Closing Awards for AHPCIX

Well, here we are at the end of our ninth edition of the Painting Challenge. All the votes have been tabulated for 'Challengers' Choice', Sarah has made her selection for 'Sarah’s Choice', I’ve done the same for the Judges selection, and we’ve made the prize draws for all the points thresholds. Whew! It has been a VERY busy day, so please get yourself a cup of your favourite tipple and settle in - you're in for a long read.

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The Challengers' Choice

We had 23 nominations for the Challengers' Choice Award this season. It was terrific to take in the gallery as it provides such a wonderful retrospective of the Challenge. Below are your top selections of all the worthy nominations.

Honourable Mention 

Millsy's for his excellent Crusaders.

Honourable Mention 

GregB's imperiously stompy Imperial Titans

Honourable Mention 

BenitoM's British WWII Paras project

Honourable Mention 

Curt's Female Samurai

Honourable Mention 

Byron's Red-Ones-Go-Faster F1 Ork Racer

Third Place for Challengers' Choice  

TamsinP for her wonderfully varied body of work. A few samples to whet the appetite.

Second Place for Challengers' Choice  

MartinN for his sumptuously painted body of work. Here are just a few selections:

First Place for Challengers' Choice' goes to: 

KenR for his beautifully realised Italian Wars project. Bravo Ken!

Ken, for your prize you get a one-year's subscription to Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy.

For those interested in seeing the voting results for Challengers' Choice, they can be seen here.

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Judge’s Choice

Honourable Mentions go to:

MartinN's (AKA Nick) poignant 'Last Rites'

Honourable Mention 

Michael's devilishly fun Doctor Aphra, BT-1 and 0-0-0

The Judge’s Choice goes to:

StefanK's wonderfully pulpy 'The Unicorn Club'. Brilliant work Stefan, Bravo!

Stefan, for your prize you get a $50 CAD gift certificate from Northern Lights Terrain.

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Sarah’s Choice 

From Sarah: What wondrous madness the ninth edition has brought forth! It seems that for each Challenge, the entrants for Sarah’s Choice provide a stellar variety of figures and genres, and this year is no exception.

I have spent a very pleasing morning, coffee in hand, perusing through all this years Sarah’s Choice entrants. All of them, from old witches and shield maidens to zombies and renaissance orcish ladies are awesome and I admire you all for showing such creativity and diversity!

Honourable Mention 

PaulOG's Jeanne D’Arc

I can hardly believe that this was Paul’s first submission to the highly coveted and sought after Sarah’s Choice Award. Such a poignant, well painted vignette and a terrific write up of a very complex historical figure. Well done, Paul!

Honourable Mention

StuartL's Nellie Cochrane and her Fake News Crew

I am unfamiliar with the Malifaux game, but I do love steampunk and fierce Lady journalists are super cool. Every once in a while, Curt convinces me to play Eldritch or Mansions of Madness.... I suspect that I could probably be enticed into Malifaux

And the winner for Sarah's Choice is:

AlanDs Jugoslav Partizanke

I really enjoyed reading Alan's posts on these women and was very impressed by both your research and the hard work on converting suitable figures. This is exactly what I like about the Challenge, people finding a passion and sharing it with wide audience. I am a history nerd, and I thank you for the book recommendation. Added to my reading list! 

Alan, your prize is a gift certificate from the good folks over at 'War & Peace Games'.

Thanks again to all the participants; your posts and the friendly commentary makes for a very warm and welcoming community.

I’ll see you all for Challenge X!


Sarah

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The Prize for The Prettiest Undead 

This was a hard fought contest, a pitched match of decayed tooth and taloned nail.

In the end, and very suitably so, it was a dead heat (ahem). Yessiree, even-stevens, right down the middle with 21 votes apiece. So, what to do you all think? I reckon we need a rematch for Challenge X.  :)

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The 'What a Tanker!' Prize

We are still awaiting the adjudication results from Lard Island HQ so stay tuned for that in a future post.

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Points Threshold Prizes

Next we have the Point Threshold prizes. These are drawn randomly and awarded to those participants who broke through the six points barriers over the course of the Challenge.

