Aragorn, You Need More Men (Backlog Clearing- Jan-June '24)

Hey all

It's been a long while since I did one of these (new year being the last), but I was heavily tied up sorting out my side of the Seven Stones project, so wasn't doing much else. But now is the time to give the first half of the year, before going back to two monthly updates.

April was the first time in the year that I painted something not for the Seven Stones force, was in April as I had an event on, where I would need the Spider Queen and her Broodlings. I painted her with a Wolf spider in mind for rough design, the washes blended them together a little too dark and hid it, but I'm not unhappy with the result.

In May/June, I needed to paint up some evil for my Azog's Legion/Hunters army for a GBHL 100pt at the end of June. I began with the 8 Hunter orcs. I used a couple of Harad bows that I had removed in building my Seven Stones force, as I found they fit the orcs' aesthetic nicely. I also painted up the last two mounted Hunter orcs that had been haunting me for years, clogging up my to-do pile (I don't seem to have taken a pic upon completion for them).

Thinking that I was done, I was horrified when, a week before the event, I realised that I still had the War bats and some Gundabad orc spears to paint. Luckily, I managed to speed through these and get them done in time. The event went better than I dared hope; lowest aim was to beat last years 1/5 result, and if I could break even with wins and losses, I'd be ecstatic. I instead ended the weekend with a split of 4/2!

The last couple of bits that I got done, were the MTO Rohan Captain, as the point was made that it was a good time to achieve the 48hr challenge for Hobby Bingo.

And finally, from my Dale project that I had almost finished in early 2022, if I remember correctly, I just had two spearmen and an archer left to have done the lot. But with the sheer amount of detail, I had been putting them off for a long time. Now, I can finally say it's done.

That's a quick summary of my hobbying up to the end of June. At this point, I'm sitting on 60 models done, so not as good as last year, but far from bad. I'll be back to my old timings again at the end of August/early Sept.