Lead Painters League, rounds 7-11

It was a good finish to the Lead Painters League. I made the difficult decision after finishing up my Round 10 entry to forego the bonus points for a newly-painted entry for Round 11. The decision was part time constraint, part tactical. I knew with my upcoming schedule that I would be pushing it to finish an entry to the best of my ability. I also knew that -- after 10 rounds -- I would be facing an opponent whose painting was at least equal mine (and likely better!). I needed to wow the voters, and I had an idea how to do that.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's pick up where we left off!

Round 10: Safeguard the Aerie 15mm/25mm

This was a round I was worried about from the beginning of the league. It was a theme round and I had to really dig to find figures that fit it in my unpainted collection. The theme was fantasy monsters, and they were specific about no weapon-using, anthropomorphic creatures. Out went my idea for using some Splintered Light Miniatures figures! Also, it could not be real creatures -- so, out went the idea of painting dogs, wolves, deer, or other Woodland creatures I had! I dug through the drawers where I keep my unpainted lead and found a bag of 15mm hippogriffs, as well as two 25mm ones. I decided to do a mama and papa hippogriffs guarding an aerie full of younglings.

I decided to make them flashy, with realistic and interesting wing patterns. So, I Googled a bunch of paintings of hippogriffs and chose the ones I liked best. The castings are not the  most spectacular (especially the 25mm ones), so I knew this would be a tough round. I thought they figures turned out nice, and I posed them next to one of my cliff sections for some additional eye candy. However, my opponent's miniatures were not only better painted, they were an amazing, cool-looking castings. So, I lost fairly soundly, 364-107. I would enter the final round 5-5. Round 11 would decide if I came out of Lead Painters League 10 with an above or below .500 record.

Round 11: The Words of the Prophet

 

So, what was my idea to wow the voters in Round 11? Well, as you can see above, I would use quantity AND quality to do my best to win this round. I envisioned a scene with a shaman speaking to a crowd of Indian warriors around a campfire. I would use only my favorite and best-painted miniatures in the photograph. I pulled out my boxes and sorted through my 28mm Indians. I wanted only poses that looked natural around a campfire -- no aiming, slashing, running, etc. As I pulled out each figure, I sorted it into 3 categories: "Best of the best," "pretty good," and "not bad."

I ended up using only the first two categories once I began setting up the scene. I dug out my best trees and tried to make the scene look like a night-time one. It took several photographs to adjust where each figure was standing so it wasn't blocking the ones behind it. Even doing this for several shots, I still missed one or two weapons in other's faces. The picture came out great, though (I felt). My thinking, tactically, was that a win was worth 30 points while a newly-painted entry gave only a 10-point bonus. What use getting 10 to lose 30?

I was a bit worried when I saw my opponent's entry on Sunday morning. It featured an amazing Japanese kimono and very characterful miniatures. However, most of the people responding to the post praised my scene and felt it was very cinematic. I started off with a slight lead and widened it to a 296-186 victory by the end of the week.

This victory notched me 15th place out of 34 entrants. I was VERY pleased with my 6-5 record -- especially considering that with the Swiss System, you are matched against entrants with similar skill levels. All in all, Lead Painters League 10 was a success for me. I painted 10 rounds of new entries, and resorted to previously-painted (but newly-staged and photographed) miniatures only in the final round. In the end, I had reduced my unpainted lead pile by 58 new miniatures...yet another definition of success!