Celebrating Challenge XV

Welcome to our wrap-up of the 15th edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!

We've tabulated all the votes for Challengers' Choice, Sarah has made her selection for Sarah's Choice as I have done the same for Snowlord's Choice. Whew!

We had an excellent turnout for the Challengers' Choice poll with 56 people casting their votes. As this is Challenge XV I thought I would list the top fifteen entries chosen by our participants. (FYI, points reflect a weighted scoring system where 3 points are given for 1st pick, 2 points for 2nd, and 1 point for 3rd).

1. MarinN ‘Burgundians’ = 38 points
2. Curt ‘Ned & Norri’ = 32 points
3. KerryT ‘Barron’s War’ = 28 points
4. DavidD ‘WWII Winter’ = 27 points
5. RayR ‘1812 Retreat’ = 25 points
6. KenR ‘Ships’ = 18 points
7. GregB ‘Dogs of War’ = 17 points
8. BruceR ‘Paratrooper’ = 15 points
9. Millsy ‘Sloggoth’ = 13 points
10. Curt ‘10mm Dogs of War’ = 11 points
11. Richard ‘10mm Sudan’ = 10 points
12. LeeH ‘1812 Retreat’ = 10 points
13. GregB ‘Hospitaller Banner’ = 9 points
14. MartinN ‘Romans’ = 9 points
15. JP ‘Dean Man’s Chest’ = 8 points

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AHPC XV Challengers's Choice

Third Place

KerryT with his wonderful collection of Baron's War figures.

Kerry, for your talented efforts I'm sure you will enjoy a gift certificate from your fellow Challenger JohnS at 'The War Room'!

Second Place

Curt's Ned & Norri. 

Thank you for the honour! For those who voted for me, your cheques are in the mail. ;P

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The Challengers' Choice for AHPC XV

MartinN (Nick) for his fantastic 'Burgundians'

Congratulations for your well-deserved win, Nick! Your prize is a gift certificate from our good friend Byron over at 'Northern Lights Terrain'! 

Sarah’s Choice

Hi Everybody

Congratulations to everyone on their Challenge!

As always, I’m honoured that my request to see more female minis represented in this hobby has become more than a novelty.

Choosing amongst all the entries is becoming increasingly difficult because you’re all just so darn good!

That being said, I do have a few highlights:

Teemu’s ‘ Sarah the Shootist’

Haha, if I were a Wild West Woman, this gal would be my role model - stylish, practical and deadly! For this Colt-armed femme fatale I award you a gift certificate from the good folk over at Warbases (I know you love getting some of your hobby supplies from them). :)

Another favourite of mine is from PeteB - Mexican Fury

What a terrifically characterful figure and I can imagine her furious and colourful language! I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that tirade😳  For this terrific submission I award you a gift certificate from BigRedBat. Enjoy!!

The absolute stand out for me were the totally awesome Witch of Westmorland vignettes from SimonG.

I really have no words except to echo minion Teemu, ‘this entry is staggering’.

Bravo Simon! For your fine efforts I award you a gift certificate from 'French Wargame Holidays' (thank you Matt!). Enjoy (Curt and I are jealous)!

Thank you to ALL the Challengers for the visual feast of this year’s entries... it's always a pleasure to see the creativity from such a wonderful crew of ‘mad painters’.

Be Kind, Be Safe

Sarah

PS: Our neighbourhood patrol of Canada Geese… enjoying a little R&R in the park across the street.

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Snowlord's Choice

For Snowlord's Choice I often like to acknowledge the new people coming into the Challenge as these folks will become the torchbearers for our hobby in the years to come. So in this vein this year the Snowlord's Choice goes to GavinB.

I very much enjoyed all your entries Gavin. From the Wars of the Roses to Turnip28, and then on to The Walking Dead, your work exhibited an infectious enthusiasm that was a joy to follow. 

I was particularly impressed with your large scale knight. Such lovely work. Transitioning between scales as diverse as 1/50 to 1/16 can be a real challenge, but you managed it quite deftly with excellent results.

Again, wonderful work Gavin! For your efforts I'm happy to award you with a gift certificate from Goblin King Games (makers of 'Moonstone'). I hope you join us next winter to enjoy this funny little hobby of ours.

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My thanks to all the nominees for sharing your wonderful work with us. For those lucky prize winners, please email me to work out the details for getting your loot. 

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As Challenge XV formally concludes, I’d like to thank again our brilliant Minions for all their hard work in herding entries, wrangling with the Spreadsheet of Doom and generally keeping everything rattling along. Hats off to Peter and Barks for respectively managing all the Duels and keeping track of our skull-count. I also wish to thank our Challenge Sponsors for their generous support of the event.  If you have a free moment please visit their sites via the banners on the left sidebar and see if something strikes your fancy.  As I often say, the Challenge doesn’t need prizes to be a success, but it adds a nice bit of sparkle to the festivities.  Thanks again to all our wonderful sponsors! 

Finally, and I really can't emphasize this enough, I want to thank all of our Challenge participants. This event would be nothing without you. Your industry, your good humour and most of all, your open-hearted support for one another makes the Painting Challenge what it is. You folks are terrific, thank you.

In closing, I bid you all a very fond farewell. Enjoy the next few months until we get together again in December.

