FROM JohnB: Whats that coming over the hill is it a monster?

Nope its an AHPC wrap! Mind you "The Automatic" (welsh indie rock band) hit was a cracker Well I have had my best year at AHPC and its my third year on the trot signing up. With a photo splurge what have I learnt? I have again learnt a lot from the other 70 odd entrants plus their figure and basing ideas as well as some of their figure/painting combinations all inspiring me to buy and paint yet more figures but actually paint more! woohoo 700 plus points worth or 13 micro projects if you like. plus I started to do stand up painting! yep stood at a bar style bench set up and doing sprints - short paint sessions of 15 minutes - 45 minutes, which led to my mini paint palette method as I tended to use one colour.

ok this paint is 4 days old but the method does work on small amounts of paint used over say 24 hours oh and the tissue is meant to be kept wet!!!!! On with the results - I am particularly pleased that I painted the ECW Tumbling Dice unit, maybe that project will get a kick start now.

Finishing the 1848 Hungarian Steam Engine having scratch built it for AHPC15 was very satisfying. You need two airfix rockets.........and a lot of cursing.

The Irish Brigade unit using Strelets Louis XIVth range was also a hit - I have admired their range for a long time - too long and never painted any. Now that has been fixed maybe more will follow.

I hope you all have seen the error of your ways and realise that injection moulded plastics in 1/72 is the way to go - queue woops of laughter about this madness of mine. Seriously I hope you have all enjoyed painting what you like and love.

That said I am glad I painted my 40mm Vikings to celebrate Ian Kay's retirement at Irregular Miniatures - I am happy for him yet sad to see such a vast traditional figure range sail off into the sunset.

And I painted my first printed figures - Italian support weapons in 20mm from MarDav.

Plus ca Change! And I sorry for my Minion Peter who was hoping to see my French Dragoons completed - I am off to the allotment for the year so this is as far as I got! Lets hope those red monsters don't get me.

So a big thank you to everyone who took part and of course especially to Curt and all the minions and duel runners and anyone I have missed. Hope to be back in the 17th challenge later this year.

LeeH: My Winter War Soviets are ready for the offensive!

So, how do I wrap up this year’s Challenge? If I’m being totally honest, I didn't get quite as much painted as I originally hoped. My "to-do" list was definitely more ambitious than my "done" list! But you know what? I got the essentials finished, and in this hobby, that’s a win in my book.

Despite the slower pace, I managed to hit two major milestones: My personal 600-point target was officially crossed, and I'm happy with that. Of course, no competition compared to the top of the leaderboard, but I'm happy with what I got done.  Second, I completed everything I wanted to get done, meaning my Winter War Soviets: These guys are complete and will give me plenty of options when list-building for games of Bolt Action or Chain of Command. They were the missing piece for my collaboration project with RayR, and I’m thrilled to have them ready for the table.

The dream now is to get my Soviets and Ray’s Finns into a proper scrap. However, we’ve got a bit of a "one in, one out" policy happening right now. We have a few urgent projects that need to be cleared off the workbench before we can play with these guys. Our big focus for the immediate future? Two 1812 Retreat from Moscow games. We're working on a skirmish ruleset with a friend, and alongside this, Ray and I want to run a big battle with our collection for a demo game at Broadside in June. Once we have these playtested and polished, the second half of the year is looking very clear, and very wintery!

From LeeH: Winter War Bunker (10 Points)

I hadn’t planned on making any terrain this year at all. Fate, however, had other ideas in the form of a gammy leg and an unexpected week off work. Painting miniatures turned out to be a bit of a non-starter—too much sitting still and not enough focus—but pottering about and making something from scratch felt just right. The result was this little Winter War fieldwork, currently occupied by a couple of my Russians. Realistically, though, it’s far more likely to end up sheltering Ray’s Finns, which rather suggests I may have built something that will be used against me. Such is life.

