All right, so welcome back to the Crown of Command, and we've got a very special guest here. We've got David Martin all the way from the US talking about the call of the Crown Challenge 4. So it's back and better than ever. Hey, David. Hey Josh, thanks for having me on. Yeah, we, it certainly is back. And I, I hope better than ever. I, I know GJ did wonderful things with it. So I'm standing on the shoulders of the Giants here as I attempt to bring the the Challenge into its fourth year.
Good on you mate. Now I'm glad you picked up the mantle and taken it forward and made a lot of people happy. There's a good number of contestants, I think 18 that are participating, including yourself. And we've just wrapped up a painting lesson just before looking at doing non metallic metals on Heil. So I wish you all the best of luck with that, David, implementing all those techniques into your own army. There's some pros and cons of doing it non metallic metal over
metallic paints. But as you know, but yeah, I mean, I think everyone who's going to participate is bringing something new, maybe a new army that they've never painted before and incorporating some new techniques that they never tried before. And it's really about pushing your limits. It's not about, it's not a really a painting competition at all in any sense.
It's more about challenging yourself to get those models painted, get them on the table, hopefully to play with them and, you know, doing something nice and thematic hopefully with your army. So mate, let's let's talk about it because I know it's already underway and it's kind of my fault for not getting on earlier to notify people about it. But then you've been really busy as well. So and there's a number of painting challenges that's on at
the moment. But tell us, just tell us about the actual challenge itself, how to get involved, if people can get involved and what they need to bring mate. So as you asked earlier this evening, we did kick off October 1st, but the challenge does allow you to use a Mulligan. So if there's anybody out there who still wants to get in on the action, you're welcome to. You can. Well, we'll say it's still not too late for you to join. If you want to join in October and get something painted.
One of the nice things that we're doing this year is it's a little more free flow. Basically you just commit each month what you want to get painted for that month and really the only rule for the first month is it's just got to be 1 character plus any legal unit. So if you're doing trolls I think that could be 3 models in a character if you wanted to to really condense it down to to
the bare minimum. But most armies, it'll be 5 models, but that's still pretty manageable for most people. I think. We're here recording on the 8th, your time, Josh, October 7th, my time. So there's still plenty of time if you want to get in, in and on the action. I don't want to exclude anybody just because you may not have heard about it or were late on the draw and didn't get it in by October 1st. We certainly want to make it as inclusive as possible. Great, mate. OK.
And so the first month is a character in a unit. So that's going to be the first month and it goes. And sorry, how long does it the the challenge go for? Again, sorry. So we're going seven months if my memory's not failing me here. So I think that'll put us into to April or May. And basically each month what I'll do is give a narrative prompt.
You can check that out. Mark and I are working together to put together a little video on the YouTube channel each month to kind of help you focus your painting. And it's totally optional. Like if you want to just paint what you want to paint, that's fine.
But if you kind of feel, if you're like me and you, you need a little inspiration or motivation to get some painted, I think it's a good way to kind of help you get excited, pick up your brush and maybe get to something that you've been
putting off for a while. And so with that in mind, each month we're going to we're going to give you a little narrative prompt of something to paint this this opening month for October. It's a character who's essentially supposed to be you, but you know, you can take whatever liberties you like with that and and then a unit of troops that he or she could muster quickly and easily. So I think kind of that the broad idea is, is kind of a core unit, but you interpret what that means for you.
You know, for for my high elves this month I'm going to be doing a unit of Bowman because it seems like that's something that that might be on hand, the household guard of my particular character perhaps. But for every person and for every army, it's going to be a little bit different. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what everybody comes up
with. And I've told people if you want to throw in a few lines of narrative about what you're doing and put that in with your submission each month, please do that. And if I can find a way to work that into our videos, I'm certainly going to do it. That sounds great, mate. Yeah, we're going to talk about your YouTube channel a little bit later on so that people can a go and check that out first. Go and subscribe hopefully and see the other 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle content
you have there. I know our good, my good friend Mastering of arms Justin over in Canada will be very happy to see that if he's not already a subscriber, he's a big 5th edition fan himself. And we want to get, we want to beat the drum because we had Joe on before talk about a 5th edition tournament in New Zealand there.
