The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

Are we really at the end already? It seems like five minutes since we started. My favourite thing about the challenge is that it fills that gap between Christmas and the first show I go to each year, Salute. Next month I will be off to London for the day where I will do my best to refill the leadpile again. These couple of months really keep my hobby itch occupied until then.

When I first glanced at the challenge map I wasn't sure I would be successfully traversing it, never mind visiting every stack. A task that wasn't necessary and only a crazy fool like myself would attempt. Last stop, Biography.

For this stop I have painted the historical figure of Jeanne De Clisson, known as the Lioness of Brittany. Jeanne was a French/Breton noblewoman born in 1300. In 1330 she married her husband Olivier de Clisson. Both of them were previously widowed and Olivier had a son from his first marriage. They then went on to have five children. In 1342 Olivier was captured by the English when they attacked the city of Vannes. His release was eventually arranged but the French Kings Lieutenant, Charles de Blois, declared the ransom too low and therefore accused Olivier of being a traitor and not defending the city to his fullest. After a failed attempt at a rescue by Jeanne and Oliviers oldest son, Jean, Olivier was beheaded in August 1343.

For her attempts to rescue her husband, Jeanne was now charged with Rebellion, disobediance and excesses against the King. (Oh and she also tried bribing the King's Sergeant) Jean died in June of that year and now Jeanne was tried in absense. Jeanne swore revenge against the King, sold all her estates, raised a force of 400 men and had three ships converted for Piracy. A 13 year career of piracy and privateering for the English followed. Jeanne died in December 1359 a few weeks after the death of her fourth husband Walter Bentley.

The model as you may have guessed (if you didn't already know) is from Bad Squiddo Games. She is sculpted by the talented Kev White.

The Space Orks painting has continued as well. A slaver and some Nobs. (They really did have fun with naming stuff back in the 90s.) The Nobs were all missing arms, so a good delve in the bits box later and some cutting and filing and I was quite pleased with the result.

As I have left it to the very end to complete all the stacks, I shall not be requesting a challenge from Head Librarian Curt for the last stack for Rare and Antique books as I have run out of time. I will however, give an alternative finish to the challenge that I have been saving from my old school 40K project. What better to paint for the end of the challenge than a Librarian?

Another model that I first painted back in the 90's, he has had a good dip in biostrip. He did have a couple of layers of paint on him. I first painted him entirely red, then discovered that in those days Librarians all wore blue and only had their army colours on one shoulder. Then he had another layer of paint from repainting all my Spam when I was enthusiastic about Brazen Brass shaded with brown ink. 

It took a good 24 hour dip to get him shiny and new and now you can see the details again that were lost in the thick crust of paint. I'm not overly happy with the banner, but I can easily print off some others to try until I am happy. 

So to my final points

7 x 28mm infantry. 7 x 5 = 35 points

1 x 28mm cavalry. 1 x 10 = 10 points

1 location = 20 points

Total = 65 Points.

From Millsy: Ahh..... seeing goblin green bases on orcs is like sitting in the sun, it's just good for the soul. Love what you've done with them Peter, especially the deep red and the arm conversions have worked a treat. I wouldn't have known some were swapped in had you not said so. Jeanne De Clisson is great work too and I really enjoyed the backstory. Nice work and another 65 points for your tally mate!

Hello all!

I cannot believe I am at the end of the Challenge and my Napoleonic project! I have successfully eliminated the mountain of 18mm Napoleonic lead. Other mountains remain of course, but those are left for another challenge. This week’s post includes a final four squadrons of cavalry and a self-portrait in miniature. In this entry I will also utilize Miss Sarah’s library cart to access the biography section of the library. I’m calling this an auto-biography although it’s really just a small origin story of my entry into the hobby. We’ll see if the judges award the points.

In the mid 70’s I was an avid board wargamer and a faithful subscriber to Strategy & Tactics Magazine. Our library was far too small to carry anything written by Charles Grant or Donald Featherstone so other than collecting an occasional box of 1/32 Airfix figures, I had never seen historical miniatures. I then came across an advertisement for Heritage Models in a copy of S&T. The ad hyped a couple of Napoleonic games that included a box of metal 15mm miniatures. I was beyond intrigued and promptly ordered the set for the Battle of Nations. 

I used the figures exactly as shown in the advertisement. I loved the three-dimensional nature of the miniatures but didn’t like the idea of a single figure representing a Brigade or Division. With no access to any further miniatures, I could not figure out how to solve that problem and soon lost interest.

A couple of years later I started a job in a hobby shop after school. It was a typical shop of the time with about half the store displaying model trains and the other half plastic model kits. There was a small section of board wargames and Dungeons and Dragons material. My boss who owned the store was a giant, gruff old gentleman. He could often be heard at our high school football games loudly voicing his displeasure at the talent of our play.

One afternoon in the back of the store, I came across a catalog offering ranges of both fantasy and historical miniatures. The list included many choices of Napoleonic miniatures in blister packs from both Minifigs and Battle Honors. Here was a solution to my problem, with just a few packs I could create brigades of miniatures!

Swallowing my fear and using my best 16-year-old business acumen, I approached the boss with an argument of how much money he could make selling fantasy and historical figures. To my surprise he agreed to place an order to see how they would do. The D&D figures sold out in days. The boss was very pleased but he couldn’t figure out why the historical miniatures didn’t sell as fast. It took a few months to sell those out.

