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.  

Vote for the 'Challengers' Choice' of AHPCXII

Hi All!

First, apologies on being a little behind on this, but here we are (finally) with the nominations for Challenger's Choice. Below are the nominees with links to their respective posts. At the bottom is a link to a Google voting app to record your votes. A few things to say about the voting. I've set it so you can select up to three of your favourite choices. Yes, this may result in a tie, but I'm perfectly fine with that - the more the merrier, I say. Also, to avoid the voting irregularities that have occurred in previous years, I've set it up so that voters will need to log their email address to submit their selections. 

I will post the results of the voting next Sunday along with 'Sarah's Choice', the final 'Minions' Choice' and 'Snowlord's Choice'.

Okay!! In alphabetical order, the nominees for Challengers' Choice' are:

Bark's 'Dernhelm'

Benito's 'WWII Canadians'

Curt's 'Not Star Wars'

Curt's 'Tomb Kings'

Curt's 'Moonstone Cultists'

Forest's 'Alamo'

George's 'Arwyn'

George's 'Eowyn'

Jasper's 'It Takes a Village'

John's 'Homemade Toy Soldiers'

Ken's 'Risorgimento Project'

Lee's 'French Foreign Legion'

Martin's '8.8cm Flak Gun and Crew'

Ray's 'Poles for Donnybrook'

Sander's 'A Soldier's Farewell'

Sander's 'Laarden 1702 Project'

...and the link to the voting app is here.

See you next week when I announce the results!

- Curt

From SanderS: Challenge Wrap up by Arthur and Sander

 Hoi,

 

We have come to the end of the Challenge well and truly if we have to write up our experiences in the Wrap Up post. Let's start with the Lad, Arthur asked me to write:

"Dear Challengers, it is a pitty the Challenge has ended already. I really had a great time competing and hope I will be allowed to join again next year as you all have given me lots of inspiration. I started out with no real plan other than get 75 points done and these should include my Whirlwind. The other figures I just randomly picked as fancy took me. The nicest result of this, is that the painting of my Blood Bowl figures has now given me a taste of painting for the sheer joy of painting rather then to get figures tabletop ready. 

I woul give a big thank you to Curt and Sarah for organizing everything this year and to Tamsin for minioning us and having such great patience with Dad, who can be a real nag sometimes. All the people who've replied to my posts with such great constructive comments I'd like to thank as well because your encouragement keeps me going!

See  you all next time!" 

While I edited some of the stuff Arthur wanted to say, the sentiments are all his of course and I do take he made great steps towards getting better this Challenge mostly due to your enthousiasm. 

As far as my own stuff is considered here we go:

A lot of the figures I have painted this Challenge were for others, I think actually almost 2/3rds of it was. Therefore most of them are not here to get photographed in the end result picture. Let's review some of those here:

The Mansions of Madness stuff:

Ankh (one of my favourites):

Some BloodBowl goodies: 

Orc team for Menno

Snotling team for Martijn

Skaven team for Mark 

Blood Bowl is certainly the big winner this season as far as the amount of miniatures painted goes for. It isn't over by far yet, since the end of the Challenge I have painted up two more teams and am printing a Dwarven Blood Bowl stadium on the 3d printer and it is HUGE!

Anyway, sadly I had loads of other things planned for this Challenge, a lot of 40k stuff (yes I have let our Skullzmeister down this year) some more Laarden 1702 posts and even some 1:72 Napoleonics. In the end though I am happy with what I did get finished specially since it did get me a spot in the Challenge top 20 as is my secret goal for each year. 

As Arthur said, thanks are in order too as is only right! I am much obliged to Curt, Lady Sarah and the Minions (specially Tamsin for keeping me in check this year) it has been a delight yet again! Not in the least since we were now also able to enjoy the Lady Sarah's very own first steps into this brilliant and therapeutic hobby of ours. To all our fellow Challengers I can only say thanks for making this Challenge the warm and comradely experience it is, let's see each other again next year!

Let's get onto the group photo then

 Update: 

As the total nitwit that I am, I totally forgot to thank Sir Sidney Roundwood for allowing me to start my own version of his Laarden so a big belated THANK YOU! to Sir Sid!

See you all next time!

Cheers Sander and Arthur

Challenge XII Round up MattW

 Round Up Matt W

Another end of a challenge, thank you again to Curt and the minions for conducting a fabulous event once again.

 I set a big lofty goal this year of 1200 points and come running out of the gate opening with Napoleonics as my main focus, followed by some medieval, ancients. and entered the blog challenge quadrant for the first time.

