2019 Hobby Review and 2020 Goals

Well I haven't been able to update the blog in a few months due to being very busy, but I have been getting plenty of hobbying done. That is not to say I've actually finished much, as I seem to accrue new side projects at an alarming rate, despite my resolution last year to not start any new projects I've done a rather poor job of that. This year however I am determined to have a year of getting things done, especially given the number of regular opponents I have currently.

One thing I don't usually talk about in my Hobby Review (or on this blog in general) is battling as I don't do that much of it. This year however I've managed to get some games in which I've really enjoyed (for both LOTR and 40k). I have instituted a policy of not battling with an army unless its fully painted and I've found that that has really helped with both painting productivity and also with getting games in as that has become the intended goal of getting stuff painted. Its also just such a great feeling to have a game with a fully-painted army on the board, and while my win/loss ratio isn't too great I've still enjoyed my games a lot!

In particular I've been involved in a 40k campaign with a space marine army that became spun off from the Kill Team I did the other year. While these games have highlighted quite a few of the problems I have with the current 40k meta, I have enjoyed the narrative aspect of it and I've felt really motivated to get an army painted due to there being points available for submitted a newly painted army each week.

In other news, I've also managed to indoctrinate one of my new housemates into the hobby via AoS, gotten one of my regular Warhammer opponents into Malifaux, and I even managed to get my girlfriend into painting Harry Potter miniatures with me!


Finished Projects

- LOTR Projects - With the revamping of the Middle-Earth Strategy Game I have decided to do a mass re-painting of my LOTR armies while adding one or two miniatures I've always wanted. My first project of the year to be completed was my Mordor army, shortly followed by my Dark Spirits of Middle Earth which allowed me to field my Mordor army as an Angmar one.

- Malifaux - To finish off my Lady Justice crew I painted up some Domodore dos Cadaveres. I absolutely love the miniatures and look forward to trying them out, as well as getting some games in this year, which I didn't quite manage last year.

Novator Ludovico Invespucci
riding the mutant navigator Pigafetta 

- Navigators - as a brief foray into the world of Inq28 and Blachitsu, I made this Navigator war band which I'm really happy with as an experiment into a way of modelling and painting I haven't really tried much before. I don't know when I'll next have the chance to do a Inq28 war band but its something I'd love to do again.

- Custodes Wave 2 - You know how I said last year that I wouldn't start any new projects? Well I did... With the release of the Vetenari, and the fact I've gotten into battling and have wanted to play larger games, I decided to add to my Adeptus Custodes to take it up to 2000 points of pure gold.

- Imperial Knight - An unexpected addition to my Talons of the Emperor, but when one of my friends was selling his Knight I felt I couldn't pass up the opportunity, and what better colour to paint it than gold? I'll be posting pictures of my knight and my expanded Custodes army on the blog as soon as I manage to upload all my pictures properly.



WIP Projects

- Daughters of Khaine - Near the start of the year I sold off my Flesh-Eater Courts due to a lack of interest in them, and began swapping over some of my old Witch Elves onto round bases. I did a little bit of painting and converting for a Daughters of Khaine army, but my summer was mostly dominated by more Custodes and by the time I had got the time to work on my Witches, a new army had come to AoS which grabbed me instantly...

Dab

- Ossiarch Bonereapers - When these guys were announced I simply had to get them. Nagash himself has been gathering dust on my shelf for years now and this army, full of constructs and tanky skeletons, gives me the perfect excuse to finally field him. I've put my Daughters of Khaine into storage, bought two Feast of Bones boxes (which I've sold the Ogor halves of), and gotten to work raising an army of Ossiarchs to conquer the mortal realms with.

- Iron Brutes Primaris marines - Since September I have been involved in a 40k campaign at my local club. When it came to choosing a faction I was a little at a loss as the campaign began before new Sisters of Battle were released and it started after I had finished painting all my Custodes (the scoring mechanism for the campaign rewarded painting new stuff each week). I decided that as Primaris marines were finally good, easy to paint, and cheap on eBay that I would expand the Kill Team I painted up last year into a full army. By only buying from eBay I've been able to assemble a 2000 point army for only around 100 quid, and I've now painted the majority of it. The campaign doesn't wrap up until February so I haven't painted everything yet, but this is a side project which will complete itself by then.

