First time Challenger and here is my price of entry.
Stash Gable is my humble entry. Hats off to Bob Murch one of my favourite sculptors.
This is one of Bobs Movember sculpts and a good one.
Off to the opera or a gunfight on main, have Tommy Gunn will travel.
Ahoy Snow Lord and esteemed fellow challengers - awesome to be back!
 |
Its a MDF kit I got at CanCon a year ago from a small Australian company whose name eludes me. I find MDF challenging to work with sometimes but am happy with how this came out. I added more colour inside to suggest a former splendour, with coloured tiling etc. I think it worked out ok.
So I am off the mark for AHPC XI with 1.5 terrain cubes and a Chamber for a total of 50 points.
 |
| It's A..... |
Challenge XI has a distinctly dungeony theme – which takes me back to exploring the unknown, a valley of caves in some kind of remote area and many other far off monster filled underground networks. However, something else that reminds me of my youth is Napoleonic Minifigs and I’m planning a lot of them over the next 3 months.
The first room of
the dungeon presented a problem – although chevaux de frise and suchlike could
be found in Napoleonic sieges I’m not planning any for my Minifigs army. I rummaged
through my inherited Minifigs stuff and found this. It’s “Wagon 9”, one of the
Minifigs carriages, which my dad bought back in the 1980s. It was handed down
to my brother and thence to me. At some point on its journey it was primed
white – but it remained unassembled and unloved.
I guess I could have
saved this for the long forgotten projects or ancestors rooms – but as it’s a
kinda sorta trap I’m presenting it as my opening entry for the Challenge XI.
Minifigs do a
Napoleon and driver set for the carriages so at some point Wagon 9 will get
some people and proper carriage horses. All sorts of scenarios could involve
the carriage and I may use it to represent the commanding general for Quatres
Bras – or Waterloo if I live long enough to paint all those line infantry.
One 25mm vehicle plus bonus for the Hall of Traps: 40 points
Thank you Curt and your minions for running another Challenge - I'm looking forward to these winter weeks, the opportunity to enjoy everyone's brushwork and participation in this wonderful community. I hope you all like Minifigs!
Well here we are at my second post for the challenge.
Continuing with the Chambers of Challenge, it's time to enter the Pit of the Pendulum. In the Pit, the mighty Snowlord has asked for something torturous, so that is what I have gone for. Considering the hell we put our host through every year, I guess most of us challengers deserve a quick visit to the Pit.
As terrain elements, these three pieces of torture chamber equipment have a total volume of about 3 cubic inches. This works out as being about 1.4% of an AHPC terrain cube, or roughly 0.28 points. Unless one of the Minions, or the Snowlord himself disagree, I am going to round that up to 1 full point, plus 20 for completing the Pit of the Pendulum, giving me a grand total of 21 points here.
Beat the drums, sound the whistles fine folk! For the first time in my long and inglorious career as a participant of this most illustrious of challenges I've managed to sneak in an entry on day one. Or at least I think that's the case. Frankly I can't be bothered to actually look it up.
Now with that out of the way let us head directly for the formidable Chambers of Challenge and step directly into The Hall of Traps, shall we?
*Phew*
We made it past the Spartoi, but now we have to sneak through the Golem's Haunt before we find somewhere quiet to hide for the night...
Standing either side of the exit are two giant stone statues that look like ancient warriors. Their bearing looks menacing, but not threatening; made slightly sad thanks to a coating of moss and bird droppings. We look at each other and wonder why this place is called the Golem's Haunt as it seems empty.
Something clatters behind us... just a rat. Turning back we could have sworn those statues weren't in that pose last time we looked!
Oh god... RUN!
These are, again, from Crooked Dice and stand about 40mm tall
You'll be glad to know that this is the last post for today! Sadly I didn't quite break the 200 points (by 1 measly point!) as the other batch of figures didn't quite get finished... will I make it to level 2 of the dungeon on day 2? We shall see... there are xmas presents to paint, so I suspect not.
