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

Vote for Challengers' Choice!

Hello Challengers!

The voting poll is now open. For those who may not have seen my email, please follow this link to take in the gallery and vote for your top three Challenge entries.

Enjoy!

Curt

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

The Last Post of Challenge XV - From Curt: 10mm Dogs of War - The Alcatani Fellowship and The Birdmen of Catrazza (106 Points)

Brushes down everyone!

It's a wrap! With 638 entires spread over 13 weeks of furious hobbying we are now at the end of Challenge XV.  

For my final entry I return to my 10mm Warhammer Fantasy project. Over the past few years I've had a lot of fun creating massed bases of 10mm fantasy units for the Empire, Wood Elves, Tomb Kings, Beastmen and Orc & Goblins. Nonetheless, my favourite force has to be 'The Dogs of War'. 

Now, anyone who's been following the Challenge will have noticed that the Dogs of War have been getting a lot of great press from several talented participants this year (I'm looking at you Greg and Sander), so I thought I'd shamelessly ride on their coattails and put forward my small offering (literally).

First up are 'The Alcatani Fellowship'. 

Pikemen in Warhammer Fantasy are quite rare, in fact they only can be found as mercenary troops hailing from the city states of Tilea. 

Though vulnerable on their flanks, pike formations can be rather nasty when faced frontally. Many a cavalry commander has rued the day when they charged head-on into a well prepared pike phalanx. 

The Alcatani Fellowship are unique in that they don't always take up arms for filthy lucre, but will offer their services to aid the disadvantaged in their fight against injustice and tyranny. Essentially Warhammer's version of social justice warriors. (Trump would have them all deported in a heartbeat.) :)

These 10mm fellas are 3d prints from MiniRat Studios. Great little models which printed-up a treat. They have quite a lot going on with them, so not really a quick paint, but they look good all ranked up (there are 85 figures in this unit).

Next are the Birdmen of Catrazza. One thing I really enjoyed about GW's 'Dogs of War' was their sly nod to all sorts of Renaissance Italy ephemera such as Lucrezia Borgia's poisonings, mercenary pikemen and Leonardo Da Vinci's whacky inventions. The Birdmen of Catrazza are very much along this vein and remain as a much-loved unit from the original range. 

These are 10mm renditions of the Birdmen from Varus Miniatures. Beautiful models and a joy to paint. 

For their basing I decided to try a forced perspective with a tiny windmill on a range of treed hills.

And for a final shot, here are my Dogs of War to-date, with the Alcatani Fellowship and the Birdmen of Catrazza joining Bronzino's Galloper Guns and Braganza's Besiegers. Hmm, getting closer to a playable force. I need more pikemen, its always the pikemen...

As to points there are 85 10mm foot in the pike unit and 7 10mm mounted from the Birdmen, giving a total of 106 points. Close to my target, but a bit shy. Oh well, I'll try to do better next time out. It's not called a 'Challenge' for no reason. :) 

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In closing I wish to give a deep bow to our marvellous Minions: Millsy, Paul, Greg, Teemu, Martijn, Sylvain and Sarah, along with Miles who wrangled the Spreadsheet-of-Doom, and our Duels Wallah Peter. To all of you, thank you so much for keeping this crazy, careening wagon-of-hobby-madness on the road - It goes without saying (but I will) that I could not have done it without you. 

Finally my heartfelt thanks to all our participants. This event would be nothing without your participation, kindness and good humour. It was a pleasure to spend the winter with you all painting figures and admiring each others' work.

I ask all participants to email me their three nominations for Challengers' Choice (deadline 11pm March 30th). From that list I'll post a voting poll and on April 20th we'll make the announcements for Challenger's Choice, Sarah's Choice and Snowlord's Choice. 

Finally, I invite our Challengers to post a final round-up shot of what they managed to achieve this year. Don't be shy in your genius and magnificence!

Until next time.

