"Going dark" for the Lead Painters League

I'm about to enter my third year in the Lead Painters League -- a 10-week contest run by the Lead Adventure Forum website. I'll be painting up ten entries to submit one a week in a head-to-head match against another participant. I've yet to break the .500 winning percentage mark -- nor do I expect to this time. The quality of artistry in this league is superb, and my meager skills put me nowhere the top of the field. That's okay, though. I enter because it forces me to try to improve my techniques and get better at painting miniatures.

One of the stipulations of the league is that the miniatures receive bonus points if they have never been published on the web before, qualifying as "new." Needing all the points I can get, I try to submit a newly-painted entry each week. So, what does this mean for Lead Legionaries? Well, essentially, my posts here may not contain photos for awhile. I may talk about what I'm painting up. I may even link some pics of the unpainted version of the miniatures. However, my painted results will have to wait until the end of the match that entry appeared in.

So, what am I going to paint up for the contest? When the contest was announced around 3 weeks ago, I dug through the unpainted lead pile to plan out my 10 entries. There will be a heavy dose of French & Indian War. Six of the 10 rounds will feature Indians, French, or Rangers. One round will be for my Pulp games and will be a pack of Splintered Light Miniatures Velociraptors. The other three rounds are Theme Rounds. For the Classic Fantasy round, I will be submitting some Splintered Light mice (ala the "Redwall" series). For Ancients, I will paint up 6 mounted Dark Ages warriors. And finally, for the World War I round, I have a few packs of figures that I purchased for Pulp, but can be used for WW I (at least, that is what my friends have told me).

The contest was announced Feb. 5, and I've been busy pretty much ever since. My hope is to have five rounds' worth of entries completed before the contest begins on March 20th. Tall order, I know, but it will certainly help keep deadline pressure away! I'll start detailing my round-by-round entries below. After that entry's match is over, I'll go back and put in photos of it.

So, wish me luck...and I hope you enjoy my entries...!