Manowar Kovnik

As I mentioned in my last update, I've decided to get back into Warmachine and Hordes. This means that I'm mostly catching up on models that I've wanted but didn't buy when I was actively playing. I can't say that I'm actually "actively playing" right now. But I think I'll probably get the occasional game in when I can.

I really enjoyed painting this model. I'm not sure he's really a fit with my current model collection. As a Jack Marshall, he needs Warjacks that aren't focus hogs. My current Jacks are focus hogs. Well, I'll have to fix that with buying some more Warjacks! (If none of that made sense to you, it was all game related jargon anyway.)

OK, this model came out nice. Again, I can take my time with it and put the layers on nice and thin, etc, etc. Red is hard to highlight properly. It either gets too pink or too orange. I generally lean toward the orange if I have to lean either way. I think this model was as close to "neutral" as I've ever come.

Assembling this model, however, was a nightmare. I had to pin his axe hand into the arm, and then glue the axe to the shield for stability. It's not the pose I wanted, but it was the one that kept the model from crumbling each time I touched it.

Greylord Ternion

Now that I've completed my Lord of the Rings army, I sort of feel lost. I went back to the Ogre Kingdom project and didn't have any interest. I've only got a few models left to paint, but I can't get the interest up. I want to focus on just doing an odd unit or model here and there with no deadline for completion.

I got to play Warmachine the other night for the first time in almost 18 months. I had found myself enjoying it more than I did before. I was actually getting ready to sell my Khador and Legion of Everblight models. But now I think I may actually play Warmachine and Hordes again. So I picked up some Greylords, which I had always intended to get. They came out nicely, and I really spent time with these models. Here are some details of the unit leader.


I'm always amazed at how rough the paint looks on the models when photographed. They don't look this poorly blended in real life. It just makes me wonder what those Eavy Metal team models must be like in real life. They photographs look perfectly smooth!

Anyway, up next is more Warmachine. I bought a Manowar Kovnik, and will be putting him together soon. I'll probably do some Hordes, and then get working on my Lord of the Rings Corsairs. Those poor Ogres are going by the wayside for a spell!

Gondor Complete (Lazy Update)

My Gondor force is complete! In fact, I finished it about two weeks ago. I was too lazy to take pictures at the time. But after attending the Arizona Lord of the Rings Indy Grand Tournament I had some snazzy pictures taken of the force in action.

These pictures come from Cursed Treasures, Tim Kulinkski's esteemed blog. (Link is on the right.) The top shows most of my force all lined up for display. That's why there's two of Boromir in it, one mounted and one on foot. The other two photos are actual action shots of games in progress. The middle one features my knights bravely hiding from Uruk-hai pikes. The bottom shows the start of a highly successful charge into Dwarf rangers on a hill (the rest of the men are in the background).

The GT was by far the most fun I've ever had at a tournament. I truly enjoyed all two days of the event. Overall, I placed fifth out of 14 players, which is a lot better than I expected. The standings were pretty tight, too. I put a ton of effort into painting these guys, but I knew my dull color scheme would work against me. So I didn't place for painting awards. I did, however, win best sportsman!

I took home a lot of prizes. For best sportsman I got about 300 pts of Corsairs. (More pirates!) The the first place winner, Frank Brown, graciously refused his prize and asked that it be given to the best sportsman. Since I had a tie for best sportsman (I won it only by battle point decision) I split a Far Harad force with the other best sportsman (Rob Brightwell) and took home about 300 pts of Far Harad.

So you all know what I'll be painting next! Time to go evil! Seriously, LotR is probably going to become my main game. It's a great system and loads of fun!

Gondor! I finally given in to Lord of the Rings.

Here are some mediocre pictures of a sample of my Gondor forces for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle games. This is the last of the GW "big games" that I haven't yet invested in. (I include Battlefleet Gothic in this, even though it's a specialist range game. It still seems there are a lot of players for BFG. Someday I'll post pics of my fleet.)

I am sorry that I have taken this long to discover this game. It's probably GW's best game all around. All the models are beautiful. The rules are easy to learn. The strategic element is deep. And my most recent, but now most important, criteria: you don't need 150+ models to play a game that will last an evening. This game 100% rocks!

So, I got the Gondor battle host boxed set to start and got a few heroes to lead the army (Boromir is my star leader these days, though I have Faramir as well.) I've assembled all of them and began playing immediately. I broke my vow to never play with unpainted models. But there's a Grand Tournament in July and I want to be ready for it. I don't want to show up having only every played three games.

So, while the pictures don't show it, I think I did a good job with these models. Of course, they don't really compare to many of the other great painters out there. But compared to my own progress, these are way above what I was doing this time last year. I find that the better I get a painting, the longer it takes! Weird! These pictures are a sample of 4 of the 12 that I have completed. They all look about the same.

In the wings, I've got 8 spearmen, 8 bowmen, 6 knights, 6 fountain court guard, a Standard Bearer, Beregond, and Boromir (on foot and mounted). That will complete the force for the GT, but not all the models I have. Needless to say, the Gondor boxed set is an insane value for what you get. I've put my Ogres on hold while I finish off these models. From now until the GT in July, it's basically going to be only LotR for me.

Project: Ogre Kingdoms -- Gorger

So it has been a while. My Ogre Kingdoms project was derailed by my recent "discovery" of Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Now Games Workshop completely owns my soul (not to mention wallet). I've been working on assembling and playing with my Gondor force rather than painting.

But I've gotten back on track. I've got only six more Ogres to go, 3 Maneaters, 2 Butchers, and the Tyrant. I've been saving the best for last, so that I'd be inspired to complete them. As for this Gorger, it was my first time painting anything "white." Hopefully, you like it.

