2025 - back on a horse and into Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge 15

The much anticipated (!?!) second post...only 19(?) months in the making. With the 15th iteration of the annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (AHPC) in full swing, time to dust off this blog with a bit of 'proof of life'. Synopsis follows...

AHPC 14

After a very productive AHPC 13 over 2022-23 I went into #14 aiming high...and ended up missing big. I'd changed jobs in 2023, and hobby time was diminished, which was evident in my Challenge output: I managed to barely scrape in before the disqualification deadline, and finished up with three figures (the boyz in green below were the entire output). You can read about it here, and my end-of-challenge lamentations here. Needless to say, the brushes remained dormant through the rest of 2024 - the painting mojo had gone, although I'd kept up with my brother's boardgame group (mostly Smallworld and the Dune boardgame in '24) and some RPGing (managed one Call of Cthulhu multi-session adventure, which was fun...better still that my character survived!)

AHPC 15

Getting back on the horse, I've lowered my points target this year, and have felt the painting mojo return. I haven't had any hard aims for my own projects this year, and have begun continuing to paint through my brother's Conquest: the Last Argument of Kings figures (which he will be looking to sell - apparently having kids leave you time poor!).

More broadly though, and with a massive pile of shame/opportunity, the start of 2025 has seen me work to downsize both my combined miniatures, models and RPG stash, from obscene to only merely excessive! 

Text of the first AHPC 15 post is below, with link. I do recommend checking out the challenge - some cracking stuff being posted up.

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/01/from-bartekr-charging-conquest-knights.html

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Greetings all, and glad you can join me for my first post of this, AHPC XV, which is my third attempt at the Snowlord’s dance-through-hell-and-heaven obstacle course of paint and banter.

If this was a sports documentary, there would be some line in this about how I have something to prove. After a decent first outing (AHPC XIII), I aimed high and dropped low and hard in AHPC XIV. So, this year, I’m aiming for a relatively modest 750 points.

With a busy work year, I haven’t much time preparing and indeed planning miniatures. Frankly, with a pile of plastic sitting dormant since last Challenge (and some from the one before), I expect I will be  spending a *lot* of time in limbo. That said, I’m hoping to get a few new things out there – maybe have a swing at some of Dante’s circles, and get out at least one bespoke piece before we wrap up.

So, first up, to get me out of the doghouse of the 21 Jan cut off: Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings Hundred Kingdoms Household Knights. 

In AHPC XIII, I started painting my brother’s Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings Hundred Kingdoms army. Two years on, I’m still going (well, to be fair, my brother has to downsize his armies – so this is an older sibling helping out with pre-sale prep!).

What to say about these? 38mm knights on horses. The figures are large (see comparison with a GW chaos warrior). Since my brother bought his Conquest army secondhand, a number of them were already  block painted using Citadel contrast or similar. While this, I believe, qualifies as putting me in Limbo, these were a focus of a lot of touching up. 

The process

The 'touching up' mostly involved bringing minis into the red/turquoise theme of the army, with a fair bit of work on the red on the cloaks and caparison to gain more depth, and shining up the armour. As it was, the paint work was a dull metallic (heavily washed, probably Nuln Oil). Overall, very dull. Not a bad look but not what I imagined for a resplendent household knight cavalry on the charge. This was fixed by hitting them with metallics again, and then a brushed-on gloss varnish.

Admittedly harder to see in photo, but the difference between dull and touched-up and glossed metal

The new build figures - including the standard bearer - followed the same process. Without the original recipe for the paint work, here the the challenge with was getting a good colour match. Needless to say, Citadel Carroburg Crimson wash was relied on to get the red of the cloaks approximate.

And more horse butts

A last note on the rider with the pennant. The command element for this called for a musician, but there wasn't any option for one on the sprues I had. So, to distinguish the figure, I used an open helmet from an infantry set and added the pennant – metal foil from a wine bottle top!

Process wise the I rediscovered (yet again) that despite having a  generous work space, after a few days of working on the bench the inevitable spread of paint droppers/pots effectively corners me on a hand's width rump of desk space to work on, before I'm pushed off the table completely. Trying to be better about keeping this aspect of the painting process under control! 

The result 

Standard question when I finish painting: am happy with them? Given the Challenge and these prompted me to pick up a brush for the first time in a year, yes. Sure, given their generous scale I would love to be more precise and bring out more of the detail, but happy enough. They were an opportunity to use up more of my legacy Citadel paints (particularly washes), having bought a set of the Army Painter Fanatic range - which i'm quite happy with. One aspect I am keen to try out is a new matt varnish - the brushed-on Vallejo matt (on the cloaks etc) was far too satin for my liking (despite vigorous mixing/shaking) so I will be keen to try out some AK Interactive Ultra Matt when it arrives.

The points

With Monday Minion Millsy's agreement, I have scored these as for 40mm:

9 x 40mm cavalry @15 pts each: 135 pts

Limbo bonus: 20 pts

Total: 155 pts

  ...in the background

Probably like most, music or audiobooks accompany my painting. Through he painting of these I was listening to the Joe Abercrombie First Law trilogy audiobooks, which I highly recommend - English actor Steven Pacey's narration is top notch.

 

Welcome and introduction to The Thin Lead Line

Exsum: An intro to a new addition into the the ocean of the tabletop hobby blogosphere.

