From MartijnN: Sweet Sixteen Wrap-up

I had a plan for this Challenge. Now, I am fairly harmless when I have a plan, for it usually does not survive first contact with the enemy, if that long. It was no different this year. I have been struggling to get up to speed, and that I eventually did hit my target surprised me as much as anyone. What is more, I have reached it without many bonus points at all, for although I enjoyed other participants' entries, I only took part in one bonus round and that was more or less by accident. In previous years, I collected a fair number of bonus points, and must confess that I have missed the thrill of running around different locations trying to come up with something that, maybe, fitted the theme. That said, I fully comprehend the work and thought going into thinking up and preparing such a work, most of which would obviously come down on Curt. As a result, however, my painting has been singularly focused, for me anyway, and that is reflected in that I did not collect more than four squirrels this year! 

I also painted exclusively 28mm stuff this year, which is rather surprising. I have always been more of a smaller scale guy, and if anyone had told me a few years ago that I would be painting only 28mm figures during the Challenge, and many WWII ones at that, I probably would have laughed incredulously.

So:

- I painted my first 28mm WW2 figures;

- I painted my first 28mm vehicles;

- I painted my first Silver Bayonet figures;

- I painted my first 28mm Ancients mass battle game units ever;

- I painted my first 28mm mass battle Napoleonics since the 1990s;

- and I did not paint any fantasy or smaller scale figures at all for the first time.

Which has left me with a fully functional French WWII force and a complete unit for The Silver Bayonet, both of which have seen the tabletop already, as well as a solid base to work from for both Hail Caesar and Black Powder (or any other set). I am very happy with that!

Siena and Lucca, the main cause of my distraction. They are not always as quiet as this!

As always, many thanks to Curt and Sarah for hosting the Challenge, and to all the long-suffering Minions, especially my own Minion Sander. Once again you made it a great experience!

I was not as much in on the Challenge as I would have liked or am used to, so I really commented only on a very few posts, sorry. I may be backtracking to see what I have missed, though what I did see was absolutely wonderful once again. I will do better next time! Many thanks for those that commented so kindly on my own submissions, it was and is much appreciated.

See you all in December!

Martijn

Adieu Season 14 from the OG Boys!

Another year and another great Dad & Lad hobby event! Naturally, we lost some productivity by playing games against one another, but its a great problem to have and we both met our challenge targets which was great! 

From Paul: 

With my work schedule having me away for more than a third of the Challenge, I set a modest target to achieve 8,000 lifetime challenge points (over 10 Challenges) but ended up cracking a thousand points for only the fourth time, which was nice!

More lead models than plastic this year, so it felt like a thousand points worth carrying it!

I had a couple of different projects prepped but in November & December we enjoyed a few games of To The Strongest, which reinvigorated our stalled Roman Civil Wars project from AHPC IX. That became a throughly wonderful focus and I've now got the army ready for the tabletop to face Alan, which is exciting! Naturally, there was space for some Beastmen to celebrate the release of The Old World too :-)

And I was pleased to be able to help in my own small way, as the Duels Wallah and Guest Minion when required. I look forward to returning the support crew again in the future.

From Reilly: 

While thoroughly distracted with preparing to move house, I set a low bar to get the last few units done in order to finish my 3000+ point Warhammer Fantasy Battles Spider Goblin army. Whilst happy that I managed to get the few units done, inevitably with the release of The Old World more units to paint came flooding in and the project continues to grow. 

These massive spiders never cease to impress me
with their presence on the table... before they die.

From us both: Many thanks indeed to our Minion Millsy (the Antopodean 'paint and sip' sessions were excellent!) the broader minion crew that made Season XIV happen, and the wonderful AHPC community for their encouragement, banter and kind comments.

As ever the lion's share of gratitude goes to Curt and Lady Sarah - another wonderful hobby event, and thankyou for your tireless enthusiasm and passion for this project!!!

See you next year!

From ArthurS and SanderS: Challenge Wrap-up post

 Hoi,

So there we have it; the end of the Challenge and the final Wrap-up post are here... Both Arthur and myself are honoured to have been allowed to participate in this august undertaking yet again this year. 

