visit to Day Surgery yesterday to get my knee repaired, a little wear and tear from military training and running. Mrs. Padre took this yesterday when I came back from the operating theatre. That smile is no doubt me dreaming of all the great figures I'll get painted for the Challenge.

With apologies to fans of the movie Gettysburg: "General, I'm so damn stoned I can't see a thing. Are these good drugs, General?" "Yes, sir/ Mmmmmmmmmmmm ..... very good drugs."

So now a few days at home to recover and then I'm out the gate with my colleagues. Here is what I will be submitting to Curt, the sum total of what I would like to paint between now and when the contest closes at the end of March.

1) 6mm Napoleonics

Last week I posted some pics of the first results of my first batch of an order from Bacchus, my toe into the water of small scale Napoleonic wargaming. You readers were most most kind and encouraging. So here is the rest of that order, and my top priority goal for this challenge.

24x line infantry @ 1 pt ea = 24 points 4 x artillery @ 2 pts ea = 8 points 12 x artillery crew @ 1 pt ea = 12 points 24 x light infantry @ 1 pt ea = 24 points 4 x limbers @ 3 pts ea = 12 points Total = 80 points

2) 20mm World War Two

Two goals here. The first, and second highest priority project, is to finish this ten man section of late war German infantry from TQD castings, to furnish SS opponents for my French Canadian alter ego, Lt. Denis Audet. My goal is to paint most of them in SS peadot cammo, which is always a good test of painting skills.

10 x 20mm foot figures @ 4pts ea = 40 points

The second goal in this scale is to finish painting these two Armourfast Soviet SU152 SP Guns as a way to revisit my languishing Soviet collection. They will also be an opportunity to try the airbrush I bought recently, as well as experiment with these pigments I picked up while visiting the wonderful BC Shaver and Hobby Shop in Victoria, BC, last month.

2 x 20mm vehicles @12 pts ea = 24 pts

4)American Civil War 28mm

Not a big project here, but an old one. I bought these Wargames Foundry ACW lads in the ever-stylish Hardee Hat to finish an expansion to the the Iron Brigade, something I've been slowly adding to over the years. Besides these three figs there are two more casualty figures, which I am thinking of posing together around a shellburst. One of Curt's recent posts at Analogue Hobbies has some clever ideas as to accomplishing this.

5 x 28mm foot figures @ 5 pts each = 25 pts

3)World War Two 28mm

These are the "plastic Johnnies" that Lord Lovat was referring to in my last post, a box of 24 British commandoes for my Weird War Two project to give "Project S" the force it needs to strike at its sinister foes. A bit of a devil to put them all together, and I've been averaging 3-4 in an evening while watching a movie.

24 x 28mm foot figures @ 5 pts ea = 120 pts

4)Seven Years War in 28mm

Ages ago my gaming group in Ontario went through an SYW phase, using the Age of Reason rules, and I started working on a Russian army. I bought these Front Rank Prussian Hussars since no one at the time seemed to sculpt Russian hussars, and chaps tearing about in gaudy uniforms on fast horses all look the same, really, don't they? So my bonus goal for the challenge is to get them finished, and maybe revisit the whole SWY thing, perhaps using the Black Power or Maurice rules, I'm open to guidance on this subject.

12 x 28mm cavalry figures @ 10 pts ea = 240pts

Since I have to order a Samurai figure as the cost of entry into this Challenge, and have 12 Dixon Tartar light cavalry which I also ordered for the SYW, as light horse for my Turkish army (they seemed like fun opponents for my Russians). Oddly Dixon only shipped six appropriate horses for those figures, so this is my chance to buy another 6 and get that unit out of the lead mountain. However, at the risk of being called a sandbagger, I won't include that in my total for this project, since, frankly, I doubt I'll get to them.

80 points of 6mm Nappies 64 pts of 20mm WW2 25 pts of 28mm ACW 120 pts of 28mm WW2 240 pts of 28mm SYW

So if my arithmetic is correct, my personal par for the Challenge is 529. God speed all out brushes! Blessings, Mike, aka Ronin 28