It's that time of the year again

The 10th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is due to start just before Christmas

I haven't signed up as I've been "promoted" to the Thursday minion. It is a great honour to serve the Snowlord and may even be one up from being one of the Daves in Paris

There are some differences this year including a map that the challengers have to navigate through by painting figures. Cooke's Crevase features and I think that geology will be involved.

Overall it will be 3 months of mad painting.Only one problem. My lead mountain only contains 10mm figs and the figures at the bottom of the pile that I don't want to paint. On the upside it is the Battleground Show on Saturday and it has become a tradition that I buy my Christmas presents their and then tell my family what they owe me. Can't wait. Helps that we are putting on a game - 28mm North Africa Bolt Action. I've also been spying out Carnivale rules and there is a participais that a reason to play hte gametion game on so I may sneak off and play that. I do fancy the terrain - 

Paris and all that

Better late than never. Last week Dave, me and James trooped down to Paris to make a Netflix movie. As regular readers wil know it wasn't for my photographic skills. Dave had been contacted by a French film production company, an actual famous one. They were making a Netflix / HBO documentary and needed to recreate the battle of Omburman. Dave has all the worlds stock of painted Sudan war figures and they planned to use these. Me and James were labour.

Proper big film set with crew of about 10, all waiting on us to do this

This

and this

and this. All the bases were masked with sand, we used 20Kg and something in the sand blistered my ears when i rubbed them with my sandy hands. Not good for geologist to be allergic to rocks

The finished table with the boom crane holding the camera. 

It was too high and caused the camera to bounce so we dismantled the whole thing and rebuild it a ankle height. Never ever wargame at ankle height unless you are 12 and have functioning knees and back.

In 3 days we saw 400 yards400m of northern Paris and mainly ate burgers and cheese. It was utterly knackering and I had the best time. It was fascinating and everybody was lovely and very professional, in the good way.

 So the painting challenge 10th event is approaching and I shall be engaged. It may not be my normal deranged attack on the lead mountain for 1 simple reason. i am very low on figures. i have a 10mm Austrian 7YW army to paint and a lot of WW2 15mm troops and tanks but pretty much that is it. Luckily it is the Battleground show and shopping must be done. Also James beautiful charity painting event will help to add to the paint mountain.

Still I must clear the decks and get rid of those 1/2 painted figures that have been hogging my painting table since the last one.

The Old guard are doing 28mm Bolt Action North Africa and i have painted my entire Desert Rat collection. 1st up a 5 man LRDG section

Then a regular section. Can merge these to a 10 man veteran section. The rest of my Perry Desert Rats are performing as Port Vale in my VBCW collection

I have finished my Pontic 15mm army with these 4 bases of pikemen

The army is very big and I might buy some Romans to fight them

Finally this Turtle Shaman, Oogway from Kung Foo Panda, is from Mr Lees and was fun to paint

I like to test my skills with so nice large figures and Mr Lees stuff is really fab and demands skills far in excess of my ability