Well, 2023 has been a year - and it's been full of hobby fun! With Fantasy Fellowships, the Minas Tirith board, several tournaments, and lots and lots and LOTS of Morannon Orcs, there's been a lot to keep me busy during my off nights. I haven't officially done the hobby bingo challenge before, though I've always looked at the boards and thought, "I should do that." Well, this year, I said, "Darn it, we're gonna do it this year" - and I am proud to say that it turned out pretty well. Let's have a look!
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
Row #1: Lots of New Models (and some movies and a tournament)
Our first square in the first row requires us to start a new army, and for me this year, that was easy: Corsairs of Umbar! Throwing weapons are my thing and these guys have them everywhere. I also had these models sitting around for a while, so I don't have all the guys I painted shown here because . . . well, I need a guy for another bingo box:
Box two is easy - watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, I watch the extended cuts every year at least once, usually while I'm working on batch painting something or working on a terrain project. It took me longer than usual to watch them this year, since I had to catch up on a bunch of Star Wars shows, but I finished watching the extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring on June 28th, The Two Towers on August 14th, and The Return of the King on September 9th.
Box three was checked off on June 24th when I attended our annual Grand Tournament - I got last place with a Quest of the Ringbearer Angmar army (you can read about my process of picking that list here and some thoughts on the scoring system - and a brief overview of my games - here).
Box 4 requires scenic bases for one of my armies and I decided to showcase my basing style for my Erebor Dwarves, as shown on Ori. The bases were done by painting white through a dryer sheet, then washing in black, then spot-highlighting in black, and then making piles of gold and emeralds from green glitter, PVA glue, and gold paint:
Finally, I needed to finish a Good army of at least 600 points. Because of the way Hobby Bingo works, I wanted to have a list that "just" reached 600pts (because I need elements of this project to cover multiple boxes, and you can't double-count a model) and since I spent quite a bit of time this year converting up Grim Hammers, Warriors of Erebor, and Thorin's Company heads into a War of the Ring era Erebor Reclaimed list, I figured I'd grab over 600 points from them. You can see here Thorin III Stonehelm, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Nori, Dori, Gloin, and 7 converted Iron Hills Dwarves with shields and spears:
In the second row, we start off needing to paint a monster, so for me that was easy: I'll do up that new Mordor Troll I got in the Battle of Osgiliath starter set. I love Mordor Trolls - but usually if they're carrying a War Drum or manning a catapult, so this guy was an easy choice: give that boy a drum (and the option to man a catapult)! This guy still needs a name - drop your thoughts in the comments!
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| Current front-runner name is Alex . . . because the Troll Chieftain is Gregg #Taskmaster |
I then needed to paint a model that's been waiting in the pile for over a year, and for that I have the last Corsair of Umbar that I got from Rythbyrt for my birthday a few years back that has been languishing:
The Winter Whirlwind Tournament came in clutch for me in box 3 as I got to play against not one but two new opponents (Ethan and Tyler) - both games were really fun, though one was very, very intense (you can read about them here)!
Box four is another given - I re-listen to the audiobooks of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings every year (I own the 1990s recordings narrated by Rob Inglis, and just picked up the Andy Serkis recordings on Audible). I finished The Hobbit on St. Patrick's Day (March 17th), The Fellowship of the Ring was completed on March 31st, The Two Towers was completed on April 11th, and The Return of the King (sans the appendices) was completed on April 28th. For those keeping count, these were finished well before I made the time to rewatch any of the films . . .
Box 5 required a display board - and the choice here was simple: finally finish up the barrow terrain needed for my Quest of the Ringbearer Angmar army!
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| No bells or whistles in this army - just Orcs, Wild Wargs, and a few Warg Riders . . . oh, and a Wild Warg Chieftain and FOUR Barrow-Wights! |
Row 3: Lots of Bad Guys (especially Orcs)
Row three begins with starting a new battle company - and while I haven't played any battle company games this year, I did manage to paint up 8 Haradrim in January for a Harad Battle Company!
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| The bowmen bases are awaiting inspiration - I want them to look like their standing on a howdah. |
Like the Forces of Good army we've already seen, box two required me to complete an evil army of at least 600pts and for that there was only ever going to be one option: Mordor. Thanks to a bunch of hero conversions from spare Morannon Orcs, I had quite the list of models to choose from. Not being able to take the drummer troll really cut into my options, but with a bunch of Morannons and converted Captains, I got a pretty good pile of Orcs to count. Featured here are my proxies for Goroth, Guritz, Zagdush, a standard Troll (Peter), a converted Morannon Orc Captain with shield, one Morannon with shield/spear/banner, 4 vanilla Morannons, 4 Morannons with shields, 4 Morannons with spears, and 4 Morannons with shields and spears:
I know you're supposed to check off the center box automatically, but in going through my collection, I found quite a few models (especially from Numenor, Rivendell, and Lothlorien) that were half-way based - the bases weren't black, but they didn't have anything on them. So . . . after a LONG set of nights of flocking . . . and more flocking . . . and painting rims on bases . . . I can say I checked the box!
