Clearing the Backlog, Part 28 – The Road to the Grand Tournament

As you know, my usual first hobby weekend of the year is the Middle Earth Grand Tournament at Warhammer World. This is normally because it takes place in February, but in more recent years, it's moved to March. Fortunately, this resulted in more planning time for the event, so I was able to easily decide my theme for the tournament. 

My first thoughts were that I didn’t want to paint up new armies for the event, which is something I've done in previous years. This is for two reasons – 1) so that I can spend more time working on other painting projects, and 2) because it will help clear my backlog – I ended up adding 80-odd models by painting two new armies for last year's GT, and whilst they were painted quickly, it meant I hadn’t made any actual impact on my backlog. 

So, to the armies themselves. I toyed around with a few ideas, before deciding that I wanted to take my Easterlings as my evil list – I had a lot of fun painting them last year, so I was quite keen to take them to some events as a result; I took a 650 point list to the 7th City Grand Prix back in February:

The caveat with this list is that the Kataphracts were only added after I accidentally forgot to pack several other models I had originally planned to include. As for the remainder of the list, I felt The Dragon Emperor and Rutabi were both solid heroes, and I had plenty of numbers to back them up. 

Unfortunately, the army only managed to win two out of eight games, losing the other six. However, five of those losses were by very narrow margins, where the game could have gone either way had a dice roll gone differently. I also learned that the cavalry aspect just didn’t work – Kataphracts are heavily armoured, but unlike Riders of Rohan or Knights of Minas Tirith, they don’t have quite the same hitting power – often they would get bogged down and be my first casualties of the game. The other learning point was that Rutabi's warband definitely needed a banner – when the army is fighting in the same place on the tabletop, they benefit from the Emperor's banner, but they tended to struggle in scenarios requiring the army to split up. 

So, with the cavalry dropped, I had to find some replacement numbers – the GT is 700 points, so this also meant I had an extra 50 points to play with, and I decided I needed another hero. Captains would be useful for marches, but I ultimately settled on Brorgir – mostly because I've not used him yet and he's a lovely model, but also for his magic – a tremor in the right place could hopefully do some damage, plus making the Emperor s6 in a fight would greatly help his killing power – there were a few instances at the GP where he was fighting against a heavily armoured opponent, but failed to do any damage, meaning his momentum stalled. 

I also wanted to throw in a couple of War Drakes, again because they're lovely models, and they could be a threat with their ability to reduce a model's fight value and their number of attacks – Aragorn's a lot less dangerous when he only has two attacks instead of three. With Brorgir and the drakes added, I still had some points left over, so I decided to take a couple of archers. Maybe not the most effective Easterling troops, but there's always the chance I could maybe snipe out a horse, a banner or even take off a couple of wounds or fate points off a hero / monster. 

So, with that done, I had my 700 point Evil list:

So, to the good army. Themed match-ups are always fun (and look great on displays), and having taken Host of the Dragon Emperor for my evil list, the only logical choice was the Defenders of Erebor. I had previously taken this list to the GT in 2023, where it did fairly well, winning two games and drawing the other:

Dain and Brand are both very solid heroes, and they add a banner effect to the warriors around them. I did briefly consider adding Bard II and Thorin III Stonehelm, but decided the points limit was too low to justify taking all four heroes – there wouldn’t have been many points left over for warriors, so I would have easily been outnumbered. 

Not shown in this list is that my Captain of Dale was armed with an Esgaroth bow, which they could take in the previous edition. Now however, they can only take a shield, which is built into their points cost. So that was an immediate change to the list. I also decided to scrap the ordinary Warriors of Dale and simply run a front line of Knights of Dale – they have the same fight value, a slightly better defence and it also means my entire front rank will have +1 to wound when charged. Despite the banner bonus for the army list, I also kept the physical banner, because you need one for scenarios where victory points are available for having a banner left on the board – there's a few of these in the Matched Play Guide, and considering you play six games at the GT, there's a strong chance of playing at least one of them

I kept the dwarves' warband the same, given that it worked very well last time – hopefully they should make a solid anchor for either the centre or a flank, with the two crossbows hopefully adding some extra firepower. Tweaking done, my Good GT List was also ready!

