The "I'm a Dad with no Time or I'm a Slow Painter" Challenge

I'm a Dad.

In the weeks prior to BOYL2016 I struggled to juggle painting time with the commitments of Dad life (mainly due to my partners shift work and our inability to get our 1 year old Son to sleep in his own bed). The result was a pissed off Misses, a frustrated Son and a failed painting target. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have this issue (indeed, Golgfag1 and myself think that should BOYL ever get a crest the motto should be "I ran out of time").

I managed to get most of it done, such as my Eltharion (although the photo below makes me think he needs a bit more inking). The main thing I didn't get done was shields and banners. Next year I don't plan to fall foul of this trap.

My very good friend "Quick Ben" is an absolutely brilliant painter but he is, by his own admission, quite a slow painter.

This will be known as the "I'm a Dad with no Time or I'm a Slow Painter" Challenge. It's quite similar to the "Tale of Four Gamers" that ran in White Dwarf a few times back in the day and also on a number of blogs recently. The main differences are that a) I have no idea if anyone else (Quick Ben included) will take up the challenge b) the only target is to paint the army by BOYL2017. Maybe I'll add in a "paint an additional character" or something but in principle there's no burden month to month in order to alleviate the time pressures.

So, what am I hoping to achieve? Inspired by the Dark Elf army in White Dwarf 144 I'm setting a target of 1000pts for 3rd edition. Nothing strenuous there. I then want to bring this compact army to battle at BOYL2017. As I'm probably going to be playing in the BFFB (Big F'in Fantasy Battle) on the Saturday I'm hoping to arrange some small battles on the Friday and the Sunday, so likely to be four games in total, two on the Friday and another two on the Sunday.

These are the rules:

1. The army should be a 1000pt 3rd Edition force and should adhere to the army lists in Warhammer Armies.
2. Numbers of compulsory troops and unit minimums are reduced to a third of the specified numbers (rounding up) so, as an example, a 3000 point Wood Elf Army should have 30 Archers but as we're playing 1000pts you only need 10 Archers to fulfill your quota of compulsory troops. Minimum unit size is 5.
3. The Army MUST be painted (shields and banners included).
4. The Army must be painted between now and BOYL2017. The minis can be stripped and repainted minis you have painted before this challenge but the repaints must be done in the "now to BOYL2017" time frame.
5. Miniatures can be of any manufacturer and time period, only the rules need to be WFB 3rd Ed.
6. I reserve the right to impose extra rules to this list should I see fit.

If I can think of any more rules I'll add them as and when (see rule 6).

My initial thinking was to paint my Nordland Empire army up but Gaj of "Warhammer for Adults" has expressed a desire to paint an Empire army this year and in the hope of enticing him into taking part I'm going to turn away from them. I don't want to go for Dark Elves as this may add to the enemy for the BFFB next year (more on this another day). So what army to go for?

Dwarfs.

I've tried to get this army off the group before, 2016/17 I'm finally going to get at least 1000pts of the bearded chaps done.

I already own a lot of the minis I need, they just need painting. The only thing I need is some Imperial Dwarf Warriors, fingers crossed I can get some at a decent price.

So, any interest at joining me in my humble plan at all?

BOYL 2016- The Rise of Morcar

OK, there are few words to describe the game that we played out on the Saturday so I'm not gonna try to, all I say is that I've learned a firing squad of Warpfire Throwers may decimate a Barbarian unit but it's actually a speed bump for my own troops, lesson learnt!

A special thanks to Erny for the original idea, Fimm for sculpting the awesome Morcar miniature for this year's BOYL (mine is gonna get the Skeletor paint job treatment to lead my Undead army), Gaj for fleshing out Erny's concept and all who took part in the game.

Here's photo's of the game, lots and and lots of photo's. Some are horrendously blurry but I'm sure you'll forgive that, it's hard to stoop over an enormous table nigh on covered in mini's.................