One last post for June

This will be just a quickie.  I've had these two..... not sure if I'd call them models or tokens, but regardless, I've had these two guys sitting on my desk for a long time.  Well, I got tired of looking at them in black primer so I painted them up on Monday.  I basically followed the steps from Tale of Painters tutorials.

The way the skin was done with the Lahmian Medium glaze was a bit different than what I'm used to.  It really didn't start to take shape until I added the Sepia wash.  I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I think they turned out pretty good, minus a little frosting from the purity seal.  All in all pretty good.

Dwarvern Command

I know I've taken a slight sabbatical on LOTR lately.  Well, probably since like March/April'ish.  I do have a few projects coming up that will involve more LOTR stuff.  Anyhew, this past week I opened up my Dwarf Command box that has been sitting idle for over a year in one of my various storage Tupperware containers.  I cracked open the box and inspected the miniatures.  Sadly, it's a first generation failcast product with holes everywhere and fiddly parts on the verge of braking along with shards of pink rubber from where the molds failed.  I wish I could say this was rare, but with most of the older line of LOTR stuff that got cast in finecast, this is the norm.  I'd be willing to bet money that if you bought any Lord of the Rings miniature in finecast even now (note; not The Hobbit finecast), you'll have a similar experience as myself.

Well, I sucked up my disappointment and cleaned up the miniatures where I could and did a rather amateur job green stuffing and remolding warped parts.  I'd use liquid greenstuff, but I always have issues using it.  Whenever I pick up a pot, it's always half cured and I always get piss poor results whenever I use it.  So, I cleaned them up, slapped some paint on them, and here is the final outcome...

Not particularly thrilled with the blue color, but it suits them.  The two guys with shields did not have a good cast and I did the best I could to try to resculpt them.  I mean, the shields were warped and both were missing the bottom half of the detail.  The captain on the right had part of his bottom right armor completely missing and I had to resculpt it.  The shield bearer on the left had a weapon that was overly brittle and I had to soak it in super glue to give it any strength.  I would've resculpted the shaft, but I was afraid I'd warp it even worse in the process.  Even part of his hand holding the axe was messed up to the point where sculpting would've damaged it even further.  All in all, this was some of the worst finecast models I've ever worked with.  I think for what I received from Games Workshop versus the final result, I did a pretty good job.  Comments always appreciated.

Adepticon 2015 Afterthoughts (Part 3)

This should be my last post on Adepticon 2015, and I warn you ahead of time that it's more of a ramble than my usual posts.

So after the Freeblades game on Saturday, I had about a 3 hour break then it was off to Lord of the Rings "March to Mount Doom Madness".  While I have no complaints about the tournament (nor pictures, as the tournie ran late), I couldn't help but notice that the participation for anything LOTR has basically come to a stand still.  Most of the regulars who attend the LOTR tournies at Adepticon were mysteriously absent and the vendors were shocked anytime anyone bought anything LOTR related which was both good and bad.  Good because I got things at a crazy discount, bad because the game is hitting an all time new low.  Even when the game became stagnant right before the warband rules came out people were atleast still playing and enjoying it.  Now, I'm not even seeing that.  In all honesty, it's such a great system yet I think the root cause for it's failing is GW's lack of support and high price-tag.

When I first got into GW's LOTR:SBG, I could pick up 24 guys for $33, now anything new you get 10 guys for $40.  Mathematically, we originally payed 0.72 cents a model, now were paying $4 a model.  If my math is correct, that's a 555.56% increase in price on basic troops.  Hero characters we're around $15 depending on who you bought.  Now they run the gambit of $20 to $75.  LOTR/The Hobbit SBG introduced so many people to the hobby because it was something they knew due to the Peter Jackson movies and even though it was a little expensive, you could buy a box or two and a hero for under $100 and have a decent force to play with.  With the jacking up of the prices, even those who are both interested in the movie and the hobby are now hesitant to shell $300-$400 down on something they're not sure they'll even like.

I understand that there is no support for the game because nobody buys anything LOTR/The Hobbit, but at the same time, nobody buys anything LOTR/The Hobbit because there is no support for the game.  It's a catch 22, the chicken or the egg kind of conundrum.

Needless to say, I had a revelation after Adepticon about my future with LOTR/The Hobbit SBG.  While I'm not going to jump ship and abandon my beloved game, I am going to take a step back from it.  I think it may be time to concentrate my hobby time into other realms for awhile and add a few more games to my collection.  I have a large Warhammer army that's ready for paint.  I have a decent amount of Space Wolves for a 40k army, Saga looks highly appealing to me, and the LOTR/The Hobbit SBG crowd in my area has moved over to Bolt Action.  So there are plenty of things to paint.  Like I said earlier, I have no intentions on abandoning the SBG game, but this whole revelation has got me thinking about the future of SBG.

