A Project for a Painting Challenge

Feel the Dogs of War nostalgia!!

Well, it's that time of year - yes, another Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is on the horizon. This will be the 14th edition of the Painting Challenge, hosted by Fawcett Conscript Founding Member Curt, and I have the honour of participating once again as a "minion" helping to shepherd the manic posting of the participants along through the winter. Dallas will be joining me in the minion duties, and both of us will also be participating in the Challenge - hopefully joined by several other Conscripts as well. 

Experience in the Painting Challenge has taught me one thing - that a challenge goes best with, well, you know, a challenge. Now, over the years, I have accumulated all manner of figures for projects new and old on the premise that I will "paint them up for the Challenge". This has worked better at some times than others, but in general Curt's Painting Challenges have often served as a great base to get some projects really moving. I am hoping to "kick things up a notch" this year with one particular project - a Dogs of War army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

Pikeman and Venators...

Most of us in the hobby have a "first army" they started out with (maybe a few of them LOL), but for me, the Dogs of War was it. I painted up a Dogs of War force and took it to a local WHFB tournament in Winnipeg, organized by Byron M and others, and it was there, in 1999 that I first met Curt! The tournament was a lot of fun, and meeting people you are friends with 24 years later is pretty great too!

Galloping guns, crossbowmen and Mydas the Mean to manage the budget!

Being a foolish youth, I ultimately sold my old Dogs of War army around 2001 or so. My interests were moving into other hobby areas, and, I thought to myself, "what is the worst that could happen? Would GW kill off WHFB or something and bin the miniatures? Of course not...right? Right?" Well, of course, I was wrong - GW could, and did, kill all manner of its games, business being business and all that. Now, of course, I save all of these painted figures (like, too many of them), but the Dogs of War were lost, and any idle searches I made turned up precious few figures and models for sale.

Fast forward to this summer and fall...Dallas spots some classic Dogs of War boxes on sale at the collector's section of The Sentry Box while visiting in Calgary (truly an amazing hobby destination). Suddenly, I'm intrigued, as I had written off the idea of ever finding enough models to recreate my old army. But I tell myself, "well, a couple of extra regiments for my existing Empire collection would be lovely!", and Dallas kindly picks them up for me.

Then, Dallas makes a trip to the Chicago area, and visits Noble Knight games...and I'm spotting boxes of Dogs of War pikemen...and then I found a few on eBay, then a few more...and it was ON. "This will be perfect for the Painting Challenge!" Thanks to Dallas' heroic hobby-sherpa efforts, this project is rolling, and I now have a rather central point around which I should focus a lot (never all) of my painting attention over the winter.

The classic army book!

Assembling these boxes and packs (as well as a few loose spare pikemen) over the past few months has been a bit of a fun exercise in itself, but I'm looking forward to getting cracking on them all once the 14th edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge kicks off in late December. So watch this space...and hopefully we might see a game next year against Dallas' Skaven...?