Far Harad Completed

At last I have completed my Far Harad force. It's about 350 points worth of warriors, plus two half trolls and a mounted King. It's not a large force on it's own, but I intend to ally this force with my Corsairs to make a solid 600 point list.

I went with the native look for the Mahud. I think GW and the guys who made the LotR movies wimped out and made a "PC" bad guy out of them. But honestly, to me they look like brave, fierce warriors from a fantasy version of Africa. So that's how I painted them. The color scheme is a little blah. But for the most part all they're wearing is some sort of wicker armor and a robe. There's not much to fiddle with, though I'm sure more talented painters have figured out how to add pizzaz to these guys. Here are the pictures. Check out the King, as I thought he come out pretty nice.

Gathering in the Desert T-Shirt Art

Another year of the Gathering in the Desert is upon us. It is an independent grand tournament for Lord of the Rings, which is run here in Phoenix. The esteemed Mr. Kulinski helps organize it, and you can read more about it on his blog.

He asked me to create a painting for the GitD t-shirts he created for the event. I think the shirts are going to look great. The colors were changed from the original to accommodate the capabilities of the silk screen shop doing the work. They could've done full color, but that would've driven up the cost beyond what's reasonable. So here's a look at the original painting.

It was done digitally, using Painter 9 and a Wacom Intuous 3 pen tablet. You can see how the painting looks on the t-shirt by following this link to Tim's blog.

Starting Again

So, it's no mystery that I abandoned my blog for the last six months! In fact, I was not unproductive during this period. I painted a Lord of the Rings Corsair force, added Rangers to my Gondor list, painted dismounts for all my cavalry, and probably a few miscellaneous things I forgot to mention as well. But I just didn't document any of it.

Well, it's a new year obviously, and I'm inspired to start again.

I want to blog a little bit more about other things that I'm doing as well. But I'm afraid that too many unrelated topics will make for a lousy blog. (For example, my Japanese and Chinese language study and reading won't interest many people who are linked here for the gaming aspect.) So I'll just do a different blog for that stuff, and keep this one for miniatures and related gaming. Recently, I've been into World of Warcraft. That might be something to blog about.... or not. I guess it depends.

OK, so on the miniatures front for 2009, I am planning a different type of year than the prior three. For the last three years, I've been going gang-busters on getting an entire army ready for this or that event. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to paint figures that interest me for no other reason than that. I'm tired of racing to an event deadline, completing an army, and never playing it again after that event. So I expect to paint things that might not be part of an existing force. For example, Reaper miniatures have always interested me, but as they're not part of a game system I play I don't do them. Warmachine and Hordes are in the same boat, though I do occasionally play those systems.

So, I started the year off by getting back to Warhammer 40K. I haven't played a 40K game in about a year! I don't even know the 5th ed rules! It's a shame, since I enjoyed this game. Of course, Lord of the Rings has been my main game for 2008 and will remain that way for a while. Still 40K was my first game, and I still enjoy it.

Rather than adding to my Ultramarines (not that interested in them) or beefing up my Tyranids (love 'em, but recently can't "empathize" with playing a hyped up hornet with guns), I've gone over to an army I've wanted to do but never followed up on: The Tau Empire!

I only have a unit of Fire Warriors and an Ethereal. So, basically I'm just doing an Ethereal with his Honor Guard. What I'll add later, who knows! I'm in no hurry, and I'm not actively playing 40K -- yet. I'll get up to a legal list of at least 500 pts, so I could do some small games. But after that, I'm not sure what my plans are. I'll have to see how I like the Tau. At least I know I'll enjoy collecting them. The above picture shows the three that I've painted so far. I think they look pretty good, and just need some flocking on the base to finish them.

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.