2012 Gathering in the Desert Armies

For this installment of my GiTD coverage I want to chat about the armies. The Gathering is an event that prides itself on great looking games. We have already look at the first half of the great looking game equation - the tables. Now it is time for the armies. The Gathering has a full painted army requirement which you just don't see very much. In addition the armies are graded on theme. Because appearance and theme actually entail significant points for the overall score you see some really amazing armies and stunning painting.

The appearance standards are so high that my Dwarf army I painted last summer for this event, and I am very proud of how it turned out, scored an average score for appearance. The level of detail on the top armies was really stunning. The really sad thing is that I only managed a few crappy cellphone pictures of a few of the armies and I completely missed some of the best. (Hopefully Tim will post some better pictures of all the armies)







This year had a very diverse array of armies. The format for this year was Good vs. Evil with each player choosing to play Good or Evil and bringing one 600 point army. Match-ups were all Good vs Evil regardless of the overall standings. I think this really helped inspire people to build and play interesting armies.

Here are a few of the Good armies:

Erebor
Durin's Folk
High Elves
Galadhrim Elves
Army of the Dead
Gondor
Dol Amroth
Arnor
Woses

For Evil we had:

White Hand
Urak Hai Scouts
Mordor
Far Harad (all mounted)
Corsairs
Moria (with Cave Drake)
Moria (Gundabad)

With this variety of armies, combined with the themed tables and Good vs Evil match-ups resulted in some really great games. Next up I will discuss my games. Stay tuned.