I never told him the reason it took months to sell out the historical minis.  You see that’s how long it took me to save enough money to buy every single pack that I had safely hidden in the shop’s storage room. 

And that was the start of a 40+ year obsession with miniature wargaming.

As for today’s entry, there are two squadrons of British Light Dragoons, one squadron of French Dragoons and one squadron of Chasseurs a Cheval. The figures are 18mm from AB Miniatures. These do not represent any particular squadron or regiment as I took some license in painting the uniforms. The paints are typically Vallejo or Citadel, washed with contrast paints. That works better on some colors than others and I’m considering it a method in progress.

Here are the British Light Dragoons in Tarletons:

And another squadron of British Light Dragoons in Shakos:

Here is a squadron of French Dragoons:

And a squadron of Chasseurs a Cheval to round out a brigade's worth of cavalry:

The artist figure is a 28mm miniature from Foundry. I received him years ago when purchasing a set of Foundry paints. The paint is long since gone but I finally got around to painting the artist as a self portrait.

For points I am claiming the following:

51 x 15mm Mounted @ 4pts = 204 points

1 x 28mm foot @ 5pts = 5 points

Library Bonus for Biography Section = 20 points

Grand total = 229 points

As this is my final entry for this year’s challenge, I think some thanks are in order. First to Curt and Sylvain, thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in the challenge. It is exactly the impetus I needed to complete a project that required painting of something just shy of 600 miniatures. Your hard work is very much appreciated and made this the most fun I’ve ever had in meeting a deadline. Next, thank you to all my Monday team members and all the participants and commentors. This has been a great collegial experience. Your amazing talent and commentary are both inspirational and motivating. Lastly, thanks to the Yarkshire Gamer. I found the Challenge via Ken's podcast and I greatly enjoy listening in to his interviews.

Challenge Complete!

From Millsy: My eyes lit up when I saw this sitting ready for posting Bob. So many memories for me in this post... exact same minis I've owned, S&T mag and both Charles Grant or Donald Featherstone whose books grace my collection in serious numbers. Your story about hiding minis so you could buy them is pure gold and despite slowing down sales in that dept you were clearly adding value elsewhere! You've done a wonderful job on the AB15s which are such a joy to paint, especially the dragoons with their glorious red facings. Congrats on a wonderful challenge mate and what a cracking wrap up photo at the end.

Once again.it is a two post week from me, but smaller than I had planned.  It turns out that those 4Ground pdf chariots are really fragile when dropped from table height....

Two figures from Bad Squiddo Games, Zenobia on the left and Nancy Wake on the right.

This is a nice casting with lots of potential for bling.  Were I to do her again I'd do the robe in a darker colour (purpled maybe) to show off the gold better.

She had me dipping into both Crimson and Purple, left overs of the former for me started on the livery for my Empire Halbadiers.

The camera tends to pick up flaws that aged eyes miss. Zenobia's cloak has picked up some white which will be fixed after post time.

The female of the species is more deadly than the male! A bit of Kipling Poetry to annoy GregB.

A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd pass their (German) posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was

Once again, the colour palette is based on the Bad Squiddo examples in their online store.   It's lovely oufit.

The paint job is basically basecoat, highlight and wash, although there might be couple of highlights here and there. The joy of painting a single mini is that you can do more things and try this and that and see how it goes. There are some personal links, my knife has a black sheath, brown grip and some brown metal at the end, so I tried my best to replicate that. The scarf and flag have the symbol of our group "an acorn", although it is very small on the scarf (Kaarinan korpiklaani). The hair colour is quite close to mine, but this is naturally the younger me, without the beard and glasses etc. I have never held our flag either. I have all kinds of badges on the shirt, but I didn't try to paint them, it would have ended in a mess... I do have a khaki shorts, which I frequently use and black "Wellington" boots.

Bringing us to the next two sections in the final room via the library cart are two more May queen dancers. These were also painted using Foundry skin triads, ProAcrylic whites, Vallejo Ivory and several contrast paints for the wreaths.

Leader Looking At Flowers

This is another Hasslefree miniature I picked up for no reason I can remember back in 2014. He was painted using Foundry acrylics.

The final general section of the library we will visit is the Cooking section. Leading us there is our final May Queen dancer:

And a shot of all the may queen dancers together...

Next we present the efforts of a tireless Goblin cook preparing some fresh seafood for the unworthy masses. He is eagerly using his new Necromancer Magic Cookbook, "The joy of cooking really fresh meat". Of course properly aged meat can still be used for an accent...

This rather large 32mm Goblin model was originally from Magnificent Egos but is now sold by Valiant Miniatures. A wonderfully dynamic model it needed a bit of putty work to assemble. This is a friends model I am painting for a Goblin oriented D&D campaign. At some point the left arm was lost and I had to improvise with a plastic human one. Bit of sanding, some glue painted on to soften the lines and he is good as new with a book! It was painted using Vallejo metals, Foundry & Two Thin Coats acrylics and Pro Acrylics Fluorescent paints. 

Points: 80

4 28mm figures @ 5 = 20
Library cart - 20
Biography - 20
Cooking - 20 

1 Skull (and crossbones).

From Millsy: Whilst your "similar to but legally distinguishable from" Asian leader made me laugh, the pick of this post is the goblin. What a wonderfully dynamic and characterful sculpt that is! He's beautifully painted too Tom and will be a real centrepiece for your D&D campaign.