Aragorn, You Need More Men (March-June 2026)

Hey all

I decided to extend this by two months, as I originally intended to post just after the Seven Stones post. But then decided to space it out, rather than have several posts so close together, and go back to the post every other month after this.

So going back from March through to now:

Continuing with my Harad project, with preparation for the GT, I grabbed three of my old raiders and repainted them in the same style as my infantry. 

Then I returned to my infantry again, getting another load sorted. These came from our local Phil, who was getting rid of them. And since I had used several of mine for the Seven Stones Project two years back, I restocked my own with them. I had more bows than spears, so converted a few.

 

As the GT loomed, I wanted to repaint the big killy thing in my army to better match my Easterlings aesthetic amongst my Grand Army of the South. I was much happier with the repaint compared to the job that I did 13~yrs ago.

Now for the easiest grey pile reducing job, I wanted an invisible Bilbo for my Assault on Ravenhill at the GT. So I got these bases and decorated them. I decided that the one that’s second from the left felt the most Bilboey, although the middle one also had the same vibe too.

I also wanted to have a Hobbit era Legolas without Orcrist, so dug out the one standing on his log. It’s an old paintjob that I remember being my last painted model for 2013, done on NYE before heading out for a party. But one that I didn’t feel stood the test of time, so I redid him. He was also my last model needed for the GT.

After the GT, we had a local teams event. For this I decided to just adapt my GT army a little. The first model that I needed for this was a Harad King. He ended up being pretty solid for me, nearly one shotting the enemy leader, Freca, in a surprise attack with a Heroic Combat.

Next up was one that I had been really looking forward to, Raza. He’s a really cool looking hero with an interesting rule.

The final models that I needed to do were the Abrakhan Merchant Guard. I felt so much happier with them afterwards as the old paintjob, like many others, just felt dated.

Then I went off to work on my Seven Stones contribution for a long while. But when that had finally been completed, we had a stream for BSIME, and up came Prince Imrahil as the theme. So went and found him out the pile and got him sorted out. I’m saving the mounted one for when I finally do my Fiefdoms army.

After this, I found myself at a bit of a loose end. And didn’t really know where to go. I did finally think of the pack of hobbits that a mate from outside the community had got for me, and decided to clear out all the hobbits that I had accumulated (not that many, fear not. Not enough to make an army.)

I began with the pack of shirriffs and lone militia. To wander off on a small tangent, this militia was the spare one that I didn’t need for our Middle Earth Traitors theme in Seven Stones last year. Not knowing what to do with him, I offered him to James, who didn’t need him either and threw him into the prestigious Seven Stones raffle. Wherein I promptly won him back. Unable to pass him on, I decided he must he fated to be with me and painted him up instead.

I then moved onto doing Farmer Maggot's dogs. Grip, I did as a Rottweiler, Fang as a Dobermann and Wolf as a sort of terrier. Maggot himself, I am saving for his upcoming stream.

We then had another EAHC event coming up, and in this I had the chance to bring a terrain piece that was themed to my army. The only thing I could think of to go with the Army of Erebor was the Throne of Erebor so I dug that out. This was a failed print that CJ had done and failed, so it was given away for free and shamelessly harvested by me.

The other terrain piece that I did, was a paintjob for out local community, doing up an elven fountain for our boards. I added some mix of 50:50 water and PVA glue to add a little pooled water inside of it.

The last job that I got done in this period, was when I finally decided on my next paint project. The Numenor army that I had been slowly accumulating through Christmas and people selling them off locally. 

I decided to do an alternative scheme on them, based a little off the feel of the Rings of Power Numenor (bright colour, water focused and a hint of Sun worship.) It might be well off the vibe in ROP, but it’s what was coming to me. 

I gave them bright baby blue capes to represent the sea, yellow undershirts to be the Sun and grey overcoats to represent the lack of ability to find a good alternative to mix those colours together without looking childish. 😆

I felt happy with the end look, and am now currently about ten models deep into the new army! Maybe next blog, I’ll have the finished force!

