From MartinC: My usual random start (198 pts)

New challenge, my 10th (or 9th or 11th). As usual I have a whole range of lead mountains to paint. However there has been a dramatic change of circumstances and total loss of mojo.  I took early retirement in August and moved house to be closer to my family. Since then I have been working on the house, it was quite leaky. I'm almost at the decorating stage.

So my plan for the challenge is to paint a 28mm Napoleonic Bavarian division, obviously I'm not doing that yet. Instead, along with a friend Ian we are doing Barbarossa in 10mm for Rapid Fire Reloaded. I have found an excellent campaign game called Kicking in the Door on wargames vault and have tweaked it a little bit. 

We are both building Germans and Russians, and will both have 6 or 7 battalions of each side. I have had most of mine for Christmas but had a few Germans to paint 

German armour

Command bases, mortars, machine gun and AT

Most of a motorised battalion,  needs 3 more bases plus transport

The barbarossa stuff will take up most of the start of the challenge 

As usual I will also have a load of random things to paint

1st up a 28mm steampunk mechanical octopus. I picked this up 2nd hand but don't know who made it and can't find any pictures on the web, so it was a bugger to put together. I fo love it though, it is very dynamic.

Next some skeletons picked up in a sale. I do love skeletons, they are a joy to paint

Finally I recently bought a massive Spanish style villa from JB wargaming and will use it as a convent in Vietnam. So needed some nuns. Never type in 28mm nuns on Google. 99% of the results are NSFW. These are from Westwind and are OK.

Scores on the doors

10mm vehicles 7 x 6 = 42

10mm infantry 70 x 1 = 70

10mm artillery pieces 7 x 3 = 21

9 x 28mm foot = 45

1 x 28mm vehicle aka octopus = 20

Total = 198

Have a great new year

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It's great to have you back Martin! It sounds like you've had a LOT on your plate this year so I can understand the loss in the hobby mojo. That aside, you seemed to have roared back with your opening entry here! I missed the return of Rapid Fire, but I can see how that would cause some interest in 10mm WWII as it was such an iconic ruleset in the 90s. Great work on this German force - you'll be doing Russians too, right? I can help you the provenance of the Clockwork Octopus as I have one sitting unbuilt on my desk. *sigh* It's from Kawe over at Westfalia Miniatures, but its now long out of print. Kudos to you in it's assembly (it's a beast) and you've done an excellent job on all of its brass, steam-fitted glory. And who doesn't love some skellies and nuns? The only thing that could possibly make it better is NSFW nuns. *cringe*

Great stuff Martin. I'm looking forward to your oncoming onslaught of painted minis! 

- Curt