Gothic Ruins 3 (Finished!!)

So I finally finished the Gothic Ruins building.  It took me a little longer than anticipated due to the fact that I started adding details and it was really my first time painting balsa wood, so I wanted to get a good feel for it.  Plus, I decided to spread the work out and say "It gets done when it gets done.  Its not a race, its a hobby".  So anyhew, this post is going to be a bit more picture heavy than normal.  Without any further delay... the finished Gothic Ruins.

So the first two pictures are just the overview of the ruins themselves.  After all was said in done, the widths are 1' by 1' and its just under 7" tall.

 

 Here are some close up shots of some of the details.  After I had primed and painted it, it looked a little bland.  I wanted this piece of terrain to be used in multiple skirmish games (LOTR:SBG and Mordheim mostly), and after viewing some of the terrain people other people had done for they're Mordheim games, I've noticed its the little details that really pop out.  Since Mordheim is the "City of Damned" after getting hit with a comet, the terrain needs to have that "hint of death" to it.  So, I added a few skulls here and there and a few broken swords, axes, and war hammers to give it more character.  I think these little details definitely add alot to the piece.

After I had done the bulk of the work, I was looking at the piece and I wondered "How would guys be able to get up to the second level and move from one side of the building to the other.  I have a lot of balsa wood laying around from one of my scratch built buildings I've yet to complete still, so I decided to make a little catwalk.  After cutting it out and gluing it together, I cut the sharp edges and scored it with my knife to give it a more "worn" look.  After doing that, I remember looking at other project involving balsa wood being used for planking and I really liked the idea of putting something like nails protruding from where the boards were hammered together.  I've seen where people just put a blob of green stuff, then painting it silver and calling it a day, but I wanted a more "authentic" look to it.  I decided to take a paperclip (2 to be exact) and shoved them thru the two pieces of wood then snipping it like 2mm above where it was sticking out of the wood.  I really liked this effect, and wanted to give it a paint job that really made the wood stand out, opting for dark warm brown and tan tones.

Now the second problem I faced was how the hell were guys going to get up to the second levels?  I toyed with idea of carving a ladder out of balsa, but wanted something a little different plus I want the bottom to feel like a bigger open space for battle.  I opted to have a rope hastily tied to one of the cut off beams.  Problem was is I didn't have any authentic looking rope material to use.  I had some lightweight gauge wire laying around, so I cut 5 pieces of the same length, twisted them together, used a ton of superglue to fix it to the bottom of the beam (out of sight), and let it cure overnight.  After it cured, I painted where the glob of superglue was the same color as the plank, wrapped the wire around the plank, primed it black, and painted it mid to light tone tan colors.  I think both the catwalk and the rope turned out fantastic.

Now here is a few shots of some minis on it to give a sense of the scale.

Aragorn fights a vicious morannon orc on the the catwalk while the battle is joined below by a small band of dwarf rangers

The dwaves engage the menacing foes

The struggle on the catwalk continues

nevermind the half painted Goblin King in the background, hes just chilling while he waits for more paint

Overall, this project was alot of fun and now I think I'm ready to tackle my scratch built Mordheim building I started 6 months ago but lost interest 30% into it.  Its been sitting on my shelf in my living room as a reminder that I still have a lot of work to do on it.  I eventually want to have a full 4' x 4' ruined city board to play Mordheim on.  I also think it can dual purpose for a game of LOTR:SBG since I'm a big fan of lots of terrain being on the board for any table top wargame.  Part of the reason I love this hobby is creating awesome looking terrain which is a whole different animal than painting miniatures, with different styles and techniques.  We'll see where we go from here.

Gothic Ruins 2

So I started making the base for the set of gothic ruins I painted up last night.  I'm running out of hardboard, so I'm probably going to have to pick some up after the next set of terrain items I make.  Instead of using 4mm thick plasticard to make the tiles, I just used some heavy cardstock, more specifically remnants from the box of a 12 pack of coke cans.

 

I actually just ended up super gluing them to the cardboard after I traced where the building was going to sit.  If I was to do this with plasticard, I would still be cutting them out and carving them.  I'm interested in seeing how this effect works.

To add some more detail to the base, I glued plumbers sand around the edges, and added pieces of old sprue to give the building a more dilapidated look.  I also glued some bit of sand, course basing material, and sprue to the tiles themselves to add a bit more texture to it.

 It probably doesn't look like much right now, but after it gets painted, I think it'll turn it pretty good.  I'm going to let it dry overnight since I used PVA glue for most of the sand.  Hopefully I'll start painting it up tomorrow.  In the meantime, I'll probably spend the rest of the night working on my Men of Minas Tirith.

