4th Annual Painting Challenge and 200+ Followers

So Curt over at Analogue Hobbies has thrown down the gauntlet for another three months of fun and banter that is known as the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. Those who have followed this blog for a year or more will already be aware of the fun and productivity this challenge supplies to the hobby in general and the painting divas in particular. Last year I was about to start work but managed to start just after the challenge so as to make maximum gains in the closing stages. This year will not see any where near the production of last year.

This year the challenge has again been expanded to allow even more entrants with the figure standing at 50 this time around. All the past entrants received an invitation to join in again but now space is being offered to will in the remaining slots on a first come basis so if you want in, get over to Curt's excellent blog via the link above and register your interest. A few new wrinkles have been added to make it more fun with a number of fortnightly challengers based on themes that you are free to enter or not as you feel (but look a lot of fun) and the usual entrance fee of a single figure, this time based on a certain film director. 

I urge you to be quick if your into this as the spare slots will go very quickly.

On the subject of numbers I have managed to reach the lofty goal of 200 followers over the last week and now sit on 201 which has really made my week. I had noticed the 200 bench mark though had not mentioned it as was trying to focus on the other posts but a big thank you to all that follow and especially to those that comment as this really fuels the interest in keeping the blog going. I know with the challenge soon to start we will see even more painting orientated posts but fear not other inane ramblings are contractually obliged.

Given the recent blog giveaway I do not plan to mark this event with any prizes, after all I still have two lots of prizes to paint, though Tamsin was reporting bruised ribs earlier from a subtle elbow poke  ;-) As for the buildings they finally are at the head of the queue and I hope to get them all finished within the week.

In fact the next 20 odd days will be about finishing as many things as possible ready for guns blazing. Anyway I am off to work out what I plan to do for the various challengers Curt has planned.

Chatter Behind the Bike Sheds - Winter's Nights

So it's here I guess. I go to work in less than full light and usually back after dark. It's that great time that most of us love for the chance to stay indoors and paint, even if that's all we like about it. Still fr many the winter tends to be their most productive. As for me, I am struggling a little, not to paint but rather undercoat and varnish. Seems that a good part of the weekend light will be spent either priming or varnishing as many figures as I can get through the process as it seems to be a bit of a bottle neck. I also struggle to get any half decent images, to the point I may just bite the bullet and get a light tent!

This afternoon I got back from my treatment at hospital and varnished twelve Battalions of Prussians but I still have three roleplaying models to varnish and don't get me started on getting figures primed and yes I really do need to get as many figures prepped as possible because.........

The 4th Annual Painting Challenge is due to start soon and you know how we like to have a heads start on the prep. Well I know I will not be able to put in the showing of last year, though it should see me pushing more lead through the grinder as I try and get the French on an equal footing to the Prussians ready for the big game of 2015. Meanwhile I will try and get all my part pained figures finished which includes the Baccus Currassiers, four Prussian Hussar regiments and the first 144 Zulu's that I have finally started. The other 300+ will be seen off during the Challenge. 

I still have a lot of figures I prepped for last years Challenge that never crossed the table so these will need to have their day of reckoning sometime but I shudder to think when. So what do I want to set myself to do during the Challenge?

Baker Company Kickstarter purchase is due any day now and given I have about 120 figures dropping in with more come March I will get onto these as soon as they land. I also have the Arena Rex Kickstarter that could land any day or er not (My money is on mid to late March) but if they land I will have to have a go at them. Tamsin could send me here 54mm figure to do as well (hint hint) and then I have those new planes.....

But it's a mix of old and new I really want to get going on, those Roman's won't paint themselves and maybe just maybe some of the Seleucid should grace my table again. Of course I have loads of Fantasy to paint and will be banging away at all the French I need to get done. Busy times ahead for sure and thanks to the Prussian purchase you can look forward to a good mix of scales and periods which I am sure will be welcome.

Secret Santa & Santa Clause Targets Engaged.

This time next week I will have my Secret Santa parcel on it's way to it's victim, er recipient with a few extra's for a nice care package. This way it gets to be wrapped in suitable paper and all. I am equally smug to say that by then I will have finished painting my Santa Clause and will be preparing to send that out as well. All told it will leave me all warm and tingly. It will also make me rather look forward to Christmas Day when I will be looking under the tree for some rather special Christmas cheer. 

I have to admit I knew roughly what I was going to get my Secret Santa for some time now but wanted to make sure I got the right thing which took a bit more digging but I finally was happy to pull the trigger. I have plenty of time to get it there so now all I need to do is relax and wait.

So if any of you out there are still unsure what to get your target feel free to get in touch with Cath and she will ask for a list and if you have had such an e-mail request, don't leave em hangin' dude  ;-)

Again a big thank you to Cath and all of you taking part as it really makes this a great fun and community Yule Tide event.

Blog-Con after the Buzz and Project Quatre Bras

So it's Tuesday night and Blog-Con whilst not a distant memory is certainly over but the buzz is still there. Next year will be a MUST for me as I had great fun. I had planned a nice set of images and post on the whole day I did make but unfortunately so few of the images were worth showing I have given up on the idea of using them. Instead I will wait for others to post pictures and will relive the moment there. It's a shame in a lot of ways but as the game never got so far as both Lee and me gossiped like old men (that we are) and my taking pics was more or less as the day wound down has left me feeling I could not do it justice and safe in the knowledge I really do need to get a new camera.

So all I really can do is say again how good it was and that I am really glad James looks to have next year sorted and we will have another great event to look forward to.

So with little to show you on that front I think I need to show you something else. Whilst the figure painting has slowed down some at least the work on Project Quatre Bras has continued. We are at the moment a little light on French Infantry, nothing at all to worry about but still not all ready..........yet. The Dutch Belgians need a fair bit more work, to the tune of about 20 Battalions I think but Lee is confident that come the day we will be well supplied. So the only thing we need is some place to fight over. 

It was mentioned in the practice game that it was hard to guess what we were fighting over with no hills or other terrain showing (other than trees and houses) so we have now added the hills which represent the larger and more important hills. These are not 100% accurate but give a fair representation of the area and will add a few wrinkles to the playing area and tactical challengers.

Here is a single battalion of Russian infantry (those AGAIN?) the hills are large enough that you can get a feel for the  sometimes rather steep hills whilst still being practical to fight over. A couple of the hills are also higher than the others as they were in the battle.

I will be fighting from the left and Lee will try and stop me forcing the hills on the right. You may be able to see the large pond in front of the bottom right hand hill and the streams progress towards the hill in the middle whilst that poor lost Russian Battalion sits all lonely in the central board.

Another Russian battalion climbs to the top of the hill and is possibly like me wondering what the hell he is doing in Belgium. Well at least he gives scale to the hills. These by the way started as polystyrene sheets that have had a cheap filler applied to and sealed with cheap paint.

Well the filler was actually added last, here we look at the area from the other side, I am now going to arrive from the right. The hill with the figures on will also have a large forest covering a large part of the hill and in the real battle and our first practice saw a lot of action with the French driving the Belgian's out of the woods in the French area but always finding more resistance and seeing the central area change hands a number of times.

The hills don't form the usual pattern you would expect on a wargames table, rather that some of them happen to be positioned in not the most helpful of places. We have two valley like sections that will inconvenience Lee or myself at points in the game. Once the forests are added back to the boards then it will become clear we will have to battle each other and the table.

Lee hard at work preparing to add the roads to the boards. These form a cross roads at Quatre Bras and cut the boards into four unequal sections. The total playing area is 5 feet wide and six feet across. This will be teaming with troops come the day and will have about fifty trees added to the finished model and over twenty buildings, both figures subject to change up or down depending what looks the best. Now we have started again I expect we will soon get to doing the adding sand and texture to the whole board and then it's painting and drybrushing them to get the final playing surface.

