The Participant Roster for Challenge X

Hi All!

Below is the participant roster for Challenge X. 

Yes, yes, it's over my 60 person limit, but as many of you know I'm a bit of a softy when it comes to strict gate-keeping. Also, I have a few people who need to send me their points targets (or to remind me if I forgot, or made a blunder), so for those folks please let me know as soon as you can.

I hope to have the final version of the Challenge Island map and its location details up late this weekend. 

Challenge X Participants and Points Targets (in alphabetical order):

1	AdamC	750
2	AlanD	500
3	AlexandroL	500
4	AlexK	500
5	AlexS	1000
6	AndrewE	300
7	Barks	1000
8	BenF	900
9	BenitoM	700
10	BillA	600
11	BrendonW	1000
12	BrettM	500
13	ByronM	1500
14	ChristopherS	500
15	Curt	1000
16	DarrellH	1800
17	DaveD	1500
18	DaveS	1500
19	DavidB	750
20	EricM	1500
21	EvanH	400
22	GrahameH	2000
23	GregB	1000
24	IainW	750
25	Iannick	400
26	JamesM	1250
27	JamieM	750
28	JasperO	500
29	JezT	500
30	JohnM	500
31	JohnP	750
32	JohnS	500
33	JonathanO	1000
34	KenR	1500
35	LeeH	1308
36	MartinC	1000
37	MartinN	300
38	MàryseO	500
39	MattK	1000
40	MikeF	500
41	MikeW	2000
42	MilesR	3000
43	Millsy	1000
44	NickJ	500
45	NoelW	2000
46	PaulOG	500
47	PaulSS	1000
48	PeteF	1000
49	PeterA	1000
50	PeterD	500
51	PhilH	500
52	RayR	1600
53	RichardP	3000
54	RobertH	250
55	RobH	500
56	RossM	500
57	SamuliS	600
58	SanderS	2000
59	ScottM	800
60	SebastianR	350
61	SidneyR	450
62	SimonM	500
63	StephenS	500
64	StuartL	1000
65	TamsinP	1300
66	Teemu L	500
67	TomG	500
68	TomM	1000

Season X Duels!

Hail to the Esteemed Challengers of AHPC Season X!

Seasoned campaigners will be aware that side duels and challenges, along with the associated smack talk and ribbings, are all part of the AHPC fun.

In past years, a minion was been allocated to manage the gambling, track progress, declare winners and make an attempt to wipe up some of the blood afterwards. This year, that will not be the case. Just as submissions will be in a "free fire approach", so too will side duels be entirely free fire and unregulated.

The Duels Wallah is no more!

Instead, participants are encouraged to issue challenges and initiate side duels as they wish (as a comment to this thread or elsewhere as desired) and then track progress and brag as required in your submissions. This will bring challenges more mainstream rather than in a side page that only those interested frequent.

Good luck and let the proclamations and challenges commence!

So... who is up for a race to the X at the centre of Challenge Island?...   :-)

'X Marks the Spot!' The 10th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

While many places in the world are enjoying a lovely long autumn, or better yet, a rejuvenating spring, here in the Canadian prairies the remorseless grind that is winter begins in earnest.  Yes, it can be a bit depressing: frozen extremities, navigating treacherous roads and the absolute worse, enduring the five million games that make up the NHL season. Nonetheless, it's not all hoarfrost and death-by-hockey, the winter also heralds a wonderful decade-long tradition: that of reacquainting with old friends, making some new ones and having a bunch of laughs painting a load of cool minis - all through the madness that is the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

The Basic Rules

The Challenge will extend from the first day of Winter, 12:01 am December 21st, through to the first day of Spring, 11:59 pm March 19th, Central Standard Time (CST). 

Your miniatures (i.e. figures, vehicles, artillery, terrain, etc.) can be cleaned, assembled and primed prior to the start date, but you cannot start painting until December 21st. In order to gain full points the figures should be based (if appropriate) and any planned groundwork completed. The figures have to be painted by you. 

The Challenge follows the honour system in the completion and entry of figures. 

Miniatures can be in any scale and in any genre (pulp-adventure, science-fiction, fantasy, etc.).

