Skeletons Update

It has been quite a while since I last posted on the blog. Real life has a habit of getting in the way of what we enjoy, and these past three months have been no different. Nothing bad (well, I did cop Covid for the first time a few weeks back despite the vaccinations), but time was not something I had much spare of.

That said, I managed to complete some more 2000AD and Judge Dredd comics reading and finally saw the eighth season of Game of Thrones. I wasn't as disappointed as almost everyone else I have heard mentioned; yes, the pacing was a little out, perhaps one or two more episodes would have resolved this, but the ending itself made sense to me and I liked the denouement for several of the main protagonists. Maybe my several year hiatus between being caught up in the hype and watching them in the cold light of day helped in this?

In addition, I did manage to get a few things done hobby wise, but didn't have the time to post my achievements. This post is a catch up of the little bits of painting and hobbying I managed to partake in since April.

Goblin Town goblin in my son's own style... 

Yep, a bright yellow goblin, painted when he was but 2 or 3 years old. He reapplied some paint a few months back and I tidied up the face and pustules, then washed it in readiness for varnishing (which still needs to be done).

More skeletons...

The second batch of skeletons from Otherworld Miniatures. As mentioned in a previous post, I mixed up the weapon arms a little to provide a few more variants. These, as well as the previous batch, have been completed all bar a wash and matt varnish. I will get around to that in a few weeks' time when I have more miniatures to finish.

The whole undead crew so far (not all finished just yet and more to order)...

The first picture above shows the command group (painted several years ago) with the inital six foot skeletons and the five mounted undead (as yet unpainted).

The second picture shows both sets of foot skeletons, and how far I have got with the mounted undead. These will still be a while in the finishing as they all still need a few more colours on them as well as a wash and matt varnish.

This little force is coming along nicely now though; I just need to finish painting the above, sort out a few more undead that I have in my lead mountain, and then add to the force with one more set of Otherworld armoured skeletons (basically the same foot figures with armour on) and a few one-offs to round it out. I am also looking at getting some zombies to add to these - a horde of 30-40 would be pretty neat, but with my glacial pace of painting I may be waiting until the year 3000 before I get them finished.

The latest haul from my first ever Kickstarter...

This is a kind of female Fellowship of the Ring plus Gollum, so we have a couple of female humans and an elf in there too.

These next two packs are the actual Kickstarter's main theme - several packs of dwarf, gnome and halfling female adventurers. The first packs are 7 of the 8 on offer (I was not over-enamoured by the halfling bar maids if I am honest, so decided not to bid for those), whilst the second picture shows the stretchgoals - the freebies.

These figures are from Bronze Age Miniatures' Half-pint Heroines range. I was after some female Dwarf, Gnome and Halfling miniatures to round out my GW and fantasy forces to enable some more gender balanced RPG and skirmish gaming. I have plenty of male adventurers/soldiers but very few female. I am hoping that this will even up the numbers a little and perhaps persuade my daughters to see that dad's games are not just for boys - I did try to convert them to the dark side with some painting lessons a fair few years back but they lost interest very quickly.

I am hoping to get some more prep work done on my Frostgrave Nickstarter figures from a couple of years back, as well as the Rangers of Shadowdeep starter figures. I am looking at sorting out some more aspects of the basing prior to undercoating. Due to work etc. this may not be for a couple of weeks yet, so watch this space.

LotR Khazad Dum Army

Lord of the Rings Khazad Dum Army (Prepped and Undercoated)


Today, I can present to you the second of my Lord of the Rings miniatures armies; the Dwarfs of Khazad Dum. These can be used against the Goblins of Moria featured yesterday, or in fact any other orc type army.

I have quite a few of these and would like to add to them a little in the future to round out the army. Again, this all depends on me securing a new job and then being able to fund the collection. Here is the army pre-prep...

And the army removed from its blisters and boxes, prepped and undercoated ready for painting...

