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SURPRISE! - Stealthy troops, cavalry reserves, guerrilla fighters, etc. These models don’t work in a straight forward manor. The come from odd angles, from the shadows, other dimensions. Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects them. Your entry should be something that exemplifies the element of surprise.

Two-Faced - In honor of the ancient Roman god Janus. So, Models that seem sneaky, lying, likely to betray, physically have two faces built into the model like D&D ettins, models where both head swaps will be painted and swap-able, a certain Batman villain, etc. Models could present as something they are not, showing one face to the world, and not the other. Illusions, costumes, misdirections.

Frugal - Your entry should be cheep. Could be in-universe penny-pinching, like troops equipped with bargain basement gear, or ruleswise, for miniatures with a low points value, or real-world, like making a character out of a regular trooper tarted up with accessories from the bits box and a fancy paint job instead of paying top dollar for the actual Captain/whatever miniature. Actual paymasters or misers would also work.

New & Shiny - Apprentices, new recruits, factory-fresh tanks etc. Could also be painting a mini with glossy/metallic paintwork, or painting a newly released/purchased mini.

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Poll will run for 3 days, so we should get our new topic Christmas morning.

I voted for New and Shiny as an excuse to practice OSL.

Voted for Two-Faced for a few project ideas I got going on. But as usual, I will end up doing something completely different!

Two faced and maybe I'll finally paint the mask makers...

Hard to pick, I like them all. I'm happy with how often that happens to me in these competitions

Surprise or two faced would get perfidious Eldar. Probably striking scorpions for first and definitely an aspect warrior for the second (but maybe dire avengers or shining spears). All aspect warriors have two faces; their normal one and their war mask they don with their aspect.

Frugal would be the jump chaplain I kitbashed based an an ETB assault intercessor and a roll through the bits box.

Not sure about new and shiny. Might go literal with new models and paint something recently added to the pile of shame. Or scouts. Forgot about them. Yup. Scouts.

Two-faced for me. I'm not saying I hope Frugal doesn't win, but that's the one for which I have to do the most braining to figure out what to do.

I have an option for Two-Faced, but I'm hoping for Frugal. Part of the reason the word was ambling around in my head was I've been thinking it'd be good to try to do this year's worth of challenges entire with miniatures I have on hand, rather than having an idea based on the theme and going out and buying a mini for it. I've built up a considerable pile of shame so it oughtn't be to difficult, but mainly it's that I've accidentally started two more armies, so I feel like GW's getting enough of my coin already right now.

 Daia T'Nara wrote:
I have an option for Two-Faced, but I'm hoping for Frugal. Part of the reason the word was ambling around in my head was I've been thinking it'd be good to try to do this year's worth of challenges entire with miniatures I have on hand, rather than having an idea based on the theme and going out and buying a mini for it. I've built up a considerable pile of shame so it oughtn't be to difficult, but mainly it's that I've accidentally started two more armies, so I feel like GW's getting enough of my coin already right now.

Every one of my entries has been sourced from the Pile of Shame. My workflow is way too slow to buy fresh. Normally I build (which is slow going) and it sits in the to-prime pile until I get a nice day to break out the rattle can to spray prime. Which at this point in the year could be months away. While there have been a few instances over the years where something went from NiB to done in less then a month, they are exceptionally rare.

It’s one of the reasons I like to keep the topics with enough wiggle room for people to improvise. I don’t want people to need to go out and buy something new. Hobby budgets are tight. People should not need to “waste” it just on a painting project that will do nothing but collect dust. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what folks want to do. But I want to keep as few barriers to participation as I can.

I'm considering whether or not to duck out for a bit after Christmas. I set myself the challenge of entering every month for a year, which I'll achieve assuming I actually get something done for the open round... I feel like I don't get much painting done beyond the monthly competition and would like to focus on making some proper progress on various projects.

That said, I voted for Surprise. Surprise and Two-faced I can pretty easily come up with something for (Raven Guard and Eldar being my two big armies). New and shiny shouldn't be difficult, either. Hopefully the new Eldar models will come out in January (another Phoenix Lord would be cool), but if not, I'm sure I can find something... Frugal is probably easy enough, too... probably...

Of course, a full competition year (March to February) might be better, as that would look cool in Midget Gems's statistics sheet... maybe I'll stick around for a couple more months, in that case.

As much as I love to see everyone enter every month, remember this is a fun activity and it’s not a job. It’s OK to take breaks, or skip months. I’d rather see people take a month off to prevent burnout then just run till they break and drop off the face of the planet.

It is real cool to see the lines of complete years on the stat sheet though.

If my math is right and I set up the poll correctly, that should be a wrap. And a tie.

So I get to wear my tiebreaker hat and make the call.

January: we will do Frugal. After the holiday spending, budgets might be tight.
February: we will go with SURPRISE! This will give you time to plan an elaborate surprise to spring on us.

