Clearing the Backlog - Part 2

 New Year's Resolutions are a bit like Finecast miniatures – they’re not very popular, pretty flimsy and so of course, it doesn't take much effort to break them. 

This year however, Sam and I decided we needed to stick to our resolutions, so we decided to motivate ourselves with a little friendly competition to see how much we could battle our way through our respective piles of shame.

My unpainted model count is probably approaching 500+ models, so I decided to see if I could go a full year without buying any new models. I've limited myself to two exceptions, these being Made to Order or Event Exclusive Miniatures.

Getting back to our little competition, tournaments are great motivators for getting through piles of shame – as you'll have seen in Sam's update last month (here's a link if you've not read it already: https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2022/01/clearing-backlog-jan-22.html), he's been working on King Brand, Bard II and the Knights of Dale to take to the Middle Earth Grand Tournament at the end of February. 

For my armies, I decided to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of The Fellowship of the Ring film by painting up two new armies out of my existing collection of unpainted miniatures – the men and elves of the Last Alliance for my good army, and the Dark Lord Sauron and his orcs from Barad-Dur for evil: 

Good:

Elendil

18 Numenorean Warriors (12 shields, 6 spears and 6 bows)

Gil-Galad

17 High Elf Warriors (6 spear and shields, 6 elf bows)

Evil:

The Dark Lord Sauron

8 Black Numenoreans

10 Orc Warriors (4 shields, 4 spears, 2 two-handed weapons)

6 Warg Riders (4 shields, 2 throwing spears, 2 bows)

Orc Tracker

7 Orc Warriors (3 shields, 3 two-handed weapons, 1 spear)

With my armies chosen, I grabbed my paints and set to work! The Numenoreans were pretty easy to paint, as they have a limited colour scheme – I sprayed everything with Abaddon Black and then highlighted all the black cloth with Corvus Black and Eshin Grey. The silver areas were based with Iron Hands Steel, washed with Nuln Oil and then drybrushed with Necron Compound (which has lately become my go-to method for painting metal). The bone coloured cloth was basecoated with Zandri Dust, before being given a Seraphim Sepia wash and then layered with Karak Stone and Ushabti Bone. The end result came out looking great, a very simple but effective look. 

For the elves, I wanted to try to recreate their look from the films. Studying stills from the file, their armour and clothing appears to have a distinct greenish tinge, so I tried several schemes to recreate this. Eventually, I cracked it – Retributor Armour basecoat, washed with Athonian Camoshade, then layered with Retributor Armour, Liberator Gold, Stormhost Silver and then given a glaze of Waywatcher Green – not perfectly matched to the films, but I'm very happy with how this came out. The cloaks were also tricky, but I followed the same method as above, but using silver paints instead of gold – in this case, Leadbelcher, Ironbreaker and Runefang Steel. Again, not perfect, but definitely pleasing.

By the end of January, I had painted most of the warriors for my Good Army – a grand total of 31 models painted for the month, and a nice start made to getting through the backlog!

For February, I started by finishing off some High Elf Spearmen, Gil-Galad and Elendil, to finish off my Good Army. I also painted up an elf captain at the same time, adding some extra models to the painted pile!

Now, I could start on my Evil Army. Orcs are not the easiest to paint, mostly because they need to look like individual models whilst being tied together as a single army. However, thanks to keeping the bases the same and sticking to a limited palate, I was pretty pleased with the results! 

Sauron and the Black Numenoreans had already been painted, so I simply re-based them to match the rest of the army – I won’t be counting these towards the overall model count.

With the remaining Last Alliance models, orcs and warg riders painted (I'm counting mounted models as a single model, not two – I don't want Gimli chasing after me!), my models painted count for the first two months of 2022 stands at an impressive 75 models, putting me well ahead in our competition – you've got some catching up to do Samwise!

Stay tuned to see how we get on both in our efforts to get through our backlogs, and see how our armies perform at the GT. Keep an eye out too for something special in the not too distant future – we won’t say any more for now, but let's just say the EAHC isn’t the only MESBG group participating!