So we want to keep beating the drum of all these, the older editions because I know a lot of people really love that and they want to follow that not only in challenges, but obviously hopefully playing the games and watching people play games if that's not an option and being involved somehow. Now I've got a, I've got an admission that I and A confession that I actually haven't joined the call of the Crown. I did fail terribly in the last
one. I think it was number 3 when GJ was running it and I had a lot of just, I just couldn't get anything painted for whatever reason. I can't remember what it was. Obviously it's just two at a time and being very busy. So sadly I couldn't contribute last time. I'd like to contribute this this time if I can because I've got time to do it. And but I am part of another challenge now we're going to talk about the gathering of mighty painters. Maybe you're aware of it, David as well.
There seems to be about three of them at the moment, all cropped up at the same time. And then I did opt to do that one. But then why not, you know, cross them, you know, have that like be part of one, but then submit entries for the other ones as well. There's no, there's no laws against that. And what I thought of because, you know, you have a character
and a unit. Well, my first month is going to be a unit, so I can pick a character that's going to be matching my theme of my empire army, which would be Middenheim. I've got the the white Lions that I have to not the white lion, sorry, the Knights of the White Wolf that I have to paint
up for the first month. And I'll do the electric count for the character and I can do a back story narrative for the Call of the Crown and still have those two painting competitions still run them simultaneously to each other, but obviously painting different things depending on the on the month and what's required. But, you know, keeping one very narrative themed, keeping the one, the other one sort of just as part of the challenge and narrative if if it needs to be.
Yeah. But there's no reason why you can't do you can't cross them over. You know what I mean? You can't. Yeah, and and that's absolutely correct, Jack, somebody mentioned to me, I forget who it was in the discord asked, you know, I, I already signed up for call the Crown 4, but I want to do gathering of mighty painters. Do you mind if I do both with the same minis? And I have absolutely no problem
with that. And I think somebody asked Marcel in the Gathering of Mighty painters discord thread if that was OK and he seemed to be OK with it. So I, I think as long as both challenges are are OK with it, I don't see a problem with it. I know I, I wanted call the crown to be as open and inclusive as possible. And, and kind of on that note, we did throw it open to, to non
GW miniatures. I think the, the guideposts there that I gave was, was if it, if they're in the spirit of hero hammer or old hammer and you feel like they kind of fit that ethos, then then I say, and that's what you want to paint or that's what you the only thing that you have to paint, but you want to do the challenge, I say, please bring them in. The more the merrier. We're, we're happy to have you.
And, and, and with that in mind, you know, our, our, it's kind of 1/3 through 6th edition kind of broadly kind of a challenge, right? Like that's our, our, our, our era, if you will, or, or era as I guess, plural. It's kind of of the spirit that we're looking for with call the crown for that. That's kind of what we're hoping to, to recapture here as we, we paint up our minis.
And so whether it's it's all GW Citadel Marauders stuff from those days, or if it's a different sculptor or even more modern stuff that's that's not in that style that really speaks to you and you want to join the challenge, bring it on in. You know, we'd love it. We'd love to have you. That sounds good, mate. I think that's a very welcome
invitation. Anybody out there who wants to join in, however big or small the Army is, it doesn't really matter as long as you're part of in, in getting involved with it and participating, sharing your pictures around of all your unpatted lead and then at the end of the challenge, showcasing your wonderful array of painted models with a nice backdrop and
everything as well. Yeah, I think it's brought a lot of joy and great, you know, involvement with a lot of people across, across all parts of various continents around the world. And it's been awesome to see and it's still going, which is amazing. So now we know we've got about 18 participants, we'd like to see some more as well. But you know, I'm not putting too much pressure on you though, David, you know, don't overload you with. I think the very first one we
did was crazy. I think it was like 60 people or something that we did, I think back in that day, those days. But of course, obviously, over time it sort of dwindled down a little bit. But yeah, always get people asking, you know, when's the next challenge going to be? So hey, they've got quite a few to choose from now and they can
integrate those three. There's the four the Taylor 4th Gamers that Dave Gilson is running on his Facebook group, and then that's obviously the Call of the Crown and then the the. What the? What I say it was the mighty painters gathering. Mighty painters. There you go. There's so many. I can't, I can't remember all the names now, the titles of them. But yeah, there's quite a few to choose from. And then I think there's the Old World Army Challenge. That's true. So 1/4.
