Back to Middle Earth

Having had a crazy week, with a weekend away on a school trip thrown into the mix, it was good to get back to the painting table.

The elves are progressing. I did a test on the armour, using ochre washed with Army Painter Strong tone. This can then be highlighted up a bit.

I've been doing Thranduil alongside these models, since he's been sitting around for a while on my shelf. I know he's not a popular sculpt, but I think it's great.

I've also been working on a mounted Pippin.

This weekend I'm planning to go to Vapnartak in York. I'll try and take some pictures and show my purchases.

Making Asteroids part 3

Today my packet of flying bases arrived, so having prepped some lessons I took to the workbench. The flying bases are the hexagonal based type with a clear pin you insert.

The first job is to cut off the little tab at the end of the stand, and then to drill down with a pin vice to a depth of about 4-5mm.

I then clipped the ends off a load of dressmakers' pins and glued them into the stands. I wouldn't want to stand on these by mistake!

Finally it was just a case of applying some superglue to the pins and stabbing each asteroid. Et voila:

                            You're not actually going into an asteroid field are you?

Fear not LOTR fans, normal service will resume soon, although the next two weekends look like being painting free zones. :(

Making Asteroids part 2

It's been a busy weekend, but I've managed to make progress on the asteroids, mainly because they could be worked on in short spells in between doing jobs around the house.

First off I painted each rock with textured masonry paint.

Once this was done it was a simple matter of successive layers of browns to drybrush onto them. I managed to destroy a brush with all the dry brushing.

For those who are interested I use cheap acrylic paints from the Range for all my terrain.

No major updates on the Elves other than I changed my mind on the base coat for their boots.

Making Asteroids

Had a fun game of X Wing at Garrison last night. I felt very sorry for Adam though. In the first turn of shooting I rolled 10 attack dice against his B Wing, he rolled no evades and the B Wing went down. He did one shot Howlrunner later though with Chewie.

During the evening I was asked to make some more asteroids for demo games at Vapnartak next month. So tonight, flight stands were ordered and I set to some off cuts of punk foam with my foam cutter. Polystyrene fumes are not good for you so cut the foam in a well ventilated area.

The pieces of foam need to be small, as the asteroid templates inthe game aren't huge.

Once I had 18 pieces cut (3 sets) I shaved them all into more rock like shapes using a knife with a fresh blade.

To give them some more texture I then rubbed them all on a piece of bark. You can just make out the difference in the pictures, but it's definitely obvious in real life. Next up will painting with textured paint.

For those of you who are only interested in things Middle Earth (yes Llama I'm talking to you!) I'm still going on the elves, but the only change is an undercoat on the boots. I'm sorry it's been a busy week.

Mirkwood Rangers part 1

Quick update on the Rangers. I've decided to paint them in an autumn theme. I was inspired by the idea in the new rule book, although less so by the actual painting.

Anyway, it's been all about the browns so far. Trousers charred brown highlighted with dark flesh and skirts beastly brown and washed with a flesh wash. 

These models are so detailed that I'm having to be quite strategic in how I paint and assemble them otherwise I can't get the brush to all the parts. Getting them off the sprue was hard too, and notice that they don't have tabs for slotta bases.

It's going to be a slow job!

I've also committed to a the Backlog Reduction Oath on the One Ring. Last year I managed to paint 134 painted for 97 bought. I've only painted 932 out of my 1341 LOTR minis so I have quite a lot to catch up on. Sadly a lot of my back log are cavalry. I hate painting horses! So far this year I have completed 14 minis, which is a bit cheap because they were almost finished before Christmas and then holidays took over. Still I'm counting them!

Hedge wedge ledge barge

First off sorry for the indulgent title. It's a reference to The Day Today, a satirical news show from the 90s. Also important as the starting point for Alan Partridge.

Anyway, I thought I would share how I plan to make hedges for 6mm games. Bocage was a major terrain feature for WW2 and so hedges are important.

I'm still playing with the method, and may actually make terrain features with hedges attached.

Starting point was lolly sticks and pipe cleaners:

After trimming the pipe cleaner to fit the stick I stuck it on with a hot glue gun. I find the glue gun great for sticking terrain down as it dries instantly and forms a really strong bond. This was then sprayed black.

Next I used PVA to glue sand to the base, then used my usual method of brown ink and dry brushing with bone to finish the sand.

Finally with slightly watered down PVA I glued flock to the hedge. In this case it was GW flock because I got it in a lot of miniatures I was given.

Here you can see a Panther hiding behind a hedge:

Finally a teaser for one of my next projects:

Mirkwood Rangers from the new Hobbit range. Fantastic sculpts, full of life and I'm looking forward to painting them up. I was annoyed by the poor use of space on the sprue though. Particularly top right.

I would like to big up JT from Orc-Ward Battles in the UK who is a great supplier for Hobbit minis and offers a discount. Search for Orc-ward Battles on Facebook. I've also got Tauriel to lead them and may paint up my old Thranduil, and possibly another Legolas to go along side them.

2014 here we come!

So I've been completely rubbish at updating this thing. Big apologies to my tiny number of readers. Part of my problem was the camera on my ipad being SO poor. Anyway, I'm going to try a different camera and see how that goes.

2013 was good for wargaming. I played a few large games of LOTR, but generally not as many games as I would like. X wing became my go to game, but have also dabbled in 6mm WW2. Also have found new opponents at York Garrison wargames club.

Here are some of the things currently on the workbench all of which need to have bases finished.

Pippin Guard of the Citadel, flanked by 2 more Citadel Guard. Only 25 more Mina's Tirith miniatures to paint!

More Misty Mountains goblins, just need to finish the scribe now.

I found some more hunter orcs on eBay to bring my army to two full warbands.

I've painted quite a few Germans now for late war Europe. I've been playing with making some terrain. A shopping trip to the Range gave me some ideas to use "funky foam" and pipe cleaners. I may do a more detailed post on this at a later stage.

That's it for now. Hopefully will post more frequently from now on. Maybe!