From PaulSS: French Officers for the Hundred Days campaign (20pts)

I've really been looking forwards to this years challenge and have spent the past few days in preparation, even clearing off the painting table for the first time in several years.

My first entry for Challenge XI is a small group of Napoleonic Frenchmen for the ongoing Hundred Days project that's been my main painting focus this year.

All three figures done today are from Perry Miniatures, the two on foot from the Line Infantry Officers advancing set and the one on horseback from the Mounted ADC’s pack.

The two chaps on foot are really well executed and have bags of character, I'll be using them as commanders in my skirmish games or as disorder markers in the big-battle games I have planned.

The mounted chap is rather a horrendous miscast, the mold has slipped quite badly and his face is rather ill formed, but he'll merge in with the rest of the figures in the collection on the tabletop. 

I was so excited for this years challenge I booked today off work to make an impact on the planned entries. My painting style does not really work for a one day turn-around cycle, so only the three above were completed. But, I made great progress on other stuff, blocking in the basecoats on ten horses for a unit of Anglo-allied light dragoons, base-coating and washing a French command stand, plus quite a few other figures with a start made on them.

I think that one mounted and two foot 28mm figures should net me 20 points kickstarting my tally for both the challenge and the 28mm Napoleonics duel.

Really looking forwards to seeing everybody's entries over the next three months.

From BruceR: Stash Gable, Curtgeld

First time Challenger and here is my price of entry.

Stash Gable is my humble entry. Hats off to Bob Murch one of my favourite sculptors. 

This is one of Bobs Movember sculpts  and a good one.  

Off to the opera or a gunfight on main, have Tommy Gunn will travel. 

I hope this makes the grade and I’m excited to paint along with everyone through the long winter nights. 

From the Great White North, paint on. 

From PaulO'G: Ruined Temple terrain (50 points)

Ahoy Snow Lord and esteemed fellow challengers - awesome to be back!

One's first entry of any AHPC season is always satisfying, and its great to get one inside the first 24hrs:  day off work is helpful in this regard, as is needing it for a big Christmas Eve battle! Presenting my Ruined Temple.  Its fantasy themed but generically useful. 

Its a MDF kit I got at CanCon a year ago from a small Australian company whose name eludes me.  I find MDF challenging to work with sometimes but am happy with how this came out. I added more colour inside to suggest a former splendour, with coloured tiling etc. I think it worked out ok.

Size wise it is 6 x 9 inches which equals 1.5 non-metric terrain cubes. That means it fits a good block of defenders so Archers can defend it and lurkers hide within and spring from ambush, like this block of 20 Gors from my Bloodsnout Tribe. To that end I will claim this entry for the Hall of Traps.

So I am off the mark for AHPC XI with 1.5 terrain cubes and a Chamber for a total of 50 points.

From PeteF: It's A.... Carriage? (40 points)

 

There are many kinds of trap:

It's A.....

1. If you’re a geologist - somewhere in rock layers favourable to fossil fuels
2. If you’re a jazz musician – things you bang 
3. If you’re a plumber – a bendy bit of pipe
4. If you play baseball – a bit of your glove
5. If you’ve got a shotgun – the thing that lobs clay pigeons
6. If you’re a golfer – a bunker
7. Other sports – controlling a football, double teaming a basketball player, tricking a defensive lineman (that's in the "football" where players use their hands)
8. If you’re a dungeon explorer – a horse carriage with springs

Challenge XI has a distinctly dungeony theme – which takes me back to exploring the unknown, a valley  of caves in some kind of remote area and many other far off monster filled underground networks. However, something else that reminds me of my youth is Napoleonic Minifigs and  I’m planning a lot of them over the next 3 months.

The first room of the dungeon presented a problem – although chevaux de frise and suchlike could be found in Napoleonic sieges I’m not planning any for my Minifigs army. I rummaged through my inherited Minifigs stuff and found this. It’s “Wagon 9”, one of the Minifigs carriages, which my dad bought back in the 1980s. It was handed down to my brother and thence to me. At some point on its journey it was primed white – but it remained unassembled and unloved.

I guess I could have saved this for the long forgotten projects or ancestors rooms – but as it’s a kinda sorta trap I’m presenting it as my opening entry for the Challenge XI.

Minifigs do a Napoleon and driver set for the carriages so at some point Wagon 9 will get some people and proper carriage horses. All sorts of scenarios could involve the carriage and I may use it to represent the commanding general for Quatres Bras – or Waterloo if I live long enough to paint all those line infantry.