So yeah, there's so many now, which is great. I mean, and so it should be. And so hopefully people can get in touch with you about that. So what's the best best way of getting in touch with you mate? To do that, so the very, very best way is if you go to the call the crown channel on on the on your Discord and just tag me in a message there. I try to check that at least once a day. So that's a good way. Or you can just PM me directly
on the Discord too. But if you want to be old fashioned like me, you can also send me an e-mail. I set up an e-mail at callofthecrown@gmail.com if you want to fire off an e-mail. And we are using e-mail because I'm old fashioned for all your official submissions. So so anything official you want to submit to me for an entry, send it. Send it there to call the
crown@gmail.com. But please, as I've told people, don't let that discourage you from sharing all your pictures and talking in the Discord. We, we love to see it. It's just so many people are, are talking and sharing in there that if I have to go back and, and scroll through to recapture everybody's entry from there, it'll take me probably a whole day to do that. So it's just makes my life a little easier if it's all just sitting in my inbox there.
But but please do come on in and, and join the conversation. There's some interesting stuff. People are already sharing what they're working on, which is, which is great to. Good on you, mate. OK, excellent. So they've got the details there to contact you in two different ways of doing so. Yeah. Feel free to come and join our Discord group at the Crown of Command to get involved either the panning challenges and there's a host of other things you can see and get in get
involved with. So I hope you can do that. So all the links for those will be in the podcast show notes, so please check those out. So going back to your YouTube channel, because I'm a subscriber to The Fifth Hammer YouTube channel, I really enjoyed the battle reports you've done solo that you played by yourself there, David, using all your wonderful empire and and high off and orphan gobble models. What brought this channel about
though? Well, I think it was something of a, of a hobby project, just this kind of a way for me to kind of record what I was doing with, with my painted minis and stuff like that. And that kind of dawned on me one day because I, I was kind of pushing around some models doing a little solo game one night after the kiddos went down. I was like, you know, it'd be kind of fun to just set my phone
up and just record this. And then if I ever feel like looking back, I don't know what, what, what did I play last year or two years ago, then it'd be there and I could go back and look at it. And I thought, you know, hey, so primarily I think I did it kind of for me just as a hobby, kind of another outlet for the hobby. But I also did kind of think to myself like, well, maybe there's some people out there who might enjoy seeing it. And if they do, that's great.
I know I've in a connoisseur of of many a Warhammer YouTube page. I think probably starting with yours, Josh, but but there are some some great ones out there that I know that I just I love to tune into whenever I see them come up. It's like an auto watch for me.
And so I thought, you know, maybe maybe there's some other folks out there that really kind of came of age, I guess during 5th edition, you know, I kind of came into the hobby during 4th, but but it was really 5th edition where I really kind of really got into the games. I really had the money to start buying more models to actually start playing real full games of it. And so that was kind of the era I wanted to go back and focus on. And, and it was really the colorful era too.
So, you know, I thought, and, and I didn't see a lot of stuff out there for 5th. I, I, you know, I kind of felt like, well, you know, maybe maybe there's other other 5th 50 Amber fans out there like me who, who wanted a little channel to, to check in at and scratch that itch and, and if I can be that for them. And that's awesome because yeah, I, I saw a lot of, there's a lot of stuff out there for 4th. 4th gets a lot of love and I totally respect it.
I mean, 5th wouldn't exist without 4th. It's, it's, you know, it's the, the father of the grandfather, if you will, of my 5th edition that I love. So, so not taking anything away from it. And 6th is what it is. It has its lovers and it has its haters, but fifth kind of got lost in the shuffle there, at least on YouTube. And so I wanted to give it a little love and, and kind of give it its due that it it held in my heart. Good on you mate.
That's excellent. I'm glad you did, because I'm always very encouraging anybody who wants to take up a camera and start filming their hobby progress, whether it be like models they're collecting or games they're playing. Yeah, that's that's always great to see. So I'm always looking forward to the next video mate, that you're going to. Yeah, yeah.
And I'll give a little shout out to Mark too, who joined me for a remote play and then chimed in with the narration that we did for the little battle report on it. So that was great, great fun to get him involved and he definitely adds a level of dignity and class to my team. I'm sure. Be very happy to hear that, Mark. Yeah, that's good. Okay, that's wonderful. OK, David, Well, thank you so much again for letting us know about the challenge.
