From AlexK - How not to play AHPC and blogger!! (390 points)

 So first off an apology (reoccurring theme), the last three months have been a bit different from normal and so my paint production for the first two months was abysmal.....very abysmal. Not only did I not have a chance to paint, I also lost track of other peoples posts and didn't really look at the great submissions as they were posted. This puts me in the category of "Bad" AHPC 11 participant and to further my place in this category, I'm about to unload my last months painting in one big (crude term coming up!) "Money shot" post, with little regard for theme, consistency or quality! I can only imagine the almighty Snowlord is sat somewhere in Canada thinking,

"We really should vet these participants more closely, maybe a Star Trek style fight to the death challenge to separate the cream from whatever you separate cream from, may well be in order?"

But as it stands I'm in and I don't think I can be removed (please don't kick me out to prove a point). So with that out of the way I suppose I should offer up some miniature content.

First up we have the final parts of my British Peninsular Wars miniatures. These have spanned three challenges in all and I'm in no rush to start painting red and white anytime soon. So this batch contains 24 line infantry, 6 Light infantry, 6 rifles and a Sergeant. Barring the officer which comes from Front Rank, all the figures are Perry's and very nice they are to.

My initial post for this years challenge was a Orc boy for Warhammer 40'000 - Kill Team and with that I detailed my plan to maybe paint up a Kill Team to play the game with my young nephews who are just starting to take an interest in the hobby. Well that plan, for once, has worked out well....huzzah!! The team consists of 17 boys from Games Workshop and as much as I hate to admit it, they are super fun to paint. I think I suffer from the engrained mentality that everything GW does must be evil and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion I may have been very wrong about this. Sure they're on the expensive side, but with an eagle eye and an eBay account I think that the cost can be curbed slightly and staying away from vehicles seems to also help. The figures themselves are really nicely detailed, go together well and are easy to convert which is always a bonus.

But as we all know, if you paint a force up it will inevitably need an opposing force, a counter balance if you will. This is in fact how I described this to my better half when ordering more figures when she asked "Do you really need more figures?!", she walked away muttering about me being an idiot or something similar. After not listening to my partners wise words, I went ahead and ordered some big space marines and here we have 7 of these Genocidal Super Humans for your pleasure.

At this point dear readers you'd imagine that no one would then be stupid enough to make the exact same mistake again.....ummm well....

So we have 12 Hormagaunts next, these figures, which aren't blatant rip offs of a very popular movie franchise from my childhood, are very nice models. Full of character and super easy to paint at just two evenings of work. Out of everything I painted these are probably the ones I like most.

At this point I was feeling rather pleased with myself. That was until I worked out my points  total, which was still some 30 points short of my target. After I'd pulled my bottom lip in and wiped the tears from my eyes I went to find a solution to my 30 point deficit and it was answered by turnips! Well it will be by the end of the challenge. I'd heard rumours of a aspect of this hobby called turnip28 (if you haven't heard of it, may I suggest a quick google session to get you up to speed), a re-writing of European history between the 17th and 19th century following some type of apocalyptic event which seems to have promoted root vegetables to some type of god like status and has altered the way in which humans grow. Reading this back it seems as clear as mud, but the basic facts are this - kitbash medieval and Napoleonic plastic kits together with great joy and where the kits don't fit correctly bang some mud, grass or vegetable matter there to fill the gap. Then paint them however you want, make up a back story and your done. I'm not sure how far I'll go with this project, but as a bit of light relief it has been nice not to be confined by set rules and ideas.

These were some Warlord Games Hanoverian line infantry I'd picked up in a sale they occasionally have. I had plans of representing the forces present at Waterloo with these, but the idea of painting all that red makes me feel a tad unwell. The ideas presented in Turnip28 seemed a much more fitting use of the figures and overall I pretty pleased with them. The eagle eyed among you may well notice this leaves me 5 points short of my target, but fear not, in between writing this up 5 more of these fine fellows are being painted to add to the ranks.

A final photo now of everything assembled together. Quite the mix isn't it?

So in conclusion I can whole heartedly say this is not how to do a painting challenge and apologies to everyone for the all in one post of randomness . If I haven't miss counted my fingers this should be 78 x 28mm models for 390 points I believe. 

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