2012-04-27

The Nine Abroad-movement tray


The Nine Abroad, all homemade, all on foot. It has been a while since I sculpted and/or converted the fellas, so I will do some work on them while I do the movement tray:



Idea from the War of the Ring rulebook, page 272. That statue looks good on the trays, and since I've got a few spare trays I'll be lazy and just glue two together, instead of doing what I did with the Edheldu projects (Wow, the time it took doing those custom trays).

Grand Army of Minas Tirith

Army of Minas Tirith. The Grand Army, that is. The yellow star dissapeared just when I had finished setting them up and so we have the normal bad image quality.




Games played so far: 3 of 100. Maybe I'll take the chance and get a game on now that my grand Gondor Army is out of the closet. I must say I am pleased with the overall look and the ten or fifteen or so sublte conversions - and of course my DIY projects. What is then bad with this particular Gondor army? The painting, of course. A company of the older Warriors of Minas Tirith even have silver coloured hair, and apparantly no belts or straps are made of leather but metal! This will need some repainting as well as two of the existing banners. Two banners aren't even attached to their bearers yet, but I think it looks grand enough. I have loaned out the Pelargir Veterans which contributed a nice splash of colour in all their redness.

I wish you all a nice weekend!

2012-04-26

Upcoming projects.


Just an image to show you what's going on in the Llama world of hobby. Don't be afraid of the polyurethane copies, they are here to help us, not destroy our hobby. There are two other Perry Miniatures miniatures on the board that I forgot to write something about: Two helping lackeys for the camel dude (camel dude is located in the lower left corner) that will be made into some sort of sorcerers*. Now, I am off to an actual physical hobby meeting, in contrast to the cyber-hobbying I normally do.
    Have a nice weekend. Pay-day is here, also, so I suggest you blow it on some minis.



*) Expect an upload with an excerpt from the great show the IT-crowd where Douglas meets with a "sorcerer" in the Desert. We'll have to settle with the ending scenes of that particular episode.
     Damn good bloody good damn good show!

2012-04-25

Thunderbolt Mountain minis

Thunderbolt Mountain miniatures. New and improved, go to the "30 mm" page for some sweet Elves.

Wood Elf Scout. Image from Thunderbolt Mountain.


The old webpage has disappeared and the new one seems to me as an improvement. After looking for his blog I found this URL http://208.109.131.41/serendipity/, which likely will be changed to something catchier.

Other news that I do not have. It seems as there are so many other things to do right now - especially taking pics... which is my priority, especially after I've surfed, and found, so many great hobby blogs with excellent photos of nicely painted miniatures. Really inspiring to see all you hobbyists out there, doing all these great projects!

I shall also update the subpages on this blog soon enough. And with this, I leave you.

EDIT: Just updated the Angus McBride page.

2012-04-22

Time Calculator

Because work and other stuff often get in the way of our hobby, I use this little formula, in a continuing effort to rationalize most things in my life, in order to get more out of the days and nights: If I know I can get a part of a project done before going to work or going to anywhere, it is then easier to get started. And of course, finished. Because of the serial-killer planning table below, I can estimate almost exactly on the minute how long a step takes in the process of making a bunch of models into miniature warriors ready for the tabletop.



A little caveat before the Time Calculator[TM]: I am not - really not - a good painter, I do not strive to be one either, so I am not trying to teach anyone anything here, just tell (anyone slightly interested) how I go about doing my painting.



Time Calculator – from Sprue to Table
I almost never do less than eight models a time, normally twenty-four models in each sitting.

1) Basics (despruing and cleaning). 2,5 min/unit. This I do sloppy whilst listening to any of the following podcasts: D6G, 40K Radio, World's End Radio (dead?). Used to listen to Podhammer, the favourite, mainly becuase of how little actual warhammer-talk there was :)
2) Undercoat (with can). This I can do just three meters from where I generally do the hobbystuff so it takes no more than a minute per model. Whilst they dry I have my coffee and watch Family Guy or similar show.
3) Basecoat-painting (first two colours, one colour on each model until they all have that one - often the metallics first). I am slow and this takes around 2-3 minutes per colour, so 4-5 minutes per model and two colours.
4) Then the base get some wood workers glue + sanding). Less than 1 min/unit.
5) Continue painting when bases are dry. Perfect time to start or revisit another project. Painting here just includes: Wash and watch paint dry. Takes barely a minute per model. Except the drying.

So, around 10 minutes for a basic miniature. Add another five for the rest of the colours, just a few tidying-ups. Of course, it may differ very much from model to model, sometimes the basics can take very long time (like the infamous Warriors of Minas Tirith who were in a terrible shape) but then the painting may go smooth instead. So, to make a 24-man band of warriors, it takes me six hours, most often spread over two days. If they aren't done within two days it may take up to a year before they ever get that last little work. Fin (or "sluut" as we say in the cold north).



About Rohirrim and Dunlendings
Annatar enlightened me on the simple geek-fact that Rohirrim and Dunlendings aren't related which I previously stated. He correctly said that, other than the general relation of different cultures of men there are no special relation between the above. He is of course correct, I somehow mixed them together since the Rohirrim were accused of stealing the Dunlendings lands.