Again, I apologise to yourself and other people that we got there a little bit too late and it's already started. But hey, it's not too late. You can jump in and get involved now and get your entries in. I'm going to start, you know, getting my stuff together and send you an e-mail about that so that. You'd be wonderful, wonderful to have you in, Josh. Yeah, mate, yeah, definitely. I feel bad about not being part of it. And then then then, you know, betraying you by joining another
painting challenge. So it may make it up by by coming back and joining the call of the crown. But thanks again, David. I really appreciate your time today mate And I hope you get a few more people coming through to to enter the call of the Crown. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Josh. OK, mate, I'll speak to you again soon, OK? Well, thanks guys for coming at this hour of the day or night for you guys to come on and talk with me about the challenge because there are a few out there.
And I really wanted to get the voices of the people who are organizing these wonderful painting challenges for us and to to learn about, you know, how to enter if people are still curious and keen to do it. Because we always get messages from people who say, you know, when's the next challenge on whether it'd be the Call of the Crown or something, something else. And it's just at this point where we have three that I know of.
We've got the Tale of 4th Gamers that Dave Gilland is running and then you guys are doing the The Gathering of Mighty Painters. This is the second time it's been ran now. And we also have the Call of the Crown or so we've got some consecutive painting challenges that have been picked up. And it just happens to be at the same time. Because when I talked to Marcel about it before, I had the impression it was going to be like later on. And I didn't realize it was going to be so soon.
So I was really happy to see it prop pop up on Facebook. And I'm really glad to see so many people have got behind it this time. So thanks, Marcel, and thanks Chris for coming on to talk all about it. And thanks for having us. Yeah, I guess. I guess Marcel got sick of painting Britannians earlier than he anticipated. And it's maybe because Chris, you wanted to start early before you have to move to Scotland, so. Yeah, yeah, the the time is a ticking. Yeah.
All right. So yeah, it's just a brief chat to talk about the actual challenge itself and the the guidelines to it and basically how do people, you know, get in touch with you guys to find out more about it and how to enter, if and what to enter. So I might get Chris to just give us a bit of an outline behind the challenge and what exactly is it and what do you need and when? Where can you go and what do you need to start?
Yeah. So I guess essentially it's a Hero Hammer only painting challenge. So we were a bit elitist in that we only wanted to see 4th and well, 3rd to 5th edition. I still wanted to sneak some third into there. So Hero Hammer with friends.
But I guess essentially just then, if you go onto any of the Hero Hammer Facebook pages, we have our own one set up for the challenge called The Gathering of Mighty Painters 2 challenge, which I think we spanned most of the the Hero Hammer pages with to launch it. So yeah, you do have to join the page to see all the rules and details. So you didn't really want to post that a humongous long post on all the the Hero Hammer pages. You join it, you can read the rules, you can leave.
You're not going to hurt my feelings if you read the rules, you don't like it and you leave. That's cool. It just seemed an easier way of having everything that the people who care about, it's in one spot and you can come and go
no problem. Yeah. So essentially seven months painting challenge with a Mulligan, given that we have December in there, seemed fitting to have, you know, one month where if you just fall behind or, you know, got stuff on, you can stay in the challenge, which gives you six other months. So then we'll do themed months, which I guess is something that I really liked about the challenge, which, you know, was initially invented by Peugeot and he didn't have time to do it
again. I kind of love the idea of like us all painting the same kind of stuff together. So there's three unit months, a monster month, character month, and a war machine month. So I think it's kind of cool to have like everyone working generally together on the same stuff, albeit we'll be doing different armies, but all working on the same things together. You know, if you don't have a monster in your army, I'm not going to make you get one, but we'll all be painting monsters.
But if you want to paint another unit, you don't have a monster. Look, that's cool, that's fine. But certainly as I'm painting my dragon, it would be great to see everyone else, you know, doing similar and we all suffer together or, you know, excel together. And it's always, you know, great to see other people stretch their painting skills. And as you're kind of testing yourself, it feels like that
camaraderie is really exciting. Yeah. So seven months Hero Hammer only jump on the Facebook page. I think we're up to 60 odd members now. And 28 people have posted their their whole army shot. So you would think they're pretty much set and others who will get bits and pieces as they go and and join. So we'll see how many people start, but yeah, really excited to to see that many Hirohammer small armies all being created simultaneously, all alongside one another.
