Monday 31 December 2018

666 - 2018 Winter Challenge: British Paras! Days 1-8


Happy New Year, All!

I decided - as I had less homework than normal this holiday - to challenge myself to get an entire project done. To this end, I opened-up my options as polls in a couple of my games clubs, and the winning option for completion by the end of January 2019 was 1000 points of British Paras: 
British Airborne Starter Army
To be more precise, a list from the Market Garden campaign book for the 21st Independent Company - the British Pathfinders. I've always been interested in those who drop in first, and I enjoy playing unusual lists too. It's going to be a tricky list, mind: there's no free artillery FOO, no AT guns, no vehicles, no on-table artillery, none of my beloved 3" mortar...essentially nothing that couldn't be sneakily parachuted in. What they do have is more PIATs, snipers and 2" mortars than normal, a Captain as their default OC, and a cool special rule for the actual pathfinder sections.

The plan (ha!) is to make some progress - however minimal - as often as I can: every day, if possible. I'm now on Day 8, and by now I have all 39 men in the platoon based, primed, base-coated and with the desert yellow base-coat on their smocks. It's been quite a slog!

Day 1. Metal teams assembled.
Day 5...maybe? All models assembled and based.
Day 6 (below, too.) All models primed and base-coated
with English Uniform. It looks better without a flash.
Day 7: some smocks base-coated Desert Yellow
Day 8: the rest of the smocks base-coated.
...So there you go.

It's been an uncharacteristically speedy start (for me) and although I'm dreading the painting of the Denison smock camouflage, I think I should be okay to get them finished by the end of January. 

I must say, it's really weird for me to see a 1000pt Bolt Action army represented by just 39 men! Still, I've wanted paras for ages - they're so damned iconic - and as I got the box set essentially for free in a trade for some mid-90s Space Marine odds-and-sods that I found in a box, I'm laughing, really!

More updates as I get to them. 

Happy New Year, folks - my 2019 be a great one for you!

- Chris.

14 comments:

  1. Cranking out that many minis at once, I had to double check and make sure I wasn't looking at the Mordian7th blog...lol!

    Happy New Year Admiral!
    o7

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HA! Yes, mate: you and me both!

      Happy New Year to you and yours too, Cheef!
      o7

      Delete
  2. Is this Winter Challenge thing all my fault? It's been ages since I set myself a large single project to attack.

    If I'm home at Easter, I have a new Platoon to attack....

    Great score on the swap as well. Love to see the camo smocks complete.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I dunno, mate: I just needed to spur myself on!

      Yeah. Camo smocks. Love 'em.

      Yeah.

      Delete
  3. Ooo, do love to see a well done Para force.

    Looking forward to seeing how this gets on mate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, mate!

      It will definitely be a para force done. As for "well done"? Well, I guess we'll see, eh?!

      Delete
  4. What a great project to kick off 2019. 39 figures should be enough for a starting platoon for Chain of Command too...just saying haha!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers!

      I'm very interested in CoC - only ever played it against myself though. I plan to try it properly soon...

      Delete
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