So, the armies are decided, and I don't need to paint anything either! This is quite a relief considering that when I last took Knights of Dale to the GT, I was up until 1:45am on the Saturday morning painting them… that just left the display board! 

I've built some big boards in the last couple of years, taking a 2' x 2' board to last year's GT – I wanted the board to be one of my best, but unfortunately there were a few things that didn’t go the way I wanted to – particularly the attempt at creating a water effect using rippled plastic sheeting – the glue refused to dry, and was still visible on the Sunday, two days after I'd applied it. So, I decided to keep it simpler this year, and also tried to use up some scrap pieces of material from last year's board. 

I knew I wanted the board to be the valley that sits before the gates of Erebor, but I also didn’t want it to be a completely flat, knowing from watching The Battle of the Five Armies that there were several raised areas before the gates. I ultimately decided I wanted a two-tiered board, which would allow me to set up some vignettes of the defenders of the mountain holding back the Easterling horde. As they were smaller warbands,  I decided to put Dain and the Dwarves on the lower tier, fighting off the Dragon Emperor and his Black Dragons, whilst Brand and the Men of Dale faced down Rutabi and her Easterlings on the tier above.

My starting pieces for the board were an A3 photo frame (these are really useful for making display boards, which gave me a nice black border to complement the board, and some Styrofoam I could use as the base. I built up gradual layers of foam, before shaping the foam with a hot wire cutter so create a slope up to the higher tier. I then managed to find a plaster-cast rock face lurking in the box of scraps, which quicky became a cliff face on the lower tier. Once I was happy with the shape, I covered the entire board in filler, to cover any gaps in the foam and generally tie everything together

So, to painting. The armies used the same basing scheme (dark brown, drybrushed with lighter khaki colours), so I simply copied it for the board on a larger scale. The rocks were also basecoated brown, but were given grey drybrushes rather than khaki so that they stood out. I then touched up the edges with black acrylic paint, and the board was almost done!

To finish the board, I added the same static grass and tufts that were on my model's bases, so that the army blended in nicely, but taking care to keep it sparse, rather than flock the whole thing. With the board done, I added the models, and the Battle of Dale was complete!

As to the games themselves, sadly results did not go my way. Although all of my games were very close finishes, I ended the weekend with a single win and five defeats. Not to say the games weren’t enjoyable - in most cases it came down to either a single turn / phase where things just didn’t quite go my way - the new 20VP scoring system is a huge improvement to matched play in my opinion, given that it gives you much more opportunity to score points in games than the previous 12VP system.

So, with the GT out of the way, my attention turns to the next weekend on my hobby calendar, and it’s one of my absolute favourites - Seven Stones! Once again Sam and I are pairing up, and we think this year’s army is going to be a lot of fun. Stay tuned to see what we come up with!

Tournament Report- EAHC Teams Event 2026 (18th April)

The Event

Similar to how the Warhammer World Teams events are run, teams are made up of four players; two good and two evil. No one within the team can use a hero that has already been used within the team.

Matchups would be slightly different though, a pool is rolled for and each team will see what their opponents’ lists are. They then must each choose one of the scenarios from that pool so that each scenario is chosen by a player from each team. This decides the pairings within the teams. You can either play the scenario that you think fits each of your players best, or try to predict what scenario your opponents will choose for themselves and attempt to pair accordingly.

Our Team

Our team was the same as our first for the Warhammer World’s first team event; Tom and the Mellon (Myself, Tom, Jake and James). Tom and James would be our good players, while myself and Jake would be the evil ones.

Our Armies

Tom

James

Jake

Me

Round 1 Vs. Boil ‘em, Mash ‘em, Stick ‘em in a List

Pairings

Me (Grand Army of the South) v Sam (Usurpers of Edoras) playing Destroy the Supplies

Tom (Army of Thror) v Kieran (Lindon) playing Retrieval

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) v CJ (Ugluk’s Scouts) playing Seize the Prizes

James (Reclamation of Moria) v George (The Eagles) playing Treasure Hoard

Game 1

No pics for this one because I’m a pro at journalism and forgot.