The piece is entirely scratch-built from what can only politely be described as rubbish. A few weeks earlier, on a walk in the park, I’d picked up a selection of sticks and bits of bark that looked suitably rough and utilitarian. The irregular base measures just over five by three inches, and the snow banks were built up using offcuts of high-density foam. These were glued down and partially filled with stones and putty to create a roughly U-shaped mound, giving the whole thing a sense of purpose rather than symmetry.

Once that had set, I cut some of the larger sticks into roughly 1.25-inch lengths to form the vertical supports of the bunker walls. Smaller sticks were laid across the top to suggest a crude roof structure. At this stage, the build relied heavily on liberal applications of PVA glue and, just as importantly, patience while everything dried properly. This isn’t fast terrain, but it is forgiving terrain.

With the structure solid, I went back in to fill gaps, add extra layers of sticks, and glue on bits of bark to break up the roofline. When that had fully dried, I moved on to a simple paint job. The ground was blocked in with an Earth Brown basecoat, while the sticks were left unpainted so the natural wood could show through. The earth was then drybrushed with London Grey and lightly highlighted with white. At this point, you might reasonably wonder why I bothered, given that almost all of it would be buried under snow. Two reasons: first, I hadn’t fully committed to 100% snow coverage at that stage, and second, I think painting the ground underneath gives the snow a more natural, convincing depth. It may be subtle, but it didn’t take long, and I think it helps. The exposed wood was then given a very light drybrush of white to give it a frosty, cold-weather look.

With the painting done, it was time for the snow. On the roof, I used Woodland Scenics Soft Flake snow mixed with PVA and water into a paste, spreading it carefully between the wooden beams and letting some of the timbers poke through. For the U-shaped bank, I applied several layers of snow in varying thicknesses to keep it uneven and rough, rather than smooth and sculpted. The final touch was the addition of a few tufts, poking through the snow for a bit of visual interest.

I probably spent a couple of hours on this over a couple of days, working in short bursts while things dried. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t expensive, and it wasn’t complicated, but it was deeply satisfying. Even if it does end up giving the Finns yet another place to ambush my poor Russians.

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What a great looking piece Lee, it left me wishing I could award points for the actually building of the model as that is where most of the work is, and lovely work it is at that!  Everything looks very natural and it will look great on the table.  The painting itself though and the size of the piece doesn't add up to a whole lot, but I am going to bend my own rules a little bit and award 10 points because of the end effect and the work that went into the piece.

 Great work, I think most of us would love to have something like this in our terrain collection.

-Byron 

The Theme Rounds for Challenge XVI

Greetings Challengers!

As a departure from the map themes that we had for the last few editions of the Challenge, we'll return to the old school monthly theme rounds from our early years.

The themes are:

1) Empire: Submit a freshly painted figure (or figures) and/or terrain piece illustrating the rise or fall of an empire. The empire can be one from history, myth or fiction.

2) Toy Story: Submit a freshly painted figure (or figures) and/or piece of terrain that evokes a beloved toy (or set of similar toys) from your childhood. Tell us the story behind your submission.

3) Resistance: Submit a freshly painted figure (or figures) and/or piece of terrain illustrating resistance by a group or individual. The subject can be from history, myth or fiction.

The scheduling of each theme is as follows:

The submission deadline for submissions to the Empire theme is 11:59pm CST Saturday January 10th. Display of all entries will go up on the 11th on the Bonus Theme page, with online voting running the following week.  Results of the voting poll will be announced on Sunday January 18th.

The submission deadline for submissions to the Toy Story theme is 11:59pm CST Saturday February 7th. Display of all entries on the 8th, with online voting running the following week. Results of the voting poll will be announced on Sunday February 15th.

The submission deadline for submissions to the Resistance theme is 11:59pm CST Saturday March 7th. Display of all entries on the 8th, with online voting running the following week. Results of the voting poll will be announced on Sunday March 15th. 

 

One entry per theme, and each entry provides 50 bonus points on top of the regular point allocation for the figure(s), and any terrain.

For those who wish to participate please mark your theme entries with the theme's title to help us with identification and organization.

Looking forward to seeing what people come up with this year's themes!

- Curt