Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Knight of the White Tower

It's been a rather busy few days since I last posted.  I spent a little time last week working on a few things and prepping for Adepticon which was last weekend.  All I have to say is Adepticon was fantastic.  Great people, tons of things to look at, tons of games to play, and I couldn't help but feel sad when the vendors starting packing things up on Sunday at two o'clock.  I didn't do too hot in the LOTR Championship tournament that Saturday, but regardless, it was still an awesome time.  My only regret is I didn't sign up for any of the classes or play in any other sanctioned games besides LOTR.  There's always next year, and I'm itching to paint my Necromunda gang when I get a chance.

So with the start of this week, I started working on my Knight of the White Tower model that's been sitting on my backlog for awhile now.  Due to the failure of Finecast, his face was horribly messed up.  Part of his nose and eye-socket had an mold line/air bubble (failcast strikes again!) and sadly my skills at sculpting to try and fix him up only resulted in making him look like a deformed caveman.  Alas, he's been sitting on my shelf until I picked him up Monday and did the only humane thing I could think of..... sawing off his head and replacing it with another one.





I was a little worried about the scale to begin with since LOTR/The Hobbit miniatures are 28mm true scale while most 28mm models are heroic scale.  I've had good luck with Wargame Factory products converting nicely with true scale models, so I bought a bunch of heads off ebay of they're historical lines (somewhere around 100 heads for around $20 +shipping).  At first it looked like it was a little big compared to the body, but after I slapped a little paint on it, it seemed to work pretty good.  I'll let you guys be the judge





All in all, I think he turned out pretty good.  With the new head on him, he really has a cool unique look to him.  I didn't like how on the box art, Games Workshop painted him with a rather pale skin-tone, so I gave him more color, but kept in the theme of the old "experienced" swordmaster and painted his hair to that of an older gentleman.  I also didn't quite care for the stock helm with the olive leaves on it, so I think things turned out for the best in this situation.

I still have a bunch of heads left, so I'm planning on converting some of my Men of Minas Tirith over to veterans.  Beats paying $15 for 3, and one of those three you get (the archer) is pretty useless with bow limits and rangers being a more viable option.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Uruk-Hai Crossbows 2

This will be a quick little update.  I just finished the last 5 Uruk-Hai Crossbows in my back log, putting me at 14 total, so I might have to go out and pick up another blister or two.


Took a quick pic of them as well right after I finished basing them.  I'll hit them with a little Matt Anti-Shine tomorrow when they're good and dry.  If you can't tell, the one on the far left was missing a crossbow, so I made a press mold of another crossbow and greenstuffed it.


And instead of doing a nice picture of them all them with a nice white background, I opted to show them in my display case because I don't really feel like doing a nice spread of them tonight.


Friday, April 12, 2013

Sauron (both Regular and Necromancer) Showcase

After spending the better half the of the night tonight re-installing Windows 7 and updating everything (apparently my updates were failing the past few nights, and rather then tinker with it, I decided to wipe the entire drive and reload everything which I normally try to do once a year to keep things fresh), I finally got to do a little painting.  Unfortunately though, I have a few more hours left to do on the last 5 Uruk-Hai Crossbowmen before they're ready to go.

In the meantime though, I took a few pictures of Sauron, both the regular gigantic version on his necromancer form the other night.  I think I painted these two about a year and a half ago.  Really simple paint job on both of them that didn't take much time at all.  Infact, putting the regular version Sauron together took longer than it did to paint him.  I still haven't gotten to use him in a game yet, which I'm hoping to rectify sooner rather than later.  Anyhew, enjoy...







I apologize for some of the blurry pictures here.  Unfortunately I take these pics with my Samsung Galaxy 3 phone, and its got 8 megapixels which isn't all that great (so I'm told).  One of these days I'll upgrade and actually make a professionally looking display box to take the pictures.



Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Uruk-Hai Crossbows with Vrasku

Seeing how Vrasku is going to be leading my Isengard army at Adepticon in a week and a half, I figured I'd spend this past weekend working on him and his crew.  Took a little extra time on Vrasku himself, experimenting with a few blending techniques.  Its something I'll have to experiment more with in the future, but the end result looked pretty good.

So a few WIP pics followed by the finished product....

















Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Troll Showcase

So when I first picked up my paint brushes again after 15 some odd years (which was oddly a little over 2 years ago today), the first really big projects I undertook was painting my trolls.  On a personal level, I think the trolls are awesome.  Fantastic kits that allow you to do a lot of fantastic poses, and create either Mordor or Isengard trolls.  Well, after seeing the Isengard army, that was the first army I really started painting.  So the Isengard trolls were some of my first monsters, and the Mordor trolls I've painted here and there in the past year.  So here they are....


