The Grey Company

January was a good month for my revitalized gaming hobby.  I finished another long dreamed of project for LOTR (MESBG), my Grey Company.  I have had most of this stuff in the box of shame for years.  This is the project that I selected for our slow grow league but I managed to just paint it all in one go.  I was supposed to do 200 points to start and then 100 points a month until we got 600 points done.  Turns out this collection is more like 800+ points and it's only half of the planned army.   The other half is the Army of the Dead and that is just getting started.

The entire Grey Company collection.  I can't use all this as the same time but I have all the options.

Arathorn, father of Aragorn.  You can't take them both but Arathorn is way cheaper option.

Halbarad.  One with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar.

Twelve of the original metal Ranger of the North.  There are two of each pose.

Five of the six original metal Dunedain figures.  I would love to find that last figure to complete the set.

Five plastic rangers used as Dunedain.  I have my eye out for the metal Grey Company figures from the War of the Ring release.  I have never actually seen them.

The Fellowship of the Ring

 After many years away I am returning to Lord of the Rings, now known as Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game.  I last played in 2012, just prior to the release of The Hobbit.  There were many reasons for leaving the game I had grown to love, but I won't get into that now.

I purchased the first edition of the game - The Fellowship of the Ring - sometime in 2001 or 2002.  Soon after I purchased this set.

Gandalf.  Painted in 2003.  I don't think I ever used him in a game.

This is the original metal Fellowship from 2002, I think, I got them right around that time.  Back then, there were no 'armies' or 'match play'. It was all open play and there really wasn't much available.  There was a focus on recreating events from the books/movies so it made sense to buy these.  Beside, they are COOL!

Aragorn.  Also painted in 2003.  I used him in a couple games but I felt guilty so he went in a box.  Back then, we did not use to many heroes and most of my group felt they were overkill and gamey.

Intially, I painted Gandalf and Aragorn.  The rest of the fellowship was primed and I started the flesh.  I am not sure why I stopped work on these but stop I did.

Boromir.  Painted last week.

Several years later GW released the campaign books and I really wanted to work through all those narrative scenarios.  I would definitely need the Fellowship for that!

Gimli.  He could use a little more work but he is fine for gaming.

Sadly, that plan never really worked out and so these excellent figures sat in a box...for about 20 years.

Legolas.  I am not happy with his face.  Too much contrast makes him look undead.  I think I will need to redo the face.

Now that I back, I am renewing my desire to play the campaign through.  I will definitely need the Fellowship!

Frodo.  Hobbit feet are kind of tough and my eye are not too good anymore.

The Hobbits are the earliest member of the Fellowship you need for the campaign scenarios so I worked on them first.  Then you need Gandalf and Aragorn and finally the rest of the Fellowship.

Merry.  I really love this sculpt.  Ne seems so serious and determined.

I am using the old The Fellowship of the Ring campaign book from 2005.  That book has some great tutorials for building the terrain you need.  Much of it is modular in design and can be used for several scenarios and functions.  Cool old school stuff.

Pippin.  Another great sculpt!

Sam.  Not happy with this face either.  Not as bad as Legolas and I probably will not redo this one.

This one checks a lot of boxes for me; first figure painted this year, first figure painted in many months, first LOTR figure painted in more that 10 years, painted items that have been in the backlog for 20+ years!  That is a big win!

Black Knights

 Another unit for my Age of Sigmar Undead army is complete.  These are Black Knights.  These are for Legions of Nagash or they can be used as Hexwraiths for my Nighthaunt army.  The reality is I will likely never use these for AoS but I have already used them for Warlords of Erehwon.

This is a really great set by Games Workshop.  I have now built this set as the Black Knights and the Hexwraiths.  I think they look much better as the Black Knights.  I might need another box.

Q3 2020 Recap

Another quarter of the amazing, and slightly painful, year of 2020 is behind us.  Time for a recap of my hobby progress.  The idea with these recaps is to help keep my annual goals on track through the course of the year and, so far, I think it is helping.  Generally speaking, the time from July until the beginning of November is a tough time of year for me and I usually see a slowing in hobby productivity during this time.  This year is no different.

Necromunda

I have really neglected talking much about this game so far this year as most of my activity has been centered on purchases.  But this was actually my main goal for the year with this game - try and catch up on all the releases and keep up with the new stuff.  I have actually done pretty well with this so far this year.  I am still behind on the latest Escher stuff and the new Orlock stuff is coming soon so I will be spending a lot more money on this in 2020.

It has not all been about the purchases, I have made significant progress on painting my collection as well as building models.  Back in April I built the new Goliath figures.

Building is not all that has been happening.  This quarter I finally finished my long neglected Escher gang.  I started these nearly three years ago but just could not find the motivation to get them done. 

A new Necromunda campaign has started (OK it's just Tim and I playing some games) and I needed some additional members for my Goliaths so I painted a few more figures for that gang.

I have been working on painting terrain for Necromunda but so far none of it has been what I would call finished.  I have also played several games for far this year and many were in Q3.  If I do nothing else with this game this year it it will still be a big win.

Q3 was not all about Necromunda, however.  I had my first real distraction of the year in August.  I jumped into collecting Marvel Crisis Protocol.  I've not yet played the game so I have no opinion yet on the rules but the models are very cool.  The models alone are enough to make this a good purchase.

I managed to build all the models I have purchased for the game so far.

I did manage to paint one model - HULK.  The larger size of these figures will be a challenge for my painting style.

MCP is certainly a distraction as it was not on my radar at all at the beginning of the year but I have no regrets.  I love Marvel and I want to play a cool super hero game and this looks like the ticket.

There was another new game added to the collection in Q3 but this one cannot be counted as a distraction - World War III: Team Yankee.  I did say back in January that this game would likely suck me in once the new starter set was released and it did.  Tim and I each buy a set and I traded my Soviets for his Americans.  This gave us each a good starting force.  I also picked up the original Bannon's Boys set from my friend Mike, giving me more M1 and a couple of Cobras.

I managed to assemble nearly all my models.  These new TY plastic sets are really great models.

Once we have about 100 points assembled we got in our first game of the new edition.  It really played well and the game was a blast.  I thought the US forces were not going to have much of a chance against Soviet T-80 and T-64 force but I was able to pull out a win.  The game is so much faster than the WWII or even the FoAN versions.

Even though my painting production has dropped off, it has been a fun quarter for the most part.  The ongoing COVID drama is still making it hard to enjoy things but that seems to be slowly improving.

Models Assembled year to date (includes cleaning and prepping metal figures):

15mm FoW WWII - 11 (5 tanks, 2 aircraft)

15mm Team Yankee - 16 (16 tanks)

28mm Bolt Action - 8

28mm Age of Sigmar - 21 (5 Cav, 1 Mortis Engine)

28mm Necromunda - 7

28mm 40K - 7

28mm Terrain - 22

40mm Marvel Crisis Protocol - 23 (11 terrain. 1 HULK)

Total - 115

Figures painted year to date:

15mm FoW WWII - 212 (11 Tanks, 6 guns, 4 Rocket Launchers, 2 aircraft, 4 pillboxes and nests, 4 Objective Markers)

28mm Age of Sigmar - 14 (1 Mortis Engine, 2 Cav, 2 Realmgates)

28mm Napoleonic - 1

28mm Necromunda - 14

28mm 40K - 32 (17 Terrain)

Total - 273

Game Record to date:

Bolt Action 1-0-0

Gaslands 0-1-0

FoW Great War 0-2-0

FoW Mid-war 2-6-0

Team Yankee 1-0-0

Kill Team 2-0-0

Necromunda 4-3-0

Warhammer Underworlds 0-2-0