A contest and a new project

Iannick-san has received the immense honour of being part of the 47 brushes who will compete in the 3rd annual Analogie Hobbies painting Challenge. Unlike previous challenge I undertook, this one is about quantity. A long painting marathon of 3 months where our resolve will be put to the test! But more seriously a great opportunity for a bunch of painters to motivate one another in a friendly competition. And 47 participants is quite something! As anyone told Curt how crazy this is?! ;-)

Amongst the 47 one finds my two gaming mates; Nicolas and John. Oh this should be fun. This year, Curt has asked us to make a prediction, to fix ourselves goals for this competition. Now, I know what you're thinking. In the immortal words of wiseman Peter Lafleur:

But rules are rules so I'll abide by it ;-) (more on this later).

So we are not allowed to start painting figures for the contest before the 20th of this month. We are however allowed to clean and prime figures.  The cleaning has begun, and the priming will follow this week-end.

What's on the table you ask?

15th BC Canaanites! Did not see that one coming, hey? Yes, I'm going back to Ancients with a new project, a Chariot/Biblical army. I'll talk more about the project in later posts, but here is the army in bare metal, recently received from the Foundry (bless their new shipping prices) :

 

 
The Foundry Biblicals have been on my radar for a long, long time (just a fantastic old school range) and I finally succumbed. Chariots from Cutting Edge miniatures are also on their way.

So my cunning plan is to use the contest to launch this project and do as much as I can in the next 3 months. Well, with some FIW here and there.

Being a slow painter I know there's no way I can beat some of the freaks participating in the contest (I keep hearing about this Ray dude...) but I'll try to give myself an ambitious target (well considering my painting speed). I figure a higher number will motivate me more than a conservative one. Of course it's a double-edge sword as failure to reach that goal will be even more shameful...

So my magic number is 710 pts.
Here's the tentative plan. It will possibly change as I go along and might very well include more FIW depending on my 'goût du jour'.

- 2x unit of 24 Canaan spearmen (48x5) : 240pts
- 1x unit of 20 Canaan archers (20x5) : 100pts
- 6 Maryannu (Canaan) chariots (35x6) : 210 pts
- 12 Bedouins skirmishers (12x5) : 60 pts
- 16 FIW Indians (16x5) : 80 pts
- and of course the entry fee, a samurai figure. I will use an old but great Clan War figure (1x20) : 20 pts

 My biggest concern and question mark is the chariots; I've never painted chariots (other than a Warhammer Chaos chariot many years ago) so I expect the first batch to be quite time-consuming. 

So yeah, wish me luck!