After escaping the Hall of Traps, our brave adventurer has to pass through the Pit of the Pendulum as the next step on their path to the Altar of the Snowlord.
The Pit's theme is something torturous or terrifying; something that will slice off your head if you aren't paying attention. I didn't have anything with attached pendulums but I did, again thanks to Crooked Dice kickstarters, have something terrifying. Kronos and its Spartoi warriors...
Kronos is Argo’s earliest experiment with artificial intelligence and looks like a giant eye with tentacles. Using his own brain patterns as a template, the prototype became dangerously self-aware forcing Argo to mothball Kronos deep beneath the foundries in his Olympus Base. It lay dormant for many years, until reawakening to lead the Argonauts after their creator's apparent death. Kronos shares Argo's madness and his all-consuming desire to control. However, Kronos views humanity as an evolutionary mistake that must be expunged - and has no qualms about acting that out. He resurrected one of Argo's earliest experiments in self replicating robots that were inspired by the mythology of the hydra... destroy one, two rise to replace them
And so on day 1 of the challenge, we enter the first of the many rooms within the dungeon... the Hall of Traps. One of my themes throughout the challenge will be to build up my Necromunda collection as well as work my way through a 7TV backlog of... stuff.
With the theme of traps, there were a few different directions I could go in... but the most apt one I could think of was the murderbot that turns up in one of the Necromunda scenarios. This thing disguises itself as one of the gang members on the board, eventually going on a murderous rampage against everyone.
Thanks to the Crooked Dice post apocalypse kickstarter, I had the perfect figure lined up for this one, though I can't seem to find him on their store any more... just variations on him.
Something new in the AHPC since last year, is the fee of entry. In this, you paint up one figure, and this has to be mailed to another participant that reaches the endgoal of the challenge.
Well, here we are with my first post for Challenge Eleven.
To introduce myself to any newcomers and to re-introduce myself to existing Challengers, my name is Stuart and I am originally from the UK. I've been living in Japan for about 16 years now and I have more minis in my small hobby room than I know what to do with. This is my third Challenge (the 4th if you include the Quarantine Challenge earlier this year) and it's my favourite time of the year.
This year I have set myself a lot of goals. 1750 points is my first target, with a top ten finish being the ideal. I have entered side duels for painting the most GW minis, painting the most Skulls and painting the most genres of mini. (Squirrel!!). I also aim to reach the Altar of the Snowlord and see what fiendish things our gracious host has cooked up for me.
The first step on the path to the Altar is the Hall of Traps, which has the theme of a figure which is trapped, stuck in a trap, snared or lying in wait. This was quite a tricky one and I spent ages rummaging through figure boxes until I found something suitable. In this case a Ringwraith from Lord of the Rings.
As any true scholar will tell you, the Ringwraiths, or Nazgul were once mortal kings and powerful men. The Dark Lord Sauron gave each of them a ring of power, which made them all but immortal, but at the same time bound them to Sauron's will. For future reference, don't accept gifts from people with the title 'Dark Lord', it never ends well.
So in a sense, (and the one I'm using to justify this figure as my entry to the Hall of Traps), the Ringwraiths were ensnared by Sauron and his magic, destined to become dark spectres of terror and Sauron's most feared servants.
This figure is a metal model of a Ringwraith from GW's Lord of the Rings game series that I bought years ago. I never really played much of the LotR game, mainly due to a lack of local interest. The rules seemed okay so long as you never used the more powerful named characters. One game I did play saw Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas murder the Balrog for the loss of only Merry and Pippin, something that would have changed the trilogy immensely if it had been included in the original story.
Welcome back to the challenge everyone and good luck in reaching your goals! I missed last year due to other commitments, so this year is the year to try and catch up with the ever growing pile of shame.
This year's opening entry is inspired by re-watching the Clone Wars recently and remembering how entertaining the droid army could be when not part of Episodes 1-3. These are from the Legion starter box, so sadly clock in at quite a bit taller than 28mm, or even 32mm figures. The kits seem unduly complex, with 2 teeeeeeny tiny bits to make up the head so I'm not sure I'll be venturing further into Legion after this. Still... the droids will be good for 7TV!
