Mordor Troll

Another model thats been hanging around on my painting table waiting for some love. This is the GW Mordor troll, although its not really!

Its comprised of spare plastic parts and a body and legs cast from plaster of paris - shock horror!

For many old grognards making your own mini's was part of the hobby, plastercast being quite useful as its cheap and easy to use, although not very robust! Anyway with the advent of 3d printers it seems that home grown models are becoming a thing again so maybe we'll see more of this in the not too distant future.

I quite like the MESBG troll models from GW, at least the older ones anyway, some of the newer stuff feels a little too designed rather than sculpted. Don't get me wrong I like some of GW's new models, particularly in the 40k space but the newer MESBG ones don't blend with the older model range very well (in my opinion), not that the initial range was very good to start with!

This guys fits with my other Uruk Hai troll so I may have to tag team them and see how many heroes they can throw around.

MESBG – Isengard vs The Army of the Dead

Ok for some of you that may have read any of my other posts you’ll know what force I tend to play in Middle Earth, therefore when I say “Ouch” it is something of a spoiler for the outcome of this game!

Bryan and I managed to find some time in our rather hectic lives to get a game in, we’ve finally managed to finish the kitchen renovation so was able to set the board up with plenty of space to move around and some decent light for photos.

So this was a 600 pts game using the Clash by Moonlight scenario. I’d decided to take some wargs and a captain, a block of uruks with captain, some crossbow uruks with captain and Lurtz with a few orcs and a uruk scouts. I was going to take a few berserkers however the new rules make them particularly dangerous for your own troops as well and I still haven’t figured out how to use them!

Bryan had a bunch of dead dudes, the King of the Dead and Aragorn!

On with the show.

The first few turns saw us jockeying for position, the scenario rules scuppered any chance for me to make effective use of the crossbows, also the combination of Harbinger of Evil (-1 courage) and terror meant that Bryan had the upper hand when it came to choosing charges (my uruks would have to roll for terror on a courage of 2 to charge, the orcs on 1).

Bryan finally decided to get stuck in and in the first couple of turns my uruks held their own, their fight 4 really keeping me in the game. The Army of the Dead wound using their opponents courage value and not their defence so my troops great armour was irrelevant.

My warg riders and their captain consistently refused to pass their courage test to charge which made them into very expensive infantry rather than super useful cavalry!

Interestingly Lurtz was my man of the match, his courage of 5, 3 attacks, 3 might and high fight value really helped. They have bumped his cost up to 90pts however he’s probably worth it.

As I alluded to at the start, Bryan wiped my force out completely, even my army special rule of only taking break tests at 66% didn’t help, as soon as I hit that point the Harbinger rule meant my orcs and uruks were bugging out like the proverbial teenager after the family meal!

It was  a fun game, we’re going to have a rematch in a few weeks and I may just have to paint up Saruman and Grima to give me a few more options!

Lord of the Rings SBG Ruins

Posted by Ste

You know how sometimes you feel the urge to complete something but you don’t want to put loads of effort in, well I had that urge the other night. My painting queue is huge and hasn’t noticeably reduced over recent months. In addition I’m in a bit of funk as well and am struggling to muster up the energy to get stuck in to anything. So I figured that these would give me a much needed boost without too much effort.

They’re the ruins that came with the Mines of Moria LoTR Strategy Battle Game published by GW (and now obsolete!). I picked these up off Trademe (NZ eBay) a while ago for peanuts, they hard plastic and very easy to paint. They were based on hard card for durability and then given some texture and a grey undercoat. A few dry brushes and some flock, grass and flowers later and voila, the ruins of Ithilien!

Quite happy with these, just need some proper building ruins to complement them now.

Ruins!

This was originally going to be Frostgrave ruins but with the snowy setting would have made it feel quite restrictive so I decided to make this more "summer-y".

Once again this is a cheapo special, scrap refrigerator packaging, sand from the beach and some old hardboard. I even used left over paint from decorating the bathroom!


Scott recently made a comment that I should get some Minas Tirith scenery done, and that little thought stuck in my mind so this has morphed into Gondorian ruins from the vale of Ithilien.


Watch this space!

Cake...err...Dragon.....err.... Cake!

My wife found this on one of the many cake sites that she follows and I thought I'd share it simply because its cool!

