Friday, December 20, 2013

Escape From Goblin Town Box Set Finally Finished

As the title to this blog states, I finally finished painting everything from the Escape from Goblin Town box earlier tonight.  Yep, its been just over a year and I'm finally getting around to having the set complete.  Well, all in all I'd say it took about a month to fully paint.  Now add procrastination, getting side-tracked with other projects, more procrastination, painting 2 to 3 other armies, the random video game, working 70 hours per week all summer long and most of fall, sleep, getting married, even more procrastination, dealing with cats, using the bathroom, ect..ect...ect, then yeah... I'd say a year sounds about right.

If your looking for pictures of the whole set, you won't find it in this entry.  My desk and white backboard wasn't big enough to cover the entire Escape from Goblin Town set, but if you really want to see other pictures, click on the table that says "Escape From Goblin Town" to the right side of the webpage.

So here we go....












I tried to make the wood look a bit more authentic than most I've seen.  I added some mold stains and used the new "Blood for the Blood God" technical paint for the authentic blood splatters.  I have to say that the blood stains turned out better than I thought they would.  I also managed to paint the last 3 models from the set which also turned out pretty good.  I'm quite pleased with how it all turned out.

Now, back to painting my Erebor Dwarves...

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

A little Erebor Army WIP

As the title suggests, this isn't a finished product (rather far from it actually) but just a little work in progress footnote.  I've spent the better half of yesterday and today chopping and gluing this next set of Erebor Dwarves that will soon be hitting the painting phase.

Here is a few pics of my recent work...




Now I've browsed a few different blogs and forums and I haven't seen anybody swapping weapons or doing anything remotely close to what I'm doing with these guys.  Maybe I just didn't see anything, but I'll keep my eyes open.

Greenstuff phase is next followed by priming and pinning.  Hopefully I'll be ready for paint by this weekend.  We'll see.....

Monday, December 9, 2013

The Dwarves of Erebor

I think I've literally spent 5 minutes trying to think of something to type as an opener to this entry instead of "So.......".  Meh, who cares.  Anyway, I spent the last week and a half working on these bad boys.  I think they turned out really good, and I definitely learned a few things as far as painting faces, eyes, and cloth goes.

I'll let my work say the rest....

We'll start off with a generic shot with the captain upfront




I really like how the one in the centers face turned out


Note the added runes on the shield







So I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.  A few minor conversions with the spear guys to make them hold both spear and shield.  Looking back at some of my previous work than looking at these, I can see I'm getting better even if it doesn't feel like I am while I'm painting them.

You'll also notice that I painted each one with a different color scheme.  Personally, I think some armies look really good with the same color scheme, but some look really good all being different from one another.  I think this adds a personal touch to each miniature.  I also added some runes on the shields.  Not sure how I feel about it yet...

Up next....?


I think I have my painting cut out for me.  Next sprue, every guy holding an axe will be holding a spear instead and every guy holding a spear will be hold an axe.  Add a little variety to this army.  Still need to pick up young Balin and Dwalin.

What do you guys think?  Comments appreciated.....

Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Dead Trees Rise!

Last February, I posted a picture of some citadel wood trees in the very beginnings of work.  Here is that picture in case anyone is curious and doesn't want to go 4 pages back.


As you can see, its minimal work I did on these.  Basically all I did was cut from the sprue, cleaned up a little bit, and some milliput to cover the seams.  Last night, I didn't really feel like painting any dwarves, but I wanted to paint.  I did a bit more work on the trees since that picture was taken, and they were primed and ready to go.  Here is the outcome of last nights work.


I opted to go with a dead look to these trees.  I remember reading a white dwarf awhile back and saw a picture with a ton of these white looking citadel trees, and I wanted to replicate this.  I cut some bases out for them, added a bit of mixed sand, and a few extra features to give it my own flavor.





Nothing says awesome quite like a bunch of skeletons laying about.  I believe I bought a box off the wargame factory which has some awesome (and cheap) skellys to add to any bland terrain item to give it that awesome battle-hardened look.  I think they're heroic 28mm scale, so they'll work with most games.  I'm thinking about tossing some more money down and buying another 3 boxes of citadel wood to do a whole dead forest.  I think it turned out pretty awesome.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Grim Hammers Finished

As promised, I managed to finish something when I said I was going to finish it.  Well, technically I finished painting these guys earlier yesterday evening but I wanted to throw a little anti-shine on them before I took pictures, so yeah.  Anyways, enough babbling, onto pictures.


Figured we'd start with a semi overhead view.






So there is a few pictures of the grim hammer captain.  I thought he turned out pretty decent.....











Groups of 4 to show off a little individual flavor with them.