To go with the droids, we have General Grievous to round out the figure count to 19.
Given that various people have asked for the recipe, here we go:
Welcome to the XI Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!
Yes, yes, I admit it, I stole a march to get this entry in, but as per tradition, I like to kick off the season with the first submission to the Challenge. In addition to welcoming everyone to the event, it also allows me to be top dog for at least an hour or two before being turned into a speed bump by the faster painters.
As a nod to our dungeon theme, here is an 'Orc with Guisarme' (Orc1) from the venerable 1979 Minifig range, sculpted by David Hutchins.
Yes, he's a real old school classic. This figure was originally from a group of twelve that I had ordered with our first set of D&D books and dice, directly from TSR out of Lake Geneva.
When I finally received the figures I was so impatient to have them painted that I used my dad's nasty automotive paints (no primer!) and 'brushed' it on using some of my mom's sewing needles. Yes, very primitive, but you can't fault the pure enthusiasm of youth.
Here is the last remaining orc of that cohort. As you can see, almost all the paint has flaked off over the years. It took several hours of rummaging through containers of random bits to find the original hexagonal shield. I did snoopy's dance of joy when I found it.
 |
| A certain charm. The archivist in me was torn whether to paint this guy or just leave him be. |
As historical background, the original concept of pig-faced orcs is usually attributed to Dave Sutherland, who was one of the main illustrators for TSR in the mid to late 70s. His work on the cover of 'Swords & Spells' (1976) is probably the first imagining of the face de cochon orc.
 |
| Orcs in the AD&D Monster Manual |
 |
| ...and from the D&D Basic Set |
I decided to repaint this guy in a fairly natty armoured hauberk, with bronze for his helmet, shield edge and boot banding.
Fans of these types of orcs will be happy to find that Otherworld Miniatures has an entire range of re-imagined snouted Orcs available. I hope to have a few of these done for the Challenge later.
Hmm. I just realized I should have done this entry for the Orc Pit, but whatever. This little gem was calling out to be given some attention. I think I may revisit this theme over the coming months to see what else I can dig up from the archives.
_______________________________
Okay folks, I expect to see an avalanche of painting over the next few days as we head into the holidays. I will be updating the points roster between gulps of eggnog and bites of shortbread. In two weeks I'll be handing the reins over to our intrepid band of Minions.
Let the fun begin!
Curt
THE CHAMBERS OF CHALLENGE!
After last year’s perilous trek across Challenge Island, culminating in the arduous ascent to Snow Lord’s Peak, our doughty band of adventurers have discovered a map describing a strange dungeon beneath the mountain. What treasures and arcane mysteries could be hidden in this strange labyrinth? What untold fame, what unimaginable glory, what peril awaits those who dare to uncover the Altar of the Snow Lord? Indeed, what could possibly go wrong?
Welcome to the Chambers of Challenge!
Here are the rules for exploring the multitude of mysteries of this maze of magnificent malice (ahem).
Each chamber has a hobby task associated with it (see below). You must fulfil the task and post your work before continuing on to the next chamber;
Each successfully completed chamber awards you 20 bonus points;
In order to descend a level, at least four chambers have to be completed on the level you are presently exploring;
There are three ways you can move between levels: by stairs, by the aquifer, or by being teleported by a witch (see below);
When you complete the ritual at the Altar of the Snow Lord you will receive a prize figure from one of your fellow Challengers!
Sarah the Sorceress
Along the left side of the “Chambers of Challenge XI” map are three dungeon denizens. Imagine them as being three witches, three graces or three dungeon sorceresses, if you prefer. Each of these three witches has the power to enable a Challenger to relocate from one room to another other room on the same level - and at the (very reasonable) cost of you painting one single female figure, per relocation, in tribute to the Snow Fiend’s fiendish companion, Lady Sarah. 20 bonus points will be awarded for these teleportations (with any bonus points to be added by Sarah). At the end of the Challenge, Lady Sarah shall judge all the female figures painted during the Challenge - including those painted to facilitate Challengers’ relocations in the Challenge dungeon - and award the winning Challenger a special prize.