Project: Ogre Kingdoms -- Ironguts

Last update today. Here are my Ironguts. I started them and then stopped them to work on Pirates for Legends of the High Seas. I'll probably go back to painting Pirates now that these are done. They came out pretty good. The pants took forever to do... I used GW Vomit Brown and it doesn't cover as well as I thought. Well, enjoy the fat boys.....

Why I Played Hordes: The Carnivean

Just looking at this guy (and his little buddy) makes me want to play Hordes again. Big scary warbeasts was the whole deal for me. This Carnivean was may favorite model to paint, and I'll probably just have to get another one to experience the fun all over again!

More Hordes

Here's a Totem Hunter minion I ran with my Everblight force. At the time everyone had this model. So, it just basically fought itself in every game. That's my beef with Hordes and Warhmachine..... there's so much duplication of models, particularly heroes and other individuals. It irked me to no end to see the exact same models on the other side of the table as the ones I had. How were there always two of the same person hanging around? Killed my imagination factor, which is huge for me in any game I play.

Some Older Models: Seraphim

I realized that I had never taken any photos of my modest Hordes collection. I started Hordes a few years ago, and began with Legion of Everblight. The game was pretty cool, but sorta complicated to learn. I think I can deal with it at small points levels. Everything has it's own rules and abilities. Blah, blah, blah..... And every enemy model has a skill that lets it ignore your ability... blah, blah, blah.... and you really need to play with 10,000 models to appreciate the game, blah, blah, blah.....

Despite all that bitchiness of mine, I'll probably pick this up again with my newfound love of skirmish level games. Here's a Seraphim, at one time I guess it ruled the Hordes world. Never did much for me because it's special rule was debated by so many that I never really used it right. Well.... there it is.

New Look for the Blog

With all the spring cleaning going on, I've decided to update the look of my blog. I think the old template I used to get started was looking a little drab for me. So, here are the new colors, fonts, etc. I think this is easier to read than white on black and that weird font I had before. Also, I deleted a few old posts that were not related to miniatures. I updated my profile with a new picture too.

This blog has basically become my miniature and war gaming blog. I might pepper in a few personal things here and there. But overall, I think the theme over the last year has been miniatures. So I cleaned up things to reflect that. Anyway, not much new to report.

On the mini painting work table I've got:

1. Bunch of pirates, about 14 more
2. 4 Ogre Ironguts
3. 2 Ogre Butchers
4. 3 Ogre Maneaters
5. 1 Ogre Gorger
6. 1 Ogre Tyrant
7. 10 Tyranid Gargoyles (I might use these for a different Hive Fleet)

So I've got plenty of posts to keep this going for the near term, as long as I can paint these. I'm getting more and more interested in doing LotR as well. So maybe an entire new army is on the horizon that is not on my plan! Thank goodness I hate plans!

Project: Ogre Kingdoms

This is my latest project, Ogre Kingdoms. I've always loved the Ogre models, all of them. That's rare for me to say so about any army. (I guess I don't like Gnoblars, but they're not Ogres!) So it was a natural step to start collecting this army.

I've got all the models for the 2,000 point starting force built and primed. I'm working on one unit at a time, and am really taking it slowly. In fact, since an Ogre Kingdoms army is so small in size, I can really spend time working on the models. I spend hours layering skin tones up from a dark base on three Ogre models. It comes out to about the same time it would take to do a unit of 25 Orcs. So here are some representatives of my Ogre troops:

You'll notice that I left the Leadbelchers (the Ogres with the cannons for those who don't know) with very dark skin. This was intended to make them look like they are dirty from getting enveloped in clouds of black powder smoke. The rest of the Ogres will be really light skinned, to reflect their adaptation to life in the high mountains.

I really like the skin I've painted for these guys. The skin looks pretty smooth in person, while these photos make the transitions look pretty stark. Still, here are some details of the rear of an Ogre Bull unit and a profile of one. This is just to give a closer look at the skin.


Totally I've painted two units of Leadbelchers (shown above, two units of two each), and four units of three Ogre Bulls. I'm currently working on four Ironguts. But they got suspended as I moved over to work on my pirate crew. I'm really in no hurry to get these guys on the table. So I'm taking my time and doing these to my satisfaction. So far I'm really happy with the outcome. Let me know what you think!

Pirates!

Recently I've really gotten into Legends of the High Seas. This is an awesome game and is really unlike anything I've played before. I like playing a small scale game with a few models. I started to play Warmachine and Hordes for this reason. But in those games, it ended up becoming an arms race to armies of 50+ models all acting as individuals. Talk about boring and confusing. This game has an upper limit of 30 men. That's reasonable. Check out my starting crew. These pictures stink, but the models are some of the best I've ever painted. I'm working on more pirates to get up to my 30 max. I'll put them up as I go. The beauty of this game is that I've already started playing with just these nine guys.

Carnifex

Despite the dearth of posting, I've actually been quite busy with my figure painting. As you know, I was pretty spent after the Viking project. I doubt I'll do anything like that again for a while. I took a short break and started up a bunch of other things. I'll post up most of what I've done since Christmas. I did 16 Hormagaunts and two Raveners that I won't bother to put up. They didn't get a very exciting paint job. So I'll skip them. But check out their big brother......This guy came out very nicely. In fact, he looks better than the other two I have. So he's going to stick out a bit. The top photo has more accurate colors than the bottom one. I'm no photographer, and can barely work my camera.

I'm still deciding on basing for my Tyranid horde. In fact, I'm thinking of starting an entirely new horde with a whole new color scheme. Of course, that'd just cause me to have a nervous breakdown (not to mention buying a whole lot of redundant models). So it's just a thought at this point.