MODELLING CHALLENGE 2024 - LADIES ! TO THE BARRICADES !

Well, it's that time of year again - when we preview the chosen piece of cruddy vintage plastic that is to be the subject of the annual Modelling Challenge, collectable in person at the Spring Big Game and playable FREE by it's painter/converter/bodger/new owner at the Autumn Big Game !

Over the years, we've gleefully handed out vintage plastic boat hulls, cheep scale-free Chinese mini-planes, old Hong Kong tanks, Chinese manufactured "Shoddy" Tanks, etc. etc. It's only occasionally that cheep toy supplies have inexplicably failed, and we've been reduced to handing out a "high value concept" for players to conjure with...for the historical records of the Modelling Challenges, see the Modelling Challenge blogpost labels in the column to the right.

This year is different. Not because toy supplies have failed (we've still got a goodly few 1960s plastics stuffed down the back of the sofa for future Modelling Challenges), but because the Campaign Co-Ordinators/Umpires need your help.

Hence the title of the Modelling Challenge 2024 - "Ladies ! To the Barricades !" [note 1]

As already announced in the Gamers' Notes to this blogpost, the Autumn Big Game 2024 ("Springtime for Stokkies?") will set the scene for a daring escape attempt by that lecherous  lascivious South African lothario darling of Royalist boudoirs drawing rooms, the rootin' tootin' shootin' commander of the notoriously boisterous King's Colonials, Stokkies Joubert. And a game involving Stokkies, as any fule kno', must involve lots of ladies.

Happy memories - a group of Royalist ladies note Stokkies' entrance to a Herefordshire garden party.

So the first part of the Modelling Challenge 2024 is to provide a lady - or ladies - for the Autumn Big Game 2024. Quite how such a lady - or ladies - will form part of Stokkies' escape attempt is yet to be determined (but will be by Autumn, in time honoured fashion, with a variety of barely legible scratchings on the back of an old envelope) - but that's rather beside the point. "Ladies provided" will not confer any competitive advantage upon the relevant player - we're going for pure aestheticism this year, and the opportunity for you to provide the best painted female 28mm figure(s) that you possibly can.

Miss Universe 1935. See [note 2] below.

So what kind of ladies and what are the rules of the Modelling Challenge 2024? Well, as to 'rules', they've always been rather loose - guidelines might be a better description - and as to ladies, well any kind, really, as long as they can plausibly fit into the 1930s world of the Hereford VBCW. We're not stuck on glamour girls - the grimly efficient "females of war" are equally welcome:

1930s Royal Glamour Girl - the Duchess of Kent. I say !

Grim Efficiency - Mrs Ada Bracegirdle, testing machine
guns at the Rotherwas Firing Range, VBCW Herefordshire, 1938.
Don't shoot! We surrender!

Nor are we stuck on faction, for Stokkies' tastes are notoriously indiscriminate. So your lady (or ladies) could be, say, a hard-line Communist pilot, or a Nazi Hell - Bitch female member of the BUF, of any faction or none:

Red Pilot (aka Janet Leigh, 1957). Golly !

Oh, no - you just know that someone is going to do this in 28mm....
.....the effect on Stokkies is "yet to be determined"
(but, come to think of it,  Ilsa may have had something to do
with the notorious disappearance of Captain Arrowsmith).

And finally, to indicate our complete relaxation (to the point of being practically horizontal, a la Stokkies) as to eligibility criteria, nor are we too troubled about the "historical period of origin" of your 28mm lady(ies). For example, if you are truly determined to resuscitate a 1970s D&D "Chick in a Chainmail Bikini" for your entry, so be it - provided always she has got a "plausible backstory" placing her in Hereford in 1938 !

No chainmail, and not much bikini - but this nicely painted Hasslefree "Libby"
will still need a "plausible backstory" for the Modelling Challenge 2024, as
bikinis weren't invented until the 1950s. The Celebrity Judging Panel cares
 about these historical details, obviously. [note 3]

Whether you want to produce a section of ladies, or simply an individual figure, as long as your entry is female (with a back story as necessary) and painted, you're in the competition to win the Autumn Modelling Challenge 2024 ! Hurrah !

Hang on, there's a catch ......... let's think ........ what was it again ? Hmmm............ah yes, now we remember! Something about the Challenge Title ! The second part of the Modelling Challenge 2024 !

