In a rundown first-floor apartment, there lived an unemployed hobbyist.

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Hello! Mae govannen! Welcome to the Here and Back Again blog and hobby project! My name is Riley, and I’ve recently returned to hobbying in Middle-earth after breaking up with the game about twelve years ago. To keep me busy painting, modeling, and gaming in Tolkien’s world (and to eventually lay the groundwork for an enormously profitable Patreon account), I’ve decided to put together a blog to help document my progress (both the fruitful and the awful), keep me motivated, and get involved in the game’s wider community.

But as those years passed, the Christmas gifts of little plastic or metal dudes dwindled, and I was informed I’d have to begin providing my own income myself, and sooner rather than later, for such eventual immaterial things like “a car” and “university”. Then, matters worsened: my local GW store shuttered its doors; those 24-packs of soldiers forming the core of every army suddenly became twice as pricey for half the amount of guys; and three other Middle-earth movies were released to nonexistent acclaim. Having lost all that enthusiasm for the game and hobby, my minis then spent the better part of a decade developing dusty enamels in the mathom-house dungeon that was my parents’ basement. 

Alas that those evil days were to be mine.

With the relaunch of the game several years ago, and the incredible snowballing effect it seems to have had since then, I’ve finally decided to get back into things and become a hobbyist again, especially now that my income has nearly dried up. Rather than doing something irrational like putting weights and a treadmill into my new home office, I’ve instead dug out my dust-encrusted minis, rigged up a painting station, and bought up as many storage containers that my closet could manage (which all went on sale a week after I had decided I needed them as soon as possible). 

With Tolkien’s themes, settings, and characters being very near and dear to me, and considering the influence his stories and words have had on how I try to live my life (I even dare to read “I Sit beside the Fire and Think” to people at parties in hopes that it will move them as it continues to move me), this blog will focus on exploring, appreciating, and representing Middle-earth through the MESBG game and hobby.

This project has been a long-time coming, although picking 22 September as a sentimental “launch day” proved a poor one if I wanted this to get any attention on the day it drops. We finally got to see the new edition’s starter set in a Warhammer Community post that went up earlier today, and, oh boy, is it looking quite decent (and it’s a good thing that article came when it did: I was beginning to really miss Gollum’s Gamers weekly emergency podcasts). In order to fill my days, I’ve already been preparing a number of hobby updates and informative posts for this blog, but, sadly, it will remain a bit of a slow start.

There were grandiose schemes to have a small series of entertaining posts to coincide with this blog’s launch: a well-lit and well-photographed battle report or two; some messy but constructive paintings to show off; and numerous, insightfully original musings on Middle-earth as represented by MESBG. Unfortunately, the heat, humidity, and unexpected downpours in the last few weeks has kept me indoors and unable to even properly prime my backlog of grey, plastic guys, and, despite having finished university courses, I’ve somehow remained very busy with school matters. As I wait for the swampy yet Seattleite conditions to dissipate, and for my school obligations to be wrapped up, I’ll remain inspired.

Once I can hit the ground running, I (hope) to crank out several dozen (ideally) acceptably-painted minis, begin working on creating my own gaming board or two, attempt to strip the paint off of all those three- or four-coloured minis I last painted from the late 2000s (yellow was often substituted for gold in those days, as was blue for purple), host a games night to provide for a scenario battle report, try to make my own terrain from scratch, and provide a little retrospective on the very first tournament I ever participated in last August (shoutout to the Ontario Strategy Battle Game League!). My unrealistic expectations suggest that these ambitions should only take a few days or so to put together. 

Aside from posts on how the painting, modelling, and in-progress projects are going, and due to being a student of history, this platform will also be used to explore the history of the game and hobby since its inception in 2001. Having decided to let nostalgia guide me, those earlier editions, expansions, and (especially) White Dwarf articles will remain a focus for this blog and hobby project alongside any attempts to keep up with the game as it is today and the game as it will become in the new edition. Although competitive play has certainly proven to be fun, Here and Back Again will be primarily concerned with narrative play and hobby efforts.

Expect exciting subseries such as “History of a Profile,” “Scenario Shoutout,” and “Supplement/Journeybook Follow-Alongs”, where I’ll go back to those original expansions released for the game, including their corresponding White Dwarf issues (which often featured incredible additional hobbying or gaming articles such as how to build an Easterling castle for A Shadow in the East or how to accurately model Ruffian architecture for 2004’s The Scouring of the Shire book), and attempt to follow them page by page as they explore their respective regions and peoples of Middle-earth.

In spite of only recently returning to the hobby, you can also expect to find amateurly-crafted, fan-made scenarios and homebrewed profiles for events and individuals that have yet to make an official appearance in MESBG (although the amount of play-testing for each might vary): the likes of Hirluin the Fair, Lugdush, and Fatty Lumpkin deserve profiles, if not official models. You can also tune in for future in-progress projects such as the building of location-specific gaming board(s) from scratch, a Fantasy Fellowship journey, and a versus-mode map campaign (to be GM’d by yours truly and played by several individuals who have been willingly coerced into participating). 

It may, perhaps, be a bit presumptuous of me to already be planning “themed” months for posts and projects, but beginning sometime in October, this blog and hobby project will also be diving spirits-first into The Rise of Angmar supplement as a way to celebrate the final hurray of the latest edition of the game that returned so many of us to Middle-earth (at least, I’ll be attempting to dive in; it might be more of a slow dip into the shallow end). It will be spooky season, after all, and I may or may not have an entire Weathertop board ready to be used for a certain new scenario.

I hope Here and Back Again will prove to be an entertaining read and deserving of your time, and, if you aren’t already involved with it, I hope you jump right into MESBG! The hobby and the world of Middle-earth are worth it. 

Thank you for reading, and thank you if you tune in later. 

-Riley