The Closing Awards for Challenge XII

Well, here we are at the close of our twelfth edition of the Painting Challenge, and what a wonderful three months it's been. 

All the votes have been tabulated for our 'Challengers' Choice', our fabulous Minions have selected their 'Minions' Choice', Sarah has made her decision for 'Sarah’s Choice', as I have for SnowLord's Choice. Whew! It has been a busy few days! So, please get yourself a cup of your favourite libation and settle-in for our 12th season wrap-up.

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Challengers' Choice

We had 16 nominations for 'Challengers' Choice' this year, with 59 people casting their votes for their favourites. I for one find that it's a great treat to be able to take in the gallery of nominations as it provides such an excellent retrospective of the Challenge.  

The voting results were so narrowly contested that the top three positions were only within a couple votes of one another. Below is the honourable mention along with the podium finishers.

Honourable Mention

Nick for his terrific (and verdant!) WWII German 8.8cm Flak Gun and Crew.

Third Place for Challengers' Choice  

Barks, for his beautiful rendition of Dernhelm and Merry galloping to their fate at the Battle of Pelennor Fields

Second Place for Challengers' Choice   

Ken's 'Risorgimento Project' - Bellissimo!

Challengers' Choice for Challenge XII

First Place for Challengers' Choice goes to Sander for his evocative and wonderfully realized 'A Soldier's Farewell'. Congratulations Sander!

Sander, for your prize you get a one-year's subscription to Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy. Congratulations!

For those interested in seeing the voting results for Challengers' Choice, here they are:

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Minion's Choice

The Minions have spoken! Here are their nominations and final selection for Minions' Choice (Feb 20 - March 20).

Bark's Grimdark Statues

 ChrisK's Early War French Vehicles

Grahame’s Anzacs in Vietnam

Ken's Bersaglieri

Pete’s Old School Napoleonic Minifigs

PhilH's Munro Sisters

Ray's Polish

Sander's 'A Soldier's Farewell'

...and the Minions' Choice for the last month of the Challenge goes to...

Sarah’s Security Officer, Sophie!

Congratulations Sarah!! In recognition of your stylish Sophie please accept a gift certificate to Comic Readers here in Regina. Well done m'dear - Bravo!!

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Sarah’s Choice 

From Sarah: 

I find that the close of every Challenge is bittersweet. ‘Sweet’ because challenge goals have been met and surpassed, lead piles decreased, new friends made and old friendships re-kindled. 'Bitter' because the novelty of the daily blog check-in has ended, the acknowledgment that there are projects and minis left unfinished and unpainted, and that the December start date seems so far away.

The Sarah’s Choice Award allows me to continue the Challenge for a few weeks longer as I go back and re-visit all the postings. I find that no matter how diligent I am during the Challenge, there are often figures that I missed or forgot about. It’s such a treat to come across these unexpected treasures!

Once again, the AHPC XII edition has seen a remarkable assortment of female figures presented. Veteran challenger, RayR has shown tremendous maturity and growth over the years … he’s made huge progress from presenting the She-Bear to this year's offerings of Femmes Fatales and his Donnybrook ladies. Well done Ray - You get to keep the orange crayons!

This years Challenge has been graced with super-heroines, witches and fairies, pirates and buccaneers, society dames and everything in between. So much goodness to choose from!

Honourable Mentions:

ChrisW has set an unprecedented record by posting female figures EACH week of the Challenge. 107 figures in total, ranging from 'Nanarchist Nannys' to a mysterious Lady in Blue. Bravo!

Millsy impresses with both the wonderful and terrifying Morrigan the War Witch and the headhunter Badh Mucha. His Celtic myth collection resonates with my own interests in the women of mythologies and fairytales. Plus, I like to think that I’m a descendant of welsh witches 🧙‍♀️

Teemu’s Janey- the Paranormal Exterminator from Crooked Dice.
I love the pops of green & purple accents contrasting against her white coveralls. As Teemu wrote, “ pink hair gives her a futuristic appearance and her sunglasses and green gloves give professional authority”. This use of colour definitely enhances the characters’ backstory and pushes the narrative for game-play.

Sarah’s Choice for Challenge XII

SimonG’s Seductive Sazae-Oni Snail/Geisha
This weird and wonderful mythological figure from Black Rose has definitely caught my attention. Simons incredible free-handcherry blossom detail on her kimono is outstanding and the colour choices so vibrant. The Sazae-Oni’s white Geisha style make up is both fantastic and creepy. mmmmm …. I think I may have to explore this world of Yokai for the next Challenge ….

Simon, please accept a gift certificate from Westfalia Miniatures for your wonderful work.

Well done Everyone!
Have a terrific summer, replenish the lead piles, stock up on paint pots and we will meet up again for AHPC XIII


Be Kind ❤️

Sarah

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SnowLord's Choice

I spent the weekend going through my list for SnowLord's Choice. Making the final decision wasn't easy, but I'm happy with my choice.

Honourable Mentions go to:

Ken's fantastic 'Risorgimento Project'

...and Kyle's chaotically coloured Chaos Dwarfs!

The SnowLord's Choice for AHPC XII goes to:

Manus' wonderfully whimsical and beautifully painted Isle of Lewis and Conan of the Fianna figures.

Manus, in recognition of your fine work I'd like to award you a Moonstone starter set from Goblin King Games. 

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Again, congratulations to all our award winners! Please contact me to work out the details for receiving your prizes. 

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The 12th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge has concluded. 