One 25mm vehicle plus bonus for the Hall of Traps: 40 points

Thank you Curt and your minions for running another Challenge - I'm looking forward to these winter weeks, the opportunity to enjoy everyone's brushwork and participation in this wonderful community. I hope you all like Minifigs!

From StuartL - Dungeon Decor - 21 points

Well here we are at my second post for the challenge.

Continuing with the Chambers of Challenge, it's time to enter the Pit of the Pendulum. In the Pit, the mighty Snowlord has asked for something torturous, so that is what I have gone for. Considering the hell we put our host through every year, I guess most of us challengers deserve a quick visit to the Pit.

These pieces are all from Reaper Miniatures, specifically their Bones range. Cast in soft, bendy plastic, they hold a surprising amount of detail and are cheap as chips if you get them through one of their Kickstarters. 

These three pieces should make nice set dressing for my regular D&D games, once we get back to being able to hold them.

As terrain elements, these three pieces of torture chamber equipment have a total volume of about 3 cubic inches. This works out as being about 1.4% of an AHPC terrain cube, or roughly 0.28 points. Unless one of the Minions, or the Snowlord himself disagree, I am going to round that up to 1 full point, plus 20 for completing the Pit of the Pendulum, giving me a grand total of 21 points here.

From MartinN: The Hall of Traps - 25 points

Beat the drums, sound the whistles fine folk! For the first time in my long and inglorious career as a participant of this most illustrious of challenges I've managed to sneak in an entry on day one. Or at least I think that's the case. Frankly I can't be bothered to actually look it up.

Now with that out of the way let us head directly for the formidable Chambers of Challenge and step directly into The Hall of Traps, shall we?

Here we find a sinister fellow called "Scope" waiting patiently for the doughty (or foolhardy?) adventurer to step into the potent sights of his Needler Sniper Rifle. Some of my fellow adventurers may recall AHPC VI back in 2016 when I presented the first six of "Schaeffer's Last Chancers". Now, since then the other six have been sitting undercoated in my mountain of shame (one day we really should do an expedition there) waiting patiently to be re-united with their comrades.

Well, it's not often I do Fantasy, or indeed SciFi as in this case, but what would be more fitting for the Hall of Traps than a sniper with a big and ugly sniper rifle? Right! Two snipers... wait... I only have the one, so you gotta be happy with what you get.

Anyway, as mentioned I don't often do SciFi, but currently reading the Ciaphas Cain novels for the umpteenth time I felt suitably inspired to get back to this long neglected project. I simply love the 40k Universe, well as long as GW don't f***k up the whole fluff again anyway (Astra Militarum? It's the Imperial Guard you Frakheads!) and now and then I feel the urge to paint a figure or two for this setting. None of those new abominations mind, but of those more vintage ones with character and soul.

Not that I was planning on ever again using the figures with one of their systems, but who knows? The figures might one day find use with some other rules. The currently under development "What A Cowboy" by TooFatLardies might be suitably tweak-able to make for a fun "Kill Teams" stand in.

OK, enough blathering for my first submission. Scope should net me a nice and tidy 25 points to start my into the Challenge.

PaulS: Golem's Haunt (34 points)

 *Phew* 

We made it past the Spartoi, but now we have to sneak through the Golem's Haunt before we find somewhere quiet to hide for the night...

Standing either side of the exit are two giant stone statues that look like ancient warriors. Their bearing looks menacing, but not threatening; made slightly sad thanks to a coating of moss and bird droppings. We look at each other and wonder why this place is called the Golem's Haunt as it seems empty.

Something clatters behind us... just a rat. Turning back we could have sworn those statues weren't in that pose last time we looked!

Oh god... RUN!

These are, again, from Crooked Dice and stand about 40mm tall

You'll be glad to know that this is the last post for today! Sadly I didn't quite break the 200 points (by 1 measly point!) as the other batch of figures didn't quite get finished... will I make it to level 2 of the dungeon on day 2? We shall see... there are xmas presents to paint, so I suspect not.

PaulS: Into the Pit of the Pendulum (45 points)

 After escaping the Hall of Traps, our brave adventurer has to pass through the Pit of the Pendulum as the next step on their path to the Altar of the Snowlord.