Excellent. OK, And who was the person who came up with the idea of picking up the mantle and taking it forward? Was it you, Marcel? Did you want to start the gathering Mighty painters again? Now not not really other Chris and I were discussing that for a couple of months now that we want to start a painting challenge that would follow into the footsteps of Gathering of Mighty Painters because we really enjoyed painting
miniatures of that period. And there was no Because in all the other painting challenges, it is allowed to include six edition models or whatever. And I mean, that's totally fine. I, I think you have enough painting challenges for every taste for every painter. And that's totally cool. But we wanted one that was filling our need. And we have our kind of personal painting challenge here on on the Crown of Command discord going on now for I guess a year
now. That is the barded demon challenge because we were both afraid of painting our Pretonians. And it was not an official challenge. It was just a challenge between both of us just to kick ourselves asses to keep moving on and painting these bloody Pretonians. And, and so we decided it would be really cool to have a challenge, like an official challenge with more people taking part. And what I really, really loved about the challenge Ojo started, that was all the flavour and the
background about the armies. It's not mandatory, but it's in the spirit of. So for example, I'm planning to paint Skaden and so I will write a little background about them for the beginning, like a little intro. And then with every unit or, or or monster or war machine or so, I will add something to the overall background of the army. And that that is something I did with the last in in the last painting challenges. And I really enjoyed it.
It's more something for me. I really enjoy doing that, but I have the feeling that other people also enjoy reading it or writing their own stuff about it. And so we discussed that and then also about when we will start. And in the beginning, I guess it was more like January, and now it's November. January was your timeline. Yeah, who cares? We have to fight our lead piles nonetheless.
And, and so we decided, OK. And I asked Ojo, hey, can we use your cool name in a gathering of mighty painters? And he said, yeah, yeah, of course. And luckily he, I, I think he joined. The yeah, yeah. Great. And I mean, that's, that's the best compliment you can get. Yeah. And and here we are. Oh great. What is he entering? OJ, can you remember? I'll have to go and check his post Chaos. OK, nice. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's said chaos, yeah.
Yeah, I'm really, I'm really happy he's he's in taking part in it. And it's been yeah. One of the things I've really enjoyed about this coming back is that on Facebook and I've got other people joining the group as well, they're not participating as such. They just want to see the models. And I really enjoy that as well, seeing everyone lay out all their figures and showing what they're going to paint for the
challenge. And like Chris says, it's got that camaraderie about it. You've got all this group of guys who love all this sort of stuff, love all the models, love this era and really want to. And it's, it's always nice to see and refreshing to see that people actually have a lot of
this stuff still sitting there. There's an army that you know, every, every year you think, OK, everyone's finished painting all their stuff, but the every year that someone has to pull out another box of all bags and miniatures again. So it's really good to see that they're still going. And I really enjoy looking through everybody's posts and seeing what stuff they've got and what models they have, what treasures they have, you know, in front of them.
So it's really nice to see. And following that on Facebook would be really, really great. So yes, so I wish everyone. All the 20 odds so. Participants who are entering, entering this and it's going to start next month. So what is the first entry, Chris? They're going to paint or November.
A unit, we start with a unit. So when I was talking, I guess see, having been in a couple of challenges, it seems that the, the common thread is it's a lot of work for the organiser trying to find everyone's posts, whether it be some someone Discord, some people e-mail that others will just put on Facebook and trying to reconcile because you don't want anyone to miss out, you know, if you don't put the effort in to painting the
stuff for the month. So I guess we've got a slightly different format than in theory to make my life easier to reconcile at all, which I've stolen off another painting group I'm in. But yeah, we'll start with a unit next month. So we officially start next month. And I guess the format we're going with is we've just created 2 albums in the album section of the Facebook group. So then you can record like a pledge. So this is the unit I'm going to
paint. So bearing in mind the unit is just the minimum in the Army's book. So generally five or three for monstrous things. You can just put a picture of your 5 Chaos Warriors and then if you paint 20, fantastic, you only have to paint 5.
So you just put in a picture of your pledge of your Chaos Warriors you're going to paint and then you just have to have that in by the start of the month to I guess officially be in it. Look, if you get it in a week later, it's not the end of the world. It just means you've lost a week. But I guess we, we need a picture of it unpainted to know it was indeed unpainted in the 1st place.