In order to be scored, photos of your submission along with a short description must be uploaded to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge blog. Up-to-date scoring will be maintained on the blog's main page. I will send out an email to all Challengers a few days prior to the event with further details on submitting your entries.

All participants must have an entry submitted within the first month of the event (i.e. January 21st). Failure to do so will result in being dropped from the Challenge roster.

The Administrator (me) will participate, but my score will not have any standing in the Challenge (except to allow me in the mad scrum with the rest of the participants).

The Scoring

Below is the scoring that will be used for the Challenge. 

6mm foot figure = 0.5 point
6mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 1 point
6mm vehicle = 2 points

10mm foot figure = 1 point
10mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 2 points
10mm vehicle = 3 points 

15mm foot figure = 2 points
15mm mounted figure, artillery piece or large crew served weapon = 4 points15mm vehicle = 8 points

20mm foot figure = 4 points
20mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 8 points20mm vehicle = 15 points

28mm foot figure = 5 points
28mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 10 points
28mm vehicle = 20 points

40mm foot figure = 7 points
40mm mounted figure, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 15 points
40mm vehicle = 25 points

54mm foot figure = 10 points
54mm mounted figures, artillery piece or crew served weapon = 20 points
54mm vehicle, limber, etc. = 30 points 

Other scales, miscellaneous models/figures will be scored on a submission-by-submission basis. 


Terrain Submissions

While admittedly not perfect, I want to keep things simple for terrain submissions, so we'll keep to our 6" cube format. Briefly, if your terrain piece (or collected terrain pieces) fills a 6" cube, you get 20 points. If your terrain would 'fill' multiple 6" cubes, then multiply 20 points for each cube of volume. 

Terrain filling the 6" cube on the left would be worth 20 points. The composite group on the right, made up of eight cubes, would be worth 160 points.

Example 1: I've painted three 28mm barrels and six trees. They would roughly fill a single 6" cube. I would get 20 points for this. 

Example 2: I've constructed and painted a large 28mm manor that is approximately 12" wide, 14" long and 10" high. All in all, this would roughly take up 8 cubes worth of volume. This would give me 160 points.

Submissions of terrain should be sent in with a picture illustrating the scale of their work (a ruler laid alongside should do the trick). This will give your hard-working Minion a basis for scoring. Extra points for extra detail, scratch-built insanity, etc. will be left to the Minions to adjudicate as they see fit.  

Changes to the Challenge

Okay, this is a bit of a biggie. As this is our 10th anniversary year, I thought we'd shake things up a bit. Here are the list of changes to the Challenge program:

1) The participant limit is set at 60 with no reserve list. 

While I’ve always loved having loads of people participate in the Challenge, what I’ve found over the past few editions is that the high numbers have made it somewhat cumbersome  to manage and a little difficult to follow. I’ve heard from several participants and observers that the sheer number of daily entries could sometimes be too overwhelming to keep up with, especially if you missed a few days of posts. So this time we'll keep the group smaller and a little more intimate. Please note that we will not have a reserve list this year - it's first-come-first-served, so if you're a Challenge veteran please get your request in.

For all those wishing to participate please send me an email, providing: 

1) your full name,
2) your country of residence
3) your blog address (if you have one), and
3) your points target for the three months of the event.

My email address is:
curtcampbell at mac dot com 

I will post a comment below when the roster has been filled and will follow-up with an email in a couple weeks detailing the specifics of the event.

2) The Challenge will be entirely 'Free Fire' 

We're going to go back to a 'Free Fire' approach this year, allowing participants the latitude to submit entries whenever they wish, as opposed to having them assigned to a specific day of the week. The only limit we'll have is that each day there will be a cap of 10 submissions, with any remainder spilling over to the next day.

3) There will be no bi-weekly theme rounds. Instead we have something better... 

This is a big change, especially as the theme rounds have been somewhat of a favoured child of mine. In consultation with the very talented Sidney Roundwood we've created something new for you to enjoy: I give you 'Challenge Island'!

Challenge Island 

Welcome to 'Challenge Island'!

Those hearty participants who chose to test their mettle can explore the mysterious 'Challenge Island', tackling the multitude of hobby challenges to be found there. 

