10th ANNIVERSARY - MODELLING CHALLENGE 2022 ("ARMOURED LEGENDS")

With the special 10th Anniversary Spring Big Game 2022 fast approaching, its time for the Modelling Challenge 2022!

Past Modelling Challenges have covered VBCW boats, tanks, planes and morale raising vehicles, mostly based on "(very) cheep Chinese plastic" toys sourced over time from Ebay and given away free by the Umpires to players at the Spring Big Game - just to see what imaginative conversions and paintjobs result. The results (usually playable as a free bonus at the Autumn Big Game) have varied, of course, mostly tending towards giganticism - entire armoured brigades, landing fleets, air squadrons - or veering into the specialist sub-genre of 1930s outre; whether Heath-Robinson flame throwing tanks or Hereford's very first mobile "bordel"....

So the 2022 Challenge is intended to bring us all back to the individual and concentrate upon creating a VBCW campaign character - an "Armoured Legend" !

Well, it wouldn't be a Modelling Challenge without a piece of (really, really) cheep Chinese plastic!  This time we have to be grateful not to the modern CCP, but to the manufacturing industry (and graphic artists) of that freedom loving and entrepeneurial enclave of the late British Empire, 1960's Hong Kong:

Yes! A complete (if somewhat battered) toy department display box of respectable vintage, complete with characterful artwork, containing twelve (12) plastic "war toys" of "roughly the right scale" and completely dubious historical authenticity - just right for a HerefordVBCW Modelling Challenge!

The interior of the display box - double packed rows of VBCW potential tanks!

The luminescent red bell-end muzzle brake has to go - but the barrel is already
too long for a 1930s tank, so it wouldn't be a loss....

...in fact, the whole barrel (a separate part) could go, leaving something
 like an M8 armoured howitzer configuration...

..the all-important "scale shots" - behind, an example of the notorious "Shoddy Tank"
from the 2019 Modelling Challenge. The 2022 variant is slightly smaller and
slightly less "bulked up". If anything, however, that makes it even more
suitable for "28mm scale" VBCW gaming...

...the BUF clearly have their eyes on the new tank variant. Here
a small section of infantry demonstrate "scale height" against the tank.

Now, this is usually where we insert a suitable VBCW "back story" - which can admittedly tend towards the over-elaborate - in order to explain the presence of somewhat a-historical vehicles in Hereford 1938. But there's no need to do so this time, as the 2022 Modelling Challenge isn't all about the tank. The tank is only a backdrop to whoever you choose to command it - your new campaign character - the "Armoured Legend".

So. pick up a tank at the Spring Big Game 2022 ! You then have six months to scour the internet/check in the leadpile/look behind the back of the couch for a suitable commander ready to attain "legendary status" in the Hereford VBCW campaign..... 

Although the judging system is entirely arbitrary, and conversion, modelling and painting of course the key, special points will be awarded for:

• snazzy 1930s three colour camouflage schemes (any three colours);
• eccentricity;
• Herefordshire connections;
• a fun backstory to the character;
• producing both a "half figure" to fit in the turret and an identically-painted "full height" figure fit to run around dizzily (once your tank meets the deadly crowbar wielding Communist A/T Team);
• independence from established factions;
• anything that makes the Umpires quietly giggle.

And remember the watchword - if you paint it, you can play it - as your Umpire's free bonus in the Autumn Big Game 2022! 

An unhappy BUF Storm Commander, Desmond Dastardly - he has yet to fight a battle in
the Hereford VBCW (let alone achieve legendary status, or even have his binoculars
finished), and soon there will be all this competition. Umpires!