Clearing the Backlog: Part 4 - Tournament Motivation

I've said a few times before in this blog that tournaments are a great motivator for getting through your pile of shame – many of my unpainted models have only ever seen the painting table when there's an event on the horizon, whether it's a local event or a GBHL event. 

With no tournaments in the calendar, most of April was spent working on my Ruffians for the Battle Companies Community Challenge – check that out here:
https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2022/05/battle-companies-communities-challenge.html?m=1

Fortunately, May contains arguably one of the best events on the GBHL calendar – The Seven Stones. Two days over the bank holiday weekend, where the main focus of the event is for you and a teammate to come up with a list that's pure fun, rather than the standard competitive lists you'll see at any other GBHL tournament – you won’t find any legendary legions at Seven Stones!

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, Seven Stones hasn’t been hosted since 2019, but on the flip side, that did give Sam Huddy and I three years to plan out our armies. And we settled on the ride out from Helm's Deep – that fantastic scene at the end of The Two Towers where King Theoden and his guard ride out from Helm's Deep into the Uruk-Hai hordes, seeking an end worthy of a song!
I spent most of the Easter bank holiday working on our display board, which incorporates the old Helm's Deep model that was made by GW when the Two Towers sourcebook was released, way back in 2002. Here's a few shots of the board being constructed, along with the finished board and army!

Whilst Sam worked on the majority of the army, my focus was to paint up the various dismounts for our heroes and warriors, along with Gimli, who would also be part of the army. To that end, I grabbed the Gimil, Theoden and Royal Guard who were sitting in my painting queue, along with my Rohan Captain and the mounted version of Theoden. 

Gimli and the Captain were very nice models to paint – the Captain model in particular given the various details he has. A lick of paint later (and a nice scenic base too) and they were both done!

Next, I moved onto Theoden. He's a tricky model to paint at first glance, given the intricacy of the detail on his armour (brown over gold) – I settled for a basecoat of Liberator Gold, then painted the raised details with Rhinox Hide and Dryad Bark. That said, once I started painting him up, it was a case of just taking my time, correcting any mistakes and eventually, he looked pretty good! Snowmane (his horse) also came out pretty well – the barding he has is also very well detailed – I find taking that little bit of extra time to make this stand out really helps separate the model from others on the tabletop.

With Theoden done, I painted up the half a dozen Royal Guard dismounts we needed, and our army was done! We had a fantastic weekend at Seven Stones, and we were thrilled when our efforts were rewarded with a nomination for Best Army!

With Seven Stones over, I turned my attention to the next events on my calendar – a local EAHC event, followed by a GBHL event (Heroes of the Belegaer Sea IV) the week after. Having spent a couple of weeks working on Rohirrim in the build up to Seven Stones, I decided to carry on and finally take a Rohan army to an event.

I'd already painted twelve Warriors for the Throne of Skulls event back in December last year, so I decided to complete the set and paint up the twelve Riders I also had. Que a frenetic two weeks of painting, and I had my mounted captain, twelve Riders of Rohan and a Banner Bearer all painted up!

But who would lead my Rohirrim into battle? Well, in the run up to Seven Stones, I also managed to get the foot version of the plastic Eomer painted up (and a good thing too, considering I started painting him back in November!), so I decided to paint up the mounted version too – and I'm very glad I did. The detail on the model is superb. A couple of evening's work, and the Third Marshall of the Riddermark was ready to ride forth!

So with my Battle Company done, plus the Ride Out from Helm's Deep, Eomer and his Riders, my models painted count for the year now stands at a whopping 109 models! 

I'm really pleased to have only just reached the end of May and already passed the 100 model mark – admittedly there's still a fair way to go in terms of actually clearing my entire backlog, but I think we can safely say very good progress has been made!

This series so far has been quite cathartic for me – clearing 100+ models out of my painting queue makes me feel like I'm actually getting somewhere, rather than thinking my pile of shame will sit there unpainted forever. The new Defence of the North sourcebook will also be a good motivator – I'm sure seeing what the new models and Legendary Legions can do will make me desperate to get some armies painted up and on the tabletop!

Stay tuned for the next blog post and see how progress on the backlog continues. Until next time, happy hobbying!