From BenitoM: My XIII Challenge Plans... Inshallah!

Following the lead of our Snow Lord Master, let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Benito and I live in Madrid (Spain). My Twitter account is under my warring name Anibal Invictus; I also used to keep a blog of my games, but has been neglected for a loooong time now;  nevertheless I've decided to resurrect my blogging activity taking advantage of this year's Challenge and the Musk-driven turmoil at Twitter. Incidentally, feel free to become follower (wink^; wink^) of any or both of my social media accounts.

I have been wargaming since 1980, first with board games (Panzerblitz was my baptism of fire) and later all type of table games with minis (scifi, fantasy and now only historical games). I was a founder member of Club Dragon,  arguably Madrid's oldest and one of the city's largest wargames club. Anyone coming to my home town, do not hesitate to contact me, more than happy to invite you to beers and eventually a game.

My first Challenge was in 2015 so this will be my 8th participation. Those who followed me on previous years know that I usually focus on one core project, complemented with some random unrelated entries to score additional challenge points. Not this year, however. I turned 60 last May and had one of those epiphany moments in the summer where I realized that I own too many unfinished projects and realistically will lack the time to undertake them all.  

As a result, I have been actively destocking minis (and boardgames) most of the year, selling second hand and even giving them away to my local club's friends, aiming to significantly reduce my "pile of shame". 

Hence, this year no new project for me, but an effort to complete some of the past years army units and other bits and pieces, painting at leisure and without stress. A list of current interests is the following:

• German early 2WW infantry and supports
• German Fallschirmjagers in 1940 jump suits for an Operation Mercury project
• Complete a few Saga warbands (Dark Age warriors, Moors and El Cid Reconquista)
• A Germanic warband for Infamy Infamy 
  
• A wide array of 2WW vehicles 

Finally, in 2022 I also dipped my toes in the fascinating ocean of 3D printing. I have already printed some singular pieces related to the list of projects above and may add a few more models through the Challenge period, time will tell.

So no major planning, but an Inshallah (only god will tell)  approach. Best of luck to all fellow challengers and will see you in a few weeks at the start line.

 

Benito's Mobile Painting Office

From TeemuL: Hobby area, current plans

Hello all! My name is Teemu, I live in Finland, Europe, next to the big, bad Russia, and this is my nth Challenge, being around since Challenge V. This is my first Challenge as a Minion, responsible for the mighty Thor's day - also known as Thursday.

I do have a nice hobby room (I'll come back to that later), but since we have a largish house and the heating is mainly done by electricity and our cheap contract ended three weeks ago, I have turned down the heating in the hobby room and moved my tray and various equipment to the living room table. All for the greater good. So currently I have the basic equipments and the models I'm working with on the tray and then periodically visit the hobby room to pick up things I need and return things I don't and store the finished miniatures. The hobby area is far from perfect, but usually I can leave it there and continue when I have time, so I don't need to setup everything up once I start painting. And being in the living room helps being social with my better half and my son.

Game time has been quite low for couple of years now and so I don't have any gaming related targets regarding painting at the moment. Last Challenge I went strongly in the Squirrel Challenge, but this time I try to focus on something else. I created a poll earlier in AHPC Facebook group asking what I should paint. I have 12 plastic Ikea boxes of unpainted miniatures (and several other boxes), so I listed the labels of each box in the poll and asked which box to paint. Nice and easy. This box got most votes, it has some Lotr Rohan and Dwarfs and metal Mithril miniatures. Surprisingly it also has some Dead of Dunharrow, but there is no label for that... So my main focus is painting the contents of this box. It is not that full, so I'm hoping to get carried away with the theme rounds and post a Squirrel here and there.

And here are some photos of the hobby room. It is like miniature armies, it is not finished yet... I still have things elsewhere in the house, which should be here, but I need more shelves or something, or organize the current stuff better or something like that. As you can see, there's lots of GW stuff (mainly books), which tells a lot of my history. 30 years ago I knew of nothing else and even though I got more knowledge during the years, it was difficult to get off the band wagon and start painting different minis and playing different games, since everyone else seemed to be on that band wagon. I still like Blood Bowl and love to play Lotr, but other games are not that hot. I liked AoS in the start (the first two editions), but didn't move to the third. I got returned to play WH40K 8th, but didn't move to 9th. Covid-19 affected of course, chances to play and learn were minimal and spending money on new rulebooks was not what I wanted. Sludge the Wargame has been the game of the year in our small hobby group and it seems to be going strong on to the next year, too. We'll see what else comes around, Flames of War most likely and some small skirmish games.

See you in few weeks!