A place of power in no time

   For my Lord of the Rings game night, I had to build a themed terrain piece to reflect the scenario and setting straight from the campaign.  Because I was focused on the transition between the Fellowship and the Two Towers, I determined that the Ambush at Amon Hen was the best choice.  There's a couple of reasons for that, and one of them just happened to be that the terrain is easy to build.  This is especially useful if you only have a couple of days and a lack of sharp blades...

  Admittedy, the instructions, templates, and measurements are right out of the Fellowship of the Ring campaign book published by GW in 2005 (these three books are still the best!).  The only changes I made were the columns (I have a few cake columns laying about, so I used them instead) and the statues around the seat (I do want them, but I would need sharper blades to avoid complete catastrophe).  Otherwise, this is almost step-by-step.

  

  The foamboard was not happy and cutting each of the layers to be 4mm shorter for the stairs (did I mention that the measurements are all in milimeters?!) turned out to be a long and error-filled task.  This was three days before gameday and it would now be two days to put it all together.  

  Next was gluing everything together.  This involved some superglue for the pillars on the base and lots of white glue for the foamboard.  That same white glue was then coated onto the base and some other necessary areas for the good 'ol sand-dump!  This was the day before gameday...

  I woke up on gameday with a paintbrush in my hand and a mission to complete.  After priming the models with black spray (I'm out of time, so I'm trying to find the quickest approaches to everything) and then grey spray, I immediately doused the base of the building and all other sandy areas with that coffee brown (the only craft paint brown color we own, and that wasn't ideal).

  Then we went crazy with the white glue and green flock, the white glue and blobs of static grass, and then the superglue for the clump foliage.  

  And finally, I pulled out a cream colour (I wanted white, but my hobby supplies betrayed me often for this project) and drybrushed and dappled around all the groundwork and across all the stone.  It game it that depth that it needed to mostly hide it.  By now, it's time to leave for gameday.  Like, 'wash the brush off and take the terrain to the car' time to leave.  But i finished it.

  This is obviously not the highest quality of work and certainly not what the Emperor would allow me to get away with in his shops, but I was satisfied and my gaming group really dug it!  I'm always excited to build and paint terrain, but getting this one done in just a few hours spread over three days while working on other stuff...  Damn, I'm good!

  Do you have a speedy '3-out-of-5' project that you've pulled off lately?  Do you have a project that you followed step-by-step from a good source and still nearly destroyed?  Comment below (I do read them)!

Happy Hobbying!

The hunt is on!

   I've been like a machine these last couple of weeks- executing project after project.  And somehow, I ended up pulling out the ol' Lord of the Rings miniatures for a game/movie night with my DnD group.  It's been almost two decades since I painted a LotR miniature (that can't be right, but I've been slipping for long time now...), so this was a bit of fun that I didn't expect.  

  In this previous post, I noted that point of these guys.  The group is partially assembling just to 'get out of the house' (no matter how old guys get, we still want to play with our friends!) and maybe watching the Two Towers.  We already watched The Fellowship, so a transition between those two would be awesome for these noobs, and I have the miniatures to play those scenarios.  But I also have to paint them, so I got to work!

These models took far longer to paint than I planned (and I forgot to do the cleaning for flash and mold lines and texture, so...), but I finally got them done.  Below are all the colors that I used- remember that I'm just using what I have and am not really following any colour-schemes.  

  The Three Hunters (Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli) just needed to be based.  But I also had to paint up the most important models for the Ambush at Amon Hen- the Uruk-hai carrying Merry and Pippin away!  I knocked those out very quickly (I've painted so many Uruk in my time that I don't even try anymore- hopefully it doesn't show!), and then got to basing all those models.  

  And with that, I have all the models for the scenarios painted and ready to play.  Now I just have to build the Seeing Chair ruins for the terrain...

Let me know what you think and whether you're into the LotR stuff at all yourself!  Most importantly- Happy Hobbing!

  

The ruins of Only War

 

  A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I'm working on a some terrain and that a good buddy sent me a set to work on.  I promised that I would blog about it, but I got smacked in the face by real life and I had to put it on pause for way too long.  I've finally started working on it and this is both to show it off and my work-in-progress.  

  Only War terrain is specifically designed for 40k, but it isn't rife with the skulls that decorate the grimdark setting, meaning that the ruins can be system-agnostic.  This matters if you happen to play other mini wargames but still want to fight through the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world.  If you are a 40k player, this terrain is perfect for the newest scenario packs (Pariah Nexus, I think) as well as meeting the cover standards for the tournaments.  For the more casual player, these are awesomely-detailed ruins that can really create that setting that drives a narrative.  