In any case, here is my latest and greatest mini all painted up.

 

 

So I got this guy for $2 from the Reaper booth at Adepticon.  He's part of the "Bones" series of miniatures that takes they're normal metal miniature and casts them in a soft plastic material, retaining most (if not all) of the detail.  While I didn't see any miscasts or air bubbles, the mold lines on this material is quite difficult to fix via conventional methods that most of us are used to.  I normally take the back of my hobby knife and scrape away the mold lines.  Since this is a soft plastic, doing that doesn't work too well and if you try and use the blade part of your hobby knife you risk damaging the miniature.  I found using a conventional hobby file works good for those irregular mold lines in odd places on the model, but you have to be extremely careful with it.  You'll notice the cut on his face on the left side.  That was a mold line I tried to fix but didn't quite get it, so I improvised and gave him a battle gash on the side of his head to cover up the apparent line.

All in all, I think he turned out quite well.  Like I said before, the Bones soft plastic material holds detail very well for a very cheap price.  The downside is prepping the mini for paint.  I guess you get what you pay for.

So that's it for Adepticon for this year for me.  I look forward to next year.

March to Mount Doom Madness Adepticon 2015 Army

As I said in my last post, I wanted to post a few pictures of my full army that I'll be bring to Adepticon 2015 March to Mount Doom Madness which starts in approximately 6 hours from now.  Take note that the rules for building an army for this particular tournament is 750 points and under 20 models, hence the low model count and the stacking of the Ringwraiths.

 

Basically, the design behind this army is to kill heroes.  Since this is a low model count tournie, I'm going to be taking on big heroes.  I figure the Dwim and Undying can shut people down while maintaing a supporting role while the Witchking, Troll Chieftain, and Knight of Umbar can do all the front line lifting.  The only issues I really for-see is either Galadrial going on a banishing frenzy (in which case I'll have to throw everything at her right away to shut her down), and/or running into a large (15-20 model count) medium hero cost army where I won't be able to protect my back support and I'll get overwhelmed.  My front line fighters are going to have to kill quickly if I run into anything of that nature.  I think it's a pretty good list as far as the parameters of the tournament goes.  Hopefully I won't get eliminated in the first round as this is also an elimination tournament.

I'll post my results and my thoughts on Adepticon 2015 either tomorrow or Monday.

The Undying

This will be my third named Ringwraith and will complete my 750 point army for Adepticon 2015 March to Mount Doom Madness (this Saturday).  I kind of waited till last minute to paint this guy as painting Ringwraith for me is extremely boring and rather unrewarding as far as the finished product goes.  I have been painting other things between this post and my last post, but nothing that is 100% complete.  I figure after Adepticon is over, I should have ample enough time to complete all the projects I've been working on recently (mainly some Blightkings for Warhammer and some Riders of Rohan in which 3 of the 6 are done).

Anyhew, here are some pictures of the Undying.

Again, painting black is a bitch for me for some reason.  I really do need more work when it comes to painting this color.  I do like the contrasting red though as it brings more color to the piece.  Also, I think I've figured out the whole concept with painting horses, as it's more subtle highlighting rather than stark muscular beast due to the hair.  I'll be posting some army pictures soon hopefully, so expect another update in a day or two.

The Knight of Umbar

Not a whole lot to talk about with this post.  Here is my second named ringwraith, The Knight of Umbar.

It was an interesting model to paint, mainly because of the slight greenish tint in his armor.  I gave him more of a heroic pose, as if leaping over the rock.  I thought it looked cooler than the rather static pose you tend to see.  It'll be fun to see how well he does on the battlefield.  2 down, 1 to go...

The Dwimmerlaik

So things are heating up in preparation for Adepticon 2015.  Sadly, there is no standard 750 LOTR tournament this year.  I can't help but be a little disappointed by this.  However, there will be a 750 point, 20 model limit, march to mount doom madness elimination style tournament.  I didn't play in the one that was ran during 2013, so it should be fun.

That being said, I've been tinkering with my list since December.  Originally, I was going to rock Buhrdur and 8 cave trolls figuring it'd be a cool theme.  Also a horde of cave trolls with 3 wounds a pop surrounding big heroes..... yeah, your going to eat up all your might and you might kill 2 if your lucky, but you'll eventually roll shitty and the hammers will come down.  Unfortunately, I don't have any cave trolls painted up, and after looking over how much work I'd have to do, I figured it'd be easier to do higher point cost heroes with a lower model count.

And with that, I decided to do a pure Mordor list.  This gives me the motivation to paint up some named Ringwraiths.  So up first, The Dwimmerlaik......