Plastic:
24 Dwarf rangers

Metal:
Murin and Drar
12 Dwarf warriors
Balin and Dain
14 Khazad Guard
4 Dwarf kings
Floi Stonehand
2 Dwarf captains
1 Dwarf banner bearer
Durin and Mardin
3 Iron Guard
King's Champion (3)
1 Dwarf ballista
1 old Citadel Thorgrimm miniature

This gives a total of 73 Dwarfs (plus one ballista)

This army is probably the least complete that I have. I would like to add in some standard plastic Dwarf warriors and beef up a few of the elite units so I can field either 12 or 6 of each. Details can be seen in the list on the right hand side of the page.

Dwarves of Khazad Dum

The faction I decided to work on today was the Dwarves. As can be seen from the picture below, there were quite a few figures that needed to be made up in readiness for undercoating.

There were actually a few extra figures in addition to those featured in the photograph above as I did a bit of eBaying after the photo was taken, to round out the army - Balin needs a lot of warriors to reclaim Moria!

Although I have a Durin and a Dain miniature, I may use them as just ordinary dwarf lords/captains (Ori and Oin?) to go with the more generic dwarf lords in the collection. The reason being, from my (probably very shaky) recollection, is that Durin had died when his people delved too deeply and released the balrog (Durin's Bane) and Dain was busy rebuilding Erebor after the untimely deaths of Thorin's line (Thorin, Fili and Kili) at the Battle of the Five Armies.

Dwarf Lords...

I have quite a few dwarf lords and leaders, perhaps too many to be represented on the tabletop at the same time? As you can see from the top photo, I have some dwarf command, Gimli, Floi Stonehand (?) and a very old Citadel pre-slotta called Thorgrimm (according to the imprint on his base). I have to admit I don't really like that King's Champion and attendant shield/banner bearers, but had bought it at the time to round out the collection. The miniatures were not slotta based which makes me wonder if they were just some old minis GW had lying around not doing anything and some bright spark suggested they be utilised (and therefore make money) as LotR minis.

The second photo shows a few Iron Guard and four dwarf kings. I actually like these miniatures for all their plainness. The less is more approach really worked on these for me and they can be used for any other named dwarf I want them to be if necessary.

Dwarf Warriors...

Whilst I was building the army I discovered that I didn't have that many actual Dwarf Warriors. I have lots of elites and so forth but only a couple of sprues of Rangers and a few metal miniatures. I think a couple of sprues of plastic warriors may be required to round out the force when I can get access to some funds.

The first photo shows off two sprues worth of Dwarf Rangers. Unfortunately, one of the twin axe wielding warriors is sans an axe in his right hand - he was also almost sans hand too, but a nifty bit of work with the plastic glue put that right (I hope). I will have to try to find a similarly shaped axe from my bits box and see if he can be salvaged.

The lower photo shows off the original metal Dwarf Warriors blister sets. I have two each of the ones armed with axes and with bows as well as the Murin and Drar set which I will utilise as their named captains.

Dwarf Elites...

I guess the Iron Guard minis above in the Lords section should have featured in this section but I took the photos before worrying about how I was going to lay out the blog post. I have plenty of Khazad Guard but noticed there was a subtle difference in the posing of two of them with their axes raised over their heads (last two warriors on the right, back row in lower picture). I will have to see if I can eBay those last two poses again so I have two full sets of Khazad Guards.

As can also be seen from the lower picture, I have a Dain and Balin miniature to lead each troop with a spare Balin to be painted or converted slightly to maybe make Ori or Oin? The Thorgrimm mini could double as either one of those two as well.

In addition to the standard troops, I also have Durin and Mardin as well as a ballista with crew. I don't have any Vault Warden teams - shall I get one or two? Not sure yet but will wait and see how the points totals for this army turn out once I have also got a couple of boxes of plastic warriors and how my funds are holding up.

Again, this army is rather large, especially if/when it gets the additional plastic dwarf warriors, so I will try to see if there is a Dragon Rampant and saga army list for them on the web somewhere. If not, I guess I could always create my own when the muse takes me (probably whilst painting I will begin to procrastinate and end up designing armies for several rules sets).

I have decided to add an additional tally to the blog where I will list probable and possible additions to my LotR armies. These numbers will be nowhere near what I originally had envisioned for each faction, but will now just cover the basics required to round out my armies.