- Imperial Fists - I acquired a large number of old metal space marines earlier this year which I ultimately plan on turning into an old-school Imperial Fists army for display purposes. I started painting them up but after the new Contrast paints were announced I decided to put them on the back burner until I have the chance to get some yellow contrast paint to do them with as I'm currently unhappy with my own attempts at yellow.


No Progress

- Lost projects - This year I managed to sell off the last of my Imperial Guard and Dark Angels, as well as my Flesh-Eater Courts which I lost all enthusiasm for after looking at how many miniatures I needed to paint to field a decent list and feeling uninspired by their new Endless Spells. I've also sold off a bunch of misc. Imperial and Undead miniatures I no longer have a need for.

- Witch Hunters - With new Sisters of Battle coming out, I had to make the decision whether to simply add them to my old army or start them as a new project. After seeing the scale of the new plastics I decided on the latter, and resolved to shelve my old Witch Hunters for now. I'll get around to finishing repainting them at some point but we'll see.

Goals for 2020

- Finish my Space Marines army for the campaign - My first and most important goal is getting my unexpected space marine army finished. I have about half the miniatures finished, and of the half that is left they are half painted so I expect to be done with them in the first few months of the year. After which I can move on to more exciting 40k projects...

- Sisters of Battle - My main 40k project this year (and probably for the next few years) is going to be my Sisters of Battle. I managed to get the limited edition army box which I've supplemented with a converted priest, and the Celestine and Greyfax miniatures I already owned - and given that amount of stuff I think I'll be still painting them for much of the year.

- Ossiarch Bonereapers - My main AoS project which I expect to come to the fore once my space marines are done. I have around 1000 points of Ossiarchs, plus a few other bits and bobs which I was gifted for Christmas, and I hope to get these painted and some games in soon before buying anything else for the army.

- Lucius crew for Malifaux- In my continued Malifaux adventures I've finally decided to get myself a second crew. I went with Lucius as I wanted to stay within the Guild, but have a more interesting experience than the reasonably simple to play Lady Justice. I also just adore the amount of character packed into each and every sculpt in the core box, and I look forward to leading a war band of lawyers into battle.

- Underworlds - I acquired the Beastgrave core box this past year as well as one or two other war bands which I've had immense fun playing. However it seems about time for me to actually paint up some of the bands I've been playing with which include: Kurnothi, Beastmen, Kharadron, and Flesh-Eaters. One a month would be a nice goal (especially as I've banned myself from buying any more until I've painted some) but we shall see given everything else I'm working on.

- LOTR - I'm slowly working on revamping my LOTR collection since the relaunch of the game and I hope to continue assembling my forces into this new year. I had a lot of fun doing my Mordor stuff last year and hope to work on Isengard this year, with a particular focus on Dunland considering they got some new miniatures recently.


I go into this year with an awful lot of projects and things I want to work on. GW did a great job last year of releasing things I really, really wanted and I can only hope that they slow down this year. However I am optimistic that I can get plenty done. I'm doing pretty well with my work/life balance at the moment and have a fair amount of spare time to get painting and battling done in. I've got a very busy year ahead of me this year so I don't know how my blogging will go, but we shall see. Maybe I'll try instagram this year...

Dark Spirits of Middle-Earth

While not an army unto itself, I had these misc. evil miniatures laying around and thought I'd give them a fresh lick of paint. These were quite quick and simple to paint up as they are mostly just dark robes and dingy armour, though I think they convey the mood of these characters quite well.

The Necromancer and the Castellans of Dol Guldur are some of my favourite miniatures from the LOTR range due to the incredible detailing on their flowing robes and the cruel menace of their armour. Though I think they are now in the Armies of the Hobbit book, which I don't have so I won't be battling with them, I am very happy to have them in my collection.

In lore, the Witch-King did not have a fell beast during his rule of Angmar, so I've converted a version of this character on horseback to represent him during that period. I took inspiration from the 'headless horseman' appearance he has in the books, as well as the Ranking/Bass film adaptation of Return of the King.

Finally we have some Barrow-Wights whose robes and armour I painted the same as my Nazgul and other evil spirits, and whose skin I painted as if it were mummified flesh. Alongside them I have the four hobbits prepared for sacrifice which I plan on using as objective markers. I really love the Barrow-Wight miniatures and should I ever field an army of Angmar they will be my go-to heroes to lead my hordes of orcs.

Just to finish off this quick post, here is a collection of my miniatures that would form an ad-hoc Angmar army should I choose to field my Mordor stuff differently. I've no idea if my miniatures will see battle in this manner but it's nice to have the option.