And then there's another album for the completed one to show that you have actually completed it in the month. That one will probably give you like 24 to 48 hours Grace in that I'm in Australia, my cells in Germany. I might get confused as to what is the 1st of November. They've just worked better for everyone.
If there's a little bit of leeway, but you you don't want too much otherwise, I guess you know, at that point, once we're a few days past, once we've got all the the photos out, the album, you know, you want to make a wrap for the month and share it on on all the Facebook groups about all everyone's hard
work. So if if you post yours, you know, two weeks later, I guess you're still in the challenge, but you're not going to be in any of I guess our publicity because we can't wait forever for you. But I guess we're trying to be a little bit loose. Well, we are definitely looser than the original version. You know, I don't want to be the guy that takes joy from your hobby, but you can't have to somewhat fall in line to get the
full experience. But you know I'm not going to break your balls if you're slightly late or slightly out of kilter. You know it's not my job to make your hobby less fun. Yeah, OK, now that's fair enough. I've been there. I've been on the road of called the Crown and failing miserably and given enough leeway to say OK, it's OK. You know, you can come back next month or whatever and and then fail the next month and then, you know, just ended up not
finishing it at all. So yeah, challenges can be a challenge in the sense that, you know, you've got to be disciplined, you've got to make sure you reach your targets, have a plan. You know, if you've got like, for example, five nights to paint in a month, just have a few hours a week, if more, if not more than to just sort of tackle, you know, at least 1 1/2 per week and you're going to get through OK. And make sure if you need to have that time to paint the banner and, and do the Shields
or what have you. So yeah, you need to manage it. So it's probably good for people to sort of sit down and pencil out what they have to paint each month and then work out of some kind of time schedule that they can do that in. As most of us are fathers or we have kids or we've got wives or we've got, you know, jobs and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So yeah. But that's all part of them. And that's all the, I think the enjoyment for me is getting those deadlines right to the
last day. I've always enjoyed pressure to get that done at the last day and then having done anything. Oh, thank God, I've got it done, you know, and it's, it's got the photography in and I feel happy that I've actually finished a unit or, or a character or something like that. Yeah, I don't have the the breakdown of months in front of me, but I'm pretty sure when I said it, I made sure that December was war machines. So it's Christmas, you might go away. You might work a lot.
Anyone could do a war machine. So in a way that kind of saves you that December Mulligan. That's always the risk. So if I didn't do that, I apologize. But I'm pretty sure I made a concerted effort since I work in retail, so the amount of time off I'm going to get is nil. So I I've got to keep myself in the challenge into the new year at least. Right.
And of course these are minimum. So like, you know, if it's got like a unit, you can paint one unit, you can paint 2 units, you can paint 3 units, you know, whatever you want to do 1 war machine, 2 war machines, what have you. So it's really up to you how you know how much stress you want to put yourself under basically in the challenge. So what are you guys taking, Marcel? What's your arm you're taking for the challenge? Oh, I can show you. Hopefully I'm not dropping any.
Yeah, here. I'm I'm preparing these now for the challenge Scaven. Beautiful So. Kind of an hot army and I have also more miniatures in the mail. So I think I will add up as we go with the challenge. And I I think I will also, for example, if I have paid a war machine and then maybe on top of that, some plan rats or so. So you, you can also paint more, but it doesn't have to be like more war machines in the war machine one month or more characters in the character
month doesn't matter. It's just like a bonus. And for example, I think I don't have monsters, so I will paint another war machine in the monster month. At least that's my plan for now and I hope I will not burn out because Skaven can also be a challenge, but I chose Skaven. Besides that they are a beautiful models and a fun army to play. And they have no mounds, so no horses or or wolves or whatever. So that's a relief coming from the plutoniums. Yeah, for sure mate.
It's going to give you lots of fur textures and those kind of things, and probably a bit more looser painting style with the Scaven, you know, So I hope you enjoy that. That's great. How about you, Chris? What are you taking mate? I guess just quickly something Marcel then touched on is I guess with the format of just uploading your photo at the start of the month, it allows you then the freedom that you don't have to post a picture of what your entire army will be beforehand.
So you can start with an army and then, you know, hit the Facebook groups and eBay and build it as you go along, which I think is, is a great way of, of getting you to kind of slow growth. If if you're one of those weird people out there that doesn't have 50 years worth of miniatures in your cupboard, you can add as you go.