The island features a rich assortment of geographic locations that participants can explore by completing a themed hobby task at each. Once they finish a task they will be allowed to travel onto the next location, ultimately making their way inland to the summit of 'SnowLord's Peak' to where 'X Marks the Spot'! 

In the next few days I'll followup with another post laying out the specifics of 'Challenge Island', its geography, its rewards and a more detailed map. ('Yes Sidney, the chains and ball-gag only come off when you deliver the final version of the map. Now back to your cell and get to work on your watercolours!')

The Minions

As usual I will serve as the Master-of-Ceremonies / Tormentor-in-Chief / Dork-Lord, but I also have happy group of 'Minions' to help keep this madhouse moving along. Here are the wonderful folks that I've convinced to assist me for this year's Challenge:

• Monday: GregB

• Tuesday: PaulOG

• Wednesday: DaveD

• Thursday: MartinC

• Friday: TamsinP

• Saturday: ByronM

• Sunday: MilesR

Personal Targets and Duels

Upon signup, I ask that each Challenger provide me with their name, nationality, blog and declare his/her points target which they hope to achieve by the March 19th deadline. 

Many participants have found the personal points targets to be a great incentive in maintaining their pace over the three months of the Challenge. I encourage participants to pick a target that is just beyond your comfort zone, but still achievable. As a rough benchmark, 300 points is considered a manageable amount for someone who is new to the the event and/or has a busy work/life schedule. Also remember that a significant amount of points can be secured by adventuring on 'Challenge Island' (more on this below).

Relating to the points targets, many folks have a lot of fun issuing 'duels' to other participants in order to race to meet a declared target, paint the most figures for a specific period, etc. I leave this to the participants to dream-up, organize and keep track of.

Shiny Prizes

During the event I will maintain a gallery of submissions for each map location and at the end of the Challenge we will vote for our favourite entries. 

Also we will award prizes for Challengers' Choice, Judge's Choice and Sarah's Choice.

The Price of Entry

Each participant will be required to paint a figure as a prize for another participant. These will be awarded to those who have successfully completed the 'X Marks the Spot' final adventure of Challenge Island. If you have a specific participant you'd like to paint for their prize please notify me and I'll make note of it. All prize figures must be completed and submitted for scoring during the first month of the Challenge.

_______________________________________

Challenge X starts at 12:01am December 21st!

Now, sign up and get some miniatures prepped - I'll see you at the start line in a month!

As Always I’m Late to the Ball

Hopefully better late than never on this one.  The end of the Challenge hits at the end of my winter semester which is a very busy time for me, plus I’m typically run completely out of gas and running on fumes by that time.  I tell myself that I’ll get my wrap up shot posted once exams are marked and in the system, but there’s always a long list of honey- dos with the same time frame.

Ok pathetic whinging over, here’s what I did over the Challenge plus a few extras.  Almost all are Seven Years War units, with the exception of my mouse adventurers.  I have the full unit of Orleans Dragoons, 12 men instead of the 4 painted in the Challenge.  The old Foundry figures had a lot of “character” and took a lot of time, so the last 8 loitered on the work bench half done for months.  I also rebased the unit, wrapping bases of twos for bases of threes.  I also have added the full unit of the Hessian regiment that I finished this Challenge, finishing 8 figures to go with the predicting 12 from a prior Challenge.

As always I had a blast on the Challenge this year.  It’s a great incentive to get ones butt in gear and get painting.  It’s also great to see others work and steal ideas from them.  However, the best Challenge related activity was getting to meet Miles at his secret Bond Villain lair on the Chesapeake.

Better Late Than Never

One of the greatest Challenges of the Painting Challenge for me is that it is held in my busiest time of the year. While it's great to be all tucked up and painting your way through the frankly silly low temperatures of the Canadian winter, down here at the other end of the planet we melt at Challenge time. Plus our biggest wargames show is held at the end of January (Cancon) and I get sucked into the vortex of Making A Living for pretty much all of January and February. Adding in a long overseas trip for all of March, I basically was pulled off the Challenge just before Cancon.

