IHL Interviews - James Gibson

(Rob) In this new installment of my interview series I decided to not interview an established tournament player but instead get the views of a player near the beginning of his SBG adventure.

Hello and welcome to the blog. Would you like to introduce yourself?

(James) Hello, thanks for inviting me on. I’m James, long time ME:SBG observer, now attempting to build a competitive and worthwhile fighting force.

What convinced you to start playing ME:SBG recently?

Well. A big part of it was yourself. I remember a few years ago I got home from work and returned to find a box with Gil Galad and some high elf warriors in! I’m pretty sure that was a major hint or persuasion technique in itself.

But also my two cousins and I had been looking into starting a new hobby last year. When I sent a message out to one of them asking if they’d be interested in ME:SBG he also said he’d been looking into it and wanted to make the plunge right away! (he’d been a previous collector before when he was a child)

Along with this I’ve always loved the Lord of the Rings and had previously collected models from when I was younger around 13/14 however never really battled with them.  So it was probably a no brainer that I’d get drawn in eventually!

Ah yes, the incident with the High Elves, I was barely involved, I just gave them a little nudge out of the door.

So apart from a surprise package of Elves, what army did you decide to start with and how did you go about building it?

Haha! Well seeing as they were painted extremely well they’re definitely welcome in my collection! Especially as I am also aiming to create a last alliance force in the near future.

So it started with going halves with one of my cousins on the battle of Pelennor fields box set. Which may I add is a damn good set especially helpful are the starter scenarios which really helped us ease into the rules.

The half I opted for was the forces of Mordor. If I’d known how powerful Rohan were going to become when purchasing it I may have tried to prise them away from my cousin. Ha! But I’ve had some serious fun with the forces of Mordor and I quickly added Gothmog, Shagrat and Gorbag to the collection. I’ve had little use of the Witch King which I’ve mainly put down to not being experienced enough to get the best out of him and the troll just hasn’t performed. I will say however that when I’ve used him as a troll chieftain in some friendly battles with my cousins he has performed remarkably well. Killing Celeborn numerous times. Actually now I come to think of it I’ve used him three times as a chieftain (using the black gate list) and he hasn’t died once.

My aim at the moment is to head towards a Cirith Ungol inspired force of around 500 points. Lead by Shagrat with Gorbag tagging along and get Shelob involved too. However to keep it quite competitive with my cousins army of a Rohan and Lothlorien alliance I’ve kept the Morannon Orcs in, instead of Mordor Orcs as they’re just so beefy for their points and a few black Numenoreans have been thrown in mainly for their terror but also to make up the points. I don’t own any Mordor Uruk hai yet but probably will soon enough. Especially as they’re more easily available now. 

The overall aim for my two cousins and myself is to have two armies of 750 points one being good and the other evil. So at the moment my forces of Mordor are battling a Rohan/Lothlorien alliance and an Isengard force quite regularly.

We have all played with each other’s armies which has made it very interesting and I’ve also used the fellowship in a battle which was extremely fun to try, especially seeing my opponents face as hobbits were felling Uruk hai to win me the game.

What is it about this game that you have enjoyed best since starting?

Definitely the battles. Controlling the heroes I’ve become attached too and tearing the opponents army apart with them, looking at you Gil Galad.

Have you encountered any difficulties or challenges as a newly starting player?

A few. Painting has never been my strong point and I have grown quickly frustrated in the past, mainly when I was a teenager about my lack of skill and the amount of time taken. 

This time around I’ve vowed to spend some more time with the modelling aspect than I did in my teens. 

On the advice from some GW staff I ended up buying quite a few contrast paints and followed a few guides on the GW painting app. The results were terrible. I was painting a Morannon Orc and other than the cloth the model just didn’t look right. So after seeing some other advice online about using it as a tool rather than an alternative it’s decreased my frustrations at it.

Another frustration has been elves. Fighting elves is sooo annoying. Ha

I know you haven't been to any SBG tournaments yet, but is that an aspect of the hobby you would be interested in and what would you be looking for in a tournament as a new player?

Yes it will be something I’ll hopefully look into. Especially once I’m confident in all the rules and battling.

My local group* (which I’m still yet to meet) were due to hold a small tournament. However this was put off due to the recent Corona pandemic. Once this is rescheduled I will aim to attend that as my first one.

Having my army painted is a priority first.

Hmm. What do I want in a tournament, well for a beginner like myself I’d want it to be friendly first and foremost just in case I get some rule wrong and seeing as I’m quite competitive I’d probably like to see myself win at least one game! Ha ha

*Sheffield and Chesterfield Middle Earth SBG

Thank you greatly for being a great interviewee and hopefully we'll be able to catch up with you soon to catch up on your SBG journey and how you get on in your first tournament.

Conversion Corner - Evil Edition

One of my favourite parts of this hobby is converting models to give them a unique look, fit a narrative better or to represent a different profile or wargear option. I've already shown off one of the conversions that I'm most proud of in a previous post (my version of the ranger Elgarain from the fan film Born of Hope) and I thought I'd show off a few more in the hopes inspiring some of to try some conversions yourself while under quarantine or lockdown due to this global pandemic.