The Pit's theme is something torturous or terrifying; something that will slice off your head if you aren't paying attention. I didn't have anything with attached pendulums but I did, again thanks to Crooked Dice kickstarters, have something terrifying. Kronos and its Spartoi warriors...

Kronos is Argo’s earliest experiment with artificial intelligence and looks like a giant eye with tentacles. Using his own brain patterns as a template, the prototype became dangerously self-aware forcing Argo to mothball Kronos deep beneath the foundries in his Olympus Base. It lay dormant for many years, until reawakening to lead the Argonauts after their creator's apparent death. Kronos shares Argo's madness and his all-consuming desire to control. However, Kronos views humanity as an evolutionary mistake that must be expunged - and has no qualms about acting that out. He resurrected one of Argo's earliest experiments in self replicating robots that were inspired by the mythology of the hydra... destroy one, two rise to replace them

PaulS: Entering the hall of traps (25 points)

And so on day 1 of the challenge, we enter the first of the many rooms within the dungeon... the Hall of Traps. One of my themes throughout the challenge will be to build up my Necromunda collection as well as work my way through a 7TV backlog of... stuff.

With the theme of traps, there were a few different directions I could go in... but the most apt one I could think of was the murderbot that turns up in one of the Necromunda scenarios. This thing disguises itself as one of the gang members on the board, eventually going on a murderous rampage against everyone. 

Thanks to the Crooked Dice post apocalypse kickstarter, I had the perfect figure lined up for this one, though I can't seem to find him on their store any more... just variations on him.

From TomM: The Price of Entry (10 pts)

 Something new in the AHPC since last year, is the fee of entry.  In this, you paint up one figure, and this has to be mailed to another participant that reaches the endgoal of the challenge.

As the model has to be submitted within the first month of the challenge, I always go at it as soon as possible, and so I duly did this year as well.

The model chosen as an entry fee is a Shrewzerker, produced by Oathsworn in their lovely Burrows and Badgers range, and a game I'm keen on collecting and playing more in the future.

This fella really looks the business, wielding his huge axe while taunting the enemy barechested!

But what's more, as I didn't have one for myself either, I opted to paint not one, but two of this mighty warriors, one for the lucky winner, and one for my own collection.

And as such, we are off for another year of painting extravaganza during the next three months, with a goal of 1000 points to score and not that much paint time at all with Baby Thorin.  So carefull planning will be key, but at least the first 10 points are on the counter now!

Good luck to all the participants and may funtimes be had and lead mountains dwindle!

From StuartL - Free Immortality, no stRINGs attached - 25 Points

 Well, here we are with my first post for Challenge Eleven.

To introduce myself to any newcomers and to re-introduce myself to existing Challengers, my name is Stuart and I am originally from the UK. I've been living in Japan for about 16 years now and I have more minis in my small hobby room than I know what to do with. This is my third Challenge (the 4th if you include the Quarantine Challenge earlier this year) and it's my favourite time of the year. 

This year I have set myself a lot of goals. 1750 points is my first target, with a top ten finish being the ideal. I have entered side duels for painting the most GW minis, painting the most Skulls and painting the most genres of mini. (Squirrel!!). I also aim to reach the Altar of the Snowlord and see what fiendish things our gracious host has cooked up for me.

The first step on the path to the Altar is the Hall of Traps, which has the theme of a figure which is trapped, stuck in a trap, snared or lying in wait. This was quite a tricky one and I spent ages rummaging through figure boxes until I found something suitable. In this case a Ringwraith from Lord of the Rings.

As any true scholar will tell you, the Ringwraiths, or Nazgul were once mortal kings and powerful men. The Dark Lord Sauron gave each of them a ring of power, which made them all but immortal, but at the same time bound them to Sauron's will. For future reference, don't accept gifts from people with the title 'Dark Lord', it never ends well.

So in a sense, (and the one I'm using to justify this figure as my entry to the Hall of Traps), the Ringwraiths were ensnared by Sauron and his magic, destined to become dark spectres of terror and Sauron's most feared servants. 

This figure is a metal model of a Ringwraith from GW's Lord of the Rings game series that I bought years ago. I never really played much of the LotR game, mainly due to a lack of local interest. The rules seemed okay so long as you never used the more powerful named characters. One game I did play saw Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas murder the Balrog for the loss of only Merry and Pippin, something that would have changed the trilogy immensely if it had been included in the original story.