Happy with my result

In fact, today is the first day I have picked up a brush (other than to pack one into a customer's order) since January. Naturally, this lead me to looking at my Challenge output. Although I didn't achieve my hoped for point goal, I did achieve a Personal Best. Isn't that we're supposed to strive for these days?

With the encouragement of Dux, Man Cave Paul and the other friends from Odin's Night Games Club I had a great time facing the Challenge. Our Hobby Day get togethers really helped me power through and not get distracted by the mundane.

I love the Challenge, thanks again for organizing Curt and I hope to participate next year, aiming for a new PB.

They may be small but they're perfectly formed

Oh, and I won The Vertically Challenged Side Duel. I guess no-one else is as devoted to plumbing the depths of the dwarven and goblin deep as I am. (You may notice in my photo above that I am working on more gobbos today).

PeteF Wrap Up

My helper occasionally bites off bayonets and breaks flags

I take off my hat to Curt, his minions and my fellow challengers. Challenge IX was epic - with some marvellous miniatures, artistry, humour and motivation. The final collective points total speaks for itself in terms of reducing the weight of lead in our mountains.

This is the first time I have managed to drop 200 quid on a specific group of miniatures for a specific time-bound project and then had the discipline to paint them all. The AWI project started three years ago - shortly after I restarted my long dormant miniature painting habit (addiction?) after watching the War & Peace remake. Having tested my brushes on some Napoleonic Russians I searched for a conflict that would not be Napoleonic - since my brother was inheriting the family 25mm army. As an immigrant to the US and now a citizen the Revolutionary War made the most sense.

Perrys were a lot of fun to paint

While the AWI made up the bulk of my entries I did find time for 3 infantry battalions and a half cavalry regiment of 25mm Minifigs.  The family army ended up with me after my brother’s passing in 2016. Which brings me to fellowship - the theme of this year’s challenge and a constant in the hobby. My brother introduced me to wargaming and through wargaming to the boy who became my best friend for life. I have made many friends through the hobby since moving to  the Pacific Northwest. I’m not that far away from being able to refight Waterloo with the Minifigs - especially now I have made a start on the Prussians (for some reason this battalion was my favourite entry to Challenge IX). I miss my brother a lot - but I think he’d be happy to see the new additions.

Since I painted zero female miniatures in Challenge VIII I bought some shieldmaidens with the intention of completing a Viking army for SAGA. Intentions shmintensions. Eight of them ended up getting painted. I was especially happy with the one in the yellow dress and gripping beast shield. Five more of them received some paint but not enough to submit an entry so I can’t even save them for next year.

The other SAGA army that saw only a pitiful expansion was the Normans. I primed a whole box of Conquest plastic knights, a dozen Old Glory metal knights, a dozen archers and the crossbowmen. Only the crossbows got finished. I have a vague plan to run a 12 person Dark Ages SAGA tournament (round robin followed by knockout) where the factions are randomly drawn each round - so I might be doing a lot more of these in 2019.

The red, white and black battle suits were done for the sports theme round - they are the colours of my adopted basketball team The Portland Trailblazers. They came in dead last with 3 votes (including mine! Is it naughty to vote for your own entry?). Fortunately the actual Trailblazers are doing well this year (still in the playoffs at the time of writing).

Each battle suit has the name and number of an actual player - unfortunately the real Nurkic (far right) broke his leg in 2 places a few weeks ago. By contrast this Nurkic has been doing well Beyond the Gates of Antares.

The Squirrel duel really caught my imagination at the beginning of the Challenge and caused me to offer to paint some figures for a friend as well as explore other scales and periods. The only really squirrelly things I ended up finishing were the Jinettes - which will see service in some Italian Wars games and The Sam-mew-rai, which I painted with a cat theme for my son. The list of things I intended to do for the squirrel includes: picts, 54mm poilus, 54mm Jacobites, 54mm Sudan highlanders, WW2 German artillery, all those Normans, Dothraki, Rorke’s Drift defenders from the movie, Union soldiers in greatcoats, and something from the ECW. I would have done all of these but I got terribly distracted.

A portion of the shelf of shame

For my Curt Geld I'm donating to Waterloo Uncovered - a charity that combines care for veterans and archaeology. They are also behind Waterloo Replayed - the giant 2 day Black Powder fest in Glasgow in June. Sadly I didn't get my act together to make the trip from the US for the game - I'm sure the participants will have a blast.