Gothic Ruins

So last night I was in Unique Gifts and Games grabbing some supplies like paint, paintbrushes, latest White Dwarf, ect.  They have a pretty good selection of most hobby related stuff, plus I love the fact that they have 3rd party terrain like Gale Force 9 stuff, and random companies the average gamer has never heard of.  They have this end-cap full of odds and ends of terrain stuff, and I found this one product from pegasus hobbies.

 

I found this little jewel which I've seen online before but never really gave much thought about picking it up.  For a little over $20, I though "Hey, why not?".  So in the end, I ended up buying this box set.

After cracking it open, it definitely looked like it would be a fun little weekend project.  The directions were pretty bad and generalized.  As with most terrain, the mold line had to be cleaned up and a few of the pieces weren't the correct ones (like they added too many pillars with slots and not enough pillars with no slots).  So I ended up having to do a bit of work to make it look good.

 

As you can see, there were tons of gaps and I had you use a bit of green stuff to make it look decent.  I think I spent almost 3 hours filling gaps and seams.  I also added extra green stuff to the 2nd floor platforms along with some fine sand to give it more texture.  I also put sand on on the top of the structures and on some of the broken pillars.

I probably should of spray painted it instead of just basing it black, but unfortunately, its cold and wet outside and that tends to not work too well.  So I based it in black paint, and dry brushed it grey colors.  Here is how it turned out.

All in all, I think it turned out pretty good.  I'm probably going to base it tomorrow with tiles and all.  I also want to add some balsa wood to it to add a walkway from one piece to the other and a ramp from the ground level to one of the platforms.  I think this will work pretty well with both LOTR:SBG and one of the dilapidated buildings for Mordheim.

My final verdict, I'm going to give this product a B.  It was fun to paint, the amount of green stuff to fill the gaps was a bit much, the directions were crap, and the mismatched pieces that came with the set was a bit absurd.

Gondor Pt 2

So I was pretty busy over the weekend.  I played a few games over at the Games Workshop Prairie Ridge (2 to be exact).

One of the games was 2 vs 2, 1200 points vs 1200 points on a 4x4 table.  I brought out my Isengard (Mauher with 12 uruk-hai scouts w/shields, 8 uruk-hai with 4 uruk-hai beserkers, and 11 orcs with an Isengard Troll) for that game and I teamed up with some dude rocking Morannon Orcs with a troll chieftain and a two contingencies of Goblin Town goblins with the Goblin King being proxied as a second troll chieftain (I know, a 40mm base being subed as a 60mm base, but the other guys were cool with it, so I'm not complaining).  Our opponents consisted of part of the white council (Gandolf, Radagast, and Sauraman oddly enough) with 12 warriors of the dead (king included), white knight with 5 (or 6) rangers, 6 knights of Minas Tirith with Aragorn (king version) mounted.

Sadly, the only miniatures that were painted were mine, along with the army of the dead (not based) and the 3 wizards (also not based).  Here are a few snapshots I took mid-game.

Gandolf Surrounded after I cut thru the Knights of Minas Tirith.  It literally took 3 turns to kill him though

The east side of the board right when the Army of the Dead line started to collapse.

The board was stacked on my side (west) and my teammate placed his Morannon unit way too far east during setup.

It was a fun game and its been a few weeks since I played, so it was refreshing to play against some new people.  We ended up over running them in the end, resulting in both Gandolf and Sauramon's death.  We had around 80 models and they had a little under 30.  I kept feeding Aragorn a troop a turn which kept him out of the action.  It was actually my first time playing the new rules, so it was fun.

I also played a Goblin Town scenario game which was fun.  They had about 6 sets of Goblin Town terrain set up so it was also alot of fun.  I played the Goblins and I pretty much ended up throwing all the heavy hitting dwarves off the edge of the platform (Dwalin, Gloin, and Thorin)  with the Goblin King.  He tried to lessen the goblin load in the beginning by spreading out instead of going straight for his weapons which ended up being a big mistake.  I also won the roll for placing Gandolf and I placed him out in no-mans land, so by the time he showed up I had already killed 5-6 dwarves.  Sadly, I forgot to take any pictures of that game.

As for regular hobbying, I took a little break on sunday opting to play the new mini-expansion for X-Com Enemy Unknown.  I got a little done today since I had the day off.

 

I started working some more on my Minas Tirith army, finishing up some of the bases and drilling into the minis so they could be put on my paperclip rig.  I also got two of them completely, opting to take my time and experiment with the colors before I really start to crank them out.