So there we have my first entry. This should score me 5 points for the figure, 20 for the Hall of Traps and it puts 5 points towards my Games Workshop side duel. Just to round things off, I'll also offer this mini up as my Curtgeld, as I am sure there are a few LotR fans among my fellow challengers.

Now, on to the Pit of the Pendulum.

PaulS: Bring out the droids (95 points)

Welcome back to the challenge everyone and good luck in reaching your goals! I missed last year due to other commitments, so this year is the year to try and catch up with the ever growing pile of shame.

This year's opening entry is inspired by re-watching the Clone Wars recently and remembering how entertaining the droid army could be when not part of Episodes 1-3. These are from the Legion starter box, so sadly clock in at quite a bit taller than 28mm, or even 32mm figures. The kits seem unduly complex, with 2 teeeeeeny tiny bits to make up the head so I'm not sure I'll be venturing further into Legion after this. Still... the droids will be good for 7TV! 

To go with the droids, we have General Grievous to round out the figure count to 19.

Given that various people have asked for the recipe, here we go:

• Undercoat with GW's Wraithbone spray
• Cover with the Skeleton Horde contrast paint
• Drybrush with bleached bone
• Touch up the weapons with some white and then cover in the black contrast paint
• for the officer, paint the top of the head and the front panel in white, then paint with Nadreg yellow contrast
• Sponge on some light chipping using the darkest brown you own

From Curt: Welcome to Challenge XI!! - A Classic Pig-Faced Orc in Honour of The Chambers of Challenge (5 Points)

Welcome to the XI Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!

Yes, yes, I admit it, I stole a march to get this entry in, but as per tradition, I like to kick off the season with the first submission to the Challenge. In addition to welcoming everyone to the event, it also allows me to be top dog for at least an hour or two before being turned into a speed bump by the faster painters.

As a nod to our dungeon theme, here is an 'Orc with Guisarme' (Orc1) from the venerable 1979 Minifig range, sculpted by David Hutchins. 

Yes, he's a real old school classic. This figure was originally from a group of twelve that I had ordered with our first set of D&D books and dice, directly from TSR out of Lake Geneva. 

When I finally received the figures I was so impatient to have them painted that I used my dad's nasty automotive paints (no primer!) and 'brushed' it on using some of my mom's sewing needles. Yes, very primitive, but you can't fault the pure enthusiasm of youth.

Here is the last remaining orc of that cohort. As you can see, almost all the paint has flaked off over the years. It took several hours of rummaging through containers of random bits to find the original hexagonal shield. I did snoopy's dance of joy when I found it.

A certain charm. The archivist in me was torn whether to paint this guy or just leave him be.  

As historical background, the original concept of pig-faced orcs is usually attributed to Dave Sutherland, who was one of the main illustrators for TSR in the mid to late 70s. His work on the cover of 'Swords & Spells' (1976) is probably the first imagining of the face de cochon orc.

That same year The Brothers Hildebrandt also produced a painting of the capture of Merry and Pippin by orcs. Who influenced who, I'm not sure, but the idea took hold for those formative years.

TSR continued the porcine depiction of orcs in their 1977  Basic Set and the 1st Edition of the AD&D Monster Manual (I can't look at this book without getting misty, recalling a younger me pondering the weighty questions of which monster had the nastiest stats, the best art, the most treasure, etc.)

Orcs in the AD&D Monster Manual

...and from the D&D Basic Set

While the style of orcs have changed over time, certainly with the dominance of Games Workshop and Peter Jackson's movies, good ole pig-faced Orcs are still 'canon' for nostalgic old school D&D geeks like me. I love 'em. Oink.

I decided to repaint this guy in a fairly natty armoured hauberk, with bronze for his helmet, shield edge and boot banding. 

In a nod to Games Workshop I went with classic orky green for this skin tone, though now I wish I had gone with a dark flesh instead. Maybe I'll try that with the next ones I do. 

Fans of these types of orcs will be happy to find that Otherworld Miniatures has an entire range of re-imagined snouted Orcs available. I hope to have a few of these done for the Challenge later.

Hmm. I just realized I should have done this entry for the Orc Pit, but whatever. This little gem was calling out to be given some attention. I think I may revisit this theme over the coming months to see what else I can dig up from the archives.

_______________________________

Okay folks, I expect to see an avalanche of painting over the next few days as we head into the holidays. I will be updating the points roster between gulps of eggnog and bites of shortbread. In two weeks I'll be handing the reins over to our intrepid band of Minions. 

Let the fun begin!

Curt