AAR - Isengard vs Mordor

MAÚHUR - I'm starving. We ain't 'ad nothin' but maggoty bread for three stinkin' days!

SNAGA - Yeah. Why can’t we have some meat? What about them? They’re fresh.

UGLÚK - They are not for eating! They have an Elvish weapon the master wants it for the war.

GRISHNÁKH - What about their legs? They don't need those. Ooh… They look tasty!

UGLÚK - Get back, scum!

SNAGA - Just a mouth full, a bit of the flank.

Pippin and Merry recoil in fright. Uglúk jumps on the Orc and cuts off his head, which bounces off the hobbit's shoulders.

UGLÚK - Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!!

As you may have realised from the text above Orcs and Uruks will eat pretty much anything, even each other. And its with that premise in mind that Scott and I got together for a return to Middle Earth and the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. As some of you that follow Scott’s blog may know both he and his lovely wife recently purchased their own business and are very busy with this new adventure, therefore it was a stroke of luck that both of our diaries cleared at the same time to allow a little gaming to take place at Chez Bowman.

So I travelled up from my new pad in Whitby to Paraparaumu (I quote the names because it’s a great example of how wacky NZ place names can be) and arrived at Scott’s to find the board set and a rather gruesome (but lovely) Mordor force awaiting destruction by my Isengard Uruk Hai. This would be a little practice for Scott for the LoTR tournament at Call to Arms in Wellington (I’m not playing) and a good opportunity for us both to brush up on our rules and tell a cool story.

Scotts force comprised a bunch of Morannon Orcs with a healthy quantity of Orc bows, some Mordor Uruk Hai, Gothmog and Shaman (both on Wargs) and Grishnakh (hidden in the reserves).

I took Lurtz leading some Scouts and Orcs, an Uruk Captain leading the obligatory Uruk Hai (tanks!), Some Orcs lead by another Uruk Captain and some Warg Riders lead by an Orc Captain.

The mission we rolled had both of our forces split with half in reserve until turn 3.

Not much happened in the first few turns, I shifted my Uruks diagonally, taking advantage of the trees to hide from the nasty Orc archers and following up with my scouts and Lurtz (who took the heroic option of hiding at the back).

Scott wisely kept his fragile, squishy Orc archers behind his shield wall of Mordor Uruks and loosed off a few stray arrows, felling a pikeman and basically being annoying (missile fire in LoTR is pretty much ineffective and annoying, unless you have a lot of it!!!).

Then it all went pear shaped. Turn 3 and I had initiative, rolled for my reserves and got them. Woohoo. But then I rolled to see which board edge they arrived on and rolled a 3 – Scott gets to pick!

So obviously they came on miles away from anywhere. But never mind, they had captains with Might so I could call a few heroic march’s and they’d get in to position as a second wave (fingers crossed). So more shuffling on my part and my Uruks start to advance down the road to Scott’s shieldwall.

This is where the pear comes in, Scott’s reserves arrive, but luckily I get to decide where so I pick his side of the board, thinking that then he’ll just bring them on behind his already deployed troops.

But no, Scott being the evil mastermind that he is (I’m sure he has a white cat and a golden gun hidden away in his palatial manor somewhere) decides to charge on his Mordor Uruks and Grishnakh straight into my Warg Riders, totally negating their charge ability. 

What ensued was a blood thirsty killing spree and after about 3 turns I managed to extract my Warg Riders with only a few of them left. To deal with this rather annoying threat I had to detail my Orcs who were busy marching towards the Mordor Shieldwall flank to tackly the Mordor Uruks…… It wasn’t pretty.

Meanwhile I threw caution to the wind and marched straight towards the now inverted horseshoe of Mordor archery, my Uruks high defence keeping them alive. Scott also threw caution to the wind and charged in (we’d had a good natter, cups of tea and it was getting late), however Orcs’ vs Uruks is not the best match up and my Uruk’s refused to die.

We called it there, we learnt a few nice tactics (like always support with spears or pikes, never get into base contact because when they support they can’t be killed if you lose the fight).

Ahh, good times. I’m sure Scott will follow up with some kind of write up about his adventures at Call to Arms, so keep em peeled!

Its chaos at home.... so I think I'll paint some Orcs!

