"More will come" Legions: The Burning of the Westfold

The Burning of the Westfold

 

Goblin-Man, 10pts

INDEPENDENT HERO

HERO GOBLIN MAN INFANTRY

Mv5 Fv 2/5+ S3 D3 A1 W1 C2 M/W/F 0/0/0

Equipment: Dagger, Elven Cloak.

“The enemy has many spies in his service”

If two competing Heroic Actions are declared which require a roll-off, so long as at least one Goblin-Man is within 3” of both Heroes declaring the Heroic Actions, the controlling player will win the roll-off on a 1-4 or 3-6 in the same manner as an Elven Blade roll-off.

PARTICIPANTS:

The Oathmaker

Dunlending chieftain

Wildmen

Uruk Scout Captain

Feral Uruk

Uruk Scouts

Uruk Drummer

Orc Captain

Orc Warriors

Goblin-Men

 

Additional Rules:
-Must include the Oathmaker, who must always be the Leader.

-Warriors may only be lead by Heroes with the same race Keyword.

-All Heroes increase their warband size by 3, except the Oathmaker who increases his warband size by 6.

 

Special Rules:

“THEY HAD NO WARNING”

After Deployment is complete, you may redeploy 2D6 models, except in Maelstrom scenarios. Priority on the first turn goes automatically to the Force chosen by the controlling player. Heroic Moves cannot be called in response by the opposing player.

Models may charge a target without having Line of Sight so long as a friendly model within 6” does have Line of Sight to the target.

“BURN EVERY VILLAGE!”

All models may be equipped with a Flaming Brand or Flaming Arrows. During the End Phase, models with Flaming Brands who are in base contact with a terrain piece may attempt to Set it Ablaze on a 6+ D6. Terrain pieces may be targeted for shooting attacks with Flaming Arrows, successful hits will roll to Set Ablaze on a 6+. A model making a Flaming Arrow shooting attack may not move that turn. A model may elect to use their Flaming Brand as a Special Strike against a single model in combat and will Set Ablaze on a 6+. Hero models will be successful in any of these attempts on a 5+ instead (Might may be used).

A Flaming Brand and any Ablaze terrain piece illuminates the area within 6” of them as if in daylight. Any model that is in an Ablaze terrain, or within 1” of it, at the end of the Move phase must roll a D6. On a 4+, that model is immediately Set Ablaze. 

“We have only to remove those who oppose us”

If all of the terrain pieces in the opponent's board half (or all terrain pieces for Maelstrom) are Set Ablaze, the enemy Force automatically counts as Broken.

Demonstration army and awesome burning objective markers kindly provided by Harry Peel using terrain from Kieran Street's The Strider Cup event.
 

Clearing the Backlog, Part 8 – The Final Count

We come to it at last, the end of all things. Well, the end of this series of blog posts at least. It's been a long journey, full of unexpected adventures – I've painted models I didn’t even plan to paint, and not painted quite a few that I had… 

When I started writing these posts way back in February last year, my goals were simple – paint a lot of models, and try to reduce the huge backlog of unpainted models I'd collected over the years (yes, years – some of my models really have been in the backlog that long!). I wasn't expecting to get through everything in my pile of shame. At the same time, I hadn’t appreciated just how big the backlog was…

So, for those of you who haven’t been following either mine or Sam's blog posts, here's a little recap of my progress over the last year:

January and February

These were probably my most productive months for clearing things out of my backlog, as I painted my two armies for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Grand Tournament – The Last Alliance, led by Elendil and Gil-Galad, and a host of Mordor orcs that would be led by Sauron – two 700 point armies, the Last Alliance being painted entirely from scratch, as were most of the orcs – I rebased a few others to complete the force. I managed to paint over 70 models over the course of a five week period. 

March

A much more frugal month, which led to my post on dealing with burnout – it's probably not surprising that you find yourself reluctant to pick up a paintbrush after a five week painting slog! I still managed some hobby time however, painting half a dozen models and assembling a few more for the special hobby project that unexpectedly arrived on my doorstep…

April

April was spent painting up the Ruffians and Wildmen of Dunland for the Battle Companies Community Challenge – which became even more of a challenge as I had to paint them green and gold of all colours. Metallic colours on models with little to no metal on them – the thought still haunts my dreams…

Just kidding! It was a really fun challenge trying to get the colour scheme to work on the models, and I was very pleased with the end results. I also ended up with some spare models that went into my backlog – hopefully I'll be able to get some paint on them in the near future – a Ruffian army for next year perhaps? 