Orc Warriors

These conversions came about because I didn't want to have loads of repeated poses in a large orc force, so changing some of them up gave some variety of poses. Most of these conversions are either reposed arms or kit bashed with other kits with some minor green stuff work to fill the gaps.

Dragon Knights

Another conversion done simply to avoid having multiple models with the same pose was this group of Dragon Knights which were made for a Cult of the Dragon themed Easterling army. An incredibly simple conversion to either a shield or bow from an Easterling warrior and replace it with an extra sword (or two in the case of the bowmen) that either cut from another Easterling or made using a green stuff press mould.

Spectre

One of my favourite conversions to date is this Spectre made for an Angmar army I took to Ardacon 2017. Made from a plastic High Elf swordsman with reposed arms and a slumped head to give it a sinister feel. The paint job on this was something of an experiment with everything except the metallics being done purely with multiple wash layers over white primer. He signpost on the base was made from a coffee stirrer and a matchstick.

Orc Tracker on Warg (also known as Snipey Magee and Woof)

Another model that was converted for my old Angmar army was this Orc Tracker on Warg. There is no official mounted tracker model but this is a nice simple conversion done by snipping away the base tab and carefully filing the gap between his legs until he fit on top of the Warg. Since building him, he has been one of my favourite models to use in game, he even (allegedly) killed something once.

Alternate Tournament Scoring System

Over the past few months several members of the Irish Middle Earth community have been working tirelessly on modifying the tournament scoring system and finally, following much play testing at the last few tournaments and a few tweaks it is finally ready to be released into the wild for other Tournament Organizers to use if they so wish.

Why do this?

It was felt that the current win/loss based scoring didn't always reflect the result of a game. For example, scraping a 1 VP win is scored the same as a 12-0 thrashing. Similarly a narrow defeat was punished the same as a rout.

Therefore an alternate system was devised that rewarded players for securing big wins while minimizing the effect of narrow defeats by making sure that every victory point counted.

How it works

Players play their game as normal and work out the Victory Points as explained in the scenario rules.

Then, instead of just recording a win, loss or draw they calculate the VP difference. Each player starts with a base score of 12, to which the VP difference is added or subtracted to give a score of between 0-24. This is their Tournament Points that is used to determine the rankings.

Example

Leo beats Boris 8-2 in a game of Lords of Battle. Leo has a VP difference of +6 so will score 18 TPs (12+6). Boris has a VP difference of -6 so will score 6 TPs (12-6).

Ireland's Most Popular

So far in 2020 the Irish Hobbit League has held 4 tournaments with a total of 61 army lists having been used. Now while writing up these lists for previous blog posts I was noticing that certain Heroes were appearing a lot more often than others and I started wondering what the most popular Heroes were among the IHL community. After a lot of studying and an Excel spreadsheet I finally found out what were the IHL's most popular Heroes. As an interesting aside I found that 105 different Hero profiles have been used so far this year.

Firstly, before we get onto the rankings, a few rules. 

1. Generic and named heroes will be ranked separately. Any hero that can be taken multiple times in the same list will be categorized as generic.
2. A Hero had to have been used by more than 1 person to qualify for the rankings. No one person taking 5 Moria Captains and sneaking a spot in the top 10.
3. Rankings will be based on total number of times used, with number of different people using them as tiebreaker

Only 6 generic heroes met these criteria. They were:

5=. Dol Amroth Captain
5=. Rohan Captain (3 appearances by 2 players)
4. Herald of the Dead (4 appearances by 2 players)
3. Orc Captain (4 appearances by 2 players)
2. Abyssal Knight (6 appearances by 2 players)
1. Barrow Wight (7 appearances by 3 players)

So, onto the named hero rankings, in reverse order:

8=. Elrond,
8=. King of theDead,
8=. Cirdan (5 appearances by 3 players)
4=.  Theoden
4=. Gamling

4=. Legolas Prince of Mirkwood
4=. Dernhelm (5 appearances by 4 players)
3. The Witchking (6 appearances by 6 players)
2. Thranduil (7 appearances by 5 players)
1. Eomer (7 appearances by 6 players)

This list really highlights the popularity of Rohan currently, with 4 of the top 10 being Rohirim. Thranduil's Halls is also a popular army at the moment with both Thranduil and Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood appearing in this list. Interestingly, if you combine Legolas' two profiles (Prince of Mirkwood and Greenleaf) then he would have finished clear at the top with 9 appearances by 7 players.

Only one Evil Hero made it into the named top 10, the Witchking, whose availability in both Angmar and Mordor helped him up the leader board. This shows some of the discrepancy between Good and Evil currently. In contrast, the top 3 generic heroes were all Evil.

I was somewhat surprised that Eomer came 1st, he's not one of the names that immediately springs to mind when considering top heroes. However, he is one of the top Heroes within Rohan thanks to him having 3 Attacks, 3 Wounds and 3 Might, so with the popularity of Rohan currently it's not terribly surprising their top hero is the IHL's most popular.

We'll come back to this topic later in the year to see if the Marshall of the Riddermark can retain the top spot or if another challenger will take it from him.