I shall quote, freely translated back to English from a Swedish version of a British booklet:

... have a complicated origin. On orders of Cirion, reich-steward [or just steward?] of Gondor, they settled in Rohan, at that time known as Calenardhon, in app. 2510 [Det stod "TÅ" i häftet... ? Betyder det "Second Age"? Ingen aning... ]. The north-men got the land area because they had helped defeating the people-from-east Balchoth.
   Between year 1977 och 2510
[TÅ] Rohirrim's ancestors, Eotheod, lived in the northern part of the river-valley of Anduin. --- blah-blah-blah, and then it continues with: " ... Before year 1857 in TÅ they were called Eothraim and lived south and east of Mirkwood.


Congratulations to...
... the young Starcraft player and winner of 2012 DreamHack EIZO Open Marcus "Thorzain" Eklöf!





2012-04-21

Golden Warriors of Minas Tirith

Has anyone got a better picture of the Swordsmaster of Gondor? Caught a glimpse of him with his landsknecht-sword when I flipped thru the pages of the Kingdoms of Men in the FLGS. There was too much "funk" (not from me, I hope) for me to stay in that area so I never got a good look. If you have a picture, please link it in the comments.
          Todays subjects are not only these fine warriors (these are the ones I was talking about earlier, about how run down the plastic-injection moulds for the Warriors of Minas Tirith must be - they models were in a really bad shape, which you can see, if you can differentiate the bad models from my shaky painting) but also my camera. I took the time to start experiment with it and have finally found almost everything I need to take better pictures. Except some sort of elusive ISO-thingie which is impossible to find. It is said that this legendary ISO might be the reason why some pictures get a lot of white pixels evenly spread over the image.
          Back to the dudes. The inspiration is obviously from Battle Hosts. Considering to make a white and gold banner. You can see the banner bearer in the front. So that needs to be done. A LOT of tidying up, which the pictures actually helped me with, the faults are easier to spot when on images.


So, what do you think? Should the shields be white and gold, or should they stay black and gold? I will decide this ASAP since it is stopping me from tidying up the golden tree-logos (which I painted this way: A white undercoat. Then painted the shield black which might seem a bit backwards. Then silver, then brown on this and then a mixture of shining GW-gold and some silver paint. I think it could have been done by just painting it with just one coat of gold on a light brown basecoat. You live and you learn.

Noticed that blogger finally made it happen: I can finally make indentations instead of pressing enter twice to separate the different pieces of text. Now the blog will perhaps look less like a fourteen year old's school essay on a shitbook and maybe more like a thirty-or-so's very serious blog about minis.

Good day

2012-04-14

Base for Mordor Beast arrived

The base arrived to the hobbyshop, a massive 50 SEK it cost me! The base, shown below, will greatly reduce the feel of crappiness the former base sometimes would bless us with. Yes, yes, the flash was on when I took the picture and the GBoG looks dull and sticky (it looks slightly more alive IRL).

I have followed a person who assembled and painted a Great Beast Gorgoroth for someone else and he talked a lot - and well - about the painting, which I will try to copy. But for now, it is aaaight.

This is how you make a Great Beast of Gorgoroth look Great!

One little question lingers, though: I'll finally be able to retake the pictures of my Mordor army to show y'all, but there's not much to say about the bases, simple sand, painted gray and NO static grass. If you have a suggestion for this particular base, please, feel free to post a comment below.

2012-04-13

Goblin Warg Rider WIP

... and I'm back.


Just placed the home-sculpted and Homecast(tm) goblins on the wolf with the help of blue-tac. Tacky... that's what the "tac" stands for in blue-tac . Bet you didn't knew that.

And the Fenrisian Wolwes that will be serving as gigantic Wargs in the Misty Mountain army. Or is it called Moria, nowadays? Or Dwellers Below? I've been gone so long from the hobby that anything might have happened.

To all of you wondering how I've been I can just say this: Angola is a beautiful country with lots of wonderful people, it felt just like coming home. To Sweden, which was a problem when I actually got home. And then realized I really hadn't been to Angola - don't want to go there, never will: "rustic" country with "wonderous" people.

Ame omulongi fikola. Shilwapo nawa, b*tches!


*) Thanks to Gregory J Vogl for wasting his time on learning me Kwanyama, and in the words of the everliving Roger "I challenge you to find a bigger waste of time than that... "

2012-04-01

Next update 14th of April

Sorry about that, we all know why there will be a two week hiatus.

The picture was added for all those that can't read and/or just look at the pictures.

So, then, see you all in two weeks! Here's a few links for your leisure so long:

Seven of Nine

Battlefoam commercial bloopers. Romeo of 40k Radio doesn't look at all what I expected him to look, not at all! All the other hosts of different geeky podcasts I have happened to find pictures of have looked exactly what I had thought they would look. He looks like an Irishman or an Albanian *racial stereotype removed after some time in the think-tank*