Tale of Painters, 1st Company - Finished Armies & Voting

[Cyric the Mad]

The first company project is complete! After 12 long months and a lot of fun, we have some truly amazing armies. Everyone displayed exceptional talent and dedication in the course of this project, and it has been my great privilege both to coordinate and participate in this awesome project. As always, immense thanks goes to Kuffy for kicking this thing off, and of course to the entire LO community for their encouragement and support.

Now for the final batch of fun facts for this first project. The point totals may not be 100% accurate, but they're close enough to be fun:

The Fantasy section had:

• 15 initial entries
• Of those 15 entries, 2 completed the project
• The Fantasy project had a total of 10,665 points worth of models contributed to it

The 40k section had:

• 33 initial entries
• of those 33 entries, 6 completed the project
• The 40k project had a total of 15,700 points worth of models contributed to it

Which gives the total project 8 finalists of 48 entries, and 26,365 points worth of models painted for it! If nothing else, the fact that this project put that many more painted models in the world makes this all worth it.

Also just for fun, here are screenshots of the spreadsheets I used to track this whole thing:

On to the armies!
Esteemed LO'ers, I present you with the finished armies:

Tekore proved to be one of our most energetic entries, having not used a single joker for the entire project and being the first from either project to finish. His Bretonnians are more than tabletop worthy, and his palpable improvement during this project deserves respect from all of us:

xbanditsx has consistently impressed me with the quality of his wood elf army, and has honestly made me a little ashamed of my wood elves so far. The fact that he actually finished a unit of waywatchers amazes me. Those guys are rough:

ShadowZora13 not only pulled off an amazing and unique-looking bike army, but did so in record time, being the first 40k entry to finish. Here's hoping the Angels of Fire work well for you after the new dex:

chemicalcaveman took on the daunting task of a yellow color scheme, which would be enough to give me nightmares to begin with. In the end his clean and consistent Lamenters make for an exceptionally impressive force:

king88mob doesn't have a photo for us yet! But he gets a placeholder here in anticipation of what will be a spectacular Eldar army. He has also earned the distinction of being the only xenos army to make it all the way to the end of the project:

Here's my own Dark Angels army. This project has helped me learn to paint not only faster, but in some ways better too. A year ago, the idea of painting Sammy in less than a month would have sent me into a coma, but the week I gave myself to finish him seemed more than adequate. Given how much more I have to paint with this army, fast is definitely good:

warmonkey was our only other non-Imperial entry for 40k, and pulled off a nice and menacing looking CSM list. Holding the title for "most tanks" his consistently high level of painting has earned him my respect:

The Paint Monkey has some 'splaining to do. We need to know how he gets the sweet hookups, and how in god's name he gets these models done so quickly. The Crimson Fists look exceptionally clean and pro, with striking and strong colors. Even if his Devastators show him no love, we still kinda like him:

Dreadstar_MRC gets an honorable mention for coming in just shy of the goal. Still a solid effort, and well worth some healthy praise. Here is his Vampire Counts army:

The result of this project is nothing shy of amazing. Solid work, friends. Truly impressive.

Now for some voting!
The list of awards up for grabs are:

1. Best Painted Army
2. Best Themed Army
3. Best Unit
4. Best Character
5. Best Warmachine or Vehicle
6. Best Conversion
7. Most Improved Painter
8. Best Joker or Excuse Used

This is all done via super-secret ballot, so PM me with your votes for these categories. The voting will go through October 15th, upon which time I'll post the results here. There's really nothing up for grabs here beyond bragging rights, so anyone may vote (but only once!)

Thanks again for everyone who participated in and supported this project. See you all in the next one!

[Lost Nemesis]

Imperial Fists, Cyric? CC has a Lamenters army!

Congrats to everyone who finished, the armies look great!

[Hex]

These look awesome, thanks for putting them up.

[Cyric the Mad]

Originally Posted by Lost Nemesis

Imperial Fists, Cyric? CC has a Lamenters army!

Doh! Sorry, caveman. I fixed it.

[chemicalcaveman]

Its all good Cyric, since its about the first mistake you've made doing this whole thing!

First things first. I've said it before and I'll say it again congrats to everyone who finished this project. You guys are great. I'll see most of you guys in ToP Round Two "The Revenging". I've repped every single one of you and you deserve it.

As for things that I have learned. The first of these is that i've learned how to quickly paint up army quaility units. This came in handy with my last month when I had to get the last two units painted. Anything that promotes me to paint faster, more effeciently and better is good in my books!

Secondly is to keep to deadlines. There was a couple of nights there where I was burning the midnight oil to get the units finished.

Finally I learned how kick ass it is to have a fully painted army! Now only another 1000pts to go for Apoc scale games!

Guys its been a blast!

[xbanditsx]

Seeing all these armies lined up together makes me really proud of everyone who saw this thing through. These are all gorgeous armies; everyone put a lot of time, energy, and work into them and it really shows.

I hope to see all of you back here in six months for the end of ToP 2!

[Lil Tweaker]

I think this really gives us an idea of just how much time and effort Cyric has put into organizing this thing. Hes got more information put together on all of these different armies. Impressive.
As for voting, it's kinda hard to see everything from these pix. I'm gonna have to dig up all the old TOPs month by month to see how people have improved and get good close ups on some of those units!
-J

[warmonkey]

We could just put in some of the pics we think would fit the appropriate awards.

Here are mine

HQ/Character
Demon Prince


Greater Demon


Conversion
Demon Prince



Obliterators




Vehicle
Land Raider


Predator


Not saying i deserve the awards, but these are the ones I thought would fit the categories. I too am having a hard time remembering what was a conversion and what was straight up.

[xhivetyrantx]

Best Painted Army- Chemicalcaveman
Best Themed Army- ShadowZora
Best Vehicle- Cyric the Mad's land raider crusader
Best Conversion- warmonkey's obliterators
Best Character/HQ- Cyric the Mad's Sammael

[chemicalcaveman]

Originally Posted by xhivetyrantx

Best Painted Army- Chemicalcaveman
Best Themed Army- ShadowZora
Best Vehicle- Cyric the Mad's land raider crusader
Best Conversion- warmonkey's obliterators
Best Character/HQ- Cyric the Mad's Sammael

Thanks for the vote hivetyrant.........but from Cyric's original post................."This is all done via super-secret ballot, so PM me with your votes for these categories."

You might want to pm him those votes.