This was just a short and sweet little project I did to keep up the Middle-Earth momentum this year after finishing my Mordor army. Hopefully I'll manage to get around to my next big LOTR project soon, which will be returning to my army of Isengard.

Army Showcase: Mordor

The board is set. The pieces are moving...

With 'Gondor at War' coming out, for my first Middle-Earth project of the year I decided to shift focus from my Isengard army to my Mordor one. Before I even got painting there was been quite a bit of stuff to fix and convert first which took a significant amount of time. When I first got into miniatures it was through LOTR, and I bought all kinds of random stuff which ended up being horribly converted, mangled, or lost in my formative hobby years. So as I get back into Middle-Earth I am faced with a very mixed collection of miniatures, many of which need reassembling or parts substituting to bring back them back to usable on the tabletop.

After many hours of work, more green stuff than planned, and some creative solutions to problems, I managed to cobble together an army of Mordor I am quite proud of which will be my go-to force for battles in the next few months while I have a local opponent. Its not the most technically amazing paint scheme, but its one I feel is faithful to the dark and dingy hordes of Mordor.

Project Orc - Part 2

"...the time of the Orc has come!"

Project Orc is now completed! I now have 20 generic orc warriors painted up to use in either  Mordor/Barad-Dur, Angmar, or Isengard army, with a generic captain and three banner-bearers for those forces. This was a fun little start to my 2019 plans for my LOTR forces and hopefully soon my completed Mordor army shall be appearing on the blog.

How to: Basing Middle-Earth

The finished bases

I'm trying to put more painting and modelling guides onto the blog so I thought I'd start a year likely to be filled with Middle-Earth miniatures with a guide to how I do them, alongside a few thoughts I have at the end on variations. For reference, I have largely followed GW's grassy plains tutorial for my Middle-Earth miniatures but with some minor difference.

I wanted a consistent basing scheme for all of my Lord of the Rings and Hobbit stuff, rather than a different one themed to each force. This is so that should I choose to ally forces I will still have a fairly unified looking army, and it will make using miniatures in different armies (for example, my orc warriors will turn up in the Angmar, Mordor, Barad-Dur, and Isengard forces I field) much easier from a visual point of view.

Sand --> Mournfang Brown

First up is applying the sand. The way I did this was to water down some pva glue (just a little bit), apply it all over the base, and then dunk the base into a tub filled with sand. I made sure to keep dunking the miniature until no more sand would adhere to the base, then I waited to let it dry.

Once the pva had all dried (I like to leave it overnight), I then covered the top of the base and the rim with watered-down Mournfang Brown. I'll come back and tidy the rim up to a firmer colour later.

Agrax Earthshade --> Mournfang Brown

I then deviated from the GW method linked above by washing the top of the base with Agrax Earthshade, before dry brushing with Mourning Brown. This is just to make sure any sand I may have missed with the first layer is at least stained brown, and also makes the recesses just that bit darker which is just personal preference.

Zamesi Desert --> Ushabti Bone

This is then followed by a dry brush of Zamesi Desert, followed by a dry brush of Ushabti Bone.

Mournfang Brown on rims and blood tidied around hooves

Once the dry brushing is complete the rim of the base can have Mournfang Brown reapplied to make the colour solid, and if there are any effect around the miniature's feet (like I have done with blood around the hooves of the Mouth of Sauron's horse) this can then be applied to the base around it.

Grass and any finishing touches

Following this add a bit of grass to finish off the generic 'plains' look. My plan is to use only dead grass (my favourite Mordheim Turf is great for this) on my evil armies, and living grass (I'll probably use the somewhat muted Scorched Grass) for my good armies. This will mean that allied forces will maintain a level of cohesion, while at the same time there is a subtle differentiation between good and evil. The only exception I might make is the Dead of Dunharrow, where I'd be tempted to use a mix of living and dead grass for thematic reasons.

Then you can add on whatever subtle touches you fancy like tree-roots or rocks. I plan on putting a skull or two on the bases of my Angmar heroes, and a few bits of ruins on my Moria bases, but otherwise I'll continue to follow the scheme laid down here. A bit of blood (if not already applied) may also be welcome if thematically appropriate, but I think I'd be tempted to keep gore to a minimum on Middle-Earth miniatures, don't know why I just would. Whatever you add, neutral and dark-to-mid toned colours are going to be the ideal.