Until next time!

Tournament Report- Plant Your Trees and Watch Them Grow (27th June)

The Tournament

This was an EAHC league event with 900pts per player. There was also the secret objectives in play from the Matched Play Guide as a tiebreak and bonus prize. 

And finally, we could each bring a piece of scenery (Believe up to 8" squared in size or something), ideally themed to our army, and replace a piece on the board with it. Another option was to bring a large piece of terrain that could cover a board edge (one guy brought the Black Gate).

The final rankings would take a vote for each of the best terrain piece and most sporting amongst your opponents and add them as soft scores to get a final ranking.

My Army

I was unsure what to bring for this, as the birth of our next child is approaching, so I was to vary my armies as much as I can prior. After some browsing, I decided to take the Army of Erebor, with father and son duo, Gimli and Gloin.

For my terrain piece, I remembered our local, CJ, giving away misprints from his 3d printer for free, and I had claimed a throne of Erebor. At 1"x1" it was an utter waste of a gaming advantage, but it gave me a reason to get it painted and fit the theme perfectly.

Game 1- Breakthrough (Vs. Fergus (Rivendell))

Opponent's Heroes: Elrond, Glorfindel, Elladan, and Elrohir

Opponent's Warriors: Rivendell Knights and High Elf Warriors

*Objectives in all pictures are marked in red.

We both deployed our lines, I made a strong wall across the centre with crossbows to the front and Fergus put his cavalry a little outside my charge range. Another block of infantry with archers to centre of my line, also far back, and Glorfindel with his unit to my far right. 

I had Gimli and Gloin to my left, Dain in the centre and the captain to the rear and right.

The elves all sit and shoot at me, but most miss. I return my shots and kill a couple of the archers. My captain rushed with his unit around the ruin to engage Glorfindel’s elves.

The following turn, the elves advanced, and not wanting to concede ground, I also did. The captain’s unit attacked Glorfindel’s. The goat riders flanked and killed a few elves with their warspears after the captain used his free heroic combat to slingshot them around.

Gimli and Gloin were engaged by the elven cavalry. Over the next several turns, Gimli fought Elrohir and eventually dismounted him. While Gloin faced Elrond and dismounted him before he and his dwarves took him down to 1w, 0f. 

Elladan then stepped in and took Gloin away from his father. Managing to incredibly withstand ~9 strikes on his horse, before losing it to Gloin’s rerolls. Elrond similarly used his special wrath of Bruinen rule and failed to hit 9 dwarves, only knocking over Gimli and killing a crossbow.

Meanwhile, the Captain’s unit decimated Glorfindel’s elves and managed to stop him breaking out to seize our rear objective. The Captain himself withstanding several combats with the big man himself and surviving the game on 1w, 0f.

Dain’s role in all this was to barrel into the infantry before him and use overwhelming force to smash through, getting to the archers at the rear, who he slew to claim the far objective for us.

I had claimed both central objectives with more models in range, claimed the one in Fergus’ deployment uncontested, wounded Elrond, broken the elves and had a banner remaining to win 12-0.

My secret objective was to have my cheapest hero not die, which I narrowly avoided.

Game 2- Command the Battlefield (Vs. Will (Battle of Fornost))

Opponent's Heroes: King Earnur, Glorfindel, Cirdan and Minas Tirith Captain

Opponent's Warriors: High Elf Warriors, Minas Tirith Warriors, and Knights of Minas Tirith

I got generously gifted priority by Will. And ended up with Dain in the South-East, Gimli nearby in the South and the Captain in the West. Gloin hadn’t arrived.

Will had Earnur arrive slightly North of Dain, Cirdan came on in the middle of the South, Glorfindel in the North-West and I placed his Captain right behind Gimli, who tried to slip away.

The following turn, I let them take priority without contest and the Captain ran, with a knight charging Gimli’s unit to hold them back. In response, Gimli charged him with many dwarves and called his free Heroic Combat. Giving chase after bringing the Knight down, and the next turn, catching and killing the Captain also.