Raza target: Freca

At deployment, I had Suladan to my right flank, and the Harad King along with Raza to my left. Sam had deployed Freca to my right and Wulf with Lord Thorne to my right. 

Sam began moving forward with most of his guys. Freca’s men shuffled forward a little and the archers got up against cover. Wulf led the other half of the army down my right side towards Suladan. I held firm in order to try and weaken his army with shooting. 

Having a low defence army and considerable shooting on either side, I called a Heroic Shoot with Raza. I intended to thin out Sam’s shooting to give me an edge. But not even one of my thirteen archers got as far as rolling to wound. 😆 Sam returned fire and luckily had no more luck than I.

We had a similar approach in the next turn, but this time I directed my bows at his melee force that was seeming to prepare to come at me down the left. I had better luck this time and killed three of them. Sam’s shots, in return, killed a couple of my archers.

On the right, Wulf and the traitors rushed towards me. Fortunately, their throwing weapons failed to find a mark. And the next turn, I called a Heroic Move to charge them. We were surprised to see the Haradrim manage to hold their own and kill a few of the traitors. Wulf had charged around the flank into a couple of my guys. During the shoot phase, I turned some bows on the right and fired at Wulf, scoring a hit and killing his horse. Suladan, saw his chance and Heroic combated off his opponent, in order to trap the dismounted Wulf. He then got a five high and was forced to spend might to avoid almost certain death. 

In turns after, the Haradrim held firm for a long while, and Wulf fought Suladan again, taking a wound and going down to 1m, 2w and 0f. But managed to bring him down later as the numbers came to bear. Eventually, I couldn’t keep them off of the right supply and they destroyed it.

Back on the left, Sam had pulled back after losing a handful of guys to shooting. And I was seeing my right under pressure, so decided to apply pressure of my own. I left five archers to cover the central and left supplies from bird attack and the King led a rush up the centre at Freca’s men. 

We withstood shooting on the approach, picking a few off in return through the gaps we could find and once in range, charged in. The King saw a golden opportunity to catch them with their pants down, and charged in. He called a Heroic Combat and ran around the side of the warband, right into Freca. He won the combat and suddenly the enemy leader was on the floor with six strikes with bane of kings raining down on him. If I could get three 5+s with rerolls, I would kill the leader and potentially, cause the collapse of the flank, without the fight value advantage. This could then help break them, and maybe allow me to destroy a supply or two in kind, potentially winning the game! I managed to score two, and Freca went down to 1m, 1w and 0f in his efforts to survive. 

The Harad King was then brutally surrounded and ripped apart by angry hill men for his actions. Raza took up the lead of the flank and got to the front. If I could just get him to Freca, I could still secure it. But sadly, it was not enough. 

The game ended with me broken, one of my objectives destroyed, meaning Sam had destroyed more than me, he had protected his banner, and slain my leader while I had wounded his. So I had lost 14-1, but it felt closer.

Results 

Me (Grand Army of the South) 1 v 14 Sam (Usurpers of Edoras)

Tom (Army of Thror) 0 v 18 Kieran (Lindon)

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) 4 v 6 CJ (Ugluk’s Scouts)

James (Reclamation of Moria) 17 v 3 George (The Eagles)

We thought James had been the expected defeat for this round, but kudos to him, he pulled it off.

Round 2 Vs. The Four Horsemen

Pairings

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) v James (Atop the Walls) playing To the Death

James (Reclamation of Moria) v Nick (The Black Gate) playing Lords of Battle

Me (Grand Army of the South) v Phil (Umbar) playing Assassination

Tom (Army of Thror) v Will (Rivendell) playing Contest of Champions

Game 2

Raza target: Delgamar

*Through this round, I had Tom to my left, a notorious elf hater (hence the team name), up against Will, a man who is fiercely pro elf, in contest with Thror v Glorfindel. So for the 2hrs, I was hearing the occasional yelp or terrified squeal from Tom.