Welcome to this, the opening post for a late entry to the constellation of miniature hobby and tabletop gaming blogs. The blog itself originated about a decade ago when I started to significantly grow my interest in getting back into miniature wargaming - which in the end turned out to be a spate of 'collecting' (ie 'hoarding') but little actual painting or gaming. But the idea of a blog stuck and the final impetus came last year I took the plunge in participating in the thirteenth iteration of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (AHPC), an annual painting output challenge that runs for 3 months over the northern winter. [For those not familiar with the AHPC I strongly recommend the following interviews with its founder, principal organiser and gentleman, ‘The Snowlord’ Curt Campbell (and of course check out Curt’s blog): 

The Yarkshire Gamer: https://kenrtai.podbean.com/e/episode-18-curt-campbell-analogue-hobbies-paint-challenge/

The Canadian Wargamer: https://madpadre.podbean.com/e/the-canadian-wargamer-podcast-with-our-guest-curt-campbell-of-the-analogue-hobbies-painting-challenge/

Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy: https://wsspodcast.libsyn.com/wss56

The AHPC was an absolute blast, though at times stressful as deadlines pressed down. Most of all it was a supportive and inclusive environment, and a great way to kickstart getting paint on miniatures. The only downside wasn’t being able to keep up with and comment on others’ posts to the degree I'd have liked (I'm still trawling through the postings discovering new things). Photos in this post largely taken from my output in the AHPC, and my posts to the Challenge can be found (in order) here, here, here, here, here...and...here. 

The gaming pedigree

Being heavily hooked on to military history since childhood, I was an easy mark to get into gaming (I grew up in Poland – in the bad old days – and everyone in my grandparents’ generation and above were touched by war, so accounts of Poland’s historical conflicts were as ready as mother’s milk). I got into gaming in what I suspect is pretty much a well-worn path for others around my age. Gateways of scale models, plastic 1/7X figures, library loans (Ospreys, and familiar names on military history and gaming - Featherstone, Quarrie, Windrow and Hook) and Military Modelling. Early ‘wargaming’ was fairly hands on and kinetic – I like to think of it retrospectively as harking back to the ‘play on the floor and shoot things across the room’ H.G. Wells style gaming: trench systems dug in the back yard where plastic soldiers would be exposed to fireworks, lighter-and-aerosol flamethrowers and sniper rocks or marbles. My first Citadel set (Dungeon Adventurers Starter Set) came courtesy of CANCON ’86, and I still have happy nostalgic memories of poring over the monthly catalogue from the then Military Simulations. Overlay reading Tolkien, Dragonlance, Sven Hassel…

Somewhere in all that along came Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader – the first acquisition being Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican because it was within my pre-teen budget and had the glorious images of all the Citadel minatures then available. Battletech came a poor second, on the back of memories of the Robotech tv series. Games were played on dining tables and floors with often reckless interpretation of the rules. Alongside this reading, a steady drip of RPGs (Warhammer Fantasy, Twilight 2000, and Call of Cthulhu).

Fast forwarding through the years – uni, time in crap campus bands, relationships/breakups, group houses, booze, jobs. All very much devoid of gaming bar PC games, easy empty calories and no storage impost. Then, in 2003, I found myself doing shiftwork with access to eBay on the work system (long blocked) and some extra pennies. Thus began the last two decades (minus) of the Golden Hoard(ing) across scales, periods, game types - interspersed with more of the above real-life distractions, deployments and postings overseas. Among those was acquisition of a sizeable portion of the collection of a Canberra gamer who had passed – much of which, which includes Citadel miniatures back to the mid-80s, remains to be stripped. Ultimately, given I fall foul of the butterfly ‘oh look so shiny’ effect like a cat to an unsupervised steak, the end result is a somewhat overwhelming stash of historical, fantasy and scifi miniatures and models. All against the backdrop of these hobbies going from being on the margins when I was in high school to accepted and even ‘cool’ in their own way).

The painting desk...pre-Challenge

So what is this all about?

Which is probably a good spot to intro what I might be covering in this blog. In the broad, the intent is to use this to share plans, progress (most of all, otherwise I’m missing the point!), and opinions on a host of tabletop gaming (miniatures, boardgames, roleplaying games) and scale modelling interests. And with occasional dips into broadly related topics: computer games, listening (podcasts, audio books); books and magazines from my shelves; films and tv shows; and, even visits to museums.

In terms of specific topics, the collection encompasses various periods of military history, science-fiction, fantasy, horror and scales. To put some names, spinning my chair around the study/hobby room, the word salad of IPs, game systems, periods, miniatures and model scales include: 28mm, 15mm, 10mm, 6mm, 1/72, 1/48, Ancients, Medieval, renaissance, pike and shot, Black Powder, French-Indian War, American Civil War, Seven Years War, Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian War, Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, Back of Beyond, World War Two, Battlegroup, Victory at Sea, Blood Red Skies, Battlegroup, Bolt Action, Silver Bayonet, Lion Rampant, Pikeman's Lament, By Fire and Sword, Samurai, Cold War, Warhammer, Horus Heresy, Battletech, Bloodbowl, Kult, Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, Alien, Mothership, Mork Borg, Cy-Borg, Twilight 2000, Force-on-Force...(copyright resides with the respective companies :-)

So dear reader, here we are...settle in with your fave beverage and watch this space.