Welcome to my first blog post for 2026, where I take a look back at all the hobbying I got up to over the last year. And a very productive year it was!
January to March – The Road to the GT
Having been able to attend [and managing to get a ticket, which in itself is not an easy task!] the GT this year after missing out in 2024, I started the year by diving into a pile of Minas Tirith and orcs for my two armies – Realms of Men and Minas Morgul.
I've painted up a lot of Warriors of Minas Tirith in my time, having collected armies themed around Pelennor Fields, Osgiliath, The Battle of Fornost and now Minas Ithil. Each time, I try to paint them slightly differently, and in this case it was using different silvers for the highlights on the armour, and blue-greys for the cloth. Combined with the scenic bases, they came out really well. I added my converted King of Men, plus his group of knights, and my army was ready to defend the cities of Gondor!
As to the orcs, I've painted no shortage of these either. The challenge with these is to try and make each model look unique, whilst trying to unify the force together – in this case, that was done by the scenic bases. Painting the Ringwraiths was quite fun too, again trying to use different colours to highlight the black robes rather than just dark greys. The spectres were fun to paint too – a nice change from the multitude of orcs. Eventually, my evil army was ready!
So, with the armies done, I built my display board, and I was ready for the GT. Whilst results didn’t go my way, it was the usual excellent weekend of fun games and admiring all the hobbying that people had done. More importantly, by the end of March, I was up to 84 models painted for the year!
April to May – Seven Stones and Scenery
With the GT out of the way, I could turn my attention to my favourite event of the year, Seven Stones! Whilst Sam and I were not expecting to retain our crown from 2024, we felt we had a fun theme of the various Traitors of Middle Earth, which we decided to tie into the popular BBC show.
We had an eclectic mix of heroes and warriors – my force had The King of the Dead, The Master of Laketown, Alfrid, Gollum, Freca, Lord Thorne and two Rohirrim Traitors. All of them were quite fun painting projects, and having seen them perform on the tabletop, some of them [but I won’t say who] may well make their way into future armies…
In between painting my Seven Stones models, I assembled and painted a collection of scenery for the club – this little project was a great demonstration of the versatility of the Ruins kit, and they all painted up pretty quickly – I took the pieces to Seven Stones, and they looked great on the tabletop!
So, with two events out of the way, plus a couple of EAHC events, I was up to 100 models painted for the year!
June to August – Build, Build, Build!
Painting took a step back over the summer, as I decided to do some hobby admin to try and condense the huge [no, that isn't an exaggeration…] pile of boxes I was starting to accumulate.
So, I grabbed the clippers, hobby knife and glue, and built a huge pile of Warriors of Rohan, Riders of Rohan, Dunlendings, Crebain, several Rohan and Dunland heroes, and of course, the Snow Troll. At the end of it all, I had assembled over 120 models, and a pile of boxes had become one big box of models ready for painting!
[Hmm, I wonder what my hobby project for 2026 might be?]
August to October – Look to the East…
Now that I was back painting, I turned to an army that has been in my backlog for a while, and one that I was determined to make my army project for 2025 – my Easterlings!
My army contains the Dragon Emperor, a warband of Black Dragons, Rutabi, a warband of Easterling Warriors, Brorgir, a Dragon Knight, and a small group of Dragon Cult Acolytes – a considerable number of models, plus the Dragon Emperor is a hobby project all on his own!
I wanted to try a new painting technique for this army, using sepia washes over silver to create the gold armour. I painted up a test model on the Battle Streams in Middle Earth Easterling episode [how fortunate!], and was really pleased with the overall look – I now had the scheme for the army!
With one model done, I applied the scheme to the rest of the army. The only models whose armour were painted in the "usual" way were the Dragon Emperor's palanquin bearer dismounts, so that I could tell them apart from the rest of the army.
Painting with washes takes considerably longer than the traditional way of painting models, because you spend longer waiting for the wash to dry, limiting how much hobbying you can do in a session. Timings aside, I really liked the final result, and the Easterlings are quickly becoming one of my favourite armies.
The characters were painted using the same scheme, and they also came out looking great. Painting and assembling the Dragon Emperor was a lengthy process, but he's such a standout model on the tabletop that it was absolutely worth it. My last additions to the army were the newly released War Drakes – the Dragon Legion was ready to march to war!
October to November – The Road to Throne of Skulls
So, as the year draws to a close, we come to one of the best events on the calendar – Throne of Skulls!
I've covered Throne of Skulls quite extensively in previous posts, so I won’t go into tonnes of detail here. Having decided to turn my Realms of Men army into Atop the Walls for the event, I spent October painting up some Citadel Guard to reinforce the army, plus two trebuchets to add some extra firepower, including a converted one to help tell the two apart
As to the heroes for the army, I added pretty much every named hero in the army list – Gandalf the White, Pippin, Hurin, Irolas and Beregond. All of these were very enjoyable models to paint, both blending in with the warriors, but having enough details to stand out [Gandalf of course stands out more than the others]
With the army done, I spent November getting the Walls of Minas Tirith display board ready for the event – whilst I didn’t get a Favourite Army nomination, I got a lot of compliments from both my opponents and other people at the event, plus two Favourite Opponent votes and three Favourite Army votes – something I was very pleased with!
December – Let's have some fun!
Post Throne of Skulls, hobbying becomes much less stressful – no event deadlines to worry about, I can just paint whatever I want! After all my Easterlings, plus my reinforcements for Throne of Skulls, I was sitting on 178 models painted for the year – only another 22 models, and I'd hit 200.
So, what to paint? A quick rummage through the backlog, I came across two boxes of Easterling Kataphracts, along with the mounted commanders set, and a banner bearer on foot - perfect reinforcements for my Dragon Legion! I also found a metal kataphract I'd bought off eBay a few months ago, so I took the cloak that comes in the kataphracts kit, and converted the model into a captain. The old metal horses have extra barding, so that and the cloak helped it stand out perfectly from the rest of the models.
The models were painted in the exact same way as the rest of the army – sepia washes over silver for the armour, then reds for the cloth. I stuck to dark colours for the horses to help the gold armour and red cloth stand out a bit more - some leisurely post-christmas painting sessions later, and my cavalry cohort was done!.
There was also one last model I managed to paint in 2025, which was on the Festive episode of Battle Streams in Middle Earth. I’d painted Tom Bombadil on a previous stream, but discovered a spare one lurking in the depths of a box of discarded miniatures. In keeping with the theme of the stream, I painted him up festive style, using reds for his hat and coat, and white for his beard - and with a Hey-ho-ho-ho Merry (Christmas)-dol, Festive Bombadil was finished!
As to 2026, I already have my tickets for the Grand Tournament in March, plus a ticket for the much-anticipated 7th City GP in February! As to army projects, there are a few in the pipeline - stay tuned to see what they might be!
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