I knew off the bat that this would be a tough fight, as Phil had a literal assassin army for assassination. I had chosen the King for my assassin, as his horse and bane of kings could be crucial, and targeted the Bo’Sun.

We deployed very closely and I lost the initial priority, so called a Heroic Move, as I was worried about how many men that I’d lose to the corsairs throwing weapons. Phil didn’t contest it, and I saw Delgamar right behind his frontline. 

I threw Raza into the guy in front of him, and piled the Haradrim into the rest. In the combats, we managed to slay a few and lost a few in return, but crucially, Raza had called a Heroic Combat and got into Delgamar. He won the fight and lunged hard with his spear, managing to get him down to 1m, 1w and 0f. 

The following turn was a similar setup as I called the move to charge again, but this time, I lost every single fight. Even Raza failed to beat the almost dead Delgamar. Phil then ended the turn by using his rule to have a Hasharin assassinate Delgamar and pass leadership to the Bo’Sun. 

This meant that now the Bo’Sun was potentially worth up to 15VPs…I HAD to get him. I had second consecutive turn of losing a lot of fights and men, so was getting desperate, as I knew that I had to keep the flank open, to allow me a shot at the new leader. So I called a Heroic Move with Suladan’s last might, who was right on the edge of the line. It had to be him in my mind as Raza was stuck behind troops and couldn’t reach where I wanted Suladan to get.

Suladan wanted to get on top of the Bo’Sun and potentially slay him, but some control zones were stopping him. So he charged into the rear. I then wanted to get the Harad King in instead but he wasn’t able to get past Phil’s frontline. 

It was here I realised my mistake, as Phil then rushed a Hasharin over and trapped Suladan along with several troops. I had given in to frustration and now my leader was going to pay for it. Unsurprisingly, Suladan was absolutely destroyed.

For the rest of the game, I was just hoping for a sudden shot at the Bo’Sun but Phil was careful with his positioning and didn’t give me that chance. Raza and the King fought side by side against the two Hasharin. The former fell in the final turn, but the King managed to stay standing and deal a wound onto his would-be assassin. 

By the end, I hadn’t managed to get near the Bo’Sun, but Phil had got the correct Hasharin to slay his target, Raza, he had broken me, kept his assassin and my target alive and killed my leader. I had kept my assassin alive, just! So I had lost 20-1.

Results 

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) 9 v 11 James (Atop the Walls)

James (Reclamation of Moria) 0 v 20 Nick (The Black Gate)

Me (Grand Army of the South) 1 v 20 Phil (Umbar)

Tom (Army of Thror) 0 v 20 Will (Rivendell)

A rough one for Tom and the Mellon, by the end of this round, we were dead last and three places beneath ‘Team Wooden Spoon!’

Round 3 Vs. Nellowship of the Ferds

Pairings

Tom (Army of Thror) v Brin (Kingdom of Khazad Dum) playing Hold Ground

James (Reclamation of Moria) v Ed (Beornings) playing Heirlooms of Ages Past

Me (Grand Army of the South) v Alex (Moria) playing Sites of Power

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) v James (Army of Carn Dum) playing Command the Battlefield

Game 3

Raza target: Durburz

I had won the priority roll off and so got Alex to arrive first. He got a 2 for Durburz, so I put him close to the corner of the South-East. Next Druzhag rolled a 3, so I put him a little higher up but also close the the South East. Finally the cave drake got a 5 and came on near Druzhag.

I then rolled 2s for my entire army. Alex chose to bring the Harad King on in the middle of the Southern edge, Suladan close to the South West corner and Raza near the North West corner. 

The King lined up his archers and fired at the approaching cave troll in the second turn, causing a single wound. Durburz, Druzhag and the Drake were bearing down on him and I felt that he was going to die, but I could buy time for the rest of my forces to fortify objectives. The cave troll ran in and charged a couple of my guys. So I ran my guys forward in response, to fight the goblins. The King charged one with a warrior and called a Heroic Combat. They killed the goblin and then he ran forward and trapped the cave troll. We won the fight and the troll was slain before the King even had to roll.

