Brambleten's Tour of Gotham - Part 2: Arkham City Limits' Painting Contest 2015

Yesterday it was announced that the first of what will be an annual painting competition on the Arkham City Limits Facebook Group will be taking place between now and the end of March. 

There are three prizes up for grabs - The winner will get a Knight Models single miniature blister pack of their choice, along with the "Tournament Only" Limited Edition Talia al Ghul cards. Two runners up will also receive Tournament Talia cards.

As the main part of the prize is a Tournament Only card, to enter, you need to paint a full 350 Rep / $1500 fund Gang. This is the tournament standard and should be tournament legal, so also means that it's a little more challenging than just a single figure. 

To make it slightly easier though, you are allowed to include minis that have been completed previously, as long as they make up less than half of your gang. Here are the official bits copied from Drew's post in the group:

"Though Individual Models may have been shown in the ACL before - the bulk of the Crew (that is more than half the Miniatures - rounded up - in number) must be newly painted with no pictures of them having been shared online before - entries not meeting these criteria will be disqualified.

The Crew must be fully painted (which in this case means at least three identifiable colours on each Miniature - not including Undercoat) and properly based (either home made, sand and PVA, or resin cast replacement bases are all acceptable - and bases must also be painted and finished properly) - entries not meeting these criteria will be disqualified.

An Overall Winner and two Runners Up will be chosen from the qualifying entries submitted by the 31st of March, and the Prize winners will be announced and notified by Private Message on the 7th of April."

To enter, create a thread in the ACL group with pictures in it and also PM Drew the entry photos and list before 31st March. Simples!

So, where do I stand with this? I've decided that the best way to get into BMG is to dive in headfirst. With that in mind, I asked around and found the best way to build a gang - The Bat Builder. This tells you who can be in a gang with whom and as you click on people, tallies your list for you so you can see when you hit your points. 

I'm in the position that most of my characters are spread out amongst the free agents section so aren't really much good to me when building gangs so far. This leaves me with The League of Shadows, which is the only gang I have henchmen for, thus are the easiest to fill out to 350 Rep. With that in mind, I've come up with the following:

Ra's al Ghul (Leader) - Liam Neeson version

Talia al Ghul (Sidekick)

Deadshot (Free Agent)

Lotus (Henchman) - One of the ninjas in the LoS box

Yang (Henchman) - Another of the ninjas in the LoS box.

That's 5 minis, and on last years performance I averaged 2 miniatures a month. So 5 from scratch over a 2 month period that is going to be massively hectic at work and may also include a Kickstarter I've been working on so that is a large challenge indeed. 

I had initially decided on keeping my BMG minis for when I have my Victoriana Basius from the Basius Kickstarter, but to enter the contest they need to be based. So, I raided my Empire of the Dead: Requiem Kickstarter box and found 5 of the cobbled bases produced by West Wind that I had intended for all my EotD minis to be based on. They are rather close to the Victoriana Basius, so I can happily mix and match.

It is however, one I am looking forward to. In fact, it's time for me to stop blogging and start building stuff.