Happy New Years!

It doesn't seem more than a day ago that it was Christmas eve. The last few days have well and truly gone in the blink of an eye.

So what did I get for Christmas? Enough to keep me busy for a long time.

A warband of Dunlending warriors which includes a chieftain
A box of wild men
Thrydan foot and mounted
An Uruk Scout command pack
Galadhrim command pack
A box of galadhrim knights
Haldir and Celeborn
And to top it all off the new War in Rohan book!

Now, the tradition seems to be looking back at the year, so let's get into it.

We started off around the end of January. Not sure what made me do it, but during a trip to Nottingham with my partner I visited Warhammer World. I had no idea that Middle Earth SBG had just released under a new edition. I purchased the rules book, and before long found myself with the armies book, a box of Uruk Scouts and all the paints and tools required to assemble them. I already had Lurtz, Ugluk and a bunch of beserkers home so I was ready to field a small army of around 500 points.

I had the models, but knew of nobody around the area that played, barring a few but these out their efforts into "optimal meta" armies and that clashed with my themed play style. A quick search of the local page gaming store pages found a chap willing to give me a game. I quickly got the hang of the game, and played the guy a second time, this time with the aid of Mordor orcs and an Isengard troll! I also met and played another gentlemen. This was all well and good, but the journey to the game and back wasn't great and left only around 2-3 hours of play time. A long way to travel for a single game. Around this time I'd began looking into other wargames and was quite Charmed by the simple skirmish game called Frost grave. Through this I met Richard Y, who invited me to join the KIA gaming group, and this really was the gateway into the wargaming world for me.

I steadily attended every club day I could, playing a variety of games such as Middle Earth, Frost Grave, Bolt Action and finally putting to use my Cromwell and British Airborne that I'd received some years before...
Of course the other game I played, and got fully stuck into was Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. I now have a 2000 points Empire army... A lot of painting to do!
I also went to two all day games, with Pelennor Fields and The Black Gate Opens, using the War of the Ring system.

And then on the painting front, I've slowly progressed to a point where I'm happy with my results. I have two major flaws with painting, a lack of patience and very high standards! It's been tough but I find I'm getting used to layering, high lighting, shading etc and can now produce miniatures to a table top standard. I'm particularly happy with my latest two miniatures, Thrydan on foot and the uruk scout captain with two handed axe. Photos of these will appear on a blog post some time soon.

So where do plans lie in the future? Well I will fully assemble, paint and base my Dunland and Isengard army, before purchasing Sharku and enough warg riders to field 500 points of the Wolves of Isengard. Many games of LOTR await including me and Richard B continuing our journey books campaign, expect and update on that in a new post shortly.

And on that note, I hope you all achieve your hobby goals this year!

Happy new years folks,
Have a good one.