Greg's Challenge - Preparing for Sweet, Sweet Revenge

The whole pile...or most of it, anyway - I think I forgot a few items...

Another exciting, brush-breaking, wine-consuming, new-swear-word-discovering, thrilling outing in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. What fun! And thanks to Curt for this opportunity to review my meandering progress through the whole thing...

Epic 30k Imperial Fists (Tamsin's favourite, I think)

Epic 30k Sons of Horus

Epic 30k assortment - Death Guard, Imperial Fists and a Sons of Horus tank

System Troopers from Pig Iron (now OOP! Sniff...)

More assorted Epic 30k bad boys

Yanks for Team Yankee

The Raven Guard arrive

Some targets for the Sylvain's Viet-Cron

Curtgeld - Cally Samstag and her friends, stout defenders of Orestes

WarPac tanks, helos and motor rifles for "Team Yankee" - have to say I loved this...

More 15mm grunts - US for Team Yankee

Another Raven Guard squad

And some Raven Guard command to wrap things up...

A big thing for me this year - I got over myself, and participated in all of the theme challenges! I pale to some of the masters in those battles (Millsy, Mr. Roundwood, Michael, Tamsin etc), but it was a lot of fun...

Nostalgia - some old Citadel Imperial Guardsmen from the Rogue Trader days

Epic Fail - toasted Syrian T-55 from Peter Pig

Defensive Terrain - whacko gothic space turret for GW's 30k/40k - I actually painted terrain! It happens!

Amour - insert your caption here, with these two fine sculpts from Wargames Foundry

Nautical - the frigate "Eisenstein"

Risk Taker - a Tau gunslinger

Three side duels, three losses - but as a fan of the Winnipeg Jets, well, that sounds about right. I'm already working on Jamie's figure.  Byron and DavidB, be sure to get your requests in (and I'm already predicting Byron might want some Iraqi tanks for his amazing M1s to light up, but we'll see...)

A special thanks again to my fellow Minions, and to my great friend Curt for assembling the whole gong show and for offering the opportunity to be part of the production.  And a big "thank-you" again to the Friday crew - as I'm sure you'll note, the body of work from the Fridays this past year is just superior... :)

My wife lets my paint right in the middle of the kitchen - is she a saint, or what???

I'm already looking forward to next year.  Specifically, I'll be hoping for another duel with Jamie - this one fueled by revenge! Pick your next Legion - I hope to be on to the Imperial Fists by then, but who knows...or maybe I'll have abandoned my sci-fi focus.  That seems unlikely today, but a year is like...a whole year away.  Maybe by then I'll be diving like a madman into more horse & musket stuff.  Or ancients.  I would paint some ancients if I could just @#%@ing figure out where to start. Who knows what will be in the pending pile by the time of AHPC VII?

That's the real beauty of this hobby...whatever whacko stuff happens at work, day or night, I can pick up my brush, my latest miniature obsessions, and just start painting.  It's magic.

I do hope to keep in touch with as many of you as possible, either here or over on the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts blog.  See you again soon! Now, back to that kitchen table, as some more Raven Guard await...

Alex's Challenge - Two Little Ones

So here's my crowning message. So I'll write more briefly. These are all my miniatures painted during the Challenge.

This is me - this is an important and a little pathetic.

This - my youngest daughter, I gave the time that would be spent on painting the planned but not made miniatures. I do not regret it.

This is - a terrible secret of why I paint so much - I paint with two hands, and taught me that my eldest daughter.

Thank you all, it was a very interesting and positive experience.

Bill's Challenge

I'm surprised at how much I accomplished during the Challenge, now that I see it all together in one place.  Three Frostgrave warbands, multiple vignettes and dioramas, tons of figures I never would have bought and painted without the influence of the themed bonus rounds...so here's everything all in one place (my apartment's coffee table):

And here's the shot with me in it (ignoring my roommate's advice to instead photoshop my head onto every single miniature):

Good show, all of you! It might be time to start stockpiling lead and plastic for next year's competition...

Chris' Challenge - What a Mug!

Well as requested by our overlord, the mug shot and then the shiny newly painted toys on mass.

I forgot to put two in the collection and sold the Napoleonic Brits so they are included as an addendum.

Looking forward to seeing everyone's efforts arrayed. I wrote the list for myself and thought gee that is a lot but upon putting it on the table it was not as much as first thought but then it is also around 4 times the amount I would have done. Hope you all had a similar result.

Photogenic mugshot (I hate selfies)

Just about all of it

taken from above

addendum 1

sold at a bring and buy

addendum 2 as I forgot I submitted these until too late to put with everything else

From DaveD Challenge Round up

Well , it's all done for another year. Not as productive as initially hoped, but I did get above the minimum targets I had set myself.