These bases are ultimately designed to be fairly simple to do and also generally unobtrusive. While one would usually base dark miniatures on lighter bases and vice versa, this is more of a mid-tone so it can work fairly well with just about anything. The goal here is to allow the miniature to take centre-stage and not be overshadowed by a busy base.

I hope you've enjoyed this little how-to and best of luck with your own basing in Middle-Earth!

Project Orc - Part 1

"The age of men is over..."

After flicking through the 'Armies of the Lord of the Rings' book in preparation for doing some new projects, I realised that by simply buying some Orc Warriors I'd be able to field several more armies than I currently can. Due to the somewhat random collection of miniatures I own, I worked out that if I had just one set of basic orcs I could not only bolster my Isengard and Mordor armies, but I could also actually field armies from Angmar and Barad-Dur as I owned relevant heroes but not any warriors.

So I've decided to get myself a bunch of orcs off of eBay, one of which I've converted into a Captain, and three of which I've converted into banner-bearers. Each banner-bearer will have a unique banner: a white hand for Isengard, a spooky-looking sigil for Angmar, and a crimson eye to use for Mordor* so I can switch which banner the squad has to represent which faction they are part of. The orcs themselves will be painted fairly drab and dark so as to fit in with any evil force I choose to use them with.

This little orc project to kick off my Middle-Earth adventures in 2019 will be a great boon to my Lord of the Rings projects and will dramatically increase my ability to get a range of games on the table. As the first supplement to the game coming out is 'Gondor at War', I think my WIP Isengard army is going to be pushed aside in favour of the forces of Mordor. I have just acquired Gothmog and begun rebuilding the Witch-King to lead this army, and I'm looking forward to painting up this rabble and bringing about the time of the orc!

*Tolkien mentions nothing of Sauron's heraldry in the second age (he seems to have adopted the red eye only after his expulsion from Dol Gulder), so I don't think I'll bother converting a banner for a Barad-Dur force. In the rare instance I'll play a game set during the War of the Last Alliance, I will either not field a banner or probably just use the Mordor one and ignore the anachronism.

The Forge World Nazgul of Dol Guldur are bad

As I've been getting back into the newly re-branded 'Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game',  I've been digging out all my old LOTR miniatures and really enjoying getting them ready to play with. While doing this I began contemplating starting a Hobbit-era force and my first thought was to do a 'Dark Powers of Dol Guldur' army as it would be fairly small, I love the Nazgul, and I'd get to use the Necromancer miniature I already own. So I went to look at the Nazgul miniatures that would make up the bulk of the force. It was the first time I'd really looked at them in any detail and I found myself really disappointed.  So much so, that I felt the need to write a long, rambley post about it on my blog complete with hastily thrown together diagrams.

Thoughts after the jump:

Re-painting Isengard (Nov WIP)

"Build me an army, worthy of Mordor"

Though I began earlier this year working on my Easterlings, the first army I am planning on getting painted up fully is my Isengard force. This is mostly because I'm quite happy with the base colours (it just needs highlights and touching up), I don't need to buy anything else for the force as its around 1000 points already, and Saruman is one of my favourite characters so he kinda gets preferential treatment.

The previous incarnation of this army (with some really awful blurry photos to boot) had a slightly different composition to how it stands now. Notably missing is one of the trolls and the unit of orcs which I have moved over to my fledgeling Mordor army. However, I have replaced them with some Uruk-Hai warriors I fixed up, a demolition team I forgot I owned, and a while ago I picked up a version of Saruman on foot and Grima Wormtongue. While I have no plans on expanding this force, if I were I'd probably want to add some Warg Riders for cavalry, possibly put some orcs back in there for cheap bodies, and crossbowmen for more shooting.

The main things I have done in repainting this army is taking away nearly all the red that was previously there. I wanted to make my Isengard force quite dark and grungy, as well as making it distinct from the other evil armies that come more directly under the thrall of Sauron which will feature red quite predominantly. This included removing red from the clothes of my Dunlendings, and repainting the flesh of my Uruk-Hai to remove any reddish tint. The only other big repainting I'm doing is Saruman himself who will be much brighter with less severe shading as I think I can do a much better job at painting him now than five years ago.