Soooo much is happening here at the moment that I'm running out of time to think let alone do any hobbying. However in between being the acting manager at work and buying a house I managed to paint some more of GW's LoTR figures. I know that I've being going on a bit of a GW rant recently and I do promise to tone it down (honest Robert !!) but to be honest it's just too easy. I've found the plastic orcs that they made for the Lord of the Rings strategy battle game to be bloody awful and a trial to paint. 

The detail is soft, the plastic very fragile and you have to try and exaggerate the shadows to get any definition. I'm not the greatest painter I freely admit, and therein lies the problem. Some of the older plastics are just so poor that you have to work hard to get a decent finish. I can't speak for the newer The Hobbit minis as I haven't bought any and I may never as I don't like the sculpts or style however the quality does look better.
And then you get some of the old lead minis sculpted during the Lord of the Rings Movies era and they are a joy to paint.

So here we have a single plastic orc (repaired), a converted Uruk Hai standard bearer and Shagrat. The orc was a bind and pretty boring, the Uruk was ok but then I have had plenty of practice with the previous 39 and then Shagrat who more or less painted himself and was a joy.

I didn't actually follow the movie colours or style which is probably why I enjoyed painting him as I didn't feel restricted. Very often I end up choosing colors on a whim so sometimes my minis look a little odd! Luckily that works ok in fantasy gaming, but not so great in historicals. Also I've tentatively painted eyes on Shagrat in my on going quest to give my miniatures the gift of sight, however I'm not sure my technique is right as Shagrat looks a little surprised.

These boys were painted in the course of two evenings to give myself a break from painting Saga Jomsvikings or FoW. And also because a certain someone who shall remain nameless (let's just call him Mr B) hinted that I may have strayed too far from the light of LoTR SBG.

Now I just have to get these guys on the board and roll some dice in anger, luckily I have a game planned soon.

Time to kick some Rohan butt (maybe)!

The boys go on Holiday!

I managed to organise mailing both mine and Scotts Curtgeld the other day. For anyone not in the know a Curtgeld is the entry fee for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge a yearly online painting competition hosted by Curt over at Analogue Hobbies Blog. Its fun, you get stuff finished and have a bit of fun banter with bloggers all over the world. You also learn quite a bit!

I wonder what they'll find to talk about on the
 way to sunny Saskatchewan?

"I am not sleeping in that!" stated Saruman
"Quit tha's bloody griping lad and ger' in't bag" retorted Beanomir!

The Challenge - 3 Months and what do I have to show for it.........

Well quite a lot it turns out, as the most interesting realisation for me was that I actually enjoy painting! That sounds a bit weird seeing as I've been doing it for about 17 years however I actually signed up to the challenge thinking that I'd use it as a sort of artificial project manager, constantly bugging me to deliver on my milestones and meet my deadlines, and at first thats exactly how it felt. However as the months passed I became more and more motivated to paint things that i enjoyed. Most of my painting over the years has been motivated with one singular goal - to get my armies on the table and roll dice. And yet my motivation has changed, maybe its my getting old (I hit the big 40 a couple of months before the challenge started) but i find that if I'm not enjoying painting then I don't want to do it, no matter how much I enjoy gaming with the figures.

So my plan going in to the challenge was to paint my Lord of the Rings figures, they were all based up and undercoated, and yet when I look back at what I've actually completed I find a whole of host of scales and genres - 15mm and 1/3000 WW2, Victorian Sci-fi, 15mm Sung Chinese, 28mm Dwarven Pirates and of course GW Lord of the Rings. My output was a total 82 models of which only 50% (41) were what I had planned to do.

Actually to be honest I never planned to paint the cave troll, it was more of a sanity check for myself as to whether I had the time and technique to paint 54mm (I was going to get involved in the Perry/Jackson ANZAC project but decide my sanity, employment or marriage wouldn't survive the pressure).

I think the most enjoyable models to paint were Smeagol (Gollum) who seemed to paint himself, the Victorian Sci-Fi (and especially the footie scarf!) and the Dwarven Pirates (Oooarrr).

Huge thanks to ScottB for talking me in to taking part, Mr C for hosting the crazy thing and most importantly my fellow challengers. It was great to see the range of genre's and scales on display, the varied interpretations of the bonus rounds and the quite terrifying volume that some of the challangers were able to put out!

Some of the challengers are putting up a bit of a retrospective on the challenge blog, head on over for a good nosy

Anyway here's the combined outputs of 3 months of initially frantic and then quite enjoyable painting!