Arthur has asked me to tell you all he really enjoyed taking part and getting such nice and constructive comments to his posts which are truly inspiring. He also says the Holliwood theme was really nice, even though he didn't actually enter any posts for it. He feels that in painting mainly Star Wars Legion figures he did contribute in a small way to the overall theme. The figure he is most proud of must be General Grievous 

 

Another highlight for him is gaining the set amount of points of 100 this Challenge, he hopes to be allowed to enter again next year.

As for me things are a bit less optimistic. Just like last year my Challenge was cut short due to our home renovation. Where last year I had to stop painting for a week or two due to the placing of new windows, this year the entire groundfloor of our home had to be cleared out and into storage due to massive structural works. This not only led to me missing my fixed target of 1000 points, something that hasn't happened in quite some time. Apart from the passing of my Dad and the renovation, work and life  in general just went on and it all really worked on my nerves, I tried to keep up with the Challenge but have to conclude I did fail in that too I would have liked to comment to all your excellent posts a lot more but the energy lacked and I have promised myself I will try to make up for all this next year. Yesterday concrete floors were placed into the house and from now on the building crew can start building up the home again and I will be getting an even better man-cave when all is done. 

This is how it looked before the rebuilding:

 

This was the state of affairs yesterday:

The figures I loved painting the most this Challenge were my Dark Angel Characters (the Lion is comming back!)

 and the Masters of the Universe figures. 

As a final parting I would like to say that we both have loads of new ideas and projects for next year (yes they will involve the Lion, he's back and I have only waited 27 years for his return!) and if Lady Sarah and our Snowlord will be gracious enough to organise the Challenge again next year, we would love to take part again. Thanks to everybody involved, we loved watching all the excellent posts and ideas everybody posted this year a lot. A special thanks goes to our minions Tamsin and Phil, we are much indebted to you both. 

Cheers Sander and Arthur

 

  

 

From TeemuL: Challenge XIII Wrap up

It happens to be a Thor's Day again, so you know how it goes. First some cold hard facts about Finland and then some minis.

 :meanwhileinfinland:

MEANWHILE IN FINLAND

The feeling when all temperatures around +0 °C  feel warm.

Everything is relative. After a long, cold Finnish winter, even a chilly spring day feels warm.

---End of a Finn talking about Finland---

Here they are, the minis I painted during the Challenge. This time I paid attention to collect all the minis in one place after they were completed, so I wouldn't miss them (like poor hobbits couple of Challenges ago) when doing the wrap up.

And here is the famous(?) Ikea box. As you can see there are still some (quite a lot) Mithril minis and 10 metal warriors for Army of Dead (which were not included in the label). So yes, I managed to paint all the Rohan and Dwarf warriors from the box, part of the Challenge completed succesfully.

And speaking of dwarfs, here they are. I have painted some Khazad Guards and Dwarf Kings in the past, so together they are quite an army already, but I still want to buy some reinforcements, rangers and specialists.

There weren't that many Rohans in the box, but most of them required some repairing or converting, so they were a bit more time consuming, but here they are all finished. I'm happy to have two warriors with flag and one with war horn, they should do small wonders for my force.

Here I have collected all the Mithril minis I painted. They were very good material for the Studios (sadly the movie never made it) and refreshing to paint, so characterful - happy to have lots of them to do in the box!

And this is me, staring in the bright future. We had kind of a spring last week, sun was shining, snow melted and all that, but it started to snow again on Saturday and now there is some 10-15 cms of snow and it continues - it is Monday now, it should be snowing until end of Tuesday. So yes, we were above zero last week, but now below. I have scheduled to publish this on Thor's Day, when it should be around zero and it will fit the emoji on the top.

And here is a group shot of a small unit of Oldhammer Orcs, I painted the right column (and snotlings in back) during the Challenge and managed to get a quick shot of a nice unit. Most of the other stuff were quite random and didn't fit to any existing group or unit, so they should look quite ok in the main photo and of course in my weekly Challenge posts.

Thank you everyone, all the organizers, minions, participants, commentators and readers! Let's see what kind of madness we have next winter, see you in December!

From DaveD - Challenge XIII - aka The Green Machine .

 It’s been a productive challenge . I managed to complete stuff in the start and end free fire phases and post something every Tuesday . That kept the score boarding ticking nicely , and I ended up doing almost a 1000 points more than anticipated- even with starting an unexpected new job for a few months  - which will let me travel to the US to Historicon and then visit ACW battlefields and USMC museum. 

You may have noticed a bit of “green” theme this year - pretty much everything bar buildings has green on most of it. 