There's still lots to do in order to achieve the look I'm going for, in particular I will have to spend quite a bit of time working on re-applying white hands to quite a few of the miniatures who previously had them on their faces. However, I'm hoping that this project wont end up taking too much time and I'm aiming to have it finished by Christmas whereafter my Mordor army will become my main focus. My Mordor force will be comparable in size to my Isengard army but requires much more work.

Here's a bonus quick pic of the small Rohan force that I'm cobbling together as well. As you can see from the range of different coloured bases, these miniatures have served in quite a few other projects previously and I was actually surprised at how many I was able to pull together for this project. I've got 5 riders, 12 warriors with a decent mix of weapons, 4 royal guard, and hero-wise I've got Eowyn, Merry, and Hama. With the addition of the contents of the Battle of Pelannor Field box and a few more heroes I think this should end up as a solid 1000-ish points force.

Non-LOTR stuff is taking up most of my painting time at the moment, but now my Kill Team is finished I hope to really get going on my Isengard and Rohan armies while I finish off my Talons of the Emperor who just need tidying up and basing now.

Autumn Workbench 2018 - Experimental Undead, Malifaux Mumblings, and Hobby Review

Last year in late autumn I wrote a bit of a rambling post about current things I was working on as well as reflecting upon my progress over the year in relation to the goals I posted back in February. I've got a few odds and ends I'm working on at the moment, and I've started thinking about next year already, so I thought I'd write another rambling post as autumn comes upon us once again. 

Firstly, something oft referenced but rarely posted about on this blog is what I've been referring to as my 'Lich Warband', or as it now appears to be a 'Lich Army'. I've collected a few different undead armies in my time and I've been left with lots of spare parts. I decided to make a little army out of what spare parts I could, taking the time to experiment with narratives, weird conversions, and unusual paint jobs. Though my time working on this force has been quite sporadic, its been an awful lot of fun and I look forward to properly putting it on the blog when its finished. For now though here's a little look at what I've completed thus far:

1985 Mouth of Sauron

As I mentioned in a previous post, I managed to pick up this old Citadel miniature of the Mouth of Sauron off of eBay which I thought looked pretty cool. He didn't take particularly long to paint up as he is a fairly simple sculpt, but I had an absolute blast doing it. It's got me really excited to start getting into some more miniatures from Middle-Earth!

I painted him in fairly muted colours (similar to my Mordor stuff), except for the eyes upon his chest and his helmet to provide both a striking spot colour and to remind his underlings that he speaks with the conviction of the Dark Lord himself. I was surprised to find that the sculpt was of decent quality for its age, though the eye patterning on the fringes of his robes and the bridle of his horse were not particularly well defined so I struggled to do my best at picking them out. There was also text sculpted onto the scroll of the dismounted Mouth, but the detail wasn't great and got lost under a few layers of paint, which allowed me to just write over it. I must also admit I was surprised at how big he is. I was expecting him to be of a weird, smaller scale due to being an older miniature but in reality he seems to more or less at the same scale as modern LOTR miniatures. On foot he does appear about the same height as GW's Black Numenorians, so just a bit taller than most men, fitting as the Mouth of Sauron is believed to hail from that race.

As I already have a Mouth of Sauron miniature, I like to think of this guy as another, similar emissary of the Dark Lord. In the books at the Council of Elrond, the dwarves reveal that an emissary from Mordor offered them a ring of power in exchange for the location of Bilbo Baggins, and while I think this may have been an early allusion to the Mouth of Sauron himself, it could have been one of a number of Sauron's mortal thralls whose job it is to travel beyond beyond Mordor bearing the word of the Dark Lord. Whether this might be to deliver terms to Sauron's enemies, or to muster armies like the evil men who owe their fealty to Mordor, I like to think of this guy as one of many emissaries of evil to sally forth from Barad-dur in the third age. Consequently I think that I'll use him in game as the Mouth of Sauron, but as an allied unit in other evil armies rather than in my Mordor army itself; to represent him gathering, threatening, and relaying orders to the other dark powers of Middle-Earth.

Now that he is finished I'm ready and raring to go with my existing Middle-Earth collections. I've taken stock of what I've got and made some plans as to what I'd like to do with it, and I've decided that my first big project will be my 1000 point Isengard force as I don't plan on adding any more miniatures to it. Its as big an army as I think I need and there aren't really any other miniatures in the range I want. I think I'll also potter around with my Moria and Rohan stuff, laying the foundations for expanding those forces several months down the line, so check back on the blog soon for more Middle-Earth miniatures.

