First and foremost, I need to apologise for barely posting any blogs last year. To cut a long story short, I found myself struggling to find time to write a blog, take photos for it, and then actually post it – as the year went on, I ended up losing my motivation for posting. Fortunately, after a respite, I'm back and will hopefully be posting a bit more regularly this year [and I really hope that's not famous last words!].
My hobbying in general suffered from a lack of motivation last year. I believe I can put this down to missing the Middle Earth Grand Tournament – this event is normally the motivation to kick-start my hobbying for the year, and without it, my productivity did suffer as a result.
Not to say that I was completely unproductive across the year – Sam and I put a tremendous effort into our Seven Stones project for 2024, focusing on the Kin-Strife. Our army was almost entirely converted, and we had the sacking of Osgiliath display board to boot – our efforts resulted in us taking home the coveted Best Army Palantir! It honestly still hasn’t quite sunk in that we won it, almost a year later!
With our Seven Stones done, I turned my attention to my second major project of the year – a Khandish army. Khand was an army I'd wanted to collect for some time, but as it would consist entirely of metal models, I decided to keep it small, roughly 500 points worth. I started with a Khandish King in Chariot, added another four chariots, and then filled out the rest with a warband of horsemen, led by a Chieftain. Paired with a small contingent of Easterling cavalry I already had painted, my plan was to take them to the Warhammer World Teams event in September.
Fortunately, when it comes to painting them, Khand has a fairly limited colour palette, consisting of dark greys, reds and a cream spot colour on the sashes. After a few months work, my army was ready for the tabletop. It went to Teams, where despite only winning one game with it, I had a lot of fun using them, and to cap it off, we went home with another unexpected prize in the form of the Most Sporting Opponent Trophy!
Sadly, my Khand are unlikely to be making a future appearance at Warhammer World, as the entire range became "legacy" profiles in the new edition of MESBG, which are sadly banned from GW events. However, I'm still really pleased with my efforts on them, and they will always have a place in my Middle Earth collection. And who knows, they may one day see the tabletop again – I've already converted a second Chieftain to lead my horsemen into battle!
Following Teams, this is where my motivation really took a nosedive. I was painting very sporadically, meandering from project to project with no real aim. I did however manage to find time on a Battle Streams night to paint up Arwen and add her to my Rivendell Army, plus a box of Morgul Knights and the original Glorfindel got some love. I also spent a lot of time assembling my Bretonnians for a planned Old World army, so there are plenty of future projects in the pipeline.
Painting aside, I did make a conscious decision to try and clear some old projects out of the backlog – I promptly raided my project boxes, pulled out everything I still had unpainted from my Moria collection, which consisted of around 30-odd goblins, a couple of captains, a shaman, and the biggest model of the lot, the Balrog.
The Balrog has been in my backlog for a long time, so I decided it was time to finally finish it. It can be a daunting model to paint at first, due to its size and the tricky nature of painting the flames on its back. I painted mine by using contrast paints, starting with red, working up through orange and eventually to yellow on the tips of the flames, adding a white drybrush in between each layer, so that the contrast would stand out more. I then carefully picked out all the black areas, before going over them with drybrushes of very dark greys, before using a very light khaki drybrush for the horns and wings – Durin's Bane was ready for the tabletop!
As to the goblins, they were pretty straightforward to paint – I used a simple scheme, basecoating the metals, leather and the cloth, before applying a brown wash and then applying highlights. Rinse and repeat that 30 times, and my Moria army was finished!
Well, nearly finished. There was one last model in my backlog that would mean my Moria collection was complete – a Cave Drake. This model was very easy to paint – I basecoated the scales and skin, washed them with Agrax, and then drybrushed lighter colours until I was finally using a pale khaki for a final highlight. I then picked out the eyes, teeth and spines, and he was done. As the nest that comes with the Cave Drake can be used as a marker in games, making it fearless within 3" of it [or rather, it did in the previous edition – at the time of writing, we're still waiting for its new profile in the Armies of Middle Earth book], I incorporated it into the base, using a wooden ring, building up around it with cork, and then going over the base with modelling compound. I painted it to match the rest of my Moria army, and it was done!
So, with those models done, my total number of models painted for the year came to… 135 models! Whilst this is considerably lower than the last two years (having painted 250 models in 2022 and 200 in 2023), I still consider it good progress – I've cleared over 100 models out of my backlog, two of them being large monsters, and finished off three army projects over the course of the year. Plus, this year, I am happy to say I am once again going to the Middle Earth Grand Tournament, and have already started painting my armies! This and the new edition of MESBG have got me super motivated to crack on with hobbying in 2025 – I look forward to sharing my journey with you!
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