IHL Interviews: Micheal Bunting

Rob: The next installment of my series of interviews sees us chatting with IHL regular, Micheal Bunting.

Welcome to the Over the Edge of the Wild blog. Would you like to take this opportunity to introduce yourself to the readers?

Micheal: Of course my name is Michael and I’ve been playing SBG for about 4 years now. I really love the creative side of the hobby, making terrain, alternative paint schemes, and building unique armies. We have a great gaming community in Ireland and I’m proud to be part of it.

Can you give us a little background your history within the ME:SBG hobby? Are there any particular highlights that stand out for you?

So when I started out with the hobby I had no affiliation with any hobby groups or anyone else that played SBG. I started out by purchasing one of the old sourcebooks and I’ve really built my collection around the scenarios and campaigns that I would have played with my close friends. I would say for me the highlights would be meeting the amazing SBG community here in Ireland and overseas. I have been to Ardacon twice now and I always love the friendly atmosphere at SBG tournaments.

You mentioned that you enjoy the creative side of the hobby, so what models are currently working on painting?

Well I have a bit of a random system to work through the backlog of models that I have. I literally roll a dice, pick out that box and that's what I'm working on. For terrain I have recently made the walls of Minas Tirith and some seige towers. For models my next batch involves Thranduils halls and eagles. I'm also waiting on a certain dragon that might skip the queue to the painting table!

Before the suspension of the League in March due to the ongoing pandemic you had been performing well at tournaments. What sort of armies were you using to achieve this success?

Elves. While I prefer playing scenarios and themed games I like to bring competitive armies to competitive events. I personally believe that this edition of the game is all about fight value and when you have fight six infantry with elven blades, they do a lot of the work for you.

You've become known for your displeasure about the restrictions imposed by the Alliance Charts. Could you please explain a bit more about why that is?

Haha, and here I thought I had ranted enough. So for me, the hobby is about creativity and fun. I would love to go to an event and see every army as a unique take on middle earth. Restricting what you can and can’t take reduces creativity as well, in my opinion. The idea of a predetermined list with clearly laid out rules is great for many people, just not my preference. I understand that it’s a hard thing to balance game play and promote creativity at the same time. This edition does it better than the last but we see a lot of very similar lists now.  I guess that’s a good thing to a lot of people.

Do you think we'll be seeing more Impossible Alliances from you as League activities resume post Covid?

It has become something of a running joke now that I will take an impossible alliance just for the sake of it. I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done. I’ll take the models that I want to take in my army and if it’s an impossible alliance then so be it. That is not something that would ever deter me from playing what I wanted to play.

Finally, before you go, what's one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out with the hobby?

So I could say about collecting the models you like, finding your local gaming community or something like that. However, my personal message to new players (and old for that matter) is to try out scenario play. The game was designed to recreate scenes from middle earth and while it has been adapted wonderfully for competitive play, I would highly recommend scenario play if it is at all possible. Removing the pressure of having to win and recreating the incredible moments we all love in middle earth is my favourite thing about the hobby. I have had some great competitive games and won some events but my favourite memories of the hobby are things like Helm’s Deep, Balin’s Tomb and other iconic moments we can recreate in this game.

 Vast Legions of Uruk Hai prepare to assault the fortress of Helm's Deep

 The men of Rohan ready to defend their Kingdom

The Pale Orc Azog attempts to end the line of Durin at the Battle of Azanulbizar

Thank you Micheal for taking the time to provide this interview. I look forward to seeing your next big narrative scenarios, maybe we'll see those Minas Tirith walls in action.