The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XI is Done: What a Blast!

 

The 11th version of the Analogues Hobbies Painting Challenge (creatively named XI) is now complete.  I had a blast and enjoyed every minute of it (as usual).

I am very pleased to report that I find myself in a 3-way tie for the most points with Martin C and Noel W.  All three of use crossed the line with 3,643 points.  I'm really pleased that we tied as I think that's the best outcome.  Remember points are based solely on output, if there were any adjustments for quality of painting, I would be trailing Martin and Noel by a wide margin.  

Still, I'm very pleased with my production this year.  While my total points total isn't as high as some previous Challenges (me personal best is 5,051) this challenge represented the most I've has to do because of the large terrain component.  It's also the first challenge where I didn't paint ANY 28mm figures.  I had a few primed and ready to go but just didn't want to paint them.  In past challenges, easily 75% of my points totals came from 28mm figures so there is some interesting commentary there on how my gaming and hobby direction is evolving.  Perhaps more on that in another post.

Similar to past Challenges, I did organize XI with building out what I need to put on a large participation game whenever conventions come back.  Stalingrad is the most ambitious project I've ever tried to pull off and it's still an open question if it will work.  The main project form Challenge X, the Russo Japanese war was also finished off this year as both the Japanese and Russian fleets were painted up.  Finally this year saw a jump into 6mm ancients and the completion of 3 different armies - Republican Romans, Parthians and Seleucids.  This ancients foray is in part to the campaign we are running at the club and on the LWTV channel.

I'm sure all of you are burning with desire to understand what comprises the 3,643 point total and that's a natural - what? you're not?  That's insane 'cause you're getting it anyway.

Total Submission:                    18

Total Points                              3,634

Avg per Submission                 202

Figures Painted:

6mm

Infantry                                1,656

Cav/Guns                               439

Vehicles                                     1 (an Elephant!)

15mm

Infantry                                251

Cav/Guns                                 8

Vehicles                                  30

1/2400 Ships                          98

Terrain Cubes                        54

(Terrain is scored by volume - each 6" cube is worth 20 points)

The chart above summarizes my challenge based on points by scale and allows a nice comparison to the totals for the full Challenge.  Challenge XI was atypical for me given the lack of 28mm production and you can see that in my much higher points share for 6mm and 15mm (34.8% and 21.2%) vs the overall averages for 6 and 15's of 2.4% and 10.6% for all participants.  

One of the more interesting things I see in Challenge XI is the relatively small share of 6mm when everything I hear in the hobby points to it's growing popularity.  Of course the sample size for Challenge XI is 84 and skewed towards people who focus on painting so it's likely not fully representative of the hobby.  I was very surprised to see that my little ancients foray accounted for 63% of all 6mm figures points

Points by project is't really a surprise with the main project (Stalingrad) accounting for roughly 1/2 of the total points and the 2 big ones totaling just under 85%

As stated earlier in the post, while my points total isn't a personal best, the level of effort put into this years challenge was likely the most I've ever done.  That's all due to the terrain building effort for Stalingrad and my choice of 15mm vs 6mm in scale.  Making hex terrain is a lot of fun but it is time consuming and somewhat labor intensive - well as labor intensive as any hobby project.  The choice of hexes was made for two reasons - one practical and one emotional.  

The practical reason is speed of play.  As a convention GM of more than 100 games with 8+ players one of the things that really slows play down are tape measures, especially when you get "that player" who is measuring to 1/64th of an inch and brings their own protractor to figure angles.  Hexes eliminate the need for tape measurers and also make LOS a lot easier.  The key is to use a ruleset that takes advantage of these aspects without rendering the game to being just a hex and counter experience.

The emotional reason is that I really want to put on the best game I can for my players when we can all return to gaming in large groups.  I really miss it and I'm sure so does everyone else.  I can't remove all the stress and loss we've endured due to COVID but I can try to make sure when we get back to the new nromal that next participation game experience is both fun and memorable.  The first time I really enjoyed wargaming was playing Squad Leader and running the Guards Counter-Attack scenario - it was a blast and lead to a life long hobby.  I want to try and recreate that evocative experience in miniatures for my players.  Will I succeed, who knows? but I'm going to give it my best shot.

Thanks to Curt and all the challenge participants for keeping me motivated to grind out the Stalingrad terrain.  XI was fantastic and I cant wait for XII.  Ok I need a bit of a break so I can wait a little bit for XII.

Now where the hell am i going to store all this stuff.....