Of course this is all practice for building the Waterloo boards that will remain six feet wide but over three times the width at about 16 feet, that's a lot of filler!! I think we will have to get the Waterloo boards all done in about three to six months after the first playing of Quatre Bras to allow us to plan out the starting positions and make the required adjustments. Maybe, just maybe we are that mad, especially when you consider all this is being done by just the two of us.

Blog-Con Gains

Sorry but you will have to wait till Monday for my Blog-Con pictures as I can't download the images from my phone till tomorrow but I can give you a bit of a report of sorts.

Set to start at 10AM saw a few of us setting up games from pre 9am. Some of the games were 100% pure eye candy but given the laughter I would say they were also fantastic fun.

We had about 30 people attend on Saturday but I did not pay close attention to numbers. No one was without the chance to play though as you would expect socialising was the main aim of the day. Unfortunately for me I had a very poor nights sleep and the floor conspired to make my joints sing a little. The upshot was me getting up past start time and still feeling somewhat rough so as I suspected would be the case did not show today. If I had the Dreadball I would have felt compelled to attend so it's probably best it did not turn up.

But be sure it was a great day and one you will be reading about on other blogs, I will go into a bit more detail tomorrow. However I have pictures of what I brought back as extra to taking with me.

First up I picked up from Dave a lot of 6mm Adler Napoleonic's. When I say a lot consider the following images are about half of what we brought back. Lee and I went halves on them and at the time of splitting was not really sure what each had ended up with. Turns out we both got a great deal and actually the split worked out right whilst both of us thought we might have ended up with more than the other.

Lee has already got all the Brunswick regiments for Waterloo and as such these fell to me by default. In total I have 38 cavalry figures, 88 infantry and seven guns and crews. These look excellent but I am not sure what I will do with them. For now I will hold onto them but these could be up for exchange as I don't plan building a British army so not sure how I will ever use them.

I wanted the early French so got a total of 108 splendidly painted figures which Dave himself had painted (he was selling the figures for a friend).

Each picture shows half the total number of these great figures. The only shame is that these will have to go into figure limbo whilst I work on the main project but I really look forward to getting back to.

I also have a small Polish painted force. The Duchy of Warsaw has been something I really want to do at some point as I want to have a good sized 1812 force and it's probably the next major 6mm project for me post Waterloo.

Shako French I also snaffled up, enough for six battalions and three guns. I need to paint up the skirmish elements to be able to base these up so I am thinking I will move to these once I have cleared some space on the table.

The lions share of painted though is the Prussians. Enough to supply me with 18 Battalions of infantry, 14 Regiments of cavalry and 7 guns and crews. These will certainly help with Waterloo Project though I still plan to paint all the Prussians I own for other battles and I am really happy to have gained these troops as it allows me to be more free with what I paint which keeps the blog a little more fresh.

In unpainted lead I have the rest of the Poles making up a Division Pack another reason the Poles may find themselves next after the Waterloo painting is done.

Backing this up is a whole later French Division pack with enough additional cavalry to form nine regiments so these will be added to the Waterloo pile though I am not 100% sure I will need them as I have a lot of the new Baccus figures and being quicker to paint and my preferred figures these will stay in front of these for the most part. Given the size of the French army in other battles I know these will be very useful.

So a great big slab of Adler. Interesting enough is that these Adler are really clean casting's as they were bought years ago. Not so long hat they are bobble heads, in other words these are perfect Adler and I think the painting experience will be terrific.

Lee for his part has overnight bulked up his painted Russians and made a dent into his yet to start Austrian's which looked gorgeous. He also has A LOT more unpainted Russian's so much so that he thinks he won't need any more, er ever? Backing these up was another Division pack but this time Wurrtemberg which was close to one of the Nations that was on his radar for the future. So between Lee and myself we picked up around 6,000 or more figures, I am just starting to think we are ever so slightly mad.

Not that I stopped with just the Adler as James had a lot of the Blazing Skies planes I had bought the other day which were not doing anything and wanted to know if I wanted them. A few emails later and I had agreed to exchange my Baccus Anglo Saxon army that was not going to see action for this pile of plastic.

