In the hobby calendar, May can only mean one thing – it's time for Seven Stones!
Once again Sam and I paired up and immediately tried to work out what our army was going to be – we've had some fun themes over the years – from our back to back armies themed around Azog's hunt for Thorin, Theoden's ride out from Helm's Deep, and of course our Kin-strife army, which won us the much coveted Best Army award which, in Seven Stones terms, means the overall winner of the event.
For last year's event, we went with an army themed around the BBC series The Traitors (complete with our very own Claudia to oversee proceedings) – you can read about how we made that army here: [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2025/06/?m=1]. Unfortunately, it turns out if you bring the most treacherous models in Middle Earth together on the tabletop, they don’t perform well together [who knew?], and we ended up claiming the wooden spoon for finishing dead last.
For this year, we brainstormed a few ideas before eventually settling on the theme for our army – The Battle of Azanulbizar. This is the battle that is told by Balin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, where King Thror is slain, Thrain goes missing and Thorin earns his title Oakenshield, slicing off Azog's arm in the process. However, the actual battle of Azanulbizar plays out very differently in the book, as set out in Sam's Seven Stones post [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2026/06/?m=1]
To try and represent the battle as described in the book, we came up with several different house rules for our army. First and foremost, Thrain needed to be the Leader, and the army had to have Thrain, Thorin, Dain and Nain, Lord of the Iron Hills. And because we were hunting Azog, we gave every model the Hatred (Azog) special rule. [And if you’re wondering, no, we didn’t play Azog the entire weekend, so the rule was completely pointless, but 100% themey, which is perfect for Seven Stones!]
Next, we came up with some more model specific rules, to represent other parts of the battle:
Battle Wounds: In the books, Thrain loses his eye in the battle – to represent this, he starts the game with one wound less.
The Oakenshield: Thorin starts the game armed with a shield, but if he suffers an unsaved wound, he can then use the Oakenshield special rules [exactly like the book]
Azog! Azog! Azog!: All dwarves must charge an enemy model if able to do so.
Ironfoot: In the books, Nain was slain by Azog, who then tried to flee back to Moria when he realised the orcs were losing the battle, but he was caught by a pursuing Dain. To represent this, if Nain was slain during the game, Dain gained +1 strength, but -1 Defence, and had to either charge or move as quickly as possible towards the model that killed Nain [essentially the rules that are used for Elladan and Elrohir]
Our last special rule was designed to represent the dwarves of the Iron Hills arriving late to the battle – instead of deploying normally, warbands led by Nain and Dain instead arrive via the Maelstrom rules, except our opponents were the ones who decided where they would arrive from.
So, special rules decided, it was time to prepare our armies!
We decided that actual Iron Hills dwarves might be a bit too competitive for Seven Stones, so instead, we converted some dwarves to look like Iron Hills dwarves – I bought a box of Grim Hammers, deciding that their heavily armoured appearance would suit the style of Iron Hills dwarves. Instead of their hammers, I used the spears from the Warriors of Erebor sprue. Fortunately, I had a few spare Iron Hills arms and shields – I was able to use these to help improve the Iron Hills aesthetic, but I kept the spearheads from the Warriors of Erebor to ensure that they all matched. After a bit of work with clippers and Green Stuff, my unit of "Iron Hills" dwarves was ready for painting!
Having taken spears from several Warriors of Erebor, I decided that I would convert some of those to have axes and shields instead. The conversions were in essence simple hand and weapon swaps, but I ended up with some really cool looking Erebor dwarves.
I also decided I would convert Thrain slightly too – I ended up re-posing his arms, trying to look like he was rallying dwarves to him, sounding their charge. A bit more Green Stuff, and Thrain was ready to lead his dwarves into battle!
Next, I needed a Dwarf King to represent Nain, Lord of the Iron Hills. There are some very nice Dwarf King models available, but Seven Stones is an event that is all about hobbying, so I decided I wanted to convert my own. I started with Floi Stonehand as the base model, before removing his head and re-posing his arm. I then added the head from the old Balin, King of Moria model. What then followed was a fiddly process of resculpting both the beard and the model's arm, but I was very pleased with how it came out – I then added the axe head from the Balin model, and Nain was also ready for painting!
So, to painting. Sam had also done his own conversions, and came up with the colour scheme for the army, which I then copied so that we would match – Sam has set out the colours used in his own Seven Stones blog: [https://eastangliasbg.blogspot.com/2026/06/?m=1]. After a few evening's work, the models were ready for the tabletop!
Thrain and his Erebor dwarves were painted in the exact same way as my Army of Thror dwarves – I then based them differently to the Iron Hills dwarves, to represent the wooded area Thrain and his dwarves are driven back to in the battle.
So, with the painting all done, my half of our Seven Stones army was ready for battle!
The last thing I needed to do was paint up some Hunter orcs to fight against the dwarves – these were quite fun to paint as they were a nice change from all the armour on the dwarves – I only painted a few orcs, rather than a whole horde, as the display board we were working on would be showing the battle as the Iron Hills dwarves arrive on the scene and drive back the orcs.
Next up, we needed some objective markers. Sam painted a couple of slain Hunter Orcs, and the pillar which marks where Durin first looks into Mirrormere, the lake near the Gates of Moria. I, on the other hand, converted the last remaining Grim Hammer to be the slain Frerin, son of Thrain, before sculpting the leftover Green Stuff from the Iron Hills conversions to be the pouch of worthless coins the orcs pay the dwarves for the killing of Thror.
We also decided to add two other objectives to our board, to tie in with another Seven Stones tradition of ours - the gifting of Freddos! We decided the theme of the giveaway would be the dwarves hunting for Azog, who would be hiding in disguise in our opponents' army – should the model survive the game, Azog has escaped and our opponents get Freddos. If the model doesn't survive, Azog has been unmasked, but they still get Freddos anyway [Simple, right?].
It was as we were discussing the unmasking of disguised Azogs that we were suddenly inspired to add two heroes who are very good at unmasking people in disguise to the board:
Yes folks, these were our newly recruited "Azog's Hunters"!
As to the event itself, the army performed surprisingly well, winning three games and losing three games – a very nice return considering we failed to win a single game at last year's event! We did however continue our tradition of being the first ones to be knocked out of the Arena of Champions – for some reason everyone decides to pick on us!
Also, I have already started plans for Seven Stones 2027! Early, I know, but I'm looking to do something rather special – 2027 will be ten years since I first attended the event, so I want to try and commemorate it in some way – keep an eye out for a future blog where I reveal the contents of this box:
So, with all those models done, it's time to look at the painting count for the year. I have also been working on several other projects alongside my Seven Stones force, and have been on a very productive hobby kick of late – so much so that those projects and the Dwarves have helped me reach a total of 104 models painted so far year! I am super pleased with my hobby progress this year – I am now halfway towards my goal of 200 models for the year, and already have some more projects lined up which should help me get closer to my target – stay tuned to see what those are!
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