A return to Middle Earth

I have been busy the last few weeks. I had one of the most beautiful experiences in my life, the birth of my firstborn son, Robrecht.

It took up most of my time and after finally finishing the afrikakorps I'm ready to return to Middle Earth.

I started with a bunch of new purchases and reordering the cabinets.

I managed to buy a few oop models that I still needed. By now, only 44 models remain and I have the complete collection!

I even obtained the rare Weathertop model:

Gondor at war: second scenario + building my own bar for the mancave

"This city of Osgiliath has been reclaimed for Gondor!"

We played the retaking of Osgiliath scenario in our Gondor at war campaign. It was an easy win for Gondor. The scenario felt very unbalanced. 19 bows against a few orcs was just a masacre. And when the orcs clashed against a Minas Tirith shieldwall with F4/F5, banner reroll and +1 to wound it was done. Even the troll stood no chance against Boromir with banner.

Next up: ambush at Itilien.

In the mancave I made some more progesss. I built my own bar with some palettes. Now I just need a few barstools.

Meanwhile the extra shelves arrived for my display cabinets so that will be the first job to finish.

2018: recap

2018 has come to a close! I accomplished for the second year in a row my yearly goals:

• Painting more lotr models then I buy 
• Buying more lotr models then Games workshop releases.
• Painting at least 100 models

In total I painted 168 Lotr models, 68 more then in 2017. The fact that I just bought a house which I'm renovating makes this figures even more strange. although I cheated a bit with a quickly painted goblin town army :p.

In total I have 2283 models in my collection and 1351 of them are painted. I'm still 70 models off a complete collection. 

This year I will once more set the same goals as last year but add another one: finishing the mancave!

I already started with cleaning it up a bit:

Some display cases, I still need to arrange them and buy some more shelves:

View from the other side. The table in the middle is multifunctional. It has a billiard golf table inside or I can turn the tabletop and it is just a normal table.

Still need to sort some stuff out and fix the lightings.

Some extra storage:

And my compact painting station. I paint downstairs because the wife doesn't like it if I would spend all spare time in the mancave 😛.

And as you can see at the moment  I'm working on a new Mumak.