My Challenge in Review

Well, what a challenge this year's Challenge was. And thank goodness it's over! I've taken a break from painting over the past few days, but should pick up the brushes again on Tuesday. Maybe I'll break the block I hit with finishing the pirate dragoons and commanders?

I ended up in 8th place with 1959 points. Taking out the 300 bonus points I gained from entering submissions for six of the bonus theme rounds, that leaves me a touch over 300 points down on last year. I'm actually quite happy with that as I was aiming to take things a bit easier. However, I might have managed to do a bit more if it hadn't been for a few factors beyond my control - ill health at various points and being on a very intensive course for a week certainly played havoc with my painting.

I guess it is time to do a pictorial review of my entries. These are in the order of submission, rather than their order of appearance.

First up, a medieval picnic scene as my Swiss camp (15mm). This was my entry for the first bonus round "non combatants"

Next up were some Seleucid Xystophoroi cavalry (15mm). I've since sold these (and the Nellies) to a friend from the club - that should keep me from the temptation of building a Macedonian/Successor army!

72 Swiss Halberdiers (15mm). These complete my Swiss army. Unless I show extreme lunacy and paint up more halberdiers so that I can field a very early Swiss army.

For the Villains bonus round, my entry was this jolly lovely Ogre (28mm). He is now in the possession of Michael Awdry who won him in my 2nd Blogday prize draw.
*Any resemblance to any living blogger is entirely deliberate. Animals may have been harmed in the production of this figure and photograph.

Koreans - 72 medium foot handgunners, 18 crossbowmen and 8 light foot handgunners (15mm)

Coureurs de Bois painted up for the Bloggers For Charity game (28mm)

Ten regimental gun markers for the FoGR 30 Years War army (15mm)

How long have we been looking for the treasure? Skeletal pirates from Rebel Minis (15mm)

The NSL 5th Fleet was my entry for the Vehicle bonus round. Just a few ships here....

"Big Momma" - the heavy carrier

6 limber teams for my 30 Year War army (15mm)

My entry for the Casualties bonus round was this collection of cohesion markers for my 30 Years War army (15mm). With 16 "disrupted", 8 "fragmented" and 6 "broken" (the graves) markers this should be enough to see me through to the end of turn 3 of most of my FoGR games

What a scurvy (or should that be leptosporotic?) bunch these are. PyRats from Rebel Minis (15mm)

Egil Skalagrimsson was my entry for the Heroes bonus round (28mm)

Septic Sam the Sewer Man - a J Peasmold waste recycling ship.

Just a few pirates (not of the undead or rodent variety this time). 248 of them to be precise (15mm).

"Errrr, skipper - I think we filled up with the wrong type of fuel"
"Better call the AA then for a tow"
Lady Christine repair/recovery ship

Unteroffizier Feldwebel Rolf Steiner was my entry for the "Favourite Character" bonus round. I had to do quite a bit of conversion work to get the look I wanted (28mm). this figure is also my entry fee and will be wending its way to Canada at some point. I need to do a little bit of touching up first and give it another spray coat of matt varnish.

My final entry was a group of 24 Mongol light horse and a 3-figure Mongol command stand, which included a camel, thereby satisfying the secret rule that all Challengers must submit at least one camel as part of their output.

My final final entry was some more spaceships, this time a flotilla of NAC ships to add to the intro fleet I painted last year and upgrade it to a mega fleet.

As you can see, quite a varied bunch of entries again this year. I'm glad that Curt decided to expand beyond the historical theme this year as it did allow me to get some of the spaceships which have been sitting unpainted for ages done. I've now got some reasonable forces for playing games of Full Thrust and some civilian ships to use as objectives.

I did manage to complete my Swiss and Korean armies at last and got very close to finishing the Buccaneers. I've made a good start on my Mongol ally force as well, which will provide a useful addition to my Koreans (and may form the base for a full Mongol army in the future. What is it with me and irregular cavalry armies?). I also added some useful bits for my 30 Years War army.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to paint up any of my 6mm ACW armies. I think that might be a project for the summer.