[THE SUBSEQUENT PARAGRAPHS DO NOT APPLY TO INTERNATIONAL (OR INTERGALACTIC) ENTRANTS TO THE MODELLING CHALLENGE 2024. SEE NOTE 4.

AND HELLO LAF BEARWOODMAN !]

Again, your Campaign Co-Ordinators/Umpires need your help. One of our Big Games in 2025 (hey, we like to think ahead) needs lots of very familiar urban buildings, and the Umpires are already hard at work on all these pieces. But a recent "forward planning review" has disclosed that we need/must have at least 60 - 80 feet (that's right, sixty to eighty feet) of "Urban Barricades" for the very same game. Sandbags (lots of sandbags), upturned domestic furniture, burnt out cars, tumbledown walls - we need lots and lots of it, preferably arranged on, say, 1 inch wide and 6 or 12 inch long bases, some of them "corner" bases.

Barricades by Warlord. It's this kind of thing the Umpires
need (but more 1930s and imaginatively put together)

Battlefield Debris by Warlord Games (other wargames manufacturers are available).
Some nice 1930s pieces here - eg. the sofas and the furniture barricade.
(But the price of £59 (!!) is not in the Hereford VBCW league)

As the Umpires are already busy making buildings, this time we're asking everyone in the campaign to come to the aid of the party. Being believers in sticks as well as carrots, female entries for the Modelling Challenge 2024 will only be eligible if accompanied by a deb's delight barricade (or, preferably, lots of barricades) of whatever description, usable in the 2025 Big Game. That ok ? We'll be putting up some blogposts in the next few months with cheep barricade ideas, for in the spirit of Hereford VBCW, more kudos attaches to barricades built from household bits and bobs with some imagination, rather than expensively purchased 'store products' (whether from Warlord or elsewhere.....) Oh, and chances are, if you attend the Big Game in 2025, you'll find your troops sheltering behind the very same barricade(s)....

So there we have it, VBCW Chaps, the Modelling Challenge 2024 - "Ladies ! To the Barricades !"

Notes:

(1). Previous (but discarded) titles included "Girls! Girls! Girls!" and "Dude! We want your women!". We do have some standards.

(2). "The title 'Miss Universe' was first used by the International Pageant of Pulchritude in 1926. This contest was held annually until 1935, when the Great Depression and the events preceding World War II led to its demise." See HERE.

(3). The Celebrity Judging Panel is yet to be announced, but is known to include the anthropomorphic Mr Wolf, Tank Commander Oddball, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, and a Mr Terry Thomas. Make of that what you will...stand by for further announcements.....and note the further guidance below!

(4). International or Intergalactic Entries - the 2023 Modelling Challenge was enlivened by an entry, for the very first time, from a modeller not (a physical) part of the Hereford VBCW Campaign - LAF Bearwoodman ! (see his entry HERE and the results HERE). As the 2024 Modelling Challenge doesn't involve a FREE GIVEAWAY provided to players at the Spring Big Game, but requires chaps to fall back on their own resources, we thought we would throw this year's Competition open to anybody (international or intergalactic) who wanted to enter a painted 1930s Female Figure - all that's necessary is a nice photograph of your entry sent to "Leadboy" on the Lead Adventure Forum ("LAF"). No requirement for "a barricade" from international or intergalactic competitors. "Golden Demon" standard painting not required - VBCW sense of place/humour mandatory.  Entries no later than 1st October 2024 - heat up the Modelling Challenge this year with your entry !

(5). Additional Guidance (GIF category) -

Miss Bren Gun, 1938. An entry likely to gain the favour of the Judging Panel -
cinematic violence "capable of enthusiastic boyish imitation" and
 historical authenticity all rolled into one.

Oh, do grow up.........whatever her back story, "Miss Brassiere Gun" is more likely to give
some of the Celebrity Judging Panel an instant coronary than provide a prospect of success.
Think of the effect on the Dowager Countess of Downton...and the hot shame of receiving
 only the "Ian Fleming Scroll for Ridiculous Implausibility" rather than the "Winner's Cup".
[Still, from an armourer's point of view only, a more successful weapons system than
the fondly remembered American "crotch mortar" featured IN THIS BLOGPOST]

GOOD LUCK WITH THE 2024 COMPETITION, VBCW CHAPS !