As this happened, Cirdan had placed himself between the edge of the board and a building. When Gloin’s warband arrived behind them, trapping them between those that had recently arrived, and the quickly approaching unit of Gimli.

Cirdan made a break for it, but Gloin quickly tore up his rearguard and Gimli caught him against a wall. And with a, completely unnecessary, Heroic Strength was instantly slain.

Glorfindel was hurrying down the board to attempt to save Cirdan. When it was clearly too late, he instead did a hairpin turn and rushed my screaming Captain, who was now facing his second Glorfindel in as many games. He and his warband were dead in a turn!

Gimli and Gloin regrouped and moved on Earnur, as Glorfindel hurried up to join the fray, dodging the occasional crossbow bolt. The dwarves began fighting the King’s men and killing several, but struggling overcome the leader himself. In the last turn, I had one last shot on him with Gimli and Gloin doing a Heroic Strike, but he managed to win the roll off and repel the attack. Otherwise, he’d have faced rerolling strikes from Gimli and Gloin as well as several warriors, a few supporting for wounding bonuses.

Dain had been stuck in a chokepoint along the East board edge and eventually pushed through, going for a Heroic Combat to finish the plugging men off, but blew it. In the last turn, I wanted to push into the North-East quadrant but couldn’t reach. So dedicated far too many dwarves into murdering the banner bearer. Near Glorfindel, one of my crossbows fired a cheeky shot that killed the elven banner in the South-West.

By the end, Will had uncontested control of three corners, while I had tightly contested control of the South-East, I had broken and 25%ed him. We recorded the result as a 9-5 win to Will, but as I write this, I seem to be getting a 9-6 result. It doesn’t matter too much, but I’m not sure where the mistake has come in.

For my secret objective, I had to claim a building with at least three guys to no opponents. I could have easily done this with Dain’s unit, but bloodlust for the banner came in hot and i forgot.

Game 3- Lead From The Front (Vs. James (Men of the West))

Opponent's Heroes: King Elessar, Eomer, and Legolas

Opponent's Warriors: Minas Tirith Warriors and Warriors of Rohan

For this last game, it actually turned out that my silly thematic terrain piece was turned deadly. As i subbed out a large piece Dol Guldor terrain for a small throne, allowing unrestricted shooting at the approaching Men of the West. This hadn’t been my intention, I’d done it to simply make a massive area for us to battle in.

I’d deployed Gloin to the left of the main force, Dain to the right and my Captain in the middle. Gimli was separate off tot the left.

James had placed Elessar in the middle, Eomer to my left and Legolas to my right.

James galloped Eomer up, hiding behind some stairs. After narrowly dodging a throwing axe from Gimli, rushed him into my exposed flank. Gloin fought him there and managed to dismount him and cause several wounds. Elessar and his men then joined the battle and attempted to rescue the King of Rohan. Gimli ended up facing Elessar and took a wound. 

After this, I managed to keep troops between Elessar and my heroes as they cut down the Rohirrim and Gondorians. Eventually, Gloin’s dwarves slew Eomer. And as the end of the game approached, I tried one last gambit to overwhelm the King of Gondor, getting the deadly father and son duo upon him with many troops. We both struck up to F9 and Elessar managed to win the roll off, even disregarding the elven blade bonus. He had escaped my trap and struck down Gloin on the way out!

Dain, during all of this, had rushed up towards the right objective. Beside it, Legolas had run inside a ruin and hid on the balcony to shoot. Dain’s dwarves hit the defenders like a train and they killed the Rohirrim in very one sided fighting. Legolas shot at Dain throughout, but could not land a wound. As the end neared, James leapt him down from the balcony to try to contest the objective. I had Dain use his last might for a Heroic Combat and trap the elf against the wall, where he was hewn and slain!

The game ended with only Dain in range of an objective as Elessar, Gimli and my Captain were blocked from reaching others. I had broken James and neither of us had removed the other’s banner, giving me a 7-0 win.