Level 1
Hall of Traps: A figure or unit which is trapped, stuck in a trap, snared, or lying in wait. Watch your step, Challengers!
The Pit of the Pendulum: Paint something torturous, terrifying - or just something with a slowly descending pendulum-blade… swoosh… swoooooshhhh….. arrrghhhh!!
The Golem’s Haunt: “..IT WALKS…!!” Paint something re-animated, stitched-together, bolted-together, re-created from steel, clay, earth, etc.
The Chamber of Darkness: For this chamber challenge, you’ll need to paint a model in luxurious greyscale. Quick, buy some more Vallejo “Neutral Grey”, dear Challengers!
The Aquifer: Anything with a nautical, or waterbound, theme.
The Larder: A figure or vignette themed around food, drink, meals, patisserie, cooking, cordon bleu and culinary over-indulgence. Bonus points for vignettes of halfling chefs or French sommeliers.
Level 2
The Hatchery: In this chamber, your model or terrain will need an avian theme, or could depict anything hatching - ideally, out of an egg .
The Armoury: Paint a figure, a vignette or unit which is armoured - plate, steel, iron, ceramic, chain-mail - the choice is yours.
The Gallery of Ancestors: Paint a figure, unit or model with an ancestral theme - an ancestor of yours, or a connection to your own family’s history, or maybe just the ancestors of the last unit you painted. Revel in a glorious past… even if it’s an imagined ancestry for your tabletop heroes!
The Guardroom: This chamber-challenge is to paint some donut-munching, soundly-sleeping, or professionally competent guards. Bonus points for painting things they might be guarding, as well.
The Orcs’ Pit: In this scruffy, dirty and unpleasant chamber, you need to paint one or more orcs, kobolds, goblins, or troll-kin of any kind!
Adventurers’ Landing: A chance to paint a landing on a home or foreign shore to collect some points. Try not to get your feet wet...
Shrine: Dearly beloved Challengers, let us bow our heads, and create … a religious-themed entry in this chamber. A model which is worshipping, praying, genuflecting, preaching, pilgrimaging, scourging, crusading, venerating … or maybe just visiting parishioners for tea. Clerics welcome!
Oubliette: Your challenge in this chamber is to paint something forgotten, or lost. A figure you thought you’d sold years ago. Or a model from a long-forgotten project. Resurrect what excited you, long ago, with a flourish from your brushes.
The Tomb: Paint a tomb, a burial-mound, a barrow or a henge. Bonus points for any ghostly guardian which lives, entombed, within...
Level 3
Knights Solar: A chamber for painting Knights of all kinds, and their knightly deeds, loves, pastimes and quests.
The Hall of Heroes: A location for heroes and the heroic things they do.
Graveyard Beach: Spooky, ghostly, undead and undying things arrive, or resurrect, here under Challenge Mountain. Bonus points if combined with a watery or nautical theme.
The Laboratory: From bubbling glass jars to smoking bunsen-burners, from Dr Frankenstein’s experimentation chamber to a alchemist’s study - laboratories and scientific figures, terrain and vignettes are the things created in this Challenge Chamber.
The Snow Lord’s Treasury: Your challenge in this Chamber is to paint a figure, unit or vignette featuring treasure of any kind. Go crazy with figures carrying gold, jewels, silver bullion, priceless artefacts, Elven-rings or strong-boxes with bundles of Confederate dollars!
Lair of the Great Beast: Yes, we know the map says ‘ Lair of the Spider’, but the spider was forced out by several things which are monstrous and nightmarish, terrifying and humongous. Shhhh…. If you’re very quiet, they may not notice we’re here… Do up a figure describing one of these great beasties.
Level 4
The Altar of the Snow Lord: In this final chamber our very own Snow Fiend will select a challenge for you, as a tribute to the painting Gods.