Threshold I / 500-749 points: BrettM

(20 Euro Gift certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

Threshold II / 750-999 points: JamesM

(20 Euro Gift Certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

Threshold III / 1000-1499 points: AdamC

(20 Euro Gift Certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

Threshold IV / 1500-1999 points: PaulSS

(20 GBP gift certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

Threshold V / 2000-2499 points: RayR

(40 CDN Gift Certificate from Westfalia Miniatures)

Threshold VI / 2500+ points: FranL

(40 CDN Gift Certificate from Westfalia Miniatures)

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Top Tier Points Finishers

Now, I think it only proper to give some prizes to our Paint Titans who dominated the points roster:

3^rd in the Points Standings: MartinC: (20 Euro Gift Certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

2^nd in the Points Standings: MilesR (40 CDN Gift Certificate from Westfalia Miniatures)

1^st in the Points Standings NoelW (50 GBP Gift Certificate from Barrage Miniatures)

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Congratulations to all the prize winners and thank you for sharing your wonderful work with us. Please contact me to work out the details for getting your awards. In the meantime, let's dance.

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Okay, keeping with tradition, I've come up with a few small gifts to express my gratitude to this year's Minions who all did a fabulous job keeping the show moving along.  Some will notice that a few of these were shown during the Challenge, but a couple are new here today.

Barks, our Monday Minion, here is your horned Pink Horror to lurk as a warp-cursed vagrant within your Pinkstone Fortress. 

Lee, Tuesday's Minion: I went through my stores to find something that would compliment your interests. So, here is a figure of a senior sergeant and drummer boy from the 24th Regiment at Isandlwana. 

Evan, our antipodean Wednesday Minion, an elder Deep One for your burgeoning collection of monsters and all things eldritch.

Iain, our Thursday Minion, a Sister Superior from your wonderful gifting of an unpainted Sisters of Battle force. Thank you very much.

and Robert, our Francophile Friday Minion, your's was easy, my friend. Here is Napoleon at Arcola, 1796. Vive la France!!

I also want to thank our Spreadsheet Sith Lord Miles and our patient Duels Wallah Paul for gifting us with their herculean efforts this year. Guys, you can expect something from me in the post.

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Painting Challenge IX is now concluded.  I’d like to highlight all our Challenge Sponsors for their wonderfully generous support of the event.  If you have a free moment please visit their sites via the banners on the left sidebar and see if something strikes your fancy.  As I say every year, the Challenge doesn’t need prizes to be a success, but it sure adds a bit of sparkle to the show. :) Thanks again to all our wonderful sponsors!

Finally, and I really can't say this enough, I want to thank all our Challenge participants. This event would be nothing without all your hard work, your humour and most of all, your open-hearted good nature. All of these things makes the Painting Challenge what it is. I doff my cap to you all.

So in closing, I bid you all a fond farewell. In a few days Lady Sarah and I will be departing for a much needed vacation to the south of France. The sun and cuisine will be an excellent diversion, but I also have an additional piece of luggage dedicated for brushes, paints and figures - the Challenge continues! In the meantime, enjoy the next nine months everyone, and I hope to see you all next November.

- Curt

SanderS - At Challenges End...

As Big Chris says:

Let's start with the most important thing of all: saying a BIG well deserved THANK YOU to Curt, the good Lady Sarah, the Mionions (specially our Big Lee!) and all you other participants for making this year's Challenge such a fun event to take part in. Special mentions must surely also go to Michael for putting up with me for another year, Tamsin: how do you manage to reply to each and every post in here AND paint more brilliant stuff than most of us at that?! Personally I have not been able to reply to all your excellent posts and apologize for that guys. And last but by no means least to my eldest son and Companion: Arthur for sharing this love that is our Hobby.

Am I happy with this year's crop? Hmmm hard to say really, while I did manage to get some stuff off the desk that has been hanging around for years (a decade in the case of the Dreadnaught)  I do feel like I could have painted more. Next year I will try a bit more planning and pre-Challenge prep. For most of the Challenge my gaming table looked like this:

You can see Arthur's painting-desk in the foreground. While the Challenge progresses I put the painted stuff in the table to see my progress; the prepped pile gets smaller, the painted pile grows.

The boxes of stuff are filled with miniatures still to be put together, most of which I got for my birthday which is in January and therefore mid-Challenge.
So on to the "done" picture:

Some more close ups:

Oh and of course after taking the picture you realise you forgot some models: the HQ Ogres and my Necromunda Gangs were used in games during the Challenge and were put away instead of back on the table.

Most happy I am with finishing the Battle Platform and the Spyrers, the platform had been cluttering the table for ages and I really looked up against painting it, now it's done! The Spyrers were just such a love to paint I would gladly collect the other versions for them if they weren't so damn expensive.

