Holiday Haul

Christmas, once again, brought me some lovely gifts from the family. Again, I am so appreciative of what they do for me so I can indulge in my hobby. I know output both gaming- and painting-wise has been very slow recently but that will hopefully begin to improve next year. The support I receive does spur me on to achieve more but my enemy is always time.

This year I received a large number of gaming-related items as well as some peripheral items to inspire and spark my currently somewhat limited creative flair - DVDs of The Princess Bride, The Dark Crystal and the second series of House of the Dragon.

I should hopefully be getting a game of 5e D&D in towards the end of January, so Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is a welcomed supplement to get my D&D head on.

I also tend to receive the latest Frostgrave supplement, if one has been released, each birthday or Christmas - these are a great source of inspiration and ideas for future gaming activities. I don't know why, but I am especially attracted to colder climes and wintery settings for my gaming worlds.

The latest(?) Osprey game book When Nightmares Come was also a pleasant surprise - I am also drawn to Cthulhu-style worlds. I like the idea of mankind being almost powerless to defend against the darkness that prevails in the universe but I am still looking for ways in which to portray that in a game. Each rules book or supplement I read adds to my knowledge but my view is that if something gets game stats that players can access it becomes defeatable. Anyway, I digress - this could be an idea for a blog post at a later date.

My figures haul also went up again this year. I got a couple of packs of Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Hobbit miniatures. I have a small, but steadily growing Hobbit militia that I would like to pit against some goblins/orcs/trolls at some point. If anybody out there could suggest alternative hobbit/halfling miniatures from other manufacturers that scale well with the GW offerings I would be very appreciative. I don't need many (so big boxes of plastic miniatures are out unless the sprues are sold anywhere individually) but for skirmish level games (up to 20-30 a side) I prefer to have each warrior represented by a unique figure (even if that is just a different paint scheme or weapon swap).

Hopefully, I will have more time and be more talkative next year, so I can keep the blog ticking over. I may change the format a little to also include more gaming thoughts and ideas.

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.

Fathers Day Haul

A little late, due to being away this last weekend, but here is a small summary of my Fathers Day haul. My kids are wonderful and always get me a small hoard of wonderful gifts. This year I had the usual scrummy Green and Blacks quality chocolate selection, as well as the beginnings of a Hobbit warband for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game...

My youngest took it upon himself to go to his local GW and order up the Hobbit warband - a dozen Hobbit Militia (8 of) and Archers (4 of). He then split the cost with the rest of my kids. Add these to my big 4 (Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin - a few variants of each), Farmer Maggot and his dogs, and I have the beginnings of a great little battle company. Just a few more packs to go to complete the army.

These will be next on my list of warbands to paint after I complete the skeletons and my son's Gondor troops. I may be some time on these however, as my temporary role has been converted to a fixed term contract of three months - happy days - and this will leave me with a lot less time to spend on our hobby.

LotR Free Peoples and Mordor Armies

Lord of the Rings Free Peoples Army (Prepped and Undercoated)

Third entry in this series of summaries - this is not really an army as such, more a collection of individual heroes and some back up troops. Here is what they looked like pre-prep...

And how things look post-prep...

There is a great variety of characters and troops in this little faction; some of them being from different manufacturers that fit in nicely and add a little colour to the mix. Most of the non-GW figures will be used in Adventures in Middle Earth games as NPCs etc., but I may get around to statting them up for the Strategy Battle Game, Saga or Dragon Rampant as part of certain units.

Anyway, here's what I have so far for this faction...

Plastic:
16 Elf warriors
16 Numenorian warriors

Metal:
Gil-Galad and Elrond
Elendil and Isildur
4 Elf Heroes (Galadriel, Haldir, Glorfindel (GW), Glorfindel (Mithril)
Radagast, Tom Bombadil, Gan-Buri-Gan and King of the Dead
5 eBob NPCs (Barliman Butterbur, Bill Ferny, Gatekeeper, Lady Greensleeves, Queen)
9 Fellowship (Gimli, 2xLegolas, 3xGandalf, 2xStrider, Boromir)
9 Hobbits (Farmer Maggot, 3xdogs, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin)

This gives a total of 69* Free peoples heroes and warriors.

Lord of the Rings Mordor Army (Prepped and Undercoated)

Again, this is not an army by any stretch. I could use the orcs and warg riders from the Isengard army (more on them later) to supplement it but will most likely not worry about Mordor as an entity in itself. I prefer the idea that it is a distant menace and occasionally its more sinister denizens (read: Ringwraiths) venture forth to gather information or infiltrate in order to disrupt. Here's the original picture of the Mordor faction pre-prep...

And the very much cut down set of personalities left over after the orcs are moved to the Isengard faction...

Not much to say on these, so here is the list of what I have got...

Metal:
Gothmog and two Morannon orc capatins
Shagrat and Gorbag
Gollum
3 x Witch King

This gives a total of 10* Servants of Sauron.

*Oops, I missed Shelob from the list, so the Servants of Sauron total is 10 miniatures (not 9) and the Free Peoples gained an additional 2 (Sam with Sting and Frodo wrapped in spider web) taking them to a total of 69 miniatures (not 67).

Scouring of the Shire mk II

As I am unable to progress with any figures prep today (and most likely not tomorrow either) I thought I would add in a couple of supplemental blog entries about the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.

