Thursday 24 December 2015

Converting Osgiliath Veterans

Firstly.. merry christmas!
Ive been converting up some Osgiliath veterans for a Hobbit sbg force over the week. I took a trip to my local hobby store but was disappointed to find they didnt really have what I wanted, more green-stuff for converting and a couple of common paint colours (they no longer stock vallejo either so i had to get something from a limited selection of GW paints :/ in future il go to the model store). I did however come away with a new box of eagles which im looking forward to adding to my Elven army (plus beorn, gandalf and rangers of the north etc).

The Imrahil model ive converted to hold a horn as i intend to field him as Erkenbrand (well... gondors equivalent) so even though my paint scheme may include some  blue and gold with the usual silver/black gondor scheme, il try to shy away from the blue and maybe use white so to differentiate him from the normal Dol Amroth scheme.
The heroes I am just going to work with the models I have. Boromir, Faramir, a converted Knight of the white tower, Damrod, Imrahil/erkenbrand and Duinhir (an old ranger of the north model)

As far as the converting went, i became rather limited after running out of green stuff, so theres the usual chop and glue for some pose variety but also a lot of hacking for battle damage and clothing wear and tear, plus I had some gripping beast bits (heads and war gear) that ive added. Converting stuff iv done before but sculpting is very new and im keen to keep upskilling in it.

I got a little inspired by the Gondor army in the Hobbit sbg rulebook, its very well painted and has a little character to the scheme, also from this painter from the painted models photo, i love the basing and very much fits my theme, id do something similar with mine except perhaps a little more stoney.

Still dunno what im going to take to Natcon, either Osgiliath, Mountains of Mirkwood Orcs or some Northern elven force with eagles
Happy hobbying

Sunday 13 December 2015

Lotr Hobbit sbg Orc Army 750pts

Most of these i had already painted, and as an sbg army il repaint (highlights) and get them to a slightly higher standard than i would need for my usual wotr Mordor or Dol Guldur army.
Theres 4 warbands;
Bolg (converted orc general) with 12 converted hunter orcs with 2-handed weapons
Orc Shaman (kardush) with 6 Morannons with shields, 6 orcs with spears
Orc Drummer (converted gorbag) with 6 Morannons, 5 orcs with spears and an orc with banner
Troll Chieftain with 2 Orc trackers (metal orc archers), an orc spearman and a black numenorean with a warhorn (converted Army of dead guy)

So what do you think? Is this going to be tournament competitive?
Id love to have any feedback regarding the list :)
Cheers

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Lord of the Rings Elves

Painted up a few Noldor elves to use as a Frostgrave warband. Fornost fits the theme perfectly i feel and so heres Glorfindel, Gildor Inglorion and kin escorting Glorfindels daughter to the havens, taking the elven paths and fending off any unwanted visitors whilst ever on the lookout for ancient items...
Or so the story goes.
Gandalf didnt make the cut but i painted another one up, i ummed and ahhed about who to use, but i couldnt go past the cool Arwen model... wel see i may end up changing my mind, Thuranduil the old metal version from before the hobbit also didnt make the cut, but im wondering whether i could use that figure as an apothecary.
On the subject of "the wizard", Glorfindel is the clear winner, followed by Gildor as "apprentice ". Elven lady as a Templar.
Some people believe Glorfindel to also be Glorfindel of Gondolin, who slays a balrog in the first age... im with those guys, why else would they say of Glorfindel that he alone could ride against the 9 (nazgul), his mounted model is one of the best LotR sculpts in my opinion, great heroic pose.
Elves are cool, enuf said!

Thursday 3 December 2015

Passages dungeon underground city terrain

A while back i built these and i stumbled on a few photos i took while making them, they were really easy to build. I cut up some flooring vinyl into one inch squares and cut up a bunch of mdf squares as bases, hirst arts molds just using wall plaster, washed lightly with several colours to give the old stone effect. Then i added the pre painted (textured concrete coloured spray paint) vinyl squares and painted the base surrounds at the bottom brown.
Ended up with a heap of tiles and rooms which il now use to play frostgrave, probably "the library" scenario.

Im thinking of drawing up my own scenario with secret passages and the treasure will be underground in a central room with four passages going towards the table top corners which will have buildings or terrain features above them. So id essentially hav two tables side by side, one above ground and the other below.

I also made a few cavern or mines pieces that i can ajoin to the passageways shown in the last photo.

