The Stuff What I Did

Before I get onto the main bit of the post, the order I placed with GZG a few weeks ago arrived today:

There are two large mecha and two "crab" tanks for my Crusties, along with two packs of reinforcements for the infantry (one of the regular infantry squad support weapons and one of the armoured infantry). The remaining figure is a 25mm prisoner of war that I was planning to use as part of my risk takers entry, which was also to be Part 2 of "Revenge on Ray" - when I knew it wasn't going to arrive in time, I had to change tack. Now that the Challenge is over, I might still produce Part 2,,,possibly in time for people to have seen it before Salute!

OK, so onto the real business of this post - "The Stuff What I Did".

I got everything I'd painted for the Challenge out on my desk last night and took some pics. And here they are:

Everything

Half of my 6mm Rebs

The other half

15mm Choson Korean Righteous Army

15mm Crusties

Bonus round entries

Character figures

Salutesville civvies and prison officers

28mm cougars for Mexicagrave

Aztecs, ghouls and wolves for Mexicagrave

Pretty impressive I'd say!

My plan is to do individual posts for each group of submissions over the next couple of weeks.

They Think It's All Over...

...well, it is now. About 14 hours ago the shutters came down on submission of last-minute entries after three months of frenetic painting which saw 75 painters from around the globe take part. Sunday was complete madness as I can attest, having stepped up (along with DaveD) to assist Curt with getting submissions posted. At times it seemed that as soon as we had adjudicated and published someone's draft post, a new one would suddenly appear in the list to replace it. On Sunday alone there were 40 entries posted.

I managed to finish and submit three entries over the weekend:


Curtgeld: "Frack"

Things That Go Bump In Mexicagrave

At Salutesville City Penitentiary

The last few days were a real rollercoaster. My Crusties put me up into 10th place briefly, but then I slipped back to 12th. The ghouls put me into 8th place and the "bulls" jumped me into 4th place - it really was that tight on the points table. With nothing left in the bag, I got gazumped by Kyle's final entry and finished in 5th place with 1787 points. That is  my highest placing, even though it's my lowest overall score (AHPC3 - 1970 pts, 7th place; AHPC4 - 1959 pts, 8th place; AHPC5 - 2522 pts, 6th place).

I think this year saw me submit more entries than the previous years - 25 in the main event and three in the bonus theme rounds. Speaking of which, out of my three theme round entries I scored two podium spots (2nd in the Nostalgia round, 3rd in the Nautical round). Funnily enough both of those submissions were taking the mickey out of other Challengers. Maybe if I'd found a way to do that for my last one I might have had a third time on the prize winners' platform?

I'm going to take a brief break from the brushes to recuperate. Just a couple of days off. I will pick up the brushes to give them a good cleaning though, but not to apply paint to figures. I think I may have finally killed off my 2 main brushes with all the painting I've done.

At some point this week I'll be doing a round-up post of all my entries. Like last year, I'll group them by theme rather than posting them in the order they were published.

That just leaves me with one thing to do - thank everyone who took part in the Challenge, but especially Curt for running it once again. It's a fantastic event and gets stronger every year. I'm already looking forward to AHPC7 - thank goodness I've got 9 months to recover!

Challenge Day 91 - 1 Day Remaining

Cripes, the end is getting close. Just about 30 hours until the shutters come down and no more entries can be submitted. As that would be 7am on Monday for me, and I don't fancy pulling an all-nighter, in practical terms I've got about 24 hours left to finish off my final submissions.

This afternoon (I had a much-needed lie-in) I started off by priming two of the three sets of figures I'm going to be working on. Why not the third? Well...you see, I'd forgotten to do the basing on those - I got that done this afternoon in between doing some other things.

Once that was out of the way I cracked on and painted my Curtgeld figure ("Curtgeld" is what we call the entry fee figure that we send to Curt as a token of our thanks for all the work he does organising the Challenge). It's been submitted, but hasn't been posted yet.

With that done, it was time to start work on some of the other figures. Both sets needed an initial wash step, partly to bring out detail, partly to provide some pre-shading. I started work on the smaller set, then decided that if I want to secure my top 10 position I needed to focus on the larger batch. I therefore switched and started painting the cloth.