Middle-Earth Redux

I'm rather excited about GW supporting Lord of the Rings again! It was the game that first got me into the hobby and I'm really looking forward to jumping back in. The lacklustre (and overly expensive) Hobbit releases just didn't do it for me, but the promise of new Lord of the Rings releases has me wanting to gather together my old miniatures and make something of them. As I mentioned earlier in the year, I've decided to work on my LOTR stuff and I think I may see about doing some expanding of my collection as well.

I currently have three forces: Isengard, Eastern Kingdoms (Easterlings and Khand), and Harad. These are at about 1000 points each based on the old points costs. I also think from various spare pieces that I have lying around I could make small (500-750ish points) armies for Rohan, Mordor, Moria, and Angmar as well. At some point I plan on getting the 'Armies of the Lord of the Rings' book so I can work out what armies can take what units (the GW website has a few oddities like Angmar having Wild Wargs listed but not the Wild Warg Chieftain, and Moria vice versa, so I'm not using that as a reliable source of info), then I'm going to work out what armies I can make from various disparate miniatures I have laying around, write up some army lists, and get painting. I'm hoping that each force I put together can be a fun, relatively quick project to put together that will give me an excuse to get some of the miniatures I've always wanted to own, paint something different to my Sigmar and 40k stuff, and just dive right back into a world I love! I've got a lot of ideas (probably too many), and I'm very excited to be getting back into this game.

1985 Mouth of Sauron 

Funnily enough though, I'm not starting off with a new miniature at all. Instead I'm starting with a LOTR miniature produced by GW back in the 1980's. Citadel briefly had a license for LOTR miniatures back then and I'm afraid to say most of them aren't very good, and some are a little odd like a goatee-wearing Elrond. However, I did think that the 1985 Mouth of Sauron was quite charming in an odd way; looking like every sword & sorcery evil wizard mashed together that has then had an eye motif slapped on top of him. He looks kinda hammy and has a skeletal horse, but I quite like it, and I managed to get him fairly cheap off of eBay. Though I already have a Mouth of Sauron miniature, I just thought this would be a fun side-project to include with my evil forces.

Hopefully I'll soon be visiting my parents, and when I do I'll be able to pick up a force or two to bring back to uni with me so I can get some more progress done on my various LOTR armies. I'll certainly have the time to start indulging in Middle-Earth soon as my Talons of the Emperor are getting closer and closer to being completed. Though LOTR wasn't in my goals for this year (and I doubt its a project I'll wrap up in a year), I am more than happy to put other projects on the back burner, and dive back into a classic game and setting that is very close to my heart. Check back on the blog to see more Middle-Earth goodness soon!

Easterlings Redux

Flat colours

Seeing as in I obviously don't have enough projects on the go already, I decided that I would take some time this year re-vamping my old LOTR collection. Looking at my collection I realised just how flat the colours were and how dire in need they were of a highlight or two. I reasoned this to be a good excuse to do some work on them, in particular my Easterlings who I think are the worst offenders and the easiest fixed. I thought to myself that this would be an easy, quick project. That I would be able to do some dry brushing and some shading and then leave them alone.

I was wrong.

Once again I have stumbled myself into another big-ish project I hadn't planned on doing. As well as improving paint schemes; I've had some ideas for conversion, basing, and incorporating disparate miniatures into a single force. This is proving to be a fair bit of work thus far, but rather enjoyable and should I get it done in a timely fashion (i.e. this year) I think I might do something similar with my Isengard forces. Below I've collected some pictures of my progress thus far:

The Hobbit - Basing my collection

One thing I decided to do over Christmas was to actually base my Hobbit collection rather than simply leaving their bases black. Using some instant mould and a lot of greenstuff I made suitable bases for all of the models from the 'Escape from Goblin Town' set which I think turned out quite well. I also took some time to base the other misc. Hobbit models I have picked up over the past few years. 

Nagash, Elven Hosts and Sauron - New year, new projects

This week I have finally begun my new projects for this year after settling back into university. My main project is going to be Nagash, whose model I have wanted ever since I first laid eyes upon it, and then as a secondary project I will be attempting to build an Elven Host from various unfinished endeavours. I would also like to try and do some more canvas pieces this year, the first of which I have started can be found nearer the bottom of the post, and I thought I might as well put some of this art on the blog. 

This. I have needed it so bad...