Sunday 29 November 2015

Frostgrave warband

Ages ago i bought a box of the dungeons and dragons galeforce9 drow war party (at least i think thats what it was) from our local games store... i wanted a new Orc hero for my war of the ring orc army... so i made up and painted the knight as a Dol Gûldûr Orc commander... the rest just got thrown into the abyss of wargaming stuff in my garage.
Then along came Frostgrave.. or i came across the game via jamies blog (Rough War) and thought to myself what a cool idea. What could be more fun than a few treasure hunters searching for new items whilst fighting off random creatures and an opposing wizard with his own crew of treasure hunters. The scope for this game seems endless as no official figures are required, all the stats are pretty much generic so you can field whatever warband you feel like.
So i went searching in the abyss for a suitable wizard and some warband guys, iv got gandalf and kardush and a few lotr figures i could use, as well as an entire crusader army i could pilfer some figures from, but in my search i came across these forgotten about d&d guys and i got cracking and quickly put together a warband. Totally happy with it, only thing i didnt like was that the galeforce9 figures are made from resin... that breaks really easily :( already the rogues ponytail is snapped off along with some other small details. Great spults, high detail but that comes at a price ($ & breakages), so overall i wouldnt consider getting these type of figures ever again, as i prefer something that will last.

Heres my Warband;
Wizard= Dark elf Mage (school of witch)
Apprentice = Dark elf Priestess
Marksman = Dark elf with crossbow
Archer = Dark elf  female rogue with throwing darts
Man at Arms = Half Elf-Orc with sword and shield (missing from the warband photo but below with the knight)
Thief = goblin mercenary
Thief = goblin mercenary
Thief = goblin mercenary  (converted these to be carrying loot bags and torches)
Animal companions x2 spider bases (using them as ice toads)

Ive also got a knight and a couple of extra men at arms to expand the warband if i need to as campaigning continues.
Skeletons were put together and painted super quick, dont look too close, they do the job for the scenarios.
Treasure tokens were made from a heap of old bits (trying to keep with the spider theme).
The only thing i have left to do is to put together a few more random encounter creatures and build the tower from the tower scenario,  then im done... frostgrave is that easy.

First battle with Jamie went well, i managed to bag a beserker with my mage and take off with 4 of the 6 treasure tokens with no losses. My marksman was a beast, he totally held the fort, even though he was unlucky to get no kills, he drew a heap of fire and got pretty lucky surviving it all, my dice rolling went amazing at times and i managed to get some crucial hits in. Thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Saturday 21 November 2015

Skirmish terrain (saga, lotr, frostgrave)

Just finished some winter terrain, the board is the other side of my xwing 3ft x 3ft deep space... so a gd use of a board. I made it purely with 6 or 7 spraypaints, a couple of light browns, light blue, dark brown patches and 2 whites.
The mausoleum i built mainly for frostgrave but it should still all work well as dale or someother winter city ruins. I have 4 or 5 extra clumps of trees, theyre just woodland scenic sprues on mdf coasters... built them for a ww2 event Craig was running a few years ago. This set reminds me of the desolation of smaug extended scenes a little, shame GW wont produce more figures/sculpts for it now. SBG is on the way out but hopefully the wargames community will rally  and keep playing, its a good skirmish system afterall.
Sorry jas, i put your Ork deffcopter base on hold for a week or so ;) need some 40k gaming inspiration!

I must say im so pleased with the 3 hirst arts molds i got, the fieldstone ruins and blocks and another one with extra bits and blocks has made a huge amount of terrain and it looks great on the table, so go check out hirst arts and see the molds they make if you like building terrain, i noticed hes made a new set for 28mm sandbagging, great stuff.

Also a while back i made a set of dungeon, cavern pieces after getting inspired by a phone game called pixel dungeon, these will work perfectly for frostgrave underground passages. Now i may hav an excuse to use them. Adam gave me a big hand one night, so thanks for that bro.

Still have a bit of infinity terrain to build and an ork fort, but for now il keep focussing on figure painting.... more progress to come...
Thx, Andy

Friday 25 September 2015

Infinity Tohaa


Well the Tohaa finally arrived and i got cracking, first unit painted is the Ectros, although im not sure if il use it much, good excuse to crack on with it and paint the playable figures.
I bought 16 figures, a starter box(6), a makaul box (4), hatail spec ops, kotail w/ spitfire, nikoul Ambush sniper, Neema, Gao rael w/spitfire, clipsos with sniper.... its a fairly good mix and a few of the models il use as different units but with the same weapons.
Jason and I also had a game last night on my newly put together armoury, i faired so bad that il leave it for him to boast about! Best part about the game for me was his wicked water city terrain that hes building. (huge cannon to leaders face equals game over on turn1)
The Armoury was quick and simple to make, just black foamcore board, white card and a few printed doors and such.
Basing up the tohaa was fun, i tryed my best to get a great detailed basing mix... of permafiller, pva glue and sand... for the first time ever i used greenstuff on my bases (rather than just the figures) and carefully applied my mixture with a scuplting tool... much fancier than my usual slap on pva and drown the figure in a box of sand. Since theres only a dozenish figures, im attempting to make them look sharper than my other horde armies.
Im really enjoying infinity, great game, gorgeous scuplts/figures and a good bunch of local guys who play it :)

Ectros "yo borisss, what did you say about my mamaaa..."  pew pew  boris writhes in pain as the virus quickly takes over his body..