Uruks-a-Mundo!

There’s one very clear benefit to me taking part in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge this year and that is it’s made me nearly complete my Isengard force for The Lord of the Rings SBG. I had one warband complete and one on the way when I started however now I’ve managed to cobble together 3 full strength Uruk Warbands (with captains), Lurtz with 5 Scouts, an Orc warband (and the makings of another) and a full Warg rider Warband.

Woohoo!

Anyway my latest (and last) submission to the challenge was the leftover Uruks that brought the warbands up to full strength (12 models) and also a final captain.

Now before anyone starts no he isn’t blonde and he doesn’t catch awesome waves dude! Believe it or not I painted his hair middlestone with the view that it would come out as a mucky blonde/white as below:

Ugluk

It was a test piece so I can try out the colouring and then go back and correct my Ugluk model who as you can see does not have completely dark hair in the films (Saruman must employ some hair stylist Orcs!).

Once the challenge is finally over I’m going to take stock of my accomplishments and do a group photo, so stay tuned.

The Final Bonus Round of the Challenge and Curtgeld

Bonus round - Anti-hero!

I had lots of things in mind however this one just kept calling to me from the bottom of the lead pile “paint me precious,paint me!”

How could I resist, and so here I present Smeagol.(aka Gollum).

Where would Middle Earth be without Gollum's sharp little teeth? After all the pain and hardship that the Fellowship go through, all the grief and loss and almost failing at the final hurdle its Gollum that saves the day. How perfect is he as an Antihero? You start off hating him, then pity him, then quite like him with his "master" this and "nasty fat hobbit" that. I personally think he fits the antihero mold quite nicely as he does have an altruistic side, albeit very well hidden. 

In both Frodo and Sam’s journey he begins to lose some of his “Gollum-ness” returning to an earlier version of himself before he was poisoned by the precious. Even when he reverts back to Gollum he still retains that desire to keep the ring away from Sauron instinctively recognising that it would be a very bad thing for Middle Earth should the ring be reunited with its master.

 But in the end its all for nought as he plunges to his doom clutching his precious (and chewing on a tasty snack at the same time). 

Great fun to paint, I went for a basic skintone in the end rather anything pasty or wasted looking. This is one of the better GW sculpts for the Lord of The Rings range, the pose is very dynamic and pretty much painted itself!

Curtgeld

This was going to be my antihero bonus round entry however that Gollum, he’s a tricky fellow and just pipped Saruman to the punch! 

Actually that’s not quite true, there is a selfish reason behind this being my entry fee to the challenge. I was originally going to submit a painted model of Professor Moriarty however when it came to painting him I enjoyed it so much that I actually wanted to keep him and so quickly started searching for something else to submit. 

"I am Saruman of Many Colours"

In steps Saruman number 1, I say that because I have two of this model and figured I could use him as a test piece for layering light colours. I wasn’t too worried that I’d cock it up as I am an okay painter and so wouldn’t be submitting a pile of junk to Curt, and I have to say I’m quite pleased with how he turned out. I figure I can do better when it comes to painting him again (hopefully really soon).

"Bugger, wrong robes!"

"Grima, be a dear and fetch my many coloured robes, they're in the second drawer down under my Backstreet Boys T-Shirts"

I’ve enjoyed and hated the challenge in equal measure (much like Gollum loves and hates himself!). It’s been a great way to motivate me to get some of those outstanding jobs done and as a consequence I have a pretty large Isengard force for LoTR/The Hobbit. Not only that but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the banter and camaraderie of the other participants and the sense of community amongst the bloggers taking part (or just observing). However I’m beginning to feel a little burnt out, and I only had a small target of 750 pts (unlike some of the others aiming for 3000+), so I’ll be a little relieved to have it finish and relax and play some games.

The overriding theme of the challenge has been Lord of the Rings for me which is appropriate I guess after having moved my family to New Zealand in the past six months, and I’m looking forward to getting a big post challenge LoTR game in with challenge compatriot Scott (who’s already promised to blog the resulting game which is good as he’s much better at taking pics!).

Anyway onward and upward, I’ve just submitted my final submission for the challenge however I did for some reason think that it ended today (16th March) when I in fact it’s the 20th so I’ve still time to try and beat my target of 750pts.

Hmmm, wait and see.