6th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge Announced

Our favourite Canadian lunatic blogger, Curt, has just announced the 6th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which will run from 20 December 2015 to 20 March 2016. This year's theme* is "risk takers, daredevils and gamblers".

* apart from the final bonus theme round, all this means is that your entry fee figure needs to somehow fit the theme.

For those who aren't in the know, the Challenge is about encouraging people to use those cold, dark winter months (or long, hot summer months for those to the South of the Equator) to make big inroad into their lead/plastic/resin piles rather than about producing high quality painted miniatures (although some people do the latter and a few somehow manage to do both).

It's good fun and there is plenty of friendly rivalry and good-natured ribbing.

Those who have been following my blog for a while will know that I've taken part in the last three of these and placed quite highly in each. However, with all the disruption in my flat and for a few other reasons I won't be aiming for such a high output this year.

Anyway, the link to the announcement post is here:  linkity-link


So, if you fancy joining in, pop over there and leave a comment.

Rules Review

I was contacted during the week by Jospeh McCollough from Osprey asking if I'd be willing to review some of their recent and upcoming rules releases. They thought my blog was a good site to do this because I have a lot of followers and a high hit count of the quality of my posts and my engaging writing style.

After a brief exchange of emails, he agreed to send me copies of Honours of War (the Seven Years War rules by Keith Flint) and Black Ops (special ops/espionage rules by Guy Bowers) to review. They arrived in the post on Saturday morning.

First Impressions

I've only had time to have a quick skim through both books so I can't say much at this point. As expected from Osprey, both books are well produced with nice colour pictures of figures on the tabletop and illustrations from appropriate Osprey books.

Honours of War

These certainly look interesting and I'll have to try a couple of games at the club. They look to be designed for fighting battles from brigade through to large battles.

Black Ops

I was originally thinking of using these for not-too-far-future special ops games, but on skim-reading them I had an epiphany - I could quite easily use them for gangster games without too much effort. I'll just need to assemble and paint up some furniture and cover terrain.

Sunday Update

Hi folks!

As you can imagine, I haven't been able to do any painting this week. Mostly my evenings have been filled with sorting out the chaos resulting from the ceiling collapse.

I did have a cunning plan for this autumn, now blown out of the water. I was going to clear all the junk out of my spare bedroom and get it refurbished as my hobby space (and possibly office). The latter part will now have to wait.

On Tuesday I got the junk removed. I then spent the rest of the day cleaning up the room and sorting the remaining items out. I also moved my television in there and bought a bean bag so that I can use it as a temporary living room. It's also where I'll be temporarily storing the contents of my lounge before I shift them to a self-storage facility. So far I have filled 13 archive boxes with books. I've got about another box worth to fill.

You might ask why it's taken me a week to fill 13 boxes with books. Surely it shouldn't take that long? Well, the reason it is taking so long is the need to dust them all individually before boxing them up. I have also boxed up my collection of DVDs, but need to do the same for my CD collection. And then the rest of the room contents.

Once I've transferred my books, DVDs and CDs to the self-storage facility (along with some of the bits I'd left in my spare room) I may have a rethink about how my rooms are used while my lounge is out of commission. I may switch my bedroom to the spare room and use my bedroom as the lounge/office/painting room as it has more space.


The roofing contractor will be coming on Tuesday to look at the roof to see where the leak came from that caused my ceiling to collapse. Once that is fixed, They'll arrange for the ceiling to be sorted (the buildings insurance will pay for that). As the whole room could do with a refurbishment (actually, my whole flat could do with it, but one step at a time) I will try to get it done as a single job.

Who knows - maybe it will even be done in time for this winter's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge?


Thanks for all your concern and best wishes in the comments you left on my post last Saturday!