Clearing the Backlog (Feb '22)

Hey all

This is a few days later than intended but such is life. Continuing on from where I finished in January, I was halfway through my good Grand Tournament army and things were very tight in getting ready on time.

The first models that I went for were the remaining 8 Knights of Dale. These guys had so much detail that it took me ~10 days to finish them off around work and baby duties. But once they were done, I was very pleased with them, all done to match the previous one's paint scheme of pale leather and white cloaks.

With them done, it made sense to then do the leader of their warband, Prince Bard. Although I preferred the sculpt of his father, this one grew on me as I painted him up. And by the time he was done, I loved it.

This now left me with just one hero and four Dale warriors left with ~10 days until the tournament, to some that may sound fine but I am a SLOW painter.

I wanted the King to stand out from the crowd, so decided to wander from the typical red colours shown on the display models and wanted to give him a nice regal colour, and a shade that I hadn't used before. So I settled on Phoenician Purple alongside white underclothes.

After the King was finished, I was inside the last week before D-Day. I hurriedly painted away late into nights and was finished with them by the Tuesday night, having to leave on the Friday morning. I then made a frantic effort to quickly base ~45 models and was done by about 9pm Thursday. 

So that was another last minute finish of tournament prep but it was achieved without compromising any models.

By the end of February, I had managed to paint up 14 more models and got the year's total to 28, with my grey mountain now at 397 as I had picked up the two new Easterling Heroes, Rutabi and Brorgir at the GT (hopefully they'll be in one of these posts this year).

I intend next month to get some Minas Tirith warriors painted as well as some dwarves and finish the last three Dale warriors. I may also skip the March update and combine it with April for reasons that will be clearer then, so in April I'll hopefully rebase my half of the Seven Stones army, build a display board for it and as a guess I'll probably paint Helm Hammerhand for a tournament late in the month. In the same vein I have some Rohan models that need repairs.