As no blog post is complete without a pic, here's one of everything I'm working on:

Yes, I think you can see now that the big batch are some ghouls from Mantic and one of the smaller batches is the Nightfolk teddy bears from Northumbrian Tin Soldier. The batch I haven't primed are some cops from Copplestone.

I'll probably paint the base colour on the bases of the ghouls before going to bed.

One bit that really brightened my day was Curt posting his Tribute figure for me - my reward for helping out with the running of the Challenge. Penelope McFadden is a gorgeous lass, whom I'll be pleased to add to my collection.

Challenge Day 90 - Two Days Remain

Well, two days and a few hours if you want to get all technical.

I have taken a relatively quiet evening . The first thing I did (after having dinner) was to assemble some plastic figures. I then left them for about two hours to allow the glue to set fully before adding some basing gunk.

Here's a pic of everything I've got ready for priming tomorrow morning:

While the primer cures, I'll be working on my Curtgeld figure. If everything goes well, I should manage to submit four entries over the final weekend. Wish me luck!

Challenge Day 89 - Challenge Update

Only 3 days (and a bit) left until the Challenge come to a close. Curt has extended to closure time to midnight on Sunday (Regina time - that means 7am on Monday for us in the UK) so that will give us a bit more time to get those last minute entries submitted.

This evening I finished painting the last of my Crusties. I've submitted three posts for them this week. As I write, one of them has been posted, the other two are in the queue. I'll add the links as they are posted.

Entry # 20 - Crusties Regular Infantry

Entry # 21 - Crusties infantry heavy support weapons

Entry # 22 - Crusties Command and Specialists


Tomorrow night will be spent priming some figures for the last-minute dash. I might also assemble some plastics - as it's the weekend, I *might* try a mad mini points bomb.

Challenge Day 87 - Crusties WIP

The "Risk Takers and Gamblers" theme round is up:

All Entries

My Entry - "It's The Pits, Baby!"

I've almost finished the Crusties grunts. Last night I painted the first batch of 16 figures, including the varnishing. This evening I've been painting the second batch of 16 - just a couple of washes and the varnishing to do. I think I'll take pics and submit them as my 20th entry once the varnish is dried, just to rack up some more points.

First batch at back, current batch in front

I've still got the heavy weapons, specialists and leader to paint up - I should be able to do those over the next two evenings, leaving Friday night and Saturday for other things. I've got the Curtgeld to do still and there are a couple of other quick projects I want to paint up.

On Sunday night I'd had enough of painting for the day, but I wasn't idle - I glued all this lot together:

These will be some reinforcements for my NSL. I'll be painting them up after the Challenge.

OK, back to painting now...

Challenge Day 85 - Taking A Risk

I've had a pretty busy and productive day today. However, before I talk about that, my Crusties cavalry/scouts have been posted. Pop on over and take a look. Here's a preview pic:

As I said, I've been quite busy today. Last night I selected and primed the figures for my entry in the final theme round - "Risk Takers or Gamblers". This morning I got out the airbrush and spray booth and over-sprayed them with white to provide some pre-highlighting. I also did that with my Curtgeld figure.

This afternoon I got my theme round figures painted. What are they? You'll just have to wait and see, when the bonus round submissions are posted by Curt tomorrow.

I've also done the basecoats on the rest of the Crusties. I realise I haven't shown a pic of them before the sepia wash, so here you go:

I'll be doing the sepia wash once I've finished this post.

And this is everything else that was on my workbench a few hours ago:

OK, so the figures at the back on the painting sticks are the ones for my theme round entry, but you can't see them in any detail so I should be able to get away with showing this pic!

Now that we're in the final week of the Challenge, it's "fire at will" so we can submit entries at any time right up to the finish. To make things easier on myself, I'm going to split up the Crusties into manageable groups for painting - two batches of grunts, the specialists and the heavy weapons teams. My Curtgeld figure will get painted next weekend. I'll have to see how things go - if I finish the Crusties early on, I might find some other things that will paint up quickly to work on.