I scowered the interwebs looking for pictures of other people's models of this guy.  Slim pickins' for sure, and the pictures I did see I wasn't too thrilled with the paintjobs.  Either they went with a more bluish tint (completely forgoing the bottom white parts) or did the dirty drybrush method in which the model looked too bright.  I really didn't see anyone try to emulate GW's example, and that's basically what I wanted to follow.  I'm not the most skilled in painting black, so I spent a fair bit of time going back and forth with my greys.  Also, blending pure white to black is a pain in the ass to do.  Hopefully if you stumbled upon my site looking for examples on how to paint this guy, you found it useful (as far as pictures go).  I think he turned out pretty good.  I still need more practice with blacks, but I have 2 other ringwraiths coming in the near future.  Check back for more later....

The Elusive Shade

A little story first.....

Last year at Adepticon I was looking around at this one area that sells loose and OOP miniatures, as well as bargin bin stuff, painted stuff, and various other products.  It's one of my favorite areas to browse thru when I go to adepticon.  So, I was slumming thru the "LOTR Bin" on the first day of the Convension, most of the miniatures in the bin being in little plastic bags with a "$2" or "$1" price written on the bag with a black marker.  They also have a few loose blister packs swimming in the bin as well.  As I was browsing, I grabbed one of the blister packs to look at, and what do I behold??

The Shade.....  the elusive shade that went OOP with the first or second batch of LOTR products from GW that were discontinued.  I had been looking for this model for over a year and all I could find were ebay auctions with an $80+ price tag on it.  Sorry, but $80 dollars for one miniature is a bit crazy to pay for any one model that isn't riding a dragon or is a huge monster.  Alas, I had the elusive shade in my hands with a price tag of $8.  I quickly snatched it, paid for it, and shoved it in my bag.

Time passed, and I had never painted it for some reason.  I had put it together, primed it, and left it in my bin until this past weekend.  So here He/She/It is....

So I'll admit, it's not my best work, but I think it looks pretty cool and I got to play with blending techniques.  All in all, should be a fun model to throw behind my lines to lower the enemies fight value.  I might in the future attempt my own Shade conversion with a mix of Warhammer and LOTR products.  We'll see though as I have mountains of pewter before me that need to be put to the brush.  Enjoy!

Bolg, Castellan of Mount Gundabad

And now here's another update.  My nephew came over not this past weekend, but the weekend before that and had a model I hadn't gotten my greedy hands on yet.  Good ole' Castellan Bolg that was recently released last month.  He asked if I would paint it for him, and it looked like a fun model, so I gave it a go.  Here are the results....

I think they turned out pretty good.  Painting pale orcs is something new to me, so I experimented with the skin tones for about a day, trying to find a color palette that looked good to me.  I eventually went with the Vampiric Skin triad from reaper as it had that purplish undertone that looks really good with a diluted Reikland Fleshshade.  I actually prefer the reddish eyes on the feral wargs as I think it gives them a more sinister tone.  I also spent some time on the rocky bases (and an entire tube of cheap superglue).

One thing you might notice if you look closely, is his left eye has no pupil.  I didn't realize this until I looked at a few pictures of the movie version of Bolg.  I had actually already painted the eyes on the foot model and had to go back after I had finished the model.

Hopefully you guys enjoy the pics.  Now I need to get cracking on my Adepticon monster army which I haven't even started.... Yikes!

Hobbits and Dwarf Vault Wardens

First post of 2015 after a 4 month hiatus.  Yep, I'm still around.  Just haven't really had the time or motivation to paint anything since.... September?  Yeah, that sounds about right.  Well, I'm back and at it again.  I was hoping to get more done over my winter vacation, but alas, I really didn't paint at all.

Rather than do the 3rd annual year in reflection and list of what I'd like to get accomplished, I'd rather forgo all that non-sense and say I didn't get really anything I wanted to get done accomplished last year and rather than set goals for 2015, I'm just going to flow naturally and whatever gets done, gets done.

So lets look at what I have done.  First up are some hobbits that have been sitting on my desk for months looking rather pathetic with a primer and dust coat.  Here we have Old Hobbit Paladin Took,  Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger (who's waistcoat mysteriously doesn't fit his wide girth), and the lean and mean Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, the bitch who tries to auction all of Bilbo's stuff and steal his hobbit-hole while he's out on high adventure.

I decided to prop these 3 up on rocks due to the fact that they're all characters rather than generic hobbits, and eventually I would like to do a massive hobbit army and finding these particular models on the battlefield will be a little easier this way.  I had fun painting these models and they were the perfect models to shake and dust off my brushes after a 4 month hiatus.  I tried to keep them in the same color schematics as Games Workshop.  I think they turned out pretty good even though they are finecast.


