Tuesday 25 March 2014

A Tale of Duelling Gamers


Anyone who has been following this blog for a while will probably have seen the Duelling Paintbrushes challenges as they came and went. There have been three of them now. Each challenge went for about a month (I think the first one was shorter), and by the end of each one, I had a lot more painted models to show for my efforts. And a slight bout of hobby burnout, truth be told. Trying to painting anything up to 1000 points in a month can be bad for your mental health.

Anyway, Owen has been up to his tricks again, and this time he has organised a slightly less insane challenge - A Tale of Duelling Gamers. Unlike Duelling Paintbrushes, this will be something of a "slow and steady" effort, with the participants gradually painting up a sizeable force over a period of 6 months. It's the sort of thing that most of you will have seen before, with several gamers buying and painting models as they go, working under a monthly budget to ensure everything stays at a similar pace ($200 AU for the first month, then $100 in each subsequent month) .

This sort of thing is always a good influence on my productivity, although I agreed to do it without thinking too carefully about what army I would focus on. In the end I have decided to go with Dwarfs because my army needs the boost in numbers, and because I was already kind of focused on them already. I will most likely not be buying up models for the challenge, however - I have more than enough backlog to satisfy the requirements of the duel. Instead I will be tracking my efforts against the equivalent value on the Games Workshop site, to ensure I am going at the same pace as I would if I were buying it all up on the spot. It's all in the rules of the challenge, which Owen wrote up diligently a while back.

The duel commences at the start of April, and will run through until the end of September. I've drawn up a rough plan of what I am going to paint, and assuming I stick to that plan, I will have a workable 2000 point army at the end of it. Not too shabby, and it will do wonders for the size of my painted Throng overall.

Anyway, expect to see more updates as the challenge commences, and I may include some links to the progress of other participants once it's been confirmed exactly who those people will be.

6 comments:

  1. I'd love to see some battle reports come out of this. Small games are pretty quick to do, and help scratch that gaming itch that comes after painting a lot of models! What are the chances you'd consider doing something like that, please?

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    1. I've been trying to get around to doing another smaller battle report anyway. Hopefully it won't be 6 months before I get onto that! As for whether one will come directly out of Duelling Gamers, that may depend on what people decide to paint - the forces that come out of it might not be ideally suited to playing each other.

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  2. All hail the Hoodling! May his bristles stay attached to his brushes and his pots keep their lids when they fall from the table! We, the massed hippos of the world salute you and our fellow duellists (we will do this now, as we will be unable to see you through the thick cloud of dust kicked up by our rapid progress during the event.)
    It would be nice to do some reports; however since this is not a HGC restricted event, we have duellists from all over the country, and even one (so far) from England. Also, since this is a dollar value event not a points value event, our armies will end up at very different sizes.

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  3. Hmm, battle reports, what about using the old warbands style rules for 6th? Edition. That way we can maybe get close to being a little bit more even vis a vis points? Just a thought.

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  4. Man, every day I hope for new updates :)
    I care way more for your written battle then most of those YouTube reports.

    And I'm even more interested in your general thoughts on the hobby and the different tactics in use.

    All in all, keep up the good work

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    1. Thanks Andreas.

      Actually, there might be another battle report currently being written up...

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