Farewell to Middle Earth...

....for the time being at least. After painting up a fair number of dwarves over the past few weeks, it was nice to get them on to the battlefield. Round at the wargaming dungeon, they faced their hated enemy, the orcs of Sauron. I would have liked to have tried Strategy Battle Game, but we could not remember the rules so settled on the much simpler Dragon Rampant. It's not my favourite ruleset for a number of reasons, but it's always useful to have an easy to play system.

I didn't manage to get too many decent photos, which is just as well because the dwarves suffered from some poor dice rolling, which (to my mind or maybe it's my imagination) always seems far more punishing in this ruleset. One or two failed activations can really swing a game in a drastic fashion. Suffice to say, there was few things to celebrate in the hold that night. This pint was only half drunk! Still, it was good to get the dwarves showing off their freshly painted kilts and stretching their little legs for a change.

A couple of days later and I was heading out to a local cafe for a coffee and consolation cake (after England were knocked out of the World Cup the night before). The cafe is positioned above a second hand bookshop and in the main entrance I found a copy of Tolkien's Children of Hurin. A lovely clean hardback copy at a third of the cover price, which was more of a consolation than the cake could provide. Every cloud has a silver lining (this one illustrated by Alan Lee). Some reading to look forward to later in the year - I always think Tolkien is best appreciated in the autumn.

So it's a fond farewell to Middle Earth for the moment. I have moved on to another of my painting projects. I still have more dwarves and orcs to paint, hopefully I will pick them up again later in the year. I am also trying to develop a game system of my own, initially based around these two foes, so they will be out of their boxes a few more times throughout the year. The road goes ever on and on.......