From the prepped stuff the lot below was left undone and I have decided that this get's painted before I allow myself to get into other stuff.

Meanwhile the lad has done well too, he's really all over the place where concentration is concerned and he likes gaming a lot more than painting but he's been a real trooper and I am mightily proud of him.

During the Summer Holiday we will be staying in Canterbury (UK) for 2 weeks and as I know the place a little I will be taking him to the local GW (can't seem to fond a decent gaming shop there)  and try to get him into some games and perhaps even some painting in the store.

A picture of myself is supposed to be in here as well, I asked my wife to take one of me painting but it's hideous so you'll have to make do with this one:

So what's up for the future? Well as I have said elsewhere, some new projects were started during the Challenge and they will be going on since I seem to have gotten into the flow of painting regularly. None of that post-Challenge blues for me, no sah! First will be the Transformers, keenly followed by Star Quest/ Space Hulk stuff. More HQ figures are always on the horizon and surely some more Necromunda as well.

For next year's Challenge I think I am going to go more into the Historical era, finishing my Indian Mutiny and getting some Napoleonics on the menu seems like a good idea.

For now farewell and till next year!

Cheers Sander and Arthur

Mike W - AHPC IX Review

As a way of doing something different I have pulled together my output on video, hopefully this will work out! 

Below we have a clip that shows the Polish Haluk Infantry and Turkish Light Cavalry figures I did for my Siege of Vienna project. With the Cavalry are three Turkish Command figures. To mix things up along with the cannon are five Spartan Hoplites I completed - just to see what the figures turned out like!

To their front are a mixture of figures  a Dalek, a group of four Fantasy figures and four mounted 17th Century commanders.

Below is another mixture of figures, It starts with two 28 figure regiments of 17th Century Saxon Infantry, then some Imperial Romans, a vignette of four 17th Century Spanish Musicians, two plastic Late Romans and a plastic confederate infantryman. A couple of limbers and a gun to be used by Turkish forces at Vienna and a lone 17th Century NCO.

Here is the mass of green-skins that I managed to get cleared form my own personal GW Hell! Spider Riders, Wolf Riders, Regular Goblins and 3 units of Night Goblin - two armed with bows and one armed with spears. The plastic mountain is now just a molehill!

100 infantry and 18 mounted figures - and for those that were following the posts - I did get the second unit of Spider Riders completed - just a couple days ago!

So here are the Breton Infantrymen I created from the Gripping Beast Dark ages Warriors pack to act as allies to the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, 1066. Generic clothing plus spare Norman heads form the Conquest Games packs and other suitable heads form the spares box.

This one hopefully shows the 20mm VBCW figures I did, including a Renault 17 Tank, 75mm Field Gun and Heavy Weapons Section. Additionally there is a one off Viking and a group of Mountain men for my Alamo project....

Now thinking about what's left, the 17th Century Brandenburg Dragoons and the 15mm Swedish GNW Infantry. The Dragoons are as below, the Swedes have been loaned out and are currently unavailable!

Hmm,Guess Who!

Hope that's all! I forget how much I gt done in the last couple months....

For anyone looking for Stats - then please don't be disappointed! I have listed everything that I can remember....

TARGET 2000 Points, achieved 1961 - Yes, I know I should have tried harder!

15mm

GNW

24 x Infantry

20mm 

VBCW 

1 x Tank, 1 x Field Gun & Caisson, 4 x Cavalry & 16 x Infantry (incl 9 Gun Crew & 7 Heavy Weapons Crew)

28mm -

17th Century 

1 x Field Gun, 1 x Galloper Gun, 2 x Light Limbers incl. 2 x Horses, 83 Infantry (incl 2 x Artillery Crew, 4 x Musicians and random NCO), 19 x Mounted Figures incl 8 Commanders)

Dark Ages

30 x Breton Infantry,1 Foot casualty Marker, 2 x Mounted Casualty Markers

1 x Viking

Ancients

5 x Spartan Hopolites

10 x Imperial Romans

2 x Late Romans

Sci-Fi

1 x Dalek

Fantasy

100 Goblin Infantry, 10 x Spider Riders, 8 x Wolf Riders, 4 x Assorted Mages & Warriors

ACW

1 x CSA Infantryman

Wild West

15 x Mountain Men & 2 x Mounted Mountain Men

Next Year (if I'm invited back) - I'll tackle the Orc mountain! The 15mm Jacobite / SYW Lead Lake and who knows what else I'll have found by then!