The Isengard Trolls







The Mordor Trolls









I have about three more trolls sitting on my bench waiting to be put together and painted.  I would like to get a few more so I could create an entire warband of trolls which I think would be awesome, but that's for another day way down the line.  Too many projects to paint.  /le-sigh

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Morgul Knights Showcase

Probably almost a year ago is when I painted these little jewels.  Definitely are brutal to have on the battlefield and look fantastic at the same time.  I have another box of them ready to be painted, but I have too many other projects also ready to go, so it'll be some time till I complete the full warband of just Morgul Knights.








These are the first cavalry units I ever painted as well.  So technically, with the horses included its alot like painting 12 models.  

Hopefully in the next few days I'll have something new to show off as I've been working on a warband for my Isengard army I plan on bringing to Adepticon in 2 weeks.


Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Great Beast of Gorgoroth Showcase

This was another interesting project I did right before thanksgiving last year.  Infact, I think I was in its final WIP stages when thanksgiving came around.  I had like 2 or 3 more orcs to do so technically, it was almost ready.

Needless to say, anyone who picked this model up knows that it had many issues.  So many issues infact that Games Workshop had to stop production for a few weeks and fix the casts.  I unfortunately wasn't immune to the errors in the casting process, so again like the Watcher model, I had to improvise with greenstuff.  I could go on and on about Games Workshop lack of quality control with this particular model, but its still a pretty cool model and a nightmare to run up against in the game.

So with out a further larger wall of text....





 


I would like to have another one so I could run two of these beasts in 1000+ games, but it'll probably be a long time before I'd attempt another one, and I got way too much in my backlog to paint first.  I probably would do a layering/blending technique with the beast next time instead of a down and dirty drybrush that I did do.  I personally like my paint job better than the ones you can buy off of ebay for $200+.

Monday, April 1, 2013

The Watcher in the Water Showcase

Earlier last summer, I was browsing the LOTR selection (very limited selection at that) at my local GW.  Finecast had just come out and after reading the initial reviews on the net, I was very hesitant about purchasing any newly casted finecast models, let alone any top end\expensive finecast models.  Alas, my eye was instantly drawn to one boxset though, and that was the Watcher in the Deep.  All you could really get before was some lame tentacles to represent the model and play the scenario with that.  To say the least, 5 tentacles on 25mm bases to represent such an awesome monster really didn't appeal to me, but the entire model (including the body and head) in all its glory.... hell yeah.

So, I dropped a pretty penny down for it, brought it home, cracked it open, and started fidgeting with it.  Apparently all the rumors were true, as it was a terrible cast and needless to say a pain in the ass to put together.  The two halves of the creatures body alone had a terrible gap which took a significant amount of greenstuff in fill.  The outer shell of the beast was litered with air bubbles and various imperfections that not even Stevie Wonder would miss (I know, I know, tasteless/insensitive joke).  Each of the tentacles require TLC to fit correctly and a fair amount of sculpting skill to get them to match into the body with little noticeably.  One of the tentacles even had a major flaw, missing one of its fingers which I had to re-sculpt.  It literally took the better halves of 3 nights to assemble this model.  Apparently the tentacles are supposed to go on a certain way as to not obstruct the front of the model so units could be pulled into the spot where its face was looking.  I didn't figure this out until I had 95% of the model completed, and basically said "the hell with it".

Despite all the issues of the lack of quality with this casting in this particular model I bought, I think it turned out pretty decent.  Problem being is after my 3rd and final day of fiddling with this model, I placed it on my shelf and didn't look at it for weeks afterwards.  A few months passed, and after painting some odd 70 fighting uruk-hai for my Isengard army, I wanted to paint something completely different, and so I set out to paint Watcher.  I found it alot easier to paint than it was putting it together.

So I finished this model sometime around November and have only played 1 game with him, as Moria isn't an army I often use.  Anyhew, on to the pics....







Anyways, judge for yourselves how it came out.  It was my first time using water effects for anything, so it was interesting to say the least.  My biggest beef with this model is that anyone starting into the hobby will have issues with this particular model, as it isn't for the faint of heart or inexperienced hobbyist.

So this is an older showcase, and I have a few more I'll be sharing in the next few days so that the blog doesn't appear stale while I work on bulk Minas Tirith troops.