- Curt

From JohnS: Target Eliminated!

 Thanks to Curt (and Sarah) for organising another fantastic Challenge. I always enjoy the Challenge but this one was really great and one worth toasting.

To our Canadian Companion, cheers!

 I decided to try and achieve my target of 500 points with a single theme, purely through painting quantity and without claiming any Bonus points. My Slaughterloo army is now larger (but so much more to paint) and I am so happy.

After passing 500 I decided to add some Stretch Goals and allowed myself to stray from the Slaughterloo madness. I finished off a couple of 28mm Napoleonic units, and started my Normans for To The Strongest.

The best part of the Challenge for me was not achieving my goal, not even beating AlanD (although I did get some joy from that) but chatting on a weekly basis with other Aussie and Kiwi Challengers.

Minion Millsie organised the Paint and Chat sessions and I must say that they were instrumental in getting me to paint. And a heck of a lot of fun. Such a great bunch of painters and gamers.

When it was time to take my Finish Line photo I had an auditing visit from the Roving Minion, Our Man From The Tropics, the Pineapple Prince, PaulOG himself. Man, some people take this minioning gig very seriously.

Output Audited, time for a beverage!

 

 Thanks again to Curt and Sarah, Super Minion Millsie and all Challengers. 684 points, a Personal Best and something to chase next time. Cheers!

Curt & Sarah's Challenge XV Wrap-Up

Hey All!

Sarah and I finally managed to get ourselves organized enough to arrange the stuff we had completed during the Challenge. First up is a few words from Lady Sarah...

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Hello Everybody!

What a terrific group of folks to have spent the past three months painting toys!

I’m only sorry that I wasn’t able to paint more... my work schedule changed to mostly weekends/evenings and well, world events have been exhaustingly chaotic of late. 🤷‍♀️

My modest output included a couple of buildings (no points for this year), 6 character figures and a swan.

My favourites are the fancy Venetian Couple - elegantly mysterious in their dark clothing, and the mesmerizingly lovely Green Dancer.

Thank you for the Challenge everyone!

Be Safe, Be Kind

Sarah 😊

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As to myself, I found that my Challenge was a little hit an miss. After a reasonably credible start I ran afoul of a nasty flu, and that along with a much-needed trip away kept me from from the brushes for almost a month. Nonetheless, all winging aside, I'm very happy with what I managed to get done over the three months. Here are a few of my favourites.

Hapless Mooks

The Emperor and his Thunder Warriors

Ned & Norri

Wretched Royalty for Mork Borg

Greek Ships for Thalassa

10mm Dogs of War

Shikigami Boss for 'Hametsu'

If I'm not mistaken I think each of my 15 entries covered a unique genre, with no repeats, which very much pleases the squirrel in me. But really the best of all was the wonderful camaraderie and the simple joy of seeing the work of my fellow hobbyists. Mark up another great Challenge!

Tomorrow (Sunday) I will publish the voting poll for Challengers' Choice, so keep an eye open for that, and on April 20th I'll make the announcements for it along with Sarah's Choice and Snowlord's Choice.

Have a good one!

Curt

From TeemuL: Final Thursday Things of Interest

Ok, the AHPC XV is gone. Of course there are some byrocratical issues still left, some statistics and so on, but the main work is done. It doesn't prevent me to use my Minion powers to post one more post. I was requested to present a bit of The Parola Armour Museum and I couldn't resist.

Armour Museum is located in Hämeenlinna, southern part of Finland and about an hour north-west of Helsinki, quite close to the highway and railroad, so rather easy to get to. It is open round the year (couple of exceptions) and has both indoor and outdoor exhibitions. The main focus is naturally armoured vehicles, but anti-tank equipment is presented, too. And an armoured train.

Some of the vehicles are unique and most are very rare outside of Russia. BT-42 Assault Gun is the only in the world, BA-10 armoured car most likely, too, and T-50 light tank is one of two survivors. Of course there's lots of small items, uniforms, ammunitions, pieces of newspapers etc. In addition there is a WW2 anti-tank gun which can used in simulated battle to destroy Soviets tanks.

There are some events, too. For example "Kevätsawutus" on April 26th is an annual event, when some of vehicles are started up and they are driven in a reserved area. Expect to see pancakes. hotdog vendors, old cars and other activieties/presenters, too. Another annual event takes place during summer "Harrastepäivät", which includes scale model painting competion, miniature game demoes, pancakes and hot dog vendors etc. The first one translates as "Spring Smokes" and the second as "Hobby Days."

All photos on this post are taken by me, but the museum pages are in English and have quite a nice gallery.

---In other News---

Here's my Challenge output. I had a high target and after missing most of the first week because of illness I knew I couldn't reach it so I focused on Circles and nice projects instead of focusing on point mongering. The last couple of weeks were quite nice, lots of points and Circles. Thank you Curt and Sarah, my fellow Minions and all the Participants - AHPC has became my favourite part of the Hobby Year. I painted over one mini in a day, something I won't reach during outside the Challenge.

Scifi models

WW2 in 15mm

Warmaster

Fantasy

Delmonteland imaginations

Napoleonics

Lord of Rings characters

A Song of Ice and Fire minis

Old West including Bertha the Bear

All of them, over 100 of them

See you in December!