The Nam collection has had its back broken with lots of vehicles added and the ARVN infantry . MartinC and I have the BIG game booked in for August where every bit of kit will be on two massive tables - each 24x6 . I really enjoyed the model making in the larger scale with the PBR being a particular favourite along with the B52. I have about 100 figures (under way now)  , 4 vehicles and a few planes to do and it will be finished if not completed .  I have the Anzac contingent and the 3rd NVA platoon under way at the moment.

The 7 Days to Rhine project has its starter forces added - with a first game completed . 

Someone said there would be “never ending Cold War challenge” - oops most of my production fit right into that ! .

My Necromunda Van Saar gang has been completed - even won its first game . See a diversion into fantasy space pixie land was had - it won’t be a long term habit - there are still historical projects in the wings . I have next years theme already building in the stash.

A new barn was added to old west/bootleggers terrain collection . 

 

My favourite creation 

I also completed the outstanding 15mm  WW2 terrain bits 

 

I ventured into Turnip 300  with Rhett in that famous film “Gone with the wind” . We managed to keep Tuesday mostly Turnip free.

 

Thanks to the director of this organisation Curt - and the person in charge Sarah. The minions as ever kept the show on the road cheers all . We had some good on line paint and chat session (we have a dedicated Discord server for challenge participants to avoid FB) especially in the doldrums periods it kept us going . Thanks for all the inspirational creations to gaze at and comment support . 

Until next year ! May your stash be suitably topped up ! My green paint certainly has been ,  after about 1500 points of creativity it needed it.

Huzzah!

From TomC: Aaaaaand cut!

I would like to (forgive me) set the scene before I go through what I managed to get through during the Challenge: it is late 2022, Liz Truss squats athwart the helm of the United Kingdom, and I have only completed one figure so far in the year.

There she is, 5 points worth of Corporate Security Unit from Corvus Belli's Infinity game. That was it. So, cut forward several months and I am very pleased to have at least managed to best that!

 All in the light-box (if not all quite in focus...), with plenty of firsts for me in there and thankfully just enough to get me over my points target! I was a little short of my stretch goal of reaching the Director's Chair but all in all I'm glad to have managed what I did get done. 

 So thank you, once again, to Curt for engineering the Challenge, Sidney for the wonderful locations, Phil and his phellow Minions for herding us cats, my wife for her patience, and to the many people kind enough to comment on any of my posts, you are all wonderful.

 With the spirit of the Challenge in mind, here is what I have on my list to do next and, now that I have offered that information publicly, I have no choice but to actually get them finished!

I did try (and failed) to get this corn-fed chunk done before the Challenge...
...perhaps before AHPC XIV?

 
As a post-credit treat (?), here is the Maestro with some biped:

She knows not personal boundaries

Until next time!

From Barks: AHPC XIII completed

I like looking back at the end of each Challenge to see what I have painted. It is often a surprise and a reminder of what I can achieve with your inspiration and encouragement. Even though my points target was a bit optimistic, I got a lot of projects out of my 'to-do' tray. I can't really pick a favourite.

I made it through the studio and should now be eligible for admission to the elitist 10 000 points club. Let me in!

Here's a pic of yours truly after an incident trying to get a glass marble into a 200mL bottle of Vallejo Grey Surface Primer.

Looking forwards to XIV!

From TamsinP: AHPC XIII RoundUp

 

Can you spot what's missing? Apart from me.

This year's Challenge for me was all about what became my final entry - the huge space carrot, and the extra bits I painted to go with it. I kept putting it off and only just got it finished in time, mostly because of the silly joke that I should paint it like a carrot which led to the name, which needed a story, which needed figures, which needed a backdrop, which needed home-made decals...

In putting it off, I found myself painting lots of little bits (some left over from AHPC XII, some purchased or 3D printed since), almost all of which were able to be neatly fitted into the different studios. In past years, I haven't done all of the map locations... actually, I didn't do the dungeon or Quadrant maps - just Treasure Island... but this year saw me visit all fifteen studios and take two limo rides; the only locations I didn't visit were the Gift Shop and the Yellow Brick Road.

Apart from the Spirit of Camberwell, the entries I'm most proud of are the two Judge Dredd busts. The black and white one was actually easier to do than the colour one, and not just because it was smaller - thinking how the colours should be shaded and highlighted (and deciding to go with non-metallic metal for the metal bits) on a larger model where there would be more natural shadow than you would get with a 28mm figure took some adjustment.