I am in awe of the output of my fellow challengers - both quality and quantity. Those at the top of the chart sustain a ten a day habit (at 5 points per 28mm foot) - very very impressive. Congratulations to all those who made it to the finish line, whether or not they made their target total, to the theme round winners for some excellent brushwork and to Curt for his organizational prowess in managing another Challenge to its conclusion. As I write I can confirm it has been zero days since my last miniatures purchase. The shelf of shame is swelling and Challenge X cannot come too soon.

This one just knocks them over and carries them around the house. The third cat refused to be photographed for this project.

PS I know I owe a miniature to the winner of the Black Powder duel - it'll be on its way once I have your address.

The 'What a Tanker!' Prize

Hi All!

Curt here, reporting from the sunny south of France. 

Sorree, I didn't know you wanted that last pain au chocolat...

I reluctantly take a break from stuffing myself with pastries, drinking bad plonk and butchering the local dialect to dash off a post announcing the winner of the 'What a Tanker!' prize. 

Sid informed me that Lard HQ was seriously stymied in their attempts to narrow the field for their final selection, as there were so many excellent entries, but he cracked the whip and they managed to come to a consensus. Good man, Sidney!

First up, the list of Honourable Mentions:

Ken's A9 Cruiser Tanks in desert Caunter Scheme, North Africa

Tamsin's M3 Stuart in Australian service, Papau New Guinea

Jasper's camouflaged Puma in ambush pattern camouflage, France 1944

All beautifully executed entries, well done people!

The winner of the Too Fat Lardies 'What a Tanker!' prize goes to Nick's (MartinN) fabulous Panzerjaeger I (France, 1940). Stunning work Nick, well done!

Nick will receive a £25 gift certificate towards purchases of fabulous Lard Island products. Congratulations Nick!

Thanks again to Rich, Nick and Sidney for providing the prize. I know it helped generate a lot of armour over the three months of the Challenge. I hope we can do something similar for our next time out.

- Curt

From Mike D: My Grimdark Winter

The particular area of my unpainted horde I wanted to work on this challenge was all the GW stuff I had purchased for the past year or so. Overall, I wasn't optimistic. I almost missed the deadline for application to the challenge and wound up making it in at the last minute of the waiting list. And I never really got my act together with planning out the challenges, so I left a lot of points on the table there. I set my goal at a piddling 400, but still fell short.

Still, when I look at what I wound up with, I'm happy. Those figures I wanted to paint were very fiddly, and though I know part of the challenge is speed painting, I often find that I set out with best, simplest intentions only to get drawn in to some need to do a particular something that just takes me forever. I did wind up with enough gangs and cultists to actually play with in Necormunda or Kill Team, which these days feels like a big accomplishment to me . (I'm still only half-way through my ADLG 28mm Thracians, and I've been working on it for so many years, it started out as a Warhammer Ancients army.)

Once again, I want to thank everyone involved with the Challenge for their support and inspiration, especially my minion Evan and Curt. This year in lieu of the usual Curtgeld, I've sent a donation to International Rescue Committee. 

Already looking forward to next year!

From TeemuL: Things you do for love

The original idea for this Challenge was to paint vast armies for the re-released Lord of the Rings (or Middle-Earth) Strategy Battle Game. Then I decided to join the Squirrel side challenge. Then Urban Conquest was released for WH40K and I decided to really get back in to that game after 10+ year pause and start a new army...

I did manage to accomplish my personal goals, I hit the target of 900 points, I participated all Theme Rounds and I posted something each week. I managed to paint 11 Squirrels (but I didn't remember to report them in time to Duels Wallah). Above you can see all the painted minis (expect the forgotten ones) and below you can see the same minis and me.

It wasn't the hobbits this year, which I forgot, it was the Hoplites. I took a quick picture of them separately to get them to join this post.

All in all, again an excellent event, very well organized, lots of nice entries (too many to comment - or even read properly) and lots of progress on my armies. In fact, at the moment I own almost 100 unpainted miniatures less than I had 1st January!