From TeemuL - Thank you! - 0 points

As my second target was accomplished by getting generous points from the last bonus round, I had no need to rush with painting and finish something quick. But it didn't felt good to just end this thing without some kind of end post, so here you are. No pictures, no points, just some pretty words.

I managed to paint 73 figures during the challenge, quite a lot in 3 months when compared to my total output of 672 figures over the past 20+ years. Of course there has been years when I didn't paint anything, but still a quite achievement and a nice boost to my current career as an amateur painter, which started in September 2014. At that time I decided that I should do something for the unpainted pile of metal and plastic in my cabins, I started to follow Finnish forums, shops and reading blogs. Thanks to Samuli for luring me into this, I don't know him, but his blog led me to the challenge pages and I found it as a brilliant idea.

I started my own blog, too. It seems to be quite common nowadays. It is very basic, short post about my painting, playing, shopping etc. It is in Finnish, but if you want to see LotR goodness and bright Oldhammer in the future, feel free to take a look at the pictures. I have set my target to post something at least once a week, but happily I have been much more productive than that. Anyway, here is the link: vainvader.wordpress.com

At the start of the challenge I had some kind of plan what to paint. Mansions of Madness monsters were one thing, and I did manage to paint them all. Second plan was to try participate in the bonus rounds, 6 out of 7 is not bad. I was supposed to paint some old WHFB Orcs and Dwarfs, but since I bought more and more Orcs, I didn't manage to paint them all and I didn't even start with the Dwarfs. I played couple of games of LotR during the challenge and because LotR range provided quite a lot of models to bonus rounds, I got carried away and painted much more than I planned for. WH40K Dark Eldar were a total bonus as well as the animals from the Warbases. Blood Bowl Ogre was in the pipeline, so I'm glad I got his painted - I'm not glad that despite the apothecary he died in his second game... So I painted quite a lot of stuff and from different areas as well.

One thing I miss is converting and making terrain, during the painting challenge there was not time for that, I was just trying to gather as much points as possible. In the future the balance will move a little bit, also some other hobbies will take a small amount of time back from painting. Future is less stressful, but hopefully not much less productive.

As the topic says, thank you all! Thanks for Curt for the administration, thanks for all the comments and votes, thanks for all other their posts. Before I got back to this hobby, miniatures meant GW/Citadel to me. I had of course some RPG miniatures, but they were not the same thing. I also knew, that some people used to play some Napoleon games and other wars, but I thought it was a small minority and that people mostly build pretty dioramas with those historic models. How wrong I was. Getting back to the hobby and getting involved in this challenge has really opened my eyes for the hobby - I had some idea about the different, strange, niche models being made, but I had no idea that there were so many games and rule systems and that you could use same miniatures in different games using different rules (GW really brainwashed me back in the days). Thank you someone, who posted something from the Crooked Dice, as soon as I have some spending money, I will be buying some apes from that planet they do live... And I will be browsing many other manufacturers and webshops as well, so I'm pretty sure I have some unpainted miniatures when the next Painting Challenge begins!

Thank you for reading the whole boring text! :)