Crash and Burn

It turns out I wont be making it to Bilbo's Birthday Bash this year. The event, which starts tomorrow at 8am,  had fate working against me almost out of the gate post Adepticon and it never let up no matter how hard I fought back.  It's drag since I havent missed a local LotR event since 2009, and I was one of the last two guys who had the opportunity have said they played in all 5 of these tournaments. That honor will now fall to my Team Tourney partner, Chris. There can only be one, buddy.!

Overall it was combination of starting way too late on what I wanted to do with the FUBAD (freaking unbelievable big ass displays)  theme several of us were going for. Then life just got in way for the rest. I was on schedule even thou abit rushed until just last week when an ass kicking case of food poisoning knocked me out of the hobby game all last weekend making completion seem nigh impossible, still in my mind I calculated the sleepless hours needed to finish and there was a path!.  In the end , a last minute hiccup with child care issues for my daughters over the weekend had me saying "WTF am I doing here?" that sealed the deal for me and on Tuesday I delivered the news to our Tournament Organizer, Brent.

My mounted Witch King here is about 90% done...he was going to show up as is but since he's missing the big dance I'm putting hours more blending on him till all those color transitions are nice and smooth

Moving to dual Good and Evil armies at 750 points was quite a challenge for anyone, especially anyone with passing interest in the game since the release of the Hobbit material.  Despite my numerous fully painted armies 750 was big bump over past tourament standards and with new warband rules. I had new heroes that had to painted in both foot and mounted profiles and then the killer (FUBAD style) display which is where things went awry.

Per its registration page and what I am hearing about drops this will be the smallest field since probably the tournaments first year. A full circle closure you could say, as this will be more than likely be the swan song for BBB. Despite a brief resurgence around the release of the Hobbit, the game has suffered a steady decline overall since, I attribute this to a bunch of things, mainly
Games Workshop and its insanity and bad choices., But the crazy amount of great new miniatures games in the last couple years has had a strong hand in the fading of its diehard fanbase.  That one , two punch , combined with games overall age has put the "The Hobbit" *cough* Strategy Battle Game on the bottom of the pile when it comes to popularity.  While I'll still paint my sizable collection, when it comes to tournaments, games like Bolt Action are doing a great job of seducing all us Lord of the Rings old timers.

Whether the game becomes a one a year get together as a novelty Team event at Adepticon or sails off on the last ship to Valinor is up in the air right now. I'll be playing in the Adepticon TT this year .(especially since I missed this and I'll be right there anyway to setup and run LotHS) . but still I wish I was there this weekend. Well, I will be, but as a spectator. I told some of the guys I stop by Sunday afternoon around lunch to say hello.

Check out my pal Jeremy's awesome work over at Chef of War, he was literally cooking with gas on this project all year and knocked it out of park with his well timed Dol Guldur setup, my money is on him for all the year 5 hobby awards!..