You're welcome.
With 4 weeks in the books, we're on pace for a sizzling Challenge 8. At press time, the point total was just under 20K, with 67 of our fellow Challenge-a-nistas submitting something. That's a participation rate of 84%. From a subjective viewpoint, I do think the quality this year is really top notch.
This reporting period includes the first "bonus round" category of flight and we had 45 submissions which I think is an all time record.
Ok, enough blabbering about past performance - what is the Point-O-Projector saying about the predicted outcome? Do you want to know (wait for positive audience response....)
crickets, chirping...
Well, dammit, I'm going to tell you anyway. The P-O-P (version 8.0) has estimated a total point level of 71K points. The forecast at this point tends to be pretty accurate with a variance of +/- 4K points. The only wild card is the 13 (now 9 as of post time) lost souls who have yet to submit an entry. I've deeply discounted any future points from them which hurts me. Lets us all hope and pray they follow the light of St. Vallejo and find the way to their collective painting happy places wherever that may be. Amen
The culling is coming and it will go down on your permanent record.
Now lets compare week 4 of VIII to the same time period from VII:
A few things stand out to me - while this year's challenge is a bit smaller in terms of participants, the activity level per participant is higher - you might say "more pigment per person". The other big variance is the decline in 15MM and 28mm figures painted to date.
The new terrain category has had some impact as it accounts for 4% of week 4 points but seems to not be upsetting the natural order. It will be interesting to see how 15mm fares for the rest of the challenge as it does illustrate the some trends in the bobby away from "big battles" towards skirmish games which tend to be mostly 28mm. Because I'm a data geek, I'm going to try and look at submissions by battle type (big battle, skirmish, naval etc) and see if any trends emerge for the challenge data. Yes, I am that boring. If only there was someone involved with a wargaming magazine participating in this years challenge - if only....
Sorry for the delay in getting this post out - work has been a bit busy. I'll try to do better next time.
See ya'
The new terrain category has had some impact as it accounts for 4% of week 4 points but seems to not be upsetting the natural order. It will be interesting to see how 15mm fares for the rest of the challenge as it does illustrate the some trends in the bobby away from "big battles" towards skirmish games which tend to be mostly 28mm. Because I'm a data geek, I'm going to try and look at submissions by battle type (big battle, skirmish, naval etc) and see if any trends emerge for the challenge data. Yes, I am that boring. If only there was someone involved with a wargaming magazine participating in this years challenge - if only....
Sorry for the delay in getting this post out - work has been a bit busy. I'll try to do better next time.
See ya'