Everyone and their cat seems to do unboxing photos/videos on the internet so here is my relatively poor attempt at one. The box design is quite nice, something very clean and slick about it being white that really helps to show off the model. The outer box seems to be unusually robust and made of higher grade card than usual, there is then a regular card tray that pulls out containing the sprues. 

These are the two sprues, the base and the instruction manual which also contain his rules. Rules in the box are a pretty good idea, one that I have only seen positivity for from the community. I was quite amazed that they managed to fit such a complex miniature onto only two sprues and even as I built it I was blown away by the detail and overall ambition of the model. He is sitting on my project table now ready to be sprayed and I can't wait to get to work painting him.

You can read my review of the first End Times book featuring Nagash here where I also talk a bit about the accompanying model release: End Times: Nagash - Review.

This pile of seemingly random collection of plastic and metal is a selection of various elven miniatures that I have acquired throughout the years, many in a state of total disrepair or simply without a use. They have languished in Limbo for some time now and this year I have decided to make them into a coherent force to field alongside my Dark Elves. I will be using the rules from End Times: Khaine to make a Host of the Phoenix/Eternity King. Thus far all I have done is stick the dragon together and drawn up a few plans, over the next few months I will be posting updates on this project including the overall cost of restoring and rebuilding this army. 

This year I have decided I would like to do some more canvas pieces and actually finish them. After falling out with oil paints I have largely been painting with acrylics, however I am terrible for starting pieces and never finishing them after losing interest about halfway through. This time however I have plenty of curious flatmates wandering over to my room from time to time who expect to see some level of progress. I have started two pieces, the main one being this painting of the Eye of Sauron inspired by his appearance in the Hobbit films. This is about half done with lots of work still being needed on the pupil and edges of the eye. I am also going to try and paint the One Ring text around the eye as well which should nicely finish it off. The other painting you can see in the background of a few of these pictures and is a bit of an abstract/surreal piece I will be posting when it is finished with the accompanying short piece of text that inspired it. 

This is my project table at the moment, two paintings started and Nagash ready to be sprayed. I am yet to fully assemble the great necromancer as he would be near-impossible to paint as a single piece. I should hopefully be able to start painting and post some pictures of Nagash in a week or two time, no idea when I will be able to work on the Elves or the canvas pieces. I have been spending a lot of my leisure time reading at the moment as my reading list tripled in size over Christmas and neither my copy of End Times: Thanquol or several books on 20th century history have arrived yet which will need reading almost as soon as I get them. Nagash is also going to take quite a long time to paint on account of the fact that he will require a lot of paints I don't own and I have a limited budget so it will take a few months to even get hold of the paints I need for him. 

Right, that is pretty much everything I am up to at the moment. I probably ought to go back to researching the formation of nation-states now so I will see you again next week, hopefully with a review of the new End Times book if I can read it in time. 

Doombinger out.

Army Showcase - Part 9 - Harad and Umbar

The last of my three Lord of the Rings armies: this Harad and Umbar army took longer to paint than my other two armies as it took a while for me to really get into them. I seemed to keep getting distracted with Dark Elves and Uruk-Hai to ever really power through them, however they are finished now and it is another project ticked off of my list. 

When I first joined the hobby the Mumak was amongst the most impressive models Games Workshop produced; certainly one of the largest and most expensive at the time. After several years of collecting I managed to get my hands on one which I have painted and repainted every few years as one of the centrepieces of my entire miniatures collection. 

Army Showcase - Part 7 - Isengard

Like my Eastern Kingdoms army this is painted with a limited colour palette to create a cohesive looking force on the table top. Using various models I had collected over the years I managed to make what I like to think of as an Isengard scouting force or raiding party. Composed of Uruk Scouts, Dunlendings and Orcs this is a more lightly armoured force made to represent one of the bands sent to burn the west fold. It also includes two trolls for no other reason than I had them sat doing nothing in a draw and they fit the over all look of the army. 

Army Showcase - Part 4 - The Eastern Kingdoms

This year as well as painting the 'Escape from Goblin Town' set I have been repainting some of my other Lord of the Rings armies. First to be completed was my Eastern Kingdoms army; quick and dirty I completed this army in only three painting sittings over two months. Using a limited colour palette I achieved a uniformed appearance that looks good on the table top with minimum effort. Not quite 1000 points and intended to act as allies to my larger Harad and Umbar force, I am thinking of perhaps expanding this army with some mixed infantry some point in the future.