- Curt

From Curt: Thalassa: 6mm Ancient Greek Naval Warfare (ships n' stuff) (85 Points)

I saved this entry for our last Wednesday (and our last day) as I wanted the chance to wind Greg up. I say this as I know he absolutely looooves naval entries. Sorry my friend, you'll have to grin and bear it for a few paragraphs at least. ;)

Last spring I came across 'Thalassa' while spelunking through 'Wargames Illustrated Online' and MyMiniFactory looking for, you know, useless cool stuff which demands storage to keep and brain cells to learn. 

'Thalassa' is 1:1 game set in the Hellenistic age of Greek naval warfare. It's historical(ish), but does make some allowances for more 'heroic' combat and leans heavily to a 'Sword & Sandals' type of cinematic game. One unique aspect of 'Thalassa' is that all of the models, dice, tokens etc. are available as 3d prints. They are all beautifully done (1:300 scale), very robust. and quite easy to paint (though admittedly one can get a bit lost in the detail). Last spring I printed off a handful of ships, painted them up and put together two small forces for a rousing game with the boys. I then packed them up and moved on to, you know, the Next Big Thing. 

Fast forward several months, and just before the beginning of the Challenge I noticed that there were a few new ship designs put on offer and thought I'd use it as an excuse to platform the game and add a few more hulls to my collection.

So first up are two triremes with thei very recognizable silhouettes. One is a 'Protos' design and the other a 'Ischyros'. Yeah, I dunno, it's all Middle Sea lingo to me. 

These are the classic Mediterranean 'battleships' of the 4 and 5th centuries CE. The level of crafting and technology packed into these vessels would have likened them to a spacecraft to a lay person of that time. Very impressive.

'Thallasa' allows players to customize the type and specializations of the ship's crew. Archers, hoplites, marines, various types of engines of war are all on offer. You just make your selection, pay your points and then 'slot' them into place on the hull. Fun!

You can also modify the hull with various figureheads, upper command decks, shrines, armoured skirting, etc. It's all pretty neat. 

Next up are the smaller-class ships, the Penteconters. One is a 'Tolmiros' design while the other is a 'Grigora'. 

These are the workhorses of the fleets. The vessels which carried the Greeks to Troy and which were crewed by Odysseus and the Argonauts during their Odyssey.  Nimble and quick, they are quite fun on the tabletop, though they can't take too much abuse when compared to their much larger tri-decked cousins. 

I magnetized the sails and masts so they are easy to store and are not so prone to break during play.

Finally we have a siege barge with a huge stone-throwing ballista on its center deck. It's very much a specialist vessel - a glass cannon with one purpose in-mind. 

Still, a very cool model with its top-heavy armament and supporting crane. Fun!

Finally, and not for points, here are two sets of wreckage markers I did up for the game.

One set is meant to depict when the enemy hull as just been split, with significant debris in the water, while the other is to show when some time has passed and most of the wreckage has sank into the deep.

As to points... In light of Greg's irrational-but-hilarious naval peccadillo, a part of me wants to nickel and dime each model for every measly point from every cast detail and burly crewman. But lets keep this simple and civil shall we?  I suggest that the larger triremes are equivalent in mass and complexity to a 28mm vehicle (20 points) whereas the smaller three vessels are not dissimilar to a 20mm vehicle (15 each). So 85 points in total. I hope this seems reasonable to you Greg, but I leave it to you for final adjudication.

I think I'll have one more entry before the close, but I'll have to get a wiggle on. 

See you at the finish line!

- Curt

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Well, I suppose I should be relieved you are not pulling the usual "I'll claim an extra ten points because I painted this water specifically to represent salt water" sort of thing I have come to associate with all of this naval wargaming blarney!

My fully-rational views of naval types aside, this really is some tremendous painting, and the modular aspects of the models really drive home the tremendous potential offered by the combination of 3D prints and talented brush-holders such as yourself. As cool as the larger ships are, out of all of these, that bonkers one with the stone thrower on the middle of the deck takes the cake for me. I suspect the stakes are quite high when those fellows manage to find the range!

Tremendous work dude, and it is always an honour to "minion" one of your posts - even naval ones...thank you again for hosting and contributing to another wonderful Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge! 

GregB