April 1st Happy Birthday Mum, and it begins the gauntlet is down

Well first off a big happy birthday to my mum.

Now that April is here it is onto Duelling Gamers, and the start of my new wood elves army for Warhammer Fantasy.

The rules are simple spend $200 worth of GW retail the first month and another $100 worth of GW retail for the next five months for a total of $700GW retail, of course being that part of the challenge is to actually spend less than the GW retail per month to show how to collect an army on the cheap with out it being cheap.

So being the first month I have money to spend and this is how I have decided to spend it.With my $200 GW retail I purchased the following figures as listed.

1.  Drycha for $6.20 from Ebay saving $15.80 of real money but counting as $22 towards the challenge.
2. 1 box of dryads for $30 from wargamerau saving $25 of real money but counting as $55 towards the challenge.
3. 3 Treekin for $26.90 from Ebay saving $56.10 of real money but counting as $83.00 towards the challenge.

For a total actual spend of $63.10 but counting as $160.00 GW retail.

This leaves $40.00 towards next month with a real dollar saving of  $96.90 or 60.05% off retail prices

Now for this month that means I will need to assemble and paint the following tree spirit figures

Drycha which will act as a Branchwraith in most battles, as I am not big on special characters.
12 Dryads
3 Treekin all the same pose, but that will not matter as they should be painted slightly different colors.
The pictures below are the condition I received these figures in.

So a total of 16 figures, not a lot when you consider how much $GW retail I have spent, but my army will bulk up over the coming months, and to be honest I am trying to limit my painting each month to less than 18 models, due in no small fact that I have not painted anything in a while, and would still like to spend time with my family. It is just as well I decided not to make a forest goblin army(maybe next challenge).

So my plan for each month is to spend the first week of every month assembling and undercoating my forces, with the rest of each month used to paint them, so on average 6 figures a week for the last three weeks of the month. The best intentions of mice and men huh.

I do have some house keeping issues to address first so that everyone knows what I am about.

1. I base my figures once the army is painted, not as I do each unit, everyone will have to wait until September to see the final product, as I have had mixed results in the past with basing as I go. Another lesson learned from my Chaos dwarfs.
2. I intend to post updates the first day, last day and every Saturday of each month, there may be more, but there will not be less.
3. With Easter being in the middle of the first challenge month I could reasonably be expected to be finished earlier and perhaps could have spent more and so painted more , except for the fact that I am already painting my kitchen over Easter. Does it count towards the challenge,not sure?

Anyway I have rambled enough catch you all next time.
Cheers Lupus.