My final secret objective, turned out to be the same as James had, to get double your opponent’s numbers within 6” of the centre. I outnumbered him, but he had managed to hold me off well enough to stop me.

Results

I had, for the first time in maybe two years, managed to go top heavy with two wins and a loss. And while the wins weren't titanic, the loss was pretty small too. This gave me 24VPs scored and only 5 conceded all day.

Once the soft scores had been added, and final rankings had been announced. I was pleasantly surprised that, amongst our ten players, I had managed to get the silver! With my opponents, Will and James getting gold and bronze respectively.

Events that I'll attend

18th July- You Shall NOT Be The Fellowship Of The Ring (Hosting- EAHC)

8th Aug- EAHC Event (TBC)

12th Sept- I Can't Carry It For You, But I Can Carry You (EAHC Doubles)

Clearing the Backlog, Part 29 – The Road to Seven Stones

In the hobby calendar, May can only mean one thing – it's time for Seven Stones!

Once again Sam and I paired up and immediately tried to work out what our army was going to be – we've had some fun themes over the years – from our back to back armies themed around Azog's hunt for Thorin, Theoden's ride out from Helm's Deep, and of course our Kin-strife army, which won us the much coveted Best Army award which, in Seven Stones terms, means the overall winner of the event.

For last year's event, we went with an army themed around the BBC series The Traitors (complete with our very own Claudia to oversee proceedings) – you can read about how we made that army here: [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2025/06/?m=1]. Unfortunately, it turns out if you bring the most treacherous models in Middle Earth together on the tabletop, they don’t perform well together [who knew?], and we ended up claiming the wooden spoon for finishing dead last. 

For this year, we brainstormed a few ideas before eventually settling on the theme for our army – The Battle of Azanulbizar. This is the battle that is told by Balin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, where King Thror is slain, Thrain goes missing and Thorin earns his title Oakenshield, slicing off Azog's arm in the process. However, the actual battle of Azanulbizar plays out very differently in the book, as set out in Sam's Seven Stones post [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2026/06/?m=1]

To try and represent the battle as described in the book, we came up with several different house rules for our army. First and foremost, Thrain needed to be the Leader, and the army had to have Thrain, Thorin, Dain and Nain, Lord of the Iron Hills. And because we were hunting Azog, we gave every model the Hatred (Azog) special rule. [And if you’re wondering, no, we didn’t play Azog the entire weekend, so the rule was completely pointless, but 100% themey, which is perfect for Seven Stones!]

Next, we came up with some more model specific rules, to represent other parts of the battle:

Battle Wounds: In the books, Thrain loses his eye in the battle – to represent this, he starts the game with one wound less. 

The Oakenshield: Thorin starts the game armed with a shield, but if he suffers an unsaved wound, he can then use the Oakenshield special rules [exactly like the book]

Azog! Azog! Azog!: All dwarves must charge an enemy model if able to do so. 

Ironfoot: In the books, Nain was slain by Azog, who then tried to flee back to Moria when he realised the orcs were losing the battle, but he was caught by a pursuing Dain. To represent this, if Nain was slain during the game, Dain gained +1 strength, but -1 Defence, and had to either charge or move as quickly as possible towards the model that killed Nain [essentially the rules that are used for Elladan and Elrohir]

Our last special rule was designed to represent the dwarves of the Iron Hills arriving late to the battle – instead of deploying normally, warbands led by Nain and Dain instead arrive via the Maelstrom rules, except our opponents were the ones who decided where they would arrive from. 

So, special rules decided, it was time to prepare our armies! 

We decided that actual Iron Hills dwarves might be a bit too competitive for Seven Stones, so instead, we converted some dwarves to look like Iron Hills dwarves – I bought a box of Grim Hammers, deciding that their heavily armoured appearance would suit the style of Iron Hills dwarves. Instead of their hammers, I used the spears from the Warriors of Erebor sprue. Fortunately, I had a few spare Iron Hills arms and shields – I was able to use these to help improve the Iron Hills aesthetic, but I kept the spearheads from the Warriors of Erebor to ensure that they all matched. After a bit of work with clippers and Green Stuff, my unit of "Iron Hills" dwarves was ready for painting!