I know I won't paint the lot so will be giving some to Lee and we will get this done between us at some point. I plan to start the German's fairly soon as both Lee and myself are into the Battle of Briton and I will be taking some over to Matt to see if they can fit in with his planes. If all works out well Matt will end up with some more Bombers and three of us will be working them over.

A bag of metal planes that may be American, got to wait and see on these. So this is another diversion but I feel well within my rights to blame Lee and James  ;-)

I also have enough plastic stands to probably supply one per plane. All told a massive collection and all I need to do know is get them all sorted and started, not sure how time factors in all this. I'm starting to need a Tardis  both for storage and time creation to paint it all up!

I did offload a few bits whilst I was there as freebies, items I had bought in the past or traded for but did not want. I have even found a new home for a spare field kitchen I don't yet have LOL.

One More Sleep till Blog-Con

Whilst the hardy fellows like Ray and Fran are travelling up or down country to the hub of all things Wargaming (can anywhere else truly claim to be the wargames capital of the UK?) I have a rather pleasant but full on task of getting ready for Blog-Con. Now I would like to say that I would be like Dave and have all the gear stowed away ready for the big event and the only reason in this unholy haste is just down to a massive U-Turn on what I am doing but alas I think nothing would be different. Still it gives me a great excuse.

I at least have a few copies of the rules to hand out but I still have to sort out the units and stats for the French, hell three of the battalions are still drying that I plan to use tomorrow. I have yet to gather the buildings, hills dice etc. but fear not I won't forget everything, just most of it.

I left Lee last night planning which units to flag for the game and I have a sneaky suspicion he got straight down to work on them. It's going to be a fairly small action, just around 20 battalions of infantry, 9 regiments of cavalry and guns in support.

I want to use as many of my new Baccus French as I can so finished off the figures I had painted but not based last month. All these are the standard French line with Voltigeurs and the odd Adler casulty for base interest.

I have to admit the basing was a little rushed so I have not added much in the way of base interest. Even so I am rather pleased with the basing apart from catching the odd figure with a bit of the basing gunk but overall I managed not to balls it up.

So I will have these three battalions to go with the other new Baccus I have painted up recently, I should also have the five guns finished on display as well as the new French Cavalry I have managed to finish which will be in the game but I will also bring the early French on display for the early war fans to take a look at.

We plan on the game lasting about two hours but we have said that before LOL. Anyway plenty of room to jump in and have fun. Right now though, I need to sort out those troops.

A Change To The Advertised Program

This Way To Blog Con

I was going to be doing rolling demo's of Dreadball at Blog-Con but unfortunately the game has as yet not arrived. I really wanted to do the job properly and be fully versed with the rules before sitting down with players and running the shortened game that promised to be rather exciting. To do this I had to test it a number of times and get a good feel for it. Now I just don't have the time and have instead started the preparation for a 6mm Napoleonic's game with Lee that anyone can join in and I can just concentrate on the rules.

Talking of rules, this will be the first time they have been released on other wargamers so I will be looking forward to hearing others thoughts on them and any improvements they have in mind. I already have one minor change that I want to add before printing off but need to discuss with Lee tonight whilst we work on the Quatre Bras boards.

Our game will be based in Russia (If Lee has managed to do his flagging) so will see lots of never been played with Russians and a few new French units to boot. It will of course by definition be a fairly basic game as we have not had the time to really do it justice but will be good practice for the main event at Joy of Six and I will get to use my Russian Buildings I bought from Andy M a little over a year ago which is a big bonus.

All in all it kind of works out better for us and seems to be written in the stars as Lee was supposed to be working in Scotland but now is free and it's a chance for me to drive him to an event for a change.

We get to pick up the Adler Napoleonic's that should keep us busy for a few years to come and I get to trade my Anglo Saxon army for a lot of Burning Skies planes that will again take me years to paint up. Seems next stop is Pendrakon to get some of the plane decals. Life sure is fun and Blog Con is VERY soon. Hope to see some of you there.