Despite my reduced final score compared to most years, I'm still very pleased with everything I've got done. 

From SylvainR: How do I Feel about the Wrap Up? Tray Bien!

I am quite happy with the outcome of this year's Challenge: the desert project is completed and I took a big bite out of Early WW2 armies. I love the fact that we are encouraging each other, although I could have certainly provided more comments to fellow painters. I promise to do better next year.

Many thanks to all the participants, the indispensable minions and, of course Lady Sarah and the Snowlord. And my thoughts are with Oscar whose big fluffy head I will miss petting.

Now that the Challenge is over, I will organize storage for my new units, start putting aside unpainted stuff  and prepare my trays for next year's Challenge.

Ce n'est qu'un au revoir!

From SimonG: Wrapping Up Another Great Year

With some sadness I've come to the end of my third cycle around the AHPC quarter. It's been another great experience and a points total I'm sure I will never get any where close to again given an unexpected bonanza with my Jewish Revolt Temple Mount terrain!  

Once again I get to bless you with my ugly mug and the fruits of my labours, which included this time around ...

... The last vehicles for my 1980s Cold War Gone Hot project -- all that remains are the BAOR infantry figures (10mm camo, fiddly stuff) ...

... A smattering of vignettes to meet the needs of the AHPC XIII Studio Challenge -- luckily I have lots of shelf space to display these things ...

... More Descent and Black Rose Wars characters, always fun to try out different painting techniques ...

... And the Jews ...

... And Romans for my Jewish Revolt project along with the temple as a sample of the large terrain I worked on -- still plenty more to add for this one and I'm taking delivery of lots of other base figures to work up and add in!

It only remains to say thanks once again to my fellow Tuesday toreadors, to Tamsin for excellent minioning once again, to Lady Sarah for inspiring an exploration of the world of high fashion, to Curt for being the mastermind and ongoing inspiration for this whole shebang, and to all who participated in, commented on and overall made this another great experience -- see you all again in December!

Postscript- I forgot my Nogs, now that my Wife has them in the Kitchen, so here’s a hello from them too

From FrederickC - Painting Challenge XIII Rounds Complete

 Before I get into what I did, I want to thank Curt and his crew of minions for the hard work they did monitoring, adjudicating, tabulating, commenting, etc., and for the design of the Challenge Studio Lot. I also want to thank all those who left comments on my posts. They did a lot to keep me motivated. I tried to respond to all of them and reciprocate in kind. If I missed you, my apologies. In addition I send out my congratulations to all the other participants on the amazing levels of skill and production displayed in an amazing array of different genres and scales. 

 This was my second year of active participation in the Challenge. Although I didn't manage to get as much done as last year, or as much as I had set up in my queue, I am still pretty satisfied with what I did complete. In the three months of painting I was able to finish a total of 15 mounted and 90 foot 15mm figures, 31 mounted and 241½ foot 28mm figures, one 40mm figure, three 54mm figures, six 1/56 WW2 vehicles, and 1½ cubes of terrain before the clock ran out. In addition, I visited six Green studios, four Blue studios, and the Director's Chair. It was enough to hang on to 10th place in the final standings. Here are the pics of what got painted.

 

WW2 Poles, Germans and Brits

 

Studio Lot submissions (The Normans went to the wrong photo shoot)

 

Terrain 'Bits and Bobs'

Lord of the Rings Forces of Evil

Lord of the Rings Dwarves, Elves, a Wizard (and two Normans)

 

Lord of the Rings Rohan and Gondor

 

 The snow in my yard is slowing melting, and soon I will be heading off to other hobbies, but hopefully still doing a bit of painting and gaming between now and the Winter Solstice and the start of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XIV. I hope to see you all next December. 

Tallyho!

FrederickC

 

In the cockpit of a Spitfire Mk IX

AdamC: Challenge 12 Wrap UP

 

Thanks again for a great challenge. I finished 51 figures all infantry this year. 

Also 22 pieces of terrain 

and of course ships 12 ACW River Iron Clads and gun boats of various types 

Also 17 Sailing ships of the AWI & Napoleonic era.  I lost almost two weeks to covid but still managed to just hit my Target.  I didn't get any other fleet pictures for the Naval Side Duel so I will declare that contest void for this year.  Thanks for the kind words.