In the event, I spent so much energy on the Challenge itself, I didn't find any time for this blog. So it's just as well I have no readers! But, now the Challenge is over, I may feel there's a gap in my life, so I think I'll try to use this as a substitute, and post irregular images of my wargaming work, as it occurs.
I finished second in the Challenge, which was amazing, given that I only intended to provide a small regular stimulus to my work. I was really bitten by the bug - both the desire to move projects on (I painted at least four times as much as in the same period last year) and, once I began to move up the table, my competitive desire to get to the top. I didn't make that, not even temporarily, mainly because there's one brilliant painter taking part - well, actually, there are lots of them, but there's one in particular, Kent, who not only consistently delivers some of the best painting you'll see on a wargames table, but also does it with apparent ease. Units of Napoleonic French (that's "Napoleonic" and "French"!!) appeared just about every week. Large units, too. I did a couple, but neither was close to his standard.
In fact, I found that to keep producing, regularly and consistently, I had to drop my painting standards somewhat. This suits me, really, as I think I spend too much time per figure, with relatively little value as a result - a few beautiful pieces, perhaps, but most of them end up in run-of-the-mill contexts. So it was a useful exercise in "can I deliver passable figures I'd want to play with, in a minimal timescale?" The answer is: more or less. I developed a couple of techniques that gave satisfactory results, such as using only two shades rather than three, or settling for washes without highlights on darker materials, and limiting the colour schemes in many cases.
The return to 15mm also helped with this. I bought part of a very large 15mm collection in January, following the death of someone who must have been a very keen 15mm gamer. I was excessively pleased with this - in fact, I've still not got over the delight of doing so. I've absolutely no complaint about it, despite the imperfections which every collection has. These actually give it character, even charm, and speak of a particular gamer with particular preoccupations, rather than some "manufactured" game. But it does mean that there are oddities.
For example, there's a massive amount of 15mm Austrian Napoleonics, unpainted, which I'll never paint up - probably more than 1000 pieces. On the other hand, there's a box of Revolutionary French (presumably intended to fight the Austrians) which fit squarely with my idea of gaming the French in Egypt, from the first landing to their exit. I've already a decent collection of the Perry figs in 28mm, but these are in the Kleber clobber. So I can fight the early months in 15mm and the later in 28mm.
Similarly, the bulk of my purchase was painted SYW figs. I'm overjoyed with this. But the problem is that it's a rather one-sided collection. Lots of British, but no French. An excellent Prussian collection, but the Austrians have almost no cavalry. I'm assuming that there was more to this collection, but that it's gone elsewhere.
So that's created a "fill the gaps" agenda - basically, to "complete" the Austrian army, and to develop a French one, almost from scratch. I know very little about the French in the SYW, so this is quite an exciting idea. And the Analogue challenge gave me to incentive to paint such a thing, so I've gone from a few token figures to an army of 5 guns, 150 infantry and around 90 cavalry. Moreover, I want to go on till it's a size close to the Brits (around 500 figures). Here's a sample:
You can see that this is not the highest quality painting, but it's not too bad. I'm aiming to keep the style reasonably close to that of the figures already painted, which is relatively simple, but also quite detailed in places. Essentially this gives me leeway to keep it simple where I want to, but indulge some of the finer detail when that suits me.
At the same time, my project for the year was supposed to be ECW. I was given two of the Warlord Battalia boxes, and I also bought a few more ECW figures in Wargames Emporium's sale. Nearly all the infantry, and something like 64 cavalry are now complete, thanks to the Challange, and I was moved to buy some Perry Scots, too.
The plan is to work towards Marston Moor (at least, a version of it), but also to include enough Scots to separate out as a Covenanter army, and to paint as decent number of Redcoats, so a version of the New Model Army can be extracted from the collection, too. Obviously, creaming off units like this means that the remainder might be a slightly odd rump, but my thinking is, as always, to aim for as many possibilities as feasible from a relatively limited collection. So far, so good. Here's a few of these:
