Challenge Day 105 + 1 - It's All Over!

Apart from the prizes and other announcements. Phew!

The Challenge closed at 6am this morning for us UK folks. Another season of furious painting has drawn to an end and we can return to a semblance of normality. I'll be taking a brief break from painting to recharge my batteries before finishing off some of the things I started but didn't quite complete:

6mm ACW Union army (4 more infantry and 2 Zouave infantry regiments)
Salutesville PD's armoured vehicles
2 more civvies for Salutesville
Crusty space fleet
5 more antiheroes
Mongol heavy cavalry

After those are done, I'll try to finish off my Wars of the Roses army. I suppose I should also try to finish off the Pirate Buccaneer army I was painting in the previous Challenge. I still need to do the command stands, artillery and light troops. And the camp. Oh, and finish the ship.

I got the four Union infantry regiments I was working on submitted, along with some thing else for that army, yesterday afternoon. You can see them here.

I then spent most of the afternoon and evening to work on a final entry (with breaks to read and comment on the frantic flurry of last day Challenge entries - there were so many, with so many pics that Blogger was having a nervous breakdown, causing Curt to have a nervous breakdown as Blogger deleted pics while he was editing posts!).

I did refer to it in my post on Wednesday - something that would combine taking the mickey and submitting some painted ladies for the Sarah's Choice prize. I finished them and submitted the post at about 2am. You can see it here.

I closed out the Challenge this year in 6th place with 2522 points. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by my final tally and with the sheer amount that I've painted over the past 15 weeks. Especially as I went into the Challenge while I was still recovering from the doldrums I experienced in the summer. i thought that my original 1500 point target was going to be a stretch to achieve, but I sailed clean through it in 9 weeks.

In a few days time, I'll post a retrospective of all my Challenge entries.

I haven't managed to post every day, but I did manage to post most days. I hope all the WIP posts didn't bore you too much!

Over on the Challenge blog I posted my thanks to Curt and my fellow Challengers. However, there is one very important group that I didn't thank there - all of you guys who read this blog and have left encouraging comments. Without you I probably wouldn't have been half as prolific as I was.

I tip my hat to you all.


So, what are my plans for the next few days?

Relax
Catch up on neglected housework
Relax
Get some non-painting (but gaming related) work done
Relax
Give my brushes a damn good clean
Relax

I've got the multi-player Imjin War game on Sunday. The campaign played by email has been great fun, although it has taken quite a bit of time away from my painting. We seem to have reached a very interesting point now and history may be changed somewhat. This afternoon and tomorrow I'll be having some fun creating flags for the Righteous Army contingents.