Monday, October 13, 2008

Why Not National Army Painting Month?

As you may know, there is a movement in the US called "National Novel Writing Month", where for the month of November, enthusiasts work together to produce a short novel of 50,000 words each. The idea being that the exercise gets everyone to write SOMETHING which is often the problem with aspiring novel writers, getting started.

So why not expand the concept to Wargaming? Often, you hear people complaining that painting an army is just "too hard", and takes "too long". Now clearly this can be true, but the benefits of having a painted army on the battlefield are many as well. So to expand the concept of the National Novel Writing Month to wargames, why not challenge everyone to paint an army in a month? The rules could be simple, paint 120 Olly points worth of figures for a new army, using those figures you have been hording away in a closet somewhere with the intention of painting them "some day". [an Olly point is 1 28mm figure equivalent, so that a knight would be 2 Olly points, and a base full of 6mm soldiers would be just 1 point]. At the end of the month, everyone shows off their new armies, some will be poorly painted, some will be prize winners, but most importantly, everyone who participates has a new army to game with. At worst, you have some people who paint a few more figures than usual, at best, a newly painted army.

What do you think?

No comments: