Clearing the Backlog, Part 10 – The Grand Tournament

January was a fairly relaxing month in terms of hobbying – I painted up the reinforcements for my Assault on Lothlorien army, made a start on my Men of Dale army, and also painted a few random miniatures from the collection sitting on my desk. For February, I had the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Grand Tournament to look forward to!

The Grand Tournament (or GT, as it's also known) is usually my first event of the year – I tend to start with the GT, and then end the year with Throne of Skulls, attending various GBHL and East Anglia Community events in between. Six games played over two days at Warhammer World, with the Green Dragon Pub Quiz on the Saturday night, plus free entry to the Exhibition, so you can drool over all the lovely models GW has made over the years (plus their absolutely stunning showcase dioramas) – it's a great weekend to start your gaming year. 

I spent the couple of weeks I had before the Tournament painting up King Brand and the remaining Warriors of Dale in my planned army (the Defenders of Erebor Legendary Legion) – Brand is a lovely model, covered in some nice little details too – it helps that his wargear and white hair help him stand out easily on the tabletop, so you don’t lose him amongst all the cloaks and pointy helmets!

The Warriors of Dale have an outstanding amount of detail for plastic miniatures too – from the designs on their shields and helmets, to the flowing way their cloaks have been sculpted, they're probably some of the most detailed plastic models in the range. With them done, I added a banner bearer to the army (GBHL veterans will remember the lengthy campaign for Dale to finally get one!) and also set about converting my captain to carry a bow – I already had a captain with a sword and shield, so I decided having one to lead my archers would also be a good idea. Fortunately, the model's posed to look like he's drawing his sword, making the conversion that much easier - a simple weapon swap later, and I had my bow captain!

To finish off the army, I added half a dozen Knights of Dale. These were both a lot of fun and a real challenge to paint, mostly because of the sheer amount of detail each model has. However, I was really pleased with the end result – the models looked great fighting it out on the tabletop. They did take a while to paint however, which ended up with me applying the last bit of static grass to their bases at 1:45 in the morning in my hotel room, the night before the tournament started… 

So, feeling excited (and also pretty tired), I was (finally) ready for the tournament. My Defenders of Erebor faired very well, remaining undefeated over the course of the weekend with two wins and a draw from their three games. The Assault on Lothlorien didn’t do as well, finishing on a win and two losses, although one of these losses was due to a rather clumsy error on my part – let's just say when you're rolling courage tests after breaking, do it in the right order (I blame it on the lack of sleep!)! In the end, out of 78 players, I finished in a respectable 27th place, and went home as part of the winning team on the Green Dragon Pub Quiz!

With the post-tournament blues kicking in, my attention turned to the next East Anglia Community event, where I ran the Erebor Legendary Legion again, although this time I was trying it out with Bard II and Thorin III Stonehelm. Bard II was another lovely model to paint, styled in the same way as the Knights of Dale, but with lots of extra details to help him stand out.

Having got tired (both literally and metaphorically) of painting Men of Dale, I dived once again into the pile of random models on my desk and pulled out some Castellans of Dol Guldur. These are lovely models, incorporating styles similar to both Sauron and the Ringwraiths, with their spiky armour and black cloth. I was able to get four of these painted in just a few sessions, making them some nice additions to the slowly growing Dol Guldur force in my collection. They're not bad on the tabletop too – their Morgul Blades make heroes wary about engaging them, whilst they're tough enough to shrug off most attacks, making them a cheaper, alternative choice to Ringwraiths. 

With the Castellan's done, my attention turned to the remaining Men of Dale that still needed to be painted. However, another model unexpectedly entered my painting queue thanks to Battlestreams in Middle Earth – a fortnightly stream hosted by Damian O'Byrne of SBG Magazine and Seven Stones fame, and Steve Crowe of TopTableGaming, where they get together to work their way through each issue of the old Battlegames in Middle Earth magazine, and invite people to watch along and get through their backlogs at the same time. Each magazine comes with a particular model and a handy guide for painting it, and the featured model for this particular issue was Gothmog. A quick bit of rummaging in my painting pile later, and I'd dug out an old Gothmog and put him on a base – I then spent the course of the stream painting him up, and based him to go in my Mordor army – another model ticked off the backlog!

So, with those additional models painted, my count for the year now stands at 47 models. I'm somewhat glad that I'm not trying (or not yet at least) to beat last year's total, as I'd already be worrying that I'd painted nearly 30 more models at this stage last year. However, 47 models is definitely not a bad return from two months of painting, and I have a few projects planned for this year which should help keep the model count ticking along nicely. Stay tuned to see what I get painted next!