Gondor Complete (Lazy Update)

My Gondor force is complete! In fact, I finished it about two weeks ago. I was too lazy to take pictures at the time. But after attending the Arizona Lord of the Rings Indy Grand Tournament I had some snazzy pictures taken of the force in action.

These pictures come from Cursed Treasures, Tim Kulinkski's esteemed blog. (Link is on the right.) The top shows most of my force all lined up for display. That's why there's two of Boromir in it, one mounted and one on foot. The other two photos are actual action shots of games in progress. The middle one features my knights bravely hiding from Uruk-hai pikes. The bottom shows the start of a highly successful charge into Dwarf rangers on a hill (the rest of the men are in the background).

The GT was by far the most fun I've ever had at a tournament. I truly enjoyed all two days of the event. Overall, I placed fifth out of 14 players, which is a lot better than I expected. The standings were pretty tight, too. I put a ton of effort into painting these guys, but I knew my dull color scheme would work against me. So I didn't place for painting awards. I did, however, win best sportsman!

I took home a lot of prizes. For best sportsman I got about 300 pts of Corsairs. (More pirates!) The the first place winner, Frank Brown, graciously refused his prize and asked that it be given to the best sportsman. Since I had a tie for best sportsman (I won it only by battle point decision) I split a Far Harad force with the other best sportsman (Rob Brightwell) and took home about 300 pts of Far Harad.

So you all know what I'll be painting next! Time to go evil! Seriously, LotR is probably going to become my main game. It's a great system and loads of fun!

Gondor! I finally given in to Lord of the Rings.

Here are some mediocre pictures of a sample of my Gondor forces for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle games. This is the last of the GW "big games" that I haven't yet invested in. (I include Battlefleet Gothic in this, even though it's a specialist range game. It still seems there are a lot of players for BFG. Someday I'll post pics of my fleet.)

I am sorry that I have taken this long to discover this game. It's probably GW's best game all around. All the models are beautiful. The rules are easy to learn. The strategic element is deep. And my most recent, but now most important, criteria: you don't need 150+ models to play a game that will last an evening. This game 100% rocks!

So, I got the Gondor battle host boxed set to start and got a few heroes to lead the army (Boromir is my star leader these days, though I have Faramir as well.) I've assembled all of them and began playing immediately. I broke my vow to never play with unpainted models. But there's a Grand Tournament in July and I want to be ready for it. I don't want to show up having only every played three games.

So, while the pictures don't show it, I think I did a good job with these models. Of course, they don't really compare to many of the other great painters out there. But compared to my own progress, these are way above what I was doing this time last year. I find that the better I get a painting, the longer it takes! Weird! These pictures are a sample of 4 of the 12 that I have completed. They all look about the same.

In the wings, I've got 8 spearmen, 8 bowmen, 6 knights, 6 fountain court guard, a Standard Bearer, Beregond, and Boromir (on foot and mounted). That will complete the force for the GT, but not all the models I have. Needless to say, the Gondor boxed set is an insane value for what you get. I've put my Ogres on hold while I finish off these models. From now until the GT in July, it's basically going to be only LotR for me.