In the next couple of turns, the King would be charged by a couple of goblins, win and slay them. The Cave Drake was charging my guys and trying to hurl them at him, but failed her intelligence test and threw them at a random archer instead. My King finally lost a fight in the third combat and was ripped apart by enraged goblins, but had paid for himself very well.

Suladan’s unit, meanwhile, had moved up and the infantry passed through a tunnel to the South West objective, the South East was claimed by a lone goblin. I moved so that my Abrakhan Merchant Gusrd formed a line across an alleyway leading from where the goblins were to the objective and backed them with spears. Suladan and his raiders hung around the left side and the raiders fired pot shots at the Cave Drake but failed to land a blow. 

Raza had sent two bows and two spears to hold the North West objective and the rest of his warband went with him towards the North East, which had Druzhag’s spiders and wargs heading for it.  

We both got there at a similar time and clashed hard, a few Harad were torn up by angry beasts. But Raza made his presence known as he speared both spiders and helped to kill the wargs off. Their job now was to just sit on the objective. 

Back in the South, the goblins and drake finished off the Kings men. Then the Drake led the way toward my blockade. Realising one they got there, that it wasn’t going to fit through, so killed a few of them and then rushed around to slaughter my raiders who were trying to snipe the goblin on the South East. The game then ended her due to time.

I had sole claim over three sites and Alex had one, we had broken one another, and he had slain my second most expensive hero (the Harad King), giving me a 10-6 win.

Results

Tom (Army of Thror) 17 v 2 Brin (Kingdom of Khazad Dum)

James (Reclamation of Moria) 8 v 10 Ed (Beornings)

Me (Grand Army of the South) 10 v 6 Alex (Moria)

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) 7 v 6 James (Army of Carn Dum)

A great round for us, our only defeat was a narrow one, despite James not being the one to find the Heirloom!

Round 4 Vs. A Chance for Zach to Show his Quality

Pairings

James (Reclamation of Moria) v Ben (Cirith Ungol) playing Domination 

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) v Matt (Grand Army of the South) playing Capture and Control

Tom (Army of Thror) v Zach (Riders of Eomer) playing Breakthrough

Me (Grand Army of the South) v Ben (Lothlorien) playing Stake a Claim

Game 4

Raza target: Galadriel

I deployed my King to the right, Suladan to the left and Raza in the centre. Ben deployed his elves in a block beside his rear objective. In my experience, the player who gets a good start in this scenario for fortification points, generally wins, so that was my strategy, take all three in the middle and hold them as long as I can.

Suladan and Raza bunched up and marched for the central Ford (the three central objectives lay on the river (L-R on a bridge, on the Ford, and in the water). Meanwhile, the King made for the right objective and a couple of warriors and my raiders went for the left. I left two bowmen on the rear one.

Ben also moved for the centre and left his wood elf sentinel on his rear, but also moved his wood elves towards my king.

The shooting had no casualties so we went into the next turn. Ben got priority and so carried on his march. I realised that he’d left a couple of wood elves in range of my king so ran forward and cut them down. On the bridge, the two warriors ran forward and lay down to hide from archers. I got within range of the Ford and claimed the middle too. 

The following turn my king was charged by a wood elf that he took down. And on the Ford the fighting started in earnest as our lines locked. I kept Suladan close by to give me plenty of rerolls and the following turn, charged him in as I wanted to break his flank to envelop him. Suladan quickly ended up burning his might over the next few turns as the elves piled numbers into him, alongside F6 guards of the galadhrim court. 

I decided to send in my raiders, who had been shooting off the bridge and sent one towards the sentinel, hiding behind the dead mumak and the other two into the rear at the left. 

My king had got very bolshy and charged into two wood elves, before being surrounded by five in total. He won the fight and killed three. The turn after, his warriors joined and killed the last two with him in a Heroic Combat. This sent them to the centre to try and relieve the pressure there and him around the back to the sentinel. The following turn, he can’t see the sentinel, due to the elven cloak and distance, so runs onto the objective to neutralise it instead. The raider from the other side rushes over and draws his bow. But is sang a song and runs off instead. The sentinel charges the king but is cut down. I now hold four of the objectives, as the elves had slightly better numbers on the fifth.