I then ended up with a little hiccup part way through.............. In early January we travelled back to Australia to settle my Father in Laws estate, this become a but of a saga that I will not go into, but I am still in Australia as I type this. So no more progress was made except for my first 218 points.

I am returning to France in mid April to l'hotel de Hercé, getting prepared for a successful year at French Wargame Holidays after two years of Covid (with bookings now full for late April and June, for the first time since 2018). I hope to get some of my projects done during the year and you will find my updates on my projects on my blog at Storm and Conquest. 

I enjoyed the chats with everyone online, facebook and video link up chats. I am looking forward to the next challenge and hopefully Curtis will be insane enough to keep this up!

My 28mm Napoleonic Mamelukes from Foundry, really loved doing these

12 Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard

 28mm Front Rank Austrian Command, both these are divisional commanders, one Infantry division commander and one Hussar Cavalry division general stand.  

Austrian Hussar General

 Gaulois Chieftain Virdovix, chief of the Uenelli tribe

The plastic kit is Revell 1/285th scale Sith Infiltrator

 

cheers

Matt

From ForestP: Thanks for allowing me to participate in a wonderful Challenge

So with this last post I want to say how thankful I have been to be able to participate in the Challenge this year. Given the stressors of my work I really needed the accountability that this Challenge provided to ensure that I could actually do some self-care. In fact things have been so busy (I have been traveling the past few weeks for both vacation and then work), I haven't even gotten around to this end-of-challenge post until now.

I set myself a modest goal of 500 points, and somehow more than doubled that, ending up with 1177 points, and was even in the top 25! I think next year I will have to up my game. 

Without further ado, there's "The Whole Shebang." Sorry for how small everything looks, but when the Alamo covers nearly my entire game table you can kind of get the full scale of it.

Lastly, here's me, saying "hello" and "thanks." Until next year my friends. Also, I intend to occasionally host Zoom meetings so people can collegially say hello and paint together throughout the year. I will post up notifications on the Challenge facebook group.

Happy painting!

Forest

From GaryA: the final muster - not much to show, but at least I remembered this year.

 

So that's it for another year. Well, it's only my second, but you know what I mean. Despite a few real world trials and tribulations, everyone seems to have done splendidly although there were times when I'd bet my grannie's false teeth I would drop short.

Blogger has been a pain. Occasionally it'd let me comment, but, more often than not, it kept throwing me out. I'll have to look into that.

I really enjoyed reading the posts on the blog and the figures which were submitted and there was such a lot to admire – and not just from the master painters. I've rediscovered the satisfaction of painting figures and for that I thank you. I'd also like to thank the people who set up and managed the  Challenge. How you coped with all that and still managed to make your own submissions is a credit to you (or maybe you just haven't got enough to do . . .  .).

I've uploaded my challenge stuff (which I forgot to do last year), but only a recent photograph of my alter ego. Tested positive for Covid yesterday and I've got eyes like Dracula, the Inca Quickstep and I'm even less of a pretty sight than usual. 

Anyway, on with the (fashionably out of focus) piccies:

 

 

 

From BenitoM: Challenge Wrap Up - Not "adios" but "hasta luego"

Another Challenge gone! I don't know you, but every year passed I feel time accelerates.  

My performace in the XII Challenge has been subpar to say the least and probably recording the lowest points scoring of all my past editions. I haven't  been able to achieve even a 50% of my 700 points target. 

The reason for this has been an unexpected peak of work through December (including Christmas) and well into Februray: I'm a partner in a startup and we had the opportunity to close a relevant and advantageous financial deal; unfortunately it demanded a lot of my attention and time, overlapping with the Challenge timeframe. Good for the business, bad for my hobby time.

In any case, I'm relatively satisfied with the final turnout of this year's Challenge. As some of you know, every year I like to focus on a core project and have some complementary mini projects on the side. The project this year was a WW2 Canadian platoon for Chain of Command.  I managed to conclude all the paltoon squads and leaders, and even some support units in the period. 

Left on the shelf are some previous years projects remnants that I hope to leisurely go through during the rest of 2022. Here a photo of my dual work/hobby table, where I spent a lot of hours daily.

To conclude, the usual round of "thank-yous": to Curt and Sarah for bothering to organize another spectacular Challenge; to the minons (and particularly to Dave); to Tamsin for her very funny weekly postings; and to the rest of participants for stopping by and taking the time to leave your comments. Apologies too to the other participants for not levaing enough comments in so many superb contributions this year.

So amigos, and as we say in Spain, not adios (goodbye) but hasta luego (see you later). In less than nine months now we'll hopefully be gathering together again.