And while we are at it, a reminder that March will be the start of the next cycle, and we will open with our traditional Space Marine round.

So we know know what’s going down for the next three months so no excuses if you can’t think of something!

 Nevelon wrote:
So we know know what’s going down for the next three months so no excuses if you can’t think of something!

Surprise would work for me much better in January, and Frugal in February. So, you know, I totally have an excuse!

 Geifer wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
So we know know what’s going down for the next three months so no excuses if you can’t think of something!

Surprise would work for me much better in January, and Frugal in February. So, you know, I totally have an excuse!

Sorry. It’s was a coin flip to decide what to do first, but I was more motivated to do what I’ve got on deck for frugal, so went with the selfish call. One of the perks of being the local benevolent dictator here in the comp.

I'm sure I'll find something. Would be easier if I could make up my mind on the color scheme for the Squat Kill Team I bought. Dwarfs are frugal. Or cheap, depending on your views on capitalism.

The timing of Frugal is perfect; my "Mordheim on the cheap" captain should be arriving in the mail Saturday.

 Geifer wrote:
I'm sure I'll find something. Would be easier if I could make up my mind on the color scheme for the Squat Kill Team I bought. Dwarfs are frugal. Or cheap, depending on your views on capitalism.

What are your choices? Got sample minis painted? or just schemes in mind? Sometimes talking things through helps the decision process. If not, we can weigh in with outside opinions.

I'm not really sure what colors I want to go with. Yellow is a consideration, but I already have Imperial Fists and my Genestealer Cult is primarily yellow and grey. I guess a part of the uncertainty is down to whether I want to link my Squats to my Genestealers. Then I'd have to paint at least one cultist to lock in the color scheme, and I've yet to find the motivation to do that.

The new Squats also turned out very Starcrafty, and I always liked getting turquoise assigned to me back in the day. However I'm very particular about my greens and blues, and I do not like the default color scheme GW gave theirs, so I'm not sure I want to give that a try. Differently colored clothes should be a start, but I'm not sure what color I'd try that goes well with turquoise.

Those are the top contenders. Realistically I'm open to just about anything as it's an army which I never had before. Being open to anything makes it kind of hard to settle on something, though. Too much choice.

I always liked turquoise with either a grey/white or a black.

But that might just be my nighthaunt talking.

I will need to dig through the pile and try and come up with something that fits… or I might take the month off and build and paint a model plane (Vought F4U Corsair) I have randomly purchased…

Hmm…

Anyway, I just want to say Merry Christmas to all my painting folk here. I hope you are all having a great day!

I suppose I liked turquoise with grey when I gave it a try last year:



Maybe I should go with the selection of colors on the trainee. Turquoise as the main armor color, throw in some golden yellow here and there to spice things up, and grey clothes as neutral filler. Silver and brass for metals and some black where I need something different, like weapon casings and such.

I'll have to assemble a model to get a better feel for the design, but that might work. Thanks for sharing the brain load, Nevelon!

If you want to go all color theory on it, turquoise pairs well with red, or if you want to go with a triadic scheme with the yellow, maybe splash some purple in?

https://www.canva.com/colors/color-wheel/

This is a site I use when I want to poke around the color wheel. I’m sure there are others out there.

The color wheel is a good start and certainly good to acknowledge, but I don't really use it. It's a bit limited for my taste.

As it so happens, I'm not just particular about my greens and blues, but also about combining them with red.

Also I'm reserving yellow and purple for my clankers, whenever I get around to painting my CIS army. I wouldn't want to duplicate that as I'll no doubt be painting lots and lots of droids that way and I'll be sure to run out of steam without the extra deterrent.

Hmm. Battle droids are also cheap, though. Might be another option.

 XvArcanevX wrote:
Anyway, I just want to say Merry Christmas to all my painting folk here. I hope you are all having a great day!

Oh yeah. Merry Christmas, folks!

I'm trying to decide: One guardsman, or five guardsmen?

Five. One Guardsman is cheap. Five get you a bulk discount.

Be smart when you shop for cannon fodder.

 XvArcanevX wrote:

Anyway, I just want to say Merry Christmas to all my painting folk here. I hope you are all having a great day!

Merry Christmas! I hope it was a great one for you too.

Woohoo! My Frugal entry arrived early!



Time to make use of left over bits and get him ready for when my primer gets shipped. The first lick of paint won't happen until 2025, of course.

If I got a load of 2nd edition plastic marines from my cousin, does that count as frugal? Because I might do a squad, if so.

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
If I got a load of 2nd edition plastic marines from my cousin, does that count as frugal? Because I might do a squad, if so.

Sounds fine to me.

 Nevelon wrote:

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
If I got a load of 2nd edition plastic marines from my cousin, does that count as frugal? Because I might do a squad, if so.

Sounds fine to me.