  After washing and priming the buildings, I decided to take some pictures to show off the detail.  Now these are definitely 'printed' and you can see some the 'ribbing' if you look up close.  But the detail is crisp and the printed aspects are almost impossible to see.  My favorite aspect of these is the non-symmetrical aspect of everything.  The bricks of the buildings are not just a grid patter, the decorations aren't just 'mirrored' from one side of the ruin to the other, and there is 'volume' to it all.  Unlike the GW buildings- these aren't super-thin and actually represent how thick brick walls would be.  These are very well-designed!

  At this point, I had to decide how I wanted to paint these ruins.  Everyone does the trusty gray (including myself , especially in that last post about Cityfight terrain), and these buildings were certainly modeled on the old GW Cityfight terrain already, so the choice is normally obvious.  But I wanted to be different.  I figured to paint these buildings in a sandstone color- something that could still be gray but have a different enough tone to even stand out from the concrete grounds they stand on.  So I busted out the airbrush, knowing that I need more practice and planning on it here.  So far, I've simply based the buildings with the Coffee color (11344) from Anita's All-Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint.  My next steps are to concoct a wash using Crayola powder (and probably around 60 years aold by now) and some kind of flow agent to weather the walls and then to start the tedious process of brush-basecoating the details.  I must admit that these are far less work than the GW versions...

  I will return with even more progress pictures.  I'm still painting Lord of the Rings minis and have to build some terrain for that as well, so this project will have to marinate for a bit.  But I'll be back with it sooner than you think!  Be sure to check out Only War terrain- I haven't even finished it yet and I'm loving it!  It might even be a fun project for you too.  

As always- Happy Hobbying and check out Only War!!!

Getting ready to hunt

   Everyone who's into fantasy still knows of and likely adores the Lord of the Rings movies.  Peter Jackson's trilogy is so good that we seek out the longer versions of the move to waste half-a-day per to fall into.  And from that came many great things for us nerds, not least of which is the Lord of the Rings game for GW (yes, my bar-code is showing again).  

  I constantly rant and rave about the unsung greatness of this game, especially when played in tandem with the story itself.  Years ago, GW's Lord of the Rings SBG was based wholly on the movies.  Eventually, the blue-book expansions came out and focused on the Ringbearer's quest and made the scenarios to follow the books more closely.  These scenarios reflect the best part of the game.

  My DnD group is on hiatus right now for the holidays, but my buddies within are still willing to gather and nerd-out with me.  Since we're not playing DnD and I don't want to destroy their enthusiasm by dumping a wargame and overloading them, and they like the Lord of the Rings...  One of my buddies has all the extended edition movies and we have comfortable seating to sit back for hours.  Oh, and I have the LotR SBG for the scenarios that we're watching!  Well, I think that makes this decision easy.  

  It turns out that I no longer have the ready resources of my old gunship and now have to rely on my personal collection.  That personal collection has some holes (such as no Moria army or Balrog because I'm so used to have one, fully painted, in the figure case right there!) or unfinished models.  That means I have to do some work.  As I poured over the collection and thought about the movies we were watching, I tried to find the most exciting scenarios that showed off the Fellowship the best.  I chose Amon Hen.

from Zorpazorp, of course!

  I have all the Uruk-hai Scouts built and painted (it was my very first force in 2001), including Lurtz.  I obviously had the Fellowship fully painted (for probably the 30th time as I had run 5 shops and we put out at least one new 're-imagining' of that movie's hero group every time), but I don't have a couple of things.  I need a ruined stone throne (the famous Chair of Seeing or something like that) for Frodo to hide in, and I need a boat.  Amon Hen is exciting because it's very scenic (it is the woods and next to a river with an ancient ruins- beautiful!) and the ambush is actually difficult (it did result in the death of Boromir, after all).  Which reminds me- now I need to paint up dying Boromir too!

Ah, metal miniatures, how I miss thee!

  Of course, the Ambush at Amon Hen breaks the Fellowship, seeing Merry and Pippin kidnapped, Frodo and Sam slipping away, and Boromir falling.  Oh, and Lurtz (from the movies) being killed.  That left Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli with the choice of folling the Ringbearer or trying to save the troublesome hobbits from Saruman's legion.  They chose to "Hunt some orcs!"  Some of my favorite LotR models were for that scenario and that provides a great bridge between the first and second movies.  Naturally, that means I have to paint the three hunters, and Ugluk (the Uruk that slew the Orc that tried to eat the hobbit).  Painting's back on the menu, boys!

Basecoat done, now to decide on technique...

  Right now, I have a few projects to complete pretty quickly.  In one week, I will have the terrain, miniatures, and scenarios ready for my buddies, and the ability to show off this underrated game.  I will definitely post more to show off the finished models and terrain and even share the results of the scenarios and if it would have changed the story at all.  Let me know if you've ever tried the SBG from GW and what you thought!  

  As always, happy hobbying!