Next we have 2 Dwarf Vault Warden Teams.

I might go back and add some dwarven runes to the two shields.  Again, they're finecast and I think they would've turned out better if they were the metal models.  One thing I've noticed is the older LOTR models are not the best quality when done in finecast.  I also wish they had the other pose available for this unit.  When they switched over to finecast, they got rid of the other pose these guys come in.  I think I bought something like 6 teams, so I'll eventually be able to do a huge older Durin's Folk army if I so please.

Hope you guys enjoyed the photos.

Beeeeeoooooorn!

I actually got something accomplished all in one weekend that didn't spill over into Monday thru Friday.  It's also actually been a few weeks since I painted any miniatures exclusively for myself.

So I picked this little kit up last weekend and cracked it open last Thursday night.  For a finecast set, I was actually impressed with the quality.  The resin itself felt like something from Forgeworld instead of that brittle shit I've gotten used to with Games Workshop Finecast.  Minimal greenstuff was needed and cleaning it up took less than an hour.  As far as the newer Finecasts go, I can honestly say the QA department is actually doing they're jobs.  Kudos to you GW QA guys.....  though your price-points still suck.

That being said, lets take a look at Beorn in man form and bear form...

These two models were a joy to paint.  I experimented with the skin tones on Beorn the Man, using a darker skin palette then I'm used to.  I wanted his flesh to be a bit more tanned and bronzed than when I usually paint flesh.  I ended up using some glazing techniques to tie it all together towards the end as my brush strokes were a bit too visible for my tastes.  My goal was to get him looking as close to the box cover as I could with a little bit of a dark tone.  I think I succeeded in this.

As for the bear, well I though his base was a bit too plain, so I sculpted the stone from the cork and covered my seams with some fine sand giving it a very realistic texture.  The bear mainly consisted of a little dry brushing and very minimal layering on the face, tongue, claws, and teeth.  It's a very easy model to paint and even a beginner could get fantastic results with little effort.  I put the flower on the base to add a little color to the piece and I think he turned out pretty good.

That's it for now....

The Fellowship Project Finally Complete!

It's been well over a month since I posted anything.  It's not like I've just been sitting around, but summer tends to be one of my more less productive times when it comes to this particular hobby.  My professional career kicks into high gear and I quite frankly have less time to do hobbying really.

Lets get down to business.  The fellowship project....  So a few posts back I showed a picture of a few unpainted miniatures from the out of print Mines of Moria starter set along with the DeAgostini Mines of Moria display piece primed in black (the way I bought it).  I've basically put a ton of hours into this piece because I wanted every miniature to be as top level as I could get and this project is a birthday present for my nephew.

Take note, this is going to be picture heavy.

So we'll start by showing the piece as a whole with the miniatures.

 

Now lets take a look at just the base itself....

Now the miniatures....

So there is the miniatures.  Now maybe a closer look at the display with the miniatures.

So I think that about sums up this project.  My thoughts.... I think all in all it turned out pretty good.  That being said, I hated painting these miniatures.  The sculpts are terrible and it's hard to tell what is what.  Of all the Fellowship models available, these are the worst.  I know it's early plastic, but they could've done a better job with the casting.  Aragorn model looks nothing like Viggo Mortensen as well as Legolas looking nothing like Orlando Bloom.  Gimli's head is so scruntched together it was hard picking out any of the details.  All the hobbit models look like generic hobbits (minus Samwise, he actually is the best looking model of the bunch in my opinion).  Boromir is another model that I liked in this set.  The rest are pretty bad.

When I picked up the paint brushes for the second time in my life (as an adult), these particular models were some of the first I had painted.  One thing that has always annoyed me when looking at other people's blogs and hobby sites is the fact that they show they're awesome paint jobs, but never models they did when they first started painting.  As a painter who's been painting roughly 4-5 years now, I like seeing my old models compared to my new, as it gives me insight on how far I've come as a painter.  I would love to see some of these top painters first works, but alas they never post them.  I might not be a top painter, but I like taking comparison shots and posting them for the world to see.  I hope it gives people who are struggling insight into the fact that we all didn't start off as fantastic painters.  

Take a gander at these.....  the ones on the left are the ones I just painted and the ones on the right are ones I painted when I started up again after a 15 year hiatus (in which I was amateur back then at best).  Note, the ones on the right have been used in games many of times, so there is a little wear and tear on them.

As you can well see, there is a very clear cut difference between now and then.  It really is amazing how your skill increases with every miniature you paint.  That's about all the pictures I got for now.  I hope this makes up for my lack of LOTR and content in general lately.  I hope you guys like what you see and I hope my nephew enjoys them.  Thanks for looking!!