Eight Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

To mark my return to a normal wargaming and blogging schedule, my first post since late April is to announce my participation for the third time in Curt's Painting Challenge. For those not in the llop, this is a friendly painting competition among wargamers across the world, organised by Canadian Curt Campbell, who I'm very fortunate to have met personally (him and his lovely wife Sarah) in a trip to Spain last year.

The Challenge launch also marks the final countdown to Christmas. The Challneg works by each participat setting his own target in the form of points awarded from painting your minis, and extends between Decemeber 20 2017 and March 20 2018. No best way to spend this dark and cold afternoons!.

In addition to the points with your painted inis and models, you get additional points participating in the thematic bonus rounds, always named with strange names to squeeze our heads with a little bit of creativity. This year's themes are the following:

• Flight' (January 6th submission / displayed January 7th / voting results January 14th)
• BFG: Big Freakin' Gun' (January 20st submission / displayed January 21st / voting results January 28th)
• 'Music/Musician' (February 3rd submission / displayed February 4th / voting results February 11th)
• 'Childhood' (February 17th submission / displayed February 18th / voting results February 25th)
• 'Monstrous' (March 3rd submission / displayed March 4th / voting results March 11th)

Any ideas on how to approach the themes are more than welcome!

Over the past two years I have focused on one single project (German Fallschirmjager in 2015/16 and Napoleonics in 2016/17). this year won't be different and will continue swelling the ranks of my Napoleonics collection to play General d'Armee. The only new news is that I'll be painting 20mm minis in addition to my traditional and favourite 28mm scale minis.

This year Curt has also added terrain to the challenge. I'm not a great modeller and therefore I'm not expecting to take advantage of the addition, but who knows.

So expect a little more of activity in the blog in the coming weeks and months

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It's Official - Painting Challenge Announced

Last night it was made official: Curt's worlwide reknown Painting Challenge is ready to be launched on the night of December 20th. This is the seventh year in a row and from looking from the sidelines many years, I decided to take the challenge in 2015... and will no doubt repeat this year.

I'm looking to reach a modest target (500 points) but considering that most of my paiting time is concentrated in the Christmas break and how slow painter I am, is more than a challenge to me. Time next weekend to plan my project, but likely a mix of Napoleonic and II WW themes.

Good luck to all participants (this year is looking to be massive...) and will be updating my progress here as it goes.

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Last of the Fallschirmjager

The title of the post does not make reference to Fenimore Copper's famous Mohicans book in a IIWW environment, but to what I have been up to recently in my wargaming activity.

Some of you may remember that I joined for the first time Curt Campbell's Painting Challenge, an annual friendly contest among international bloggers lasting three months. Coinciding with the end of the winter, today the Challenge finished. And despite not achieving my targets (500 points), I do have achieved something quite unusual in the annals of our hobby: to complete a full a painting project!!

Believe or not, I have painted ALL the models (minis and vehcicles) of my Fallschirmjager platoon for Chain of Command; not a single blister, figure or vehicle has been remains in my lead pile... not even the remains of the flash!!! The last model (a FJ private in winter gear) was completed only a few hours ago.

My gaming buddies however claim that I am the shame of our hobby and that I should not be proud of this, on the contrary it's a stain in my wargaming credentials XD

Anyway. I have painted the full platoon with supports plus an extra section in winter gear that i expect to deploy in some Ardennes enviroment game later in the year (my gaming buddies stored a large number of supplies in the form of American and German in winter uniform of the last Warlord series).

Here is the full platoon displayed...

... and the winter section.

Read more »

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Warming Up to the Challenge

I will spend most of this weekend priming my models for Curt's Analogue Hobbies challenge, which is merely 2 days away now. My plan is to paint a German Fallschirmjager platoon for Chain of Command together with several supports (engineers, mortars, HMG, recoilless ATG and a Hetzer), reinforcements for my German infantry units (the recently released  wonderful Warlord German in snow uniform are on their way home as we speak...), some vehicles and a few French Napoleonic cavalry and infantry.

This should be close to the 500 points that I decided to use as my challenge level. 

What you see in the photo is part of the work done so far stored with my French Dragoons (I have noticed an alarmingly scarcity of storage space at home!!!). You may notice some models already initiated: don't worry, I won't cheat and use them to my challenge count; actually I put them on purpose in the photo... These are models I was painting when the challenge was announced and are part of the units I'm using for the contest.

Also, some of the models will "arrive" under the tree next 24th December and for obvious reasons can't even start the priming phase yet. The Xmas holidays will be useful to catch up.

So brushes, paints and models on the table ... on my marks, ready... BANG

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Taking up the Challenge

You know Christmas is just around the corner when... Curt launches its Annual Painting Challenge. This is now in its sixth edition and has developed as one of the most remarkable social media event of our hobby.

The challenge gathers wargamer aficionados from all over the world. The contest includes duels between participants and special thematic bonus rounds where you can let your imagination fly to create a vignette representing the theme. All details can be found in Curt's blog.

After many years watching the fun from the sideline, this year I'll take up the challenge and will participate for the first time. I'm aiming to a modest target of 500 points considering how unpredictable my hobby time can be and also how sloooooow painter I am (as my gaming buddies can attest).

My focus will be 28mm of course. I have a couple of IIWW projects to use (an early war German Army and a late war Fallschirmjager platoon, both with supports) as well as completing my Napoleonic project with some French infantry and additional cavalry units. I see this as a good sting to plan and put a spin to my painting and gaming plans for 2016.

The challenge starts with the winter (on 20th December) and will finish with Spring (20th March). Quite excited already with it... wish me luck!


A final comment on blog administration: I'm leaving tomorrow Sunday on a 10 day business trip to Latin America, returning early December. Don't expect to see much activity here until then. My next post will be the third part of the Crisis trip, the visit to Arnhem and will be followed by a special entry on the not quite known but really remarkable tank museum of Overloon, also in The Netherlands.

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