And the last 2 final group shots I took.


All in all, this was a pretty fun unit to paint.  I decided to paint they're beards all different colors since all having brown just seemed rather boring to me.  I also decided to paint they're tunics blue to give them a little bit of color.  So that's my first unit done for my Erebor Army.  We're on schedule for Adepticon 2014.

Up next......


Stay tuned!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

A Little Secret Weapon Anyone?

This is going to be a quick post since my time is short today.  My bases finally came in yesterday and alas, I was like a kid on Christmas.  Well, maybe not that extreme, but I was "pleasantly delighted" that they finally arrived.


I was surprised that they packed all 50 into one packaging.  Since I ordered 5 packs of 10, I figured I'd get 5 packs of 10.  This works too though.



I needed to paint 11 of these for the rest of my Grim Hammer, so I spent the bulk of last night painting these bad boys.  I think they turned out pretty good, and I think I'm going to keep this color scheme with these particular bases.  I like the subtle earth tone and I think the black rim gives it a clean look.

Hopefully later this week I'll have the unit completely done.  I'm not in a rush though.

Friday, November 15, 2013

The starting of a new unit

This past weekend really lit the fire under my ass to start painting again.  I had a blast at Bilbo's Birthday Bash, and I'd highly recommend it for any LOTR/Hobbit player looking for a fun weekend, whether your local or a flight away.  I had an awesome time, and some of the display boards were freakin' awesome.

That being said, everyone who played walked away with a bunch of cool swag, including a box set of miniatures of they're choice.  People who won awards got extra picks.  I didn't win anything, and as far as my battle prowess went, I did average.  2 major victories, 2 major defeats, 1 minor victory, 1 minor defeat.... so not as bad as I did at Adepticon 2013 where I lost every game.  Definitely some room for improvement on both the playing side and the hobbying side.  When it was my turn to go pick a goodie, I knew there was only one box I was looking for.....




Freakin Grim Hammers!!  These guys look so awesome.  I was in awe the first time I saw them in the movie, and couldn't wait to see what the models would look like.  At the time the models came out though, I was busy on other projects and couldn't justify buying them just yet due to GW discontinuing they're 24/20 boxes with only a few left being in the stores.  Being the cheap gamer that I am, I got into a buying frenzy with the old boxes, the $33 ones being #1 priority.  Somewhere along the lines, I wanted to create a hunter orc army (which I still need to paint) and basically forgot about the grim hammers entirely.  For some reason lately, I've been wanting to pick up a box, so when I saw it sitting on the table, I knew I had to snag them.

Fast forward a week later.  After finishing the Army of the Dead box I had, I wanted to paint something else.  I was browsing a few websites, I found Adepticon 2014 registrations were open.  I was a little pissed because most of the hobby seminars were sold out, but I managed to get spots for two and signed up for the LOTR/The Hobbit championships (only 1 tourny this year for LotR.... bummer), and a spot for a Freeblades game on Saturday.  I talked to one of the owners of DGS who makes Freeblades for about an hour and ended up buying 2 boxes of figs which I haven't touched yet.  I want to get atleast one of the boxes painted, and by signing up for an event it pretty much gives me the push I need to get it done.

That being said.... Grim Hammers.  Fantastic miniatures.  I spent a night putting them together and a good portion tonight cutting the slotta off they're feet.  You'll see why....


I also bought the grim hammer captain to go with them this week.  It's a cool model, except the fact that its a failcast thru and thru.  The weapon is brittle and bent, a couple air bubbles, and the finger fell off on its own so I ended up having to re-sculpt the hand.  I was tempted to pivot the hand and make him stick up his middle finger, but alas I kept it "G" rated and just sculpted the broken part.  One thing I'll say about Finecast is it forces you to hone your sculpting abilities, and if you have no sculpting abilities.... well, you'll soon develop it if you want your models to look somewhat decent.

For anyone who counted the above black models should've only noticed 11.  No, I didn't lose one.  I decided to do a test one to see what painting these guys entail.


I think the only thing I'm going to change is the belt color, probably going with a darker brown.  Mostly, these guys are pretty easy to paint.  I'll probably randomize the beard colors.  All brown beards is boring to me as a unit.  You'll also notice this is a different base than normal....

  

I dunno if I'm satisfied with this color, or rather the black rim.  I wanted to do an earthy tone for the ruined temple bases, as I think they look freakin sweet.  I ordered 50 of these bases after getting a trial base in my swag bag for Bilbo's B-Day Bash and really liking it.  Why so many you may ask?  Well, I think I'm going to do a Erebor army for Adepticon next year.  We'll have to see if these guys keep my interest.