Over the last few turns, the elves come dangerously close to killing the trapped Suladan, but he gets away wounded (1w, 0f) and then takes all of Celeborn’s fate away in the last turn. Raza had been inching towards Galadriel, who had spent two fate against a warrior, I hoped my assassin could make a sudden end to her. But simply didn’t get the opportunity.

As the game ended, I had triple the fortification points (60/19), held more in the last turn, he had wounded Suladan and we had broken each other, giving me a 15-2 victory.

Results

James (Reclamation of Moria) 1 v 13 Ben (Cirith Ungol)

Jake (Lurtz’s Scouts) 7 v 14 Matt (Grand Army of the South)

Tom (Army of Thror) 10 v 5 Zach (Riders of Eomer)

Me (Grand Army of the South) 15 v 2 Ben (Lothlorien)

A nice even matchup to finish, with a good split down the middle for results.

Overall Results

At the end of the day, we had managed to win 1 matchup, drawn 1 and lost 2. Won 6 of our 16 games and we had scored 107VPs and conceded 170VPs. So we ended in 6th place of the 8 teams, which wasn’t bad, considering how rough we were looking by the end of round 2.

The podium ended up being:

3rd: Fellowship of the Nerd

2nd: Boil ‘em, Mash ‘em, Stick ‘em in a List

1st: Squirtle Squad

Congrats to them all, and to ‘A Chance for Zach to Show his Quality’ for taking home ‘Best team armies’ and ‘Most sporting team’.

Events that I will attend

Fog of War 4 (TO) (16th May)

Seven Stones (23-25th May)

What about Second Breakfast? (13th June)

Clearing the Backlog, Part 27 – Hobby Goals

If there's one subject I don’t talk about much on this blog, it's setting myself hobby goals. Whilst this blog's overriding theme is clearing my backlog of models, that is more of a long-term goal – I've been writing this blog for the last four years, and whilst we've made good progress, there's still some ways to go in terms of actually reaching the end of the backlog [great in the sense of having motivation and content for future posts, less so in terms of not being surrounded by half-painted models…]

What I've not normally talked about is setting myself more short-term goals, as in setting myself targets for the year. I tend to meander from project to project, rather than planning out which armies I'm going to paint. Normally, my hobby drive can quite impulsive, inspired either by new releases, or ideas that flit in and out of my head.

Whilst such a drive is great for hobby motivation, it's less helpful in terms of managing my backlog – as ideas tend to come thick and fast, often I'll find myself halfway through a hobby project when suddenly another idea comes to the forefront of my mind, so I end up shelving the current project in favour of the new one – this then means the old project tends to sit gathering dust until I eventually come back to it, remembering in the process how fun the project was. 

Now, I know it's a bit daft to be talking about hobby goals for the year when we're already halfway through April, but the truth is I actually wrote most of this blog post back in January – due to real life getting in the way, this is the first opportunity I've had to actually publish it. Fortunately, most of the goals I set myself in January are still relevant.  

So, Goal 1 for this year [and hopefully something I'll stick to in the long-term as well] is to be a bit less impulsive when it comes to hobby purchases – often I'd go into a hobby shop for some supplies, and end up coming out with a box [and sometimes more than one box] of miniatures as well. Fortunately, it's usually just a single miniature I really want to paint, but as these gradually accumulate, you realise you've added a dozen more models to your backlog. 

So, Goal 2 is to finish painting these various models bought solely for the purposes of wanting to paint them. Again, this goal has more long-term than short-term ambitions, so I'll probably use them as means of either breaking up lengthy hobby projects, or painting them at the end of a project as a reward – hopefully knowing you have a "treat" miniature at the end of painting a horde of models is good motivation! At the same time, painting something different can often help with motivation as you actually enjoy painting the model, rather than finishing a model and then dreading painting the remaining models the same way over and over again.