Having taken spears from several Warriors of Erebor, I decided that I would convert some of those to have axes and shields instead. The conversions were in essence simple hand and weapon swaps, but I ended up with some really cool looking Erebor dwarves.

I also decided I would convert Thrain slightly too – I ended up re-posing his arms, trying to look like he was rallying dwarves to him, sounding their charge. A bit more Green Stuff, and Thrain was ready to lead his dwarves into battle!

Next, I needed a Dwarf King to represent Nain, Lord of the Iron Hills. There are some very nice Dwarf King models available, but Seven Stones is an event that is all about hobbying, so I decided I wanted to convert my own. I started with Floi Stonehand as the base model, before removing his head and re-posing his arm. I then added the head from the old Balin, King of Moria model. What then followed was a fiddly process of resculpting both the beard and the model's arm, but I was very pleased with how it came out – I then added the axe head from the Balin model, and Nain was also ready for painting!

So, to painting. Sam had also done his own conversions, and came up with the colour scheme for the army, which I then copied so that we would match – Sam has set out the colours used in his own Seven Stones blog: [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2026/06/?m=1]. After a few evening's work, the models were ready for the tabletop!

Thrain and his Erebor dwarves were painted in the exact same way as my Army of Thror dwarves – I then based them differently to the Iron Hills dwarves, to represent the wooded area Thrain and his dwarves are driven back to in the battle. 

So, with the painting all done, my half of our Seven Stones army was ready for battle!

The last thing I needed to do was paint up some Hunter orcs to fight against the dwarves – these were quite fun to paint as they were a nice change from all the armour on the dwarves – I only painted a few orcs, rather than a whole horde, as the display board we were working on would be showing the battle as the Iron Hills dwarves arrive on the scene and drive back the orcs. 

Next up, we needed some objective markers. Sam painted a couple of slain Hunter Orcs, and the pillar which marks where Durin first looks into Mirrormere, the lake near the Gates of Moria. I, on the other hand, converted the last remaining Grim Hammer to be the slain Frerin, son of Thrain, before sculpting the leftover Green Stuff from the Iron Hills conversions to be the pouch of worthless coins the orcs pay the dwarves for the killing of Thror. 

We also decided to add two other objectives to our board, to tie in with another Seven Stones tradition of ours - the gifting of Freddos! We decided the theme of the giveaway would be the dwarves hunting for Azog, who would be hiding in disguise in our opponents' army – should the model survive the game, Azog has escaped and our opponents get Freddos. If the model doesn't survive, Azog has been unmasked, but they still get Freddos anyway [Simple, right?].

It was as we were discussing the unmasking of disguised Azogs that we were suddenly inspired to add two heroes who are very good at unmasking people in disguise to the board:

Yes folks, these were our newly recruited "Azog's Hunters"!

As to the event itself, the army performed surprisingly well, winning three games and losing three games – a very nice return considering we failed to win a single game at last year's event! We did however continue our tradition of being the first ones to be knocked out of the Arena of Champions – for some reason everyone decides to pick on us!

Also, I have already started plans for Seven Stones 2027! Early, I know, but I'm looking to do something rather special – 2027 will be ten years since I first attended the event, so I want to try and commemorate it in some way – keep an eye out for a future blog where I reveal the contents of this box:

So, with all those models done, it's time to look at the painting count for the year. I have also been working on several other projects alongside my Seven Stones force, and have been on a very productive hobby kick of late – so much so that those projects and the Dwarves have helped me reach a total of 104 models painted so far year! I am super pleased with my hobby progress this year – I am now halfway towards my goal of 200 models for the year, and already have some more projects lined up which should help me get closer to my target – stay tuned to see what those are!