Myself, because I am a lunatic, I did briefly consider after painting Brutonians for a year, painting another lot of Brutonians for six months because I still have more. But no, I couldn't do that to myself. So I guess what I'm doing is, is my best friend passed away last year and he was a high off player when we first started playing. That was his. His shtick was high elves and I was the dark elf guy.
So he didn't paint at all. He I think we probably had about 100 to 200 painting nights together over the journey and I've never seen him paint a single miniature. He was just always assembling while I was painting away. So I've accrued a a 4th edition high off army. So then the the plan is to paint that I guess in his honour to paint the army that he never could or would or what have you.
But like his dream army, so I guess it kind of then has the benefit of like I really want to finish it for him. So that will spur me on. But also I never wanted a high off army. I was a dark elf player. So it'll there will be some dog days trying to trying to get these guys done without the love of them.
But I guess the love of the project will hopefully get me through and, and maybe it'd be one of those things where as you're painting it, you know, I might fall in love with them and all their gemstones when I when the paintbrush hits the model. But yeah, it it was one of the last armies on board. OK, well I hope you have fun with that and it's sad to hear that someone is so young has passed away recently.
So yeah mate, he'd be looking down on you and probably assembling as you paint like he used to do in the in the old. Yeah, well, at least at least I know he won't judge me if I don't get the if I don't make it get done. But. You need, you need to set like another chair aside next to you with some modelling tools and everything for him so you can sit there and and do that as you
paint along stuff there. So that sounds great now and recently and probably is, is there still is a treasure chest of miniatures travelling around the world all the way from Europe to Australia, the US and North America and back over to to the UK. So Marcel, how's, how's the treasuring trove going? The treasure trove. Yeah, it's now in the Netherlands and will soon come back to Germany and from Germany making a brief stop in Poland and then coming back to me as the final stop in Germany.
So I'm really, really happy that so many people take part in it. And we did it a couple of years ago for the first time. And that was only Europe, including the UK, sadly, it was right in the middle of Brexit. And so we had to tackle here with custom declaration and so on. But it, it, it worked out fine. So, and we really enjoyed doing that. And then people asked me, hey, can we do that again? And of course, over the years, I collected more miniatures. I have no use for, for whatever
reason. And, and so I packed a huge bag, I think it was almost 10 kilos. And I counted them because for custom declaration roughly around 250 miniatures. And I sent them to here Chris, in Australia. That was the first stop. And from there it went to the US and then the UK and then now to the Netherlands. And it's really, really astonishing.
What people are putting in, and we have the one rule is you post a picture what you will take out and you will post a picture what to add so that it is roughly a fair exchange. Because not everyone knows the value of miniatures. And if someone says, hey, that miniature you took is really, really rare, can you please add up some or add some more miniatures to to make it fair? That's totally fine. But so far we had no problems at all with it.
And it's really great to see what miniatures people still have. So for example we have some orcs and skate and blisters and also a complete what's the name, Cauldron of Blood for the Dark Hours still in the box. So that's really, really great, and it's a nice way for people to complete their collections or even start new collections, I guess. Yeah, that's really wonderful. Yeah, Sally, I didn't participate this year because I don't, I actually don't have anything.
So I feel bad if to get something and then not be able to put something back in. So hopefully next year I'll have some extra surplus stuff lying around so that it might be useful to somebody out there who knows. But it's a great idea, great initiative. And I'm really happy to see and follow on our Discord people picking up these treasures, taking them out and putting their own stuff, unwanted stuff that other people might want.
So it's it's a great, great, great community initiative guys. So that's really nice. OK guys. Well, I just want to say finally, I wish you all the very best in the challenge. I hope everyone can pull through all the participants who enter and they can see their army realize at the very end, that's the that's the gratification you get when you finish, finish a challenge. So yeah, all the best to you guys. Thanks. Thank you. OK, guys, thanks very much again and we'll speak again soon.
Maybe after the challenge, we'll get you guys back on to talk about how it all went and and maybe share some nice images of the final contestant, you know, army shots and that kind of thing. I think that'd be really nice to see their efforts in maybe a live stream. I think that'd be a good idea. Yeah. Gathering a mighty Paint a live stream, that'd be nice. So if you guys are willing to do that, I'll see you in seven months. Yeah. Sure. OK. OK, guys. Thanks very much. Yeah.