The Votes are In for the 'Resistance' Theme Round!

The votes have been tabulated for our third and final theme round: 'Resistance'! 

I enjoyed taking-in the various interpretations of 'Resistance' (some perhaps a bit more tenuous than others).  We had entries depicting Joan of Arc to the Dutch Resistance, from Luke Skywalker to the Free French, all excellent examples of the power of various kinds of resistance. 

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In third place is Barks' excellent submission of Robin Hood's 'Merry Men'

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For 2nd place, we have Dallas' doom of Custer, his wonderfully painted 'Plains Warriors'.

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And, in first place, we again have Kerry (the Man with a Plan) with his very impressive castle and siege works in his 'Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War'!

Wonderful work, Kerry!

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Kerry, in recognition of your first place for the theme I'm delighted to award a $50 gift voucher from Byron's Northern Lights Terrain & Gaming Supplies. Please drop me an email for details and thank you Byron for your prize support!

Again, a big congratulations, to Barks, Dallas and Kerry!  Also, a huge thank you to all those who submitted their creations for this, the final theme round - alway good fun!

Now, back to your brushes and final projects as we close-in on the end of the Challenge - Good Luck!

- Curt

The Votes have be Tabulated for 'Empire'!

The votes are in for our first theme round: Empire!

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In third place is DaveD with his return to the Sudan in 'Beyond the Reach of Empire'. 

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Tied for 2nd place is Millsy and Greg with their Late Roman Infantry and Thirty Years War Imperialist Pike and Shotte respectively. 

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Aaaand, in first place, we have Rafael with his 'The Last Stand of the Imperial Guard'. Congratulations Rafael!

Rafael, in recognition of your first place for the theme I'm delighted to award a gift voucher from Simon over at BigRedBat (of 'To the Strongest' fame). Drop me an email for details on securing your award.

Again, congratulations, to Dave, Millsy, Greg and Rafael!  Also, a huge thank you to all those who submitted their creations for the round - it was great fun to see people's interpretations of the theme!

The next theme is: 'Toy Story' (Submissions due 11:59pm CST Saturday February 7th)

Looking forward to it!

- Curt

From SamuliS: Saxon Cavalry ready to defect from the First French Empire (104 points)

Finally kicking off this painting challenge from my side as well! Back after a few years hiatus to what I think is my 11th challenge after first participating in 2013! And the first entry now is actually part of a project that I started in the 2015-16 challenge so more or less a ten year anniversary for this!

Starting off the challenge this year is a selection of Napoleonics to wrap up my Saxon army for the 1813 campaign. We were originally planning to play the campaign starting around 2016-17, but after years of heavy Napoleonics gaming we started to move to other interests and the army newer saw the gaming table and some units were left unpainted. Moving forward quite a few years there has now been a renewed interest in Napoleonics at the club with a lot of fresh faces so I decided to dig up the remaining miniatures and paint up a few additional units. Nice change of pace as well to return to 18mm scale as I haven't painted smaller scale in several years despite it once being my main scale with Napoleonics, Flames of War and Team Yankee making up much of my gaming. Miniatures are mostly AB Figures 15/18mm Napoleonics and I suspect at least some of the command figures are Campaign Game Miniatures.

Fitting nicely with the Empire theme as the First French Empire was really on it's last legs in 1813 and throughout the campaigns the disillusioned Saxons (as well as some other French allies) started defecting to the Allies speeding up the crumbling of Napoleons forces. The Leib Kürassiere painted here were the last Saxons to desert Napoleon after the Battle of Leipzig signaling the end of Saxonys alliance with France.

 

 

Unit sizes are quite small as with the ruleset we are now using the units are smaller than we used to play with. Personally I'm not the biggest fan as I like the spectacle of massive amounts of minis on the table when playing big battles with larger units, but it has definitely helped get a lot of newer players into Napoleonics as you don't need to paint hundreds of minis to field a Division of your own. And for me of course it helped speed up the process of painting the missing cavalry units into the army. I'll get around to bringing the unit sizes up to the same as the rest of my collection at some point, but for now I'm all set for 1813. 

 Leib Kürassiere

Prinz Clemens Regiment

 

 Hussars

 

16 cavalry figures in 18mm scale coming in at around 64 points  with another 50 added for the Empire theme.

Next up some Fantasy minis with a return to The Old World! 

 It is great to have you back with us Samuli and with such nice and crisply painted Saxons indeed. These do look the part and I really like your colourchoices. Do have a great Challenge and can't wait to see those Fantasy miniatures!

 

Cheers Sander 

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