Box four requires two Heroes of Valour to be painted - one good, one evil. For Evil, the choice was super simple: Gothmog (you know, because I got the new set - but not the mounted model I needed above). For Good, I decided to pick the conversion I did for Balin, Champion of Erebor - I'm super stoked with how this conversion came out!
Box five was a super simple one for me - we finally did Fantasy Fellowships this and there were a bunch of missions post-Amon-Hen that I'd never played any variant of before (the ones that show up before Amon Hen were all variants of the scenarios from the old Fellowship of the Ring journey book, which Centaur and I played through years ago). So, I decided that I wouldn't do just one. My favorites of the new scenarios we played were the Deeping Wall Is Breached (you can read about it here) and Osgiliath (which you can find here).
Row 4: SO MANY DWARVES!
Row 4 starts off with the requirement to convert a model up to be different from before . . . and boy was there a lot of that this year! I'm choosing to showcase the Dwarves of Erebor that I don't need for any other boxes: Thorin, Fili, Kili, and Oin (so glad I did the head swaps for Kili and Oin)!
Box two required entering a painting competition, so I decided that the TMAT THRO tournament would have a painting competition . . . just so I could check off the box for hobby bingo. :)
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| That moment when you decide to redo the flame effects on your Balrog and it kind of works out! |
Box three required watching all the (extended) Hobbit films, which was again a gimme, but particularly so since my son Gorgoroth was reading The Hobbit this year so he could watch the films with me (extended cuts for the first two, theatrical for the third) - it was awesome watching with him! I don't recall when I finished the first two extended films, but I finished the extended cut of the Battle of Five Armies on April 15th (Gorgoroth finished the book and watched the theatrical version of the Battle of Five Armies on June 5th). In an interesting turn of events, Gorgoroth submitted The Hobbit to his book club as their third book to read this year - and it was randomly drawn! So yeah, he actually read The Hobbit twice this year and watched the classic animated film a few weeks ago.
Just like we needed to paint two Heroes of Valour, now we need to paint two Heroes of Fortitude. For this, I turned to two models I'd converted up this year: Bombur, Champion of Erebor (my favorite of the Champ conversions) and Gothmog's Enforcer.
Finally, I needed to practice a painting technique I hadn't tried before and I decided to showcase an OSL project I did this year, which involved about 20 black washes to make Bilbo look like he's in the dark, followed by a very sharp blue being cast by Sting:
Row 5: Pretty Much Just Gandalf (and some Dwarves)
In Row 5, we start off by needing to paint a member of the Fellowship - and for that, I decided to paint Gandalf the Grey on foot and mounted. This is actually the second version of the foot sculpt that I've owned, but my son wanted my other one. This one is here to stay (probably as my Shire version, though).
Box two required painting a model within 48 hours of receiving it - and boy did I think ahead on this one! As soon as my box of Warriors of Erebor arrived, I opened it, popped a guy off the sprue, cleaned up the sprue lines, and got him painted and based the following day - DONE!
The third box requires us to put together a scenery kit, and since I didn't get the buildings from the Battle of Osgiliath box set, I knew GW scenery just wasn't going to be a thing. So instead, I bought the ramshackle raft file from Zorpazorp as well as the siege tower file from Conquest Creations and backed Jacob's Kingdom of Durak Deep project on Kickstarter and printed a bunch of the buildings and 48" of walls. The rafts and siege towers were needed for Fantasy Fellowships. Do these count, though? I'm counting them. Here's a few photos for your viewing:
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| Zorpazorp Ramshackle Rafts - or "bridges" if you ask my children . . . |
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| Conquest Creations Kingdom of Durak Deep walls, used at THRO 2023 - I ended up gifting these to my youngest sons for Christmas because they love them so much (and because we couldn't find anything else to get them for Christmas) |
Box four required two Heroes of Legend (one good, one evil), so I painted up Dalamyr to match my Corsair contingent and, of course, painted Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain:
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| That's an Easyerling Kataphrakt sword, by the way . . . |
Last box - and it's a member of Thorin's Company. Seeing as how I converted up all those Dwarves into their champ versions, I didn't think painting the "bagged Dwarves" really counted (I just painted their feet). So . . . I painted up Gandalf the Grey from my new Thorin's Company blister instead. :)
Conclusion
And that's it - all 25 squares filled out for hobby bingo. Technically one of those squares wasn't met by GW products (the scenery kit), so if you want to be particular about GW only products, I didn't get that one. Still, the process of pushing myself to do different things was really great and I'm quite happy with this year's progress. Until next time, happy hobbying and have a happy new year!
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