Well, our ship is finally making port. We had to toss a few
sergeants over the side en route to appease the gods of occasional misfortune
and the goddesses of incidental encounters - perhaps we shouldn’t have named
the ship “The Odyssey”. But at last we can see the shores of our homeland on
the horizon and a warm breeze is coaxing us in an almost straight line towards
harbour.
Hmm! Those shores look familiar, but there’s something a
little wrong. I know we’ve been away for a while, but something has changed. I
can’t quite put my finger on it. They’re definitely familiar cliffs, and I know
I’ve seen that bay before with its threatening breakers. Probably we’re a bit
further west than we thought we were.
Do you think we need to sacrifice a couple of sergeants to calm
the waves? It wouldn’t do to crash out at the final moments.
That’s unusual, too. There seem to be dozens of small ships
assembling nearby. Craft of all kinds, mostly rather worse for wear – tattered
sails, mildewed hulls, the occasional broken mast, and crew who definitely look
exhausted, as if they’ve faced months of struggle, desperate to complete some
Ixion-like task in an endless purgatory of unattainable desire. What are they
doing here, these strange people? There’s even someone with a badger on their
shoulder.
They’re drifting around bemused, as if they’ve lost
something, as if all meaning has drained from their lives, as if they’ve lost
control of their small vessels, drifting aimlessly.
What is going on?
Wait! I don’t think this is the homeland at all. This
island, so familiar, so full of sirens, lures, hazards and (very occasionally)
charms, so deeply tattooed in my consciousness that I can feel blood seeping
into my eye sockets, this septic isle we’ve just spent three months
circumnavigating, this graveyard of sergeants – of course I recognise it! We’ve
come full circle. We’re back where we started!! Oh, demon of the wandering
island, when will you release me from this endless compulsion, this shackle of
desire, this perpetual fate we all so clearly deserve?
---
So here's a smugshot:
Challenge X has been great fun, but it’s surprised me in
several ways. I had promised Curt that, unlike Challenge IX, I would not spend
much time building up points and painting masses of figures, and I fully
intended to do that. I set my target quite low (2000 points), hoping that would
remind me to be more focused in my approach. My plan was to work on “aesthetic”
pieces: command bases, artillery, vignettes, terrain – items that would enhance
the battlefield - rather than paint masses of new units.
At the same time, I’d several armies where work had more or
less been suspended since Challenge IX, so I wanted to pick them up again. I
decided my basic approach would be to alternate between a set piece and a unit,
to satisfy both urges. I had it all planned out, with about 3000 points of
small units, command figures, artillery and terrain primed and ready to go.
(3000 points, I thought, would give me enough leeway to butterfly between
different projects over the three months and easily deliver the intended 2000).
And then along came Challenge Island, and that instantly wrecked
all my plans. On reading the setup, it took me only moments to decide I’d
attempt the whole island, even though at startup I couldn’t see how I’d deliver
about a third of the location tasks, and very few of them mapped onto the
figures I’d so carefully prepared for painting.
So I made a new plan. I’m a great one for plans. I find
they’re a really useful guide to all the aspects of a project you could perhaps
have got right but are actually totally failing to achieve. Which, when
realised, usually means time for a new plan. I made a spreadsheet listing all
the locations, their requirements and the items I had prepared which might fit
that requirement. Then I plundered the collection for anything else I might
have which would satisfy locations not already sorted.
Here's the full tablesworth (lacking those figures that went to the For Joshua project):
I really loved delivering all this. It made me delve into
areas of the collection I’d not touched for ages. It made me think about some
things in different ways. It made me wonder why some periods and armies were
very well represented in my collection (I’ve Napoleonics in several scales and
for several theatres, for example) and others are completely unrepresented (I’ve
nothing in Ray’s?? floppy hatted period, for example – nor, indeed, the Marlburian
period which immediately followed, even though I’ve ECW and SYW armies). Why?
Anyway, I just loved that journey. Also, as a writer, I
found the whole thing stimulating my imagination, too. Sander suggested there
might be a book in my combined posts. Unfortunately, I don’t think that idea
stands up with the actual materials, because it’s so specific to the hobby and
the Challenge, but the idea of an episodic narrative took hold, and I had to
think of some reasonably imaginative or potentially funny event for each
posting, too. And it wasn’t enough to do this once: I so enjoyed the exercise I
felt I had to do it all over again, travelling in both directions.
As there are 40 posts of my journeys, and around 25000 words
of posting (of variable quality, it must be admitted), this additional task I’d
set myself alongside the painting was quite demanding, too. Moreover, because
I’d raided the collection several times to deliver the Challenge Island tasks,
and I was using my return journey to force me to develop the “vignettes” I’d
promised myself, the points value of the whole thing kept going up. It was
clear to me as I approached the end of the return journey that I was going to
have over 3000 points – and yet many of the pieces I’d originally planned for still
glared at me from the tabletop demanding the paintbrush I’d promised them.
So I was also painting “Non-island” figures alongside my
island tasks. These were mainly dribs and drabs of work – the Celts, for
example, were started around Christmas, and only finished in the final week of
the challenge, because I kept picking up one or two figures at a time whilst
working on other projects, and painting just a stripe here or a shield there.
By the time the end of Challenge X approached, I’d
clearly violated my promise to keep the mass painting down, but I had kept my
promise to myself to produce a smattering of command vignettes. I’m really,
really pleased by what I’ve achieved in this respect, and I can’t thank Curt
(and all the minions, of course) for enabling this. Of course, we could do
these things without such incentives, but would we? Would we?
The word which seemed to occur most frequently among the
kind comments my work received was “mad”. It may, in fact, be a fair
descriptor. Around hobbyist projects, I guess I’ve some sort of OCD (I first typed “OCR”, but my skills at
optical character recognition are, in fact, quite limited).
Just to confirm that, here’s what I think I painted:
Terrain items: 30
1/700th ships: 6
6mm: 293 figures and 57 vehicles/artillery
10mm: 78 figures (for Joshua)
15mm: 179 figures
28mm: 562 figures, 16 artillery pieces, 1 boat
Command bases and set-piece vignettes (included in the numbers
above): 29
(I could show you the spreadsheet. If I had one. But, of course I don't have one. Who would keep a spreadsheet of figure plans and painting, of purchases and armies and completions? The very idea!)
All in all a wonderful challenge. I’ve loved everyone’s
entries, been inspired by many, and learned a few things, too. And, unfortunately,
identified two or three new periods or games I’m definitely never going to be interested in.
No, absolutely no chance. Never.