Speaking of abandoned projects, there are a number of these in my backlog that I have been neglecting for some time, and not just for MESBG. I have a number of projects for Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar and The Old World currently sitting in the backlog, all in various stages of assembly / painting, and a part of me actually wants to get these projects to completion. I'm unlikely to be able to get through all of them in a single year [there just isn’t enough time!], so Goal 3 for the year is to try and get at least one of these backlog projects completed. However, because I want to keep this Backlog Blog series Middle Earth-themed, they won’t be shown here – I will however still count them towards my model count for the year (as that focuses on the backlog as a whole), but I'll very likely set up a separate blog series for these. 

Lastly, Goal 4 is a numbers challenge, partially inspired by last year's model count – I painted 195 models in 2025, and I was disappointed that I didn’t quite manage to hit the 200 mark – probably because I was only five models away. So, the challenge for 2026 is to try and paint 200 models this year. I like to think this is an achievable goal given that, apart from 2024 when my hobby motivation took something of a nosedive, I've managed to paint either over or around 200 models every year that I've been doing this blog. Some of the goals I've set myself will certainly help in this regard, given that some of the unfinished projects have a high model count – get through those, and I'm easily on my way to hitting my target. So, look forward to the last post of the year, where I'll be checking back in on whether or not I hit these goals!

So, hobby goals set, let's get to painting!

I started 2026 as I finished 2025 – painting Easterlings! I dug out the eight archers I had lying in the backlog, and painted these to go in my Host of the Dragon Emperor list. Easterling archers are probably some of the most underused models in the game, and a common complaint is that you only get four pikes in the boxed set, but eight archers – not very helpful when the key part of an Easterling army is the pike block. Complaints aside, the archers are still very nice models. I spent a few evenings working on them, painting them in the same way as the rest of the army, and they were done. I've really enjoyed this Easterling project – so much so that I've painted nearly 1,500 points worth over the last 6 months!

Next were a pair of models I didn’t quite get around to finishing in 2025 – two old metal Rangers of Gondor. I painted my current Osgiliath force years ago, but I've been having thoughts for some time about stripping and re-painting the army – these models were attempts at experimenting with different colour combinations – I painted one Ranger with a green cloak, and another with a brown one – always interesting to see how the same miniature looks in a different colour scheme. The Osgiliath repaint is a very low priority for now, but having some reference models for when I eventually get round to it will be very helpful. There are actually a couple of my armies that I think could benefit from being stripped down and repainted, but I think the sensible thing is to focus on at the moment is finishing some unpainted new armies, rather than repainting old ones. I based them with an Osgiliath-themed rubble scatter, but I'm not sure if this will become the main basing scheme for the army – I might be tempted to do something else when I eventually get round to repainting the army.

With the rangers done, I took a small break from painting Middle Earth miniatures, to try and work out exactly which one of my other backlog projects I wanted to finish. Not that I wasn't entirely focussed on Middle Earth – I've also been busy working on my armies and the display board for the Middle Earth Grand Tournament a Warhammer World, but more on that in a future blog.

My main Middle Earth project for this year is still the huge box of Rohan I put together last year, and in between my work on other projects, I chipped away at some of the Riders. I tried to do some variation on the colours, using different shades of green and browns for the cloaks and leathers, and using metal colours for their helmets, where I'd always used a dark brown previously – variation really helps models stand out, especially when you're only using a handful of poses in your army. I then based the models to match Erkenbrand, who I painted on foot last year, and my first few Riders of the Westfold were ready for the tabletop.

With the Riders done, I then turned my attention to the mounted version of Erkenbrand – this was painted in the exact same way as the foot version, from the green cloak to his distinctive red shield – a few hours work, and he was ready to lead the Riders into battle!

So, to progress – with everything I've painted so far this year from the different game systems, my painted model count currently stands at 49 models! I'm considering this really great progress, considering it's mid-April and I'm nearly a quarter of the way to my 200 model goal already – I just need to try and keep this pace up to hit my target!