Whilst surfing the good ol' internet last night I came across a few new releases from Games Workshop for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. This is probably old news to most, but I am going to post up as an aide-de-memoir, so I know what I am missing from my GW LotR hobby. It is also a coincidence that I only posted up a few of my Bree/Shire related miniatures the other day and this is what is due out in the next GW release.

Since the game's relaunch last year, GW and Forgeworld have been good to their word and are fully behind supporting it as a mainstream game. As a result, several rulebooks have already been released (of which I have only the initial Battle Companies one). I would like to grab the Lord of the Rings related ones when I am able but don't have much interest in The Hobbit stuff except for completeness sake.

• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual
• Armies of The Hobbit
• Armies of The Lord of the Rings
• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game : Battle Companies (release 1)
• Gondor at War

Very soon now, we should be getting the following plus a hole heap of miniatures to accompany the rulebooks...

• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game : Battle Companies (release 2)
• Scouring of the Shire (release 2 - this topic was covered in the game's previous incarnation)

I am not sure about the second coming of Battle Companies so soon on the tail of the original version, but I have heard rumours that the original sold out on no less than six print runs! I think that was seen as a sign by GW that this was a horse worth backing. On my current budgetary restraints, I will pass on the latest version until I can justify getting it after all the other goodies I would like to grab. I am also not sure on the other rule books just yet.

Also to be released at the same time as these new rules manuals are a whole bunch of new hobbits and ruffians as well as the original metal sets which I have already toyed with getting, so this may add to the pressure on me to cave-in to those demands.

There will also be a new hobbit hole and the re-release of some other old miniatures that the hobbits can fight against, like Golfimbul. Added to a few wild wargs and some orcs and we have a game on!

 

Exciting times ahead for players of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game. This all ties in nicely with me prepping and painting my old LotR miniatures collection. Hopefully I will be having a busy summer getting all my old minis ready for some tabletop action.

I should have an update tomorrow about what is happening with my favourite faction: Rohan.

Middle Earth Magic and Mysteries

The miniatures I got round to prepping today don't really fit into any other category, so I labelled them the Magic and Mysteries faction of the Free Peoples. Unfortunately I did not have as much time as I usually do to get anywhere near as much work done (and my superglue has now gone a bit claggy and doesn't stick as well so I will need to get a new tube), but progress was still made.

In this selection are one-off figures that I got with the De Agostini Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine that was published between 2002 and 2006 ish. They could make up parts of those other armies that I either just didn't get around to collecting or didn't want to use in my gaming, but to be honest, I will just keep them aside until such a time as I may get to use them. They will be nice as just painting projects to be called upon if I hit any dry patches in my other factions.

In this selection are a number of hobbits, Tom Bombadil, King of the Dead, a few wizards and a Woses leader (Gan-Buri-Gan?). However, due to the aforementioned superglue incident I couldn't finish off any multi-part minatures as the glue just wasn't instantaneously tacky enough to allow arms/weapons etc, to catch straight away, but just enough that it would bind my fingers to whatever I was holding. The glue is fine for basing but nothing else at present.

First up is a gaggle of really obscure miniatures gaming wise. Not sure how I will use these to be honest - King of the Dunharrow Dead and Tom Bombadil. As I don't have any other LotR undead (other than a couple of Ring Wraiths) to make up an army he could double up as a barrow wight maybe? Tom Bombadil can only really be a painting project as the only stats I have seen for him are a bit vague - I will try to paint him as per the description in the books though and see if I can use him in a scenario or two, but without Goldberry I am not sure I'd want to (although perhaps my Lady Galadriel figure could double-up as Goldberry?).

I then got onto a few of the hobbits I have lying around. Farmer Maggot along with Grip, Wolf and fang helping Bilbo keep an appointment. I have some Fellowship set Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin miniatures already prepped, so these can go right alongside them. If I recall correctly, GW have re-released the hobbit Shirriffs etc. - if they are in metal, I may pick some up when I get some spare cash to create a little Shireling army to fight against some goblins and wargs etc. and maybe some Dunlanders and various ruffians with Sharky and Worm?

The final picture is of Gandalf the White on Shadowfax. It's funny how I can't get used to Gandalf being the White; I always see him as being the Grey even though he appears in more pages of the trilogy as the White. I think a lot of it may be due to the fact that I prefer the Fellowship journey and small skirmishes more than big set piece battles that tend to occur later in the books. It may also be due to the fact he is the Grey in The Hobbit too? I don't know really - does anyone else out there think the same way as I do?

I still have a Gollum and Gan-buri-gan figure to complete and several more wizardly figures to add to the blog, but these will have to wait until I can get to the shops and grab some superglue tomorrow. Hopefully I can get the rest of them completed over the weekend (although I am busy this weekend as it is a friend's 50th birthday and a lot of us are out to celebrate).


Next week I  have one or two smaller factions (Moria) to complete and then I am onto the larger armies of Rhun, Rohan and Gondor (although I think all of Gondor's figures have been prepped). I think my Isengard orcs and wargs are completed too, but I will need to check. Lots more to do but I have made great in-roads so far over the last week or two by chipping away at the lead and plastic mountain for an hour or so here and an hour or so there.