Hoi,
Pfew! Hanging on with my fingernails and shear perseverance, I managed to finish the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and gain my points target of 1500 points. It was my 3rd Challenge and even though I now can say I know the drill it is still exciting to the last. If you have never participated in an event like this you cannot understand the chemistry that exists between the Challengers, their Minions and the Snowlord out of the High North beyond the Wall. The effect of 3 months of painting comradeship within the points-system used to calculate your targets, is quite profound in that I am still counting up Challenge points when looking at figures on my desk.
In the end, I managed to reach the 16th place, quite good if you look at the veterans firmly and immovably entrenched in the top 10. Anyway, even after Challenge's end when the list is fixed, I look at it half expecting to see my name move down the list and I can't stand the timer showing all zero's to indicate the event is over. Yeah I have a big Challenge-lag, but, and this is VERY important: no painters-block. Last Challenge left me completely empty, not so this year, I want to paint but am tired from other stuff so am now up to very little actual painting, if I wasn't tired I'd be painting believe you me!
On to the Highlights. Basically there are 3 and
in no particular order, these are the Side Duel I held with Iannick,
my
participation in the Curtgeld with Stefan and Lord Awdry
and me ending
up in 3rd place in the West Theme Round.
As far as personal goals go, I did not do so bad either. I have managed to gain the 1500 points I had set myself at the start. Now I have been moaning about this high and low, but at one stage, I really was convinced I was going to end below the 1000 points and that I did not want to do. The second most important goal of the Challenge is to get paint on your miniatures, I was not going to fail in this regard. With superhuman effort, a lot of goading from Phil my pet Minion (or is it the other way round?) and support from the other Challengers I got busy and it paid off.
So I finished in the top 20, also a personal target I want to keep aspiring to each Challenge, I ended up 3rd in the East Theme round and runner up about two times in other Theme rounds. Yeah I am pretty happy all round.
Without doubt the biggest model I have painted this far must be my TTCombat coaster, a ship model that I really like and looks amazing in the showcase. I stupidly forgot to include it in the picture above, how dumb is that!?
The
majority of the figures I have painted in this Challenge are either Dark Age figures or part of my
80's Pulp Project with some sundry others thrown in for good measure. This has left me with a small pile of unpainted figures. These are 20 odd Vikings, 4 Crooked Dice female martial artists, 6 Battlemechs, 4 80's Pulp vehicles and the 15mm Crimean War Brits. The latter did not get painted because they are not based yet and I did not want to loose time on basing them rather then painting more stuff already based.
Basically all these figures were already part of my lead pile, the only figures I bought during the Challenge are some 28mm Dutch troops for WW2. What's this? I hear you cry, you have always said you'd not start gaming WW2! Yes that is very true and at the moment I am still not doing that! That said... my interest in WW2 has always been either professional (as a teacher) or concerning regional happenings. Personal stories of people I know, mostly my family are what interest me most about the war. Don't get me wrong I love reading books on several different theatres of the War and watching movies about them, but do not feel like playing them out on the board. However, I am within spitting distance of some of the heroic last stands of the Dutch forces during May 1940... Anyway, whether I am going to actually use them in wargames or just for educational purposes in my classroom I am not sure yet, we will see in time.
So that's pretty much my Challenge for 2017, if Curt's still running it next year, I will most definitely be joining in and probably with a little unexpected twist at that.
This
leaves me with saying a great big thank you to all of the Challengers,
Minions and of course the Snowlord and Lady Sarah for making this Feast
of Figures possible for yet another year!