Clearing the Backlog (Jan '22)

 I, like many of us, have accumulated a bit of a backlog with my pile of shame. So, I thought that I'd set myself a target for a new years resolution. 

As of Jan 1st, I have a total of 419 models to paint. I'm setting myself the target of getting down to 300 by new year, while doing updates on what I have got finished at the close of each month, accompanied by whatever rambling I see fit with it.

For this first post, and most likely the second. I am working on an army for the upcoming Grand Tournament at the end of Feb. My evil one is Isengard and is almost fully prepared (besides a touch of basing), which allows me to focus primarily on my good force, the Garrison of Dale during the War of the Ring.

As I started on this army, all that I have for it is a single warband of 10 Dale warriors and a shield Captain painted ~8-9yrs back along with another Captain armed with a bow that I converted from a spare Legolas 3-4yrs back. Over Christmas, I had been lucky enough to receive a box of 20 Dale warriors, 9 Knights of Dale and the two new(ish) Dale Heroes, King Brand and Bard II. 

When I opened up King Brand to build, I found that he had had an air bubble at the tip of his sword. I posted to the GBHL group to see if I could pick up a new trick to fix it.

I had a really good solution put forward by Keith Robertson, who suggested putting a small blob of superglue into the hole and using accelerator to solidify it, then file it into shape. I followed this with one small change. Since I didn't have any accelerator, I made a small clamp to hold Brand upside down as the glue set overnight. And the result was perfect.

I started 2022, by getting my shield warriors and archers painted up, they are lovely models but the sheer amount of trim on their armour means they each take a lot of time.

For the GT, I would also require a warhorn, due to my mistrust of my luck with courage tests. So I simply made one out of green stuff and stuck it to the belt of a spearman.

Another piece of wargear, involved something not available to the men of Dale until 3.5yrs back. I took another spearman, cut his hand off and rotated it to face upwards, drilled a hole through it and created a banner pole out of a paper clip. I then created the banner itself from some paper, moulded into a waving shape with some PVA glue. I then had to come up with a design for it. 

One idea that came immediately to mind, was that the descendants of Bard would no doubt have great pride in his slaying of Smaug. So the Black Arrow seemed like an ideal emblem and a red backdrop seemed ideal, but I worried this could seem a bit plain.

A further idea was to add the silhouette of Smaug at the pointed end of the arrow. I figured that I would want Smaug to be red, but this wouldn't work with the backdrop, so I would need to change its colour. I opted for a bright blue as this would make the arrow and Smaug obvious. But it felt like it needed something else, just to complete it. After some thinking, the Lonely Mountain seemed like the obvious answer, with the design idea complete, I could begin painting it.

I had to make one change as I was painting, when I realised that Smaug wouldn't fit in the pose I had come up with, so I came up with a new one and it seemed perfect.

 

The last model of the month that I completed was one of the Knights of Dale, they are lovely little sculpts and as I prepped my paints for them, I was struck by a little inspiration. I could give them white cloaks, similar to the Kingsguard from Game of Thrones, to make them stand out a little more. Just to make them pop a little further, I also gave them a different colour leather too.

With all these done, I have managed to get 14 models painted in the first month. Next month, I'll finish the Dale warriors, knights and heroes.