Same Archer from the previous picture above this one

They're actually a real easy color scheme to follow.  The faces are a little hard to paint due to the helmets, but overall they're not too bad.  I also have them pinned into the bases, so unless someone either steps on them or sits on them, they're not coming off.   My goal is to finish a warband by the end of this week.  We'll see how it goes.

Aragorn Face Fix

So a few days ago when I was putting my collection back into the glass case, I noticed (well rather re-noticed since I've seen it before) that my Aragorn models face was chipped at the nose.  What pissed me off about it was the fact that I coated him with a good layer of Vallejo Matt Medium after I finished him to give him a good seal, yet the paint still chipped.  Also, out of all the Games Workshop Aragorn sculpts, this one is my favorite.  I brought him back to my work bench and I figured one day I'd touch of the paint, maybe do a little brush on primer followed by a quick shade and a highlight.  Upon further notice, I realized that I really messed his face up when I finished him.  His eyes were way too big, and I hadn't watered down my base coat shade which caused I massive buildup which looked terrible when I put him under the magnifying light.

I decided to take a sewing pin to his face, and scrape the buildup off and just redo his entire face.  The rest of the paint job looked nice, so I didn't want to strip all the paint.

T-1000 Aragorn Model

This was my first time trying this method, and on a metal miniature, it worked pretty good.  I wouldn't recommend doing this method on a plastic or resin mini since you'll end up warping the details.

Afterwards, I placed some black reaper brush on primer and repainted the face and a bit of the hair.  I think it turned out pretty good.

He now has a face again.

So yeah, I learned something tonight.  I also haven't been using the Vallejo Matt Medium lately on my mini's.  I've found that a good coat of GW's purity seal works pretty decent as long as you give the paint ample time to dry before you spray them (I usually let them sit overnight).  On a side note, I've also been working on the rest of the Goblin Town and I've gotten a pretty good amount done.  No pictures yet...

Uruk-Hai Captains

So about 2 days ago I made my presence known on a local hobby forum and I made a couple new friends.  I really had no idea that there was really anyone in the local area that played LOTR:SBG, but apparently there is a pretty kickin community up in Kenosha, and that is quite awesome.  Most people around here are pretty into Warhammer 40k, and while it looks appealing, I'd rather play something a bit more medieval with swords and magic.  Sadly, after watching a few Warhammer Fantasy games, the whole rank and file with massive armies just seemed really unappealing to me.  I want to interact with terrain on a single model scale and Warhammer Fantasy just really doesn't allow you to do that.  Plus, with all the models, and seemingly one guy not being very important, it just feels like a lot of busy work.  I guess that's the reason the skirmish type games are the ones I play.

So yesterday during lunch I started making some army lists for my Isengard force, trying to compile the most bang for my buck and came up with a few lists of different point variations.  I ran into a little problem though.  I was short on painted Uruk-Hai Captains.  Well it just so happened that I bought a few a while back in case this scenario did pop up.

Before

I won't lie though, I kind of did these in a hurry because I was hoping to catch a game today, but unfortunatly I'm the only person that showed up with an army.  No worries though, as I got to check out the store in Prairie Ridge which to my amazement is less than 20 minutes away.  When your crossing state lines, it just has the feel of being far to me.  Oh, here are the after shots...

After

 I think they turned out pretty good considering I kind of rushed them.  I might go back and touch up a few details and add a white hand to the breast plate on the guy on the left.

2013 goals

So even though we're already halfway thru January, I thought it would be a good idea to write some hobby goals down for this year.  I've noticed a lot of other people have been doing this, and I really like the idea in a hobby sense.  At the end of the year (pending if I'm still blogging at that point), I want to return to this thread and see what I've accomplished.  So without further ado....

1. Finish the Goblin Town Box Set (Completed)
2. Marry my gf/fiancee of 8 years  (Aug. 31st) (Completed)
3. Paint a 1000 point Gondor Army (Completed)
4. Paint a 600 point Rohan Army
5. Finish up my Isengard Army  (N/A)
6. Finish up my Mordor Army (N/A)
7. Push my general orc total to 72 models (I think I'm in the 40's at this moment)
8. Experiment more with conversions (Completed)
9. Paint a 600 point Elven Army
10. Finish painting my Garden of Morr Cemetery that is half done.
11. Get more involved with the gaming community (Completed? Sorta)
12. Become a better painter by working on my weaknesses (Completed? Sorta)

Now I don't think this is impossible, but I did set the bar pretty high and I'm almost certain I won't get everything accomplished on my list, but these are goals rather than "to-do or else" item.  I know throughout the year other hobby priorities will pop up, but that's okay.  As of right now, this is what I'm aiming for