May

May proved to be another productive month, as I now had a couple of GBHL tournaments on the horizon, and as I always say, these are a perfect motivator for painting models. Most of my focus was on a display board for the Seven Stones event, but I also painted some models for the army I'd be taking – Theoden, Gimli, a Rohan captain and half a dozen Royal Guard. I also managed to paint up Eomer, a dozen Riders of Rohan and a banner bearer too – a very Rohan-centric month!

June

A very evil month in terms of models painted, and also very monster heavy – I used the Platinum Jubilee weekend to paint up a host of Moria models, including The Watcher in the Water, Groblog, two Dweller in the Dark models, a dozen Moria Blackshields, a Blackshield Shaman and two Warg Marauders. I then moved on to Gundabad, painting up two Ogres, half a dozen berserkers and two Warbats – a very productive month in terms of progress, and some (literally) big models taken out of the backlog too!

July and August

Some slightly less busy months hobby-wise – I spent some time away from the painting table, including a bit of holiday time. Taking breaks however is not a bad thing – I'd already made good progress on my various projects for the year, and there was nothing to really motivate me to paint – I was on a break from tournaments, but I knew I had a few later in the year that would bring my attention back to the painting table. I did however manage to paint up a few models for the first ever Teams Championship at Warhammer World – Muzghur, two Orc Captains and an orc banner bearer. 

September

A batch painting bonanza – I had three GBHL events in October which I had to get models ready for, and barely any of them were painted. Queue some frantic weekends and evenings trying to get paint on models! Similar to January and February, I painted nearly fifty models in the space of about four weeks, including Gothmog, a Morannon orc captain, 30-odd Morannon orcs, The Witch-King (both on foot and on his Fell Beast), Amdur and a dozen Easterlings! Whilst it was very frenetic, there is also something very satisfying about finishing off such a large number of models, and it was great to see them all on the tabletop. 

October

Perhaps ironical in a month associated with all things evil, I only painted good models in October. That said, after four months of painting nothing but evil miniatures, it was time for a change. I painted up Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain, along with his son Thorin III Stonehelm, plus a dozen Iron Hills dwarves. Newer models to the range, the detail on these two miniatures is lovely – the golden armour really helps them stand out from the rest of the force too. 

November

A month that started out with a simple painting plan – finish off my remaining Iron Hills dwarves. However, halfway through November, I managed to get myself a ticket for Throne of Skulls and my plans suddenly changed – I only had a few weeks to come up with an army for the event. Fortunately, I had been planning on an army on the off-chance I got a ticket. My initial army plan was to take the Grey Company Legendary Legion, thinking I only needed to paint up the elven twins to complete the army. However, when I did a count up of the models I needed, I was short on two rangers, and they're not currently in production - cue panic! 

Fortunately, I also had Elrond in my painting queue at the same time, given that he and his sons would all be painted using the same colour scheme I used for my High Elves all the way back in January. It was at this point I remembered I also had Isildur lurking somewhere in the pile of shame, and by happy circumstance, he and Elrond (with the heavy armour upgrade) add up to 300 points, and I just happened to have 700 points of Last Alliance models already painted… In a way, this was rather fitting – I started the year by taking Last Alliance to a tournament – why not take them to my last tournament of the year too! A quick lick of paint, and Isildur, Elrond and the Twins were done!

December

A quiet month for me, what with Christmas around the corner and everything. I still had fun painting up a few more Easterlings that had been sitting in my painting queue for ages – it’s a nice way to relax when you’re finished with work for the year, in between eating as much as a Hobbit and trying to work out where on earth you're going to put the shiny new models you got for Christmas in your painting queue!

The Final Count

So, how many models did I manage to clear from my backlog over the course of the year? Well, I used a clicker to keep careful track of every model painted this year, and my final count stands at (drumroll please!)… 

Yep, I painted 254 models last year! I'm really pleased with my efforts this year – as I mentioned at the start of the post, I've managed to paint a lot of models I really wanted to get through, along with quite a few I didn't expect to paint at all!

So, is this the end of the backlog? Well, unfortunately, no. There's still a lot of models to work my way through, and I did pick up a couple of more models over the course of the year. However, I do have a few projects planned for this year which should help me make good progress through the backlog – stay tuned to see how that goes for me!

A huge thank you to everyone who's followed this series over the course of the year – hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, and happy hobbying in 2023!