The Wolf's Hour

I finally finished off the last of the wargs and orcs for my Eldest son. After watching some of the Hobbit he asked for 'the boss' to be white - Azog obviously had a big impact on him.

Unfortunately I seem to have got the wrong end of the stick - he pointed out that the Orc wasn't white. "But that's OK, Daddy" he said, magnanimously.

He's already asked for some more.

While I was on, I also finished Bilbo. This was a cast iron sod to paint being almost closer to 15mm than 28mm. Great likeness but not exactly fun!

The Wasp Factory

"Some say, Jim, that the defensive line of the Wissenland Wasps ate the entire line of scrimmage of the Shire Sasuagemakers during the 2467 Chaos Cup Playoffs; no-one knows for sure because Cabalvision deemed the footage too disturbing to broadcast."

"All we know for sure is that their offensive line, the Blitzers, all wear the 'red splash' an item of red clothing to show they successfully fouled an opposing player without getting sent off. Not for nothing, Bob, are these lads known as the Codpiece Crushers of the Chaos Cup."

I've painted up my first team from the new 2016 Bloodbowl game.

The main issue was turning two sets of 6 miniatures into 12 individual pieces. This was done with a few head swaps, some repositioning of arms and, in the case of the Thrower to Blitzer, some plasticard armour and some astonishingly 1970s footballer sideburns.

As an aside, I love that teams come with personalised markers and balls. In the case of the orcs, two inflated squig skins:

So that's a very productive start to 2017. Here's hoping I can keep it up! 

Next up is some more Middle Earth for my son and then the Human team before the start of yet another project...

Happy new Year everyone and thanks as always for helping keep up my mojo. 

Merry Gaming Loot Day

Also known as Christmas. I hope you all got what you wanted.

As for what I got?

Yeah, who didn't see that coming?

The Fellowship of the Ring

Sans the annoying hobbits. I can't be the only one who skips all Frodo and Sam stuff in both the films and the books, surely?

Anyway, these are the only members of the Fellowship I'm really interested in so I made a concerted effort to get them all finished, given a kick up the backside by the previously mentioned 15th anniversary.

The last one to be done was Boromir:

I'm actually rather proud of these. I treated them like historical miniatures, using picture references and colour matching and I took a little extra time over glazes and layers. I think the extra effort shows - although I must admit to being helped enormously by the quality of the sculpts. As always the Perry Middle Earth stuff is lovely to work with.

And I'm obviously not the only one to think so...

This is definitely the last post before Christmas and the dawn of a new project so I will bid everyone a lovely holiday and I look forward to all the loot posts appearing on my feed.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Fell Wargs

As regular readers of my dispatches from the front line of gaming ADHD will be aware, my Eldest son has developed something of an affinity with orcs. Specifically the Warg riders from The Lord of the Rings. As I mentioned in my previous post I picked up a box of warg riders from eBay last week. He immediately started hassling me to build them.

So here are the first three of the new batch along with the two originals.  A relatively quick paint job as they are likely to be played with quite hard.

I did however, now I've got the knack of it, string all their bows.

There's one more possible post before Christmas but otherwise have a lovely time.

BOOM!

I quite fancied having a crack at some of those explosion markers you see around. Cotton wool. An LED light. How hard can it be?

Actually, it turns out to be really easy.

I used cotton balls because I could sort of sculpt them into the shapes I wanted but I know people have got really good results from using teddy bear innards.

Now, I'm going to be talking about my balls a lot in this post so let's just accept that it's going to be a bit Frankie Howerd and move on.

So first off, grab your balls and your LED tealight.

Then smear glue around the rim of the tealight. I used the thickest PVA I had as I didn't want my balls to get soggy. I wanted them to be firm and pliable. 

Arrange your balls around the side of the tealight and tease them upwards and outwards slightly.

Then smear the flat top surface of the tealight with glue, and arrnage your balls on this surface. 

Next, dip your balls in some glue and gently place them around the actual 'flame'. Repeat the teasing action. 

Repeat this step until you are happy with the placement of your balls.

I ended up with this sort of shape:

Painting was fairly easy; the only advice I would offer would be SPRAY YOUR BALLS LIGHTLY.

I used a basic black spray, quick thick around the base and progressively lighter as I worked up the length. The trick here is that you want the light to be able to show through at the core:

You can then place it on tanks, buildings or other objectives. 

You can even find a use for them in fantasy games.

Let's be honest - who would you put your money on: a Sherman Tank or Sir Christopher Lee?

If I don't get another post out before the Holidays, have a great Christmas and I hope Santa empties his sack for you. 

"Aye, I Could Do That."

"I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an Elf."

"What about side by side with a friend?"

"...Aye. I could do that."

Who doesn't love Gimli and Legolas? In an attempt to clear the decks before the Christmas loot arrives, I'm trying to tidy up some loose ends this week. Part of this was finishing off my little mini-fellowship. 

It actually turned out to be quite hard to find photo references for Gimli in his Fellowship outfit without the Elven cloak so I had to watch a couple of clips and take a best guess. 

In other Middle Earth news, I built up painted the last set of the Ruins of Osgiliath:

As I said in my previous post you simply cannot beat that for £40. The three sets easily create a setting for a 4x4 skirmish. Throw in some scatter and vegetation and you're done.

I am currently trying to resist the temptation to buy the Laketown House. The multipack is a touch more expensive, but you don't half get some scenery for your money. 

 As a final bit of housekeeping I based up the Dragon - the building of which is detailed exhaustively here - but when it was done, I found that that with dragon being green and the base also being earth tones, it needed something to make it pop.

Enter the snow effect I looked at earlier. 

As sort of scatter terrain, it breaks up with the green enough to do the job. There's still something missing here so I thick I'm going to have to come back to this one again.

And finally, you may recall that my Eldest son has adopted two orc warg riders as his favourite toys. So, as it's the season of goodwill, I've been keeping an eye on ebay.

12 second hand warg riders + 1 four-year boy = happiness:

So I guess I have those to paint up before Christmas.