I really want to stay up and finish these Easterlings, but I'm trying hard to stay close to a proper sleep schedule. If I go to sleep a little earlier than I'm used to it helps my wife sleep better and I find I have more time and get more done in the afternoon before I leave for work.

Another hour or three of painting should see this batch of Easterlings finished off, so hopefully at some point tomorrow I'll have some pictures to post here. Close up they don't look all that great, but at arm's length they are passable.

With the progress I've been making on the painting front, I've started thinking about the Lord of the Rings campaign I want to run. I'm thinking I might project the timeline of my game out to a couple hundred years after the events in the books, which will give most of the main characters time to die off and let me set the politics of the setting a little more to my liking. That way I can still use the Middle Earth map, but I won't feel as bound to the alliances and continuity of the "proper" Lord of the Rings mythology. It also gives me an excuse not to paint elves, as they should be pretty well cleared out by then. I really have a dislike for elves.

My main sticking point with the campaign is how to run the various factions. I'd like to model alliances and subterfuge but it's rather hard to keep secrets from yourself or play both sides equally. So I'll be looking around for solo campaign systems that provide for some sort of artificial intelligence moderation for all or some of the factions in my campaign.