Before I sign off, I want to thank our wonderful Minions: Peter, Tamsin, Greg, Barks, Dave and Millsy for all their patience and hard work over the past three months. This event couldn't have happened without you amazing folks. Kudos to Miles for once again recreating the 'Spreadsheet of Doom' which is absolutely integral to our scoring and administration. I also want to thank Sidney Roundwood for his invaluable help in creating our Challenge map this year. I want to extend my gratitude all our Challenge sponsors for providing the prizes that we've issued and will be issuing in the award post. But most importantly, I want to thank all of our participants for their industry, good humour, and their unstinting support for one another over the event. The Challenge would be nothing without you.

I won't say goodbye, but 'see you soon'. Enjoy the spring and summer, be safe, be excellent, and I hope I see you again next November.

- Curt

From ChrisW AHPC 12 Wrap up post

 😶

So, I can hardly believe that it is over. The three months of the challenge seemed to pass in a blink of an eye but then again so did winter! It was the best winter I have ever had. I understand it was cold outside, and that it snowed, barely noticed I was just too focused on the challenge, which was a great thing. 

Now, however, I find myself adrift, rudderless casting about for something to fill the hours. At first I suffered through what can only be described as withdrawal symptoms. For the first few nights after the end of the challenge I would wake up in the middle of the night in a panic convinced that I had stuff to work on, that I was falling behind on my projects, that I needed to paint something, anything. Morning would arrive and I would wake up with the same thoughts and rather than slowly returning to consciousness, I would instead spring forth from my bed, dress and be part way out of the bedroom before I realized that I was off the clock.

A similar thing happened to me when I (got) retired. I guess to some extent I finally found a 'new job', the challenge became my job, and on a good note as the saying goes, choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. I certainly never 'worked' all winter, but I did feel pressure (self imposed & good), and I did have deadlines, and for the first time I really enjoyed having deadlines and targets. I have only ever been productive when given a set timeline and goal. Two years without gaming resulted in no drive, no reason to get projects done. Now I was able to treat every Tuesday as a target date carved in stone, any other view would have seen me put off projects to next week or the week after.

I also want to say that the inclusion of planetary challenges was brilliant and much appreciated. It encouraged me to pull out miniatures that I had almost forgotten that I had. I would never have thought to paint up my Eldar titans if not for the need for some 'old robots'. I certainly had no plans to use them in a game, but now that they are painted maybe it is time for a game of Space Marines and/or Adeptus Titanicus. These mini challenges, including the alphabet and squirrel challenges really kept my mental hamster wheel spinning thinking of stuff to paint to meet these challenges.

So it is over and I can relax again. I now move onto the next phase, the post challenge clean up. Throughout the last three months I felt I just did not have time to waste to maintain a clean work area. I also ran into the problem of not having cleared enough space for finished projects, well its time to pay the bill.

Not a good idea to store painted figures this way !

Abandoned challenge projects

For the past few days I have been slowly picking at this mess gradually taking down the pile and creating a clear area once again. So now the main gaming table has been recovered from the above mess to...

The wrap up pictures!

Not certain what I add to this picture...

VSF, AQMF, BoB, Dystopian Wars, Pulp

Gypsies, Martians, Apes, VSF & Ice Warriors

A note on my point total, it was totally unexpected and certainly nothing in my life would have suggested that I could have had this success. I really do not stick to any project, the fact that I produced as much as I did and that I kept producing right to the end is very atypical for me. Already I feel myself slipping back into my old habits from before the challenge.

Prior to the start of the challenge I looked back over what I had painted during the same time period last year, that result was somewhere around 500 points, so it seemed right to set my target at twice that amount. Boy was I off! To put my success in better context, in all of 2021 I panted the equivalent of 2000 points, for 2020 it was 1300 points. well I almost doubled those two years, combined, in just 3 months, I am shocked!

How could I ever imagine that this challenge would produce such results! The thing is, of course, the points do not matter beyond a way to track progress, what is great is to have so much stuff finally painted! The sad truth though is despite how much got done, it is still just a small amount compared to the great unpainted pile. I also fear that come next December some of the projects that I had wanted to tackle this challenge will still be waiting for me for challenge 13.

Primed, some base coated, too many not painted

Challenge 12 results (as best as I could figure out)

• [515] 28mm infantry (including 109 female figures)
  
• [58] 28mm mounted
• [19] 28mm vehicles
• [01] 28mm Artillery
• [08] Larger 28mm monsters/robots
• [10] Tripods
• [46] Scenery items
  
• [23] Dystopian wars
• [08] Eldar titans
• [09] 28mm Cows
• [03] Big scenery items (about 831 points worth or 41.5 cubes)
  

This was my first challenge, hopefully not my last. I really enjoyed the challenge, it was well run and everyone was so very encouraging. I like the fact that it was not a competition, it was a gathering of like minded individuals that had a goal to paint some miniatures. 

However I was disappointed by one thing, me. I got too caught up on producing, not enough time looking around. I really should have stopped to smell the paint once in a while. So I submit to one and all a list of things I would (will) do differently:

• Comment more on others work. (There were just so many great posts) 
  
• Relax a bit, I don't have to paint everything
• Better, wordier posts (be more like Tamsin)
  
• Be even more squirrely (Live up to my sobriquet of an unfocused gamer)
  
• Maybe finish a few more projects that I had actually planned to do
• Get my posts ready sooner
  
• Select more realistic weekly and challenge targets that better reflect what I can get done  
• Less terrain building (that mountain took a lot out of me)
  

Again I thank everyone who participated in this challenge, and to those who organized and watched over us. I am so happy to have found this, it has been great!!!

P.S. Feel free to drop by and visit me at my blog

 Rants & Ramblings of an Unfocused Gamer