Building The Lonely Mountain, Part 1

My Friends and are putting on the Battle of Five Armies at Cold Wars. We have started a new blog for the build and the rules we are writing, Blood of Heroes.

Check the build here: Building The Lonely Mountain Part 1

Xin

Big update, Reaper, Otherworld and GW

I've been on a painting tear lately. I'm painting as much as I can. So here is the latest offerings. Some just finished and some finished back in Dec but never got around to posting.

First up is a GW or Marauder Ogre from 1989.  I've used him many times back when the Empire could have Ogre Units. I never was found of the wife beater tee-shirt, so it's been on my painting table for a repaint for the last 5 years. I finally asked my Friend Lou, if he could sculpt on some armor. As you can see below, he did a fantastic job. I also cut off the sword and used a weapon from a Ral Partha Giant.

Next up we have a Reaper Bones Figure, Labella DeMornay, Banshee. It's a great sculpt. The best part is I didn't have to paint it, I just did a light green wash. I mounted it on a 40mm GW base. On the base I added some skeleton bits I had left over from a GW skellie box. I added some static grass, some grass tufts, and flowerd tufts.

Here is another translucent Reaper Bones figure, Ghostly Summons. Another great sculpt of rising spirits. Again I did a light green wash, but this time I added a light white dry brush on the "smokey" parts of the sculpt. Again mounted on a 40mm gw base, The figure has an integral base, which looks like a summoning circle. So I attempted to paint the runes a glowing blue. Not sure how well it comes out in pictures though.

Here is the 2nd of the Otherworld Trolls. I painted the first one up back in June(Link). I picked up the 2nd one off ebay for good price. I forgot the method and paints I used the first time so it took some experimenting to get it to match the first one. Mounted on a GW 40mm base, with some decorative elements.

And last up we go back to Reaper Bones, Vermin Spiders. I've been painting with a dungeon crawl in mind, but I picked up pack of scenic elements from Windsword Accessories with this cool tree stump and log so I wanted to use it for a base. Mounted on 1 inch Fender Washers.

The Windsword tree stump is on the right. The dead tree on the left is a real branch. The large stones are bits of sea glass.

Painted Reaper Monsters

Here are a few more Reaper figures I banged out over the Holidays. Since we