Mostly units for the Sudan

 The main unit I wanted to nail was the Camel Corps, which was 36 mounted, 36 dismounted, 12 camels at rest, and 12 dismounted skirmishers. It was a big unit so took a while. Also completed the 10th Hussars and the Eyptian Lancers. I have no more imperial mounted in the lead pile. Result.

I also managed a number of vignette pieces, such as the signallers, the medical section ,Sapper Corporal Millsy and Major Docherty, and the war correspondents. 

The final entry was the Balloon Detatchment, which was an enjoyable model making challenge.

The Mahdi himself put in an appearance along with a few top up foot troops. - takes me to just over 900 foot now

I also completed two 54mm Cowboys to provide some distraction from dusty stuff, and a few 28mm miners, plus the Curtgeld.

While it was a slow start overall , it ended reasonably well. I also enjoyed my Wednesday minion duties helping out Curt with the admin work. 

I am moving on to other terrain work for the Sudan and various other game aid items . The first dust up is booked in for April the 16th. 

Some mad overlord requested a picture. The Hawaain shirt was due to the fact this is my recent 5-0 birthday , so we made theme of it..

B

John's Challenge: I thought I was done!

So I wake up this morning and my Mail account is filled up yet again, maybe today I will figure out how to turn off Google + that so annoys me. I go about rapidly deleting them all and suddenly I  recognize what appears to be a photo of Curt. I point it out to my wife and say "is that Curt?" and she says it looks like Curt. I say to her maybe you should get the coffees so I can figure out why there is a photo of Curt in my email account.

So with coffee in hand, I open up the trash bucket in my email account, and start to look through it, I click on the link of one of the emails and it brings me to the Painting Challenge blogspot. I say to myself was that not over a week or 2 ago.....no more getting up and feeling guilty for not heading to the painting table. I had thought I was all done with that. No more guilt for not entering any of the fortnightly challenges or not finishing off half painted platoons. What is it I am supposed to be doing now?

And as I go through a couple posts, I realize that there is not just beautifully painted figures, but there are also photos of people, some of whom I vaguely recognize and then it dawns on me, Curt has made a request that we do one more post for this year's challenge. A post that not only includes our entries but also a photo of ourselves. And I say to myself how interesting this is, I finally get to see what all these people look like..............Curt's true brilliance has revealed itself and I know that he has made me go back, find the necessary photos and post one more entry!

Westwind's Empire of the Dead Line: the Tong

AB 18 mm Brits

A Gripping Beast Iman

Holmes and Watson from EotD

Battlemodel's 20mm USMC

18mm AB French Artillery

AB 18mm British Artillery

SHQ 20mm IJA Tank

SHQ 20mm IJA Tankette

20mm IJA troops from Eureka

Well there we have it, my entries to the 2015-16 Painting challenge.



Oh yes the required personal photos.

Going out on the town with my wife

Heading to the game last Saturday night, I am not really sure how I managed a smile!

Thanks Curt, and to all the challengers........what a great job.

Evan's Challenge - Who Invented Mornings?

I'm not a morning person at the best of times.

Last night, we went to a friend's 50th birthday party, and I learned firsthand that I can't put away the booze like I used to.

So I'm now snatching a moment between my first coffee of the day (and certainly not my last) and getting ready to go out and visit my son, my daughter-in-law and the grandchildren (and thank the gods for My Good Lady Wife, the sweetest little designated driver a man could want) to post a quick round-up as per Curt's request.

"But you already did that, Ev", I hear you cry, "surely you won't need to recycle that last post of yours?" No, no, but none of those pictures featured an image of me, and when the Snowlord decrees that we must each capture a portion of our souls and send them to him for some dark and nefarious purpose, we lesser mortals must needs obey. Let's not be naive about this. We knew it was a cult when we signed up, OK?

So, to the work at hand. Here is my Challenge output (minus Curtgeld). I wasn't sure how to arrange them, so here they are sorted by theme;

Clockwise from top left, Fantasy, Pulp, and Historical.

And now, just for the completists, sorted by climatic zone;

Clockwise from left, Tundra, Temperate, Arid, and Wet Tropics.

And for those who are in need of an early morning emetic, here they all are with their humble figlimner.

More coffee. Please!

Honestly, Curt, I don't know why you needed to see that.

And now, we come to the end of this year's Challenge. I knew at the outset that I wasn't ever going to match the output of the many gifted painters and modellers taking part here, but still, I can hold my head high and strip my sleeve and say, "these paint stains I had on Crispin's Day!"

So let's go out with a suitable closing track - this one is simultaneously funny and poignant, which kind of sums up the way I'm feeling now, happy and a bit sad at the same time.

Unless that's the residual alcohol from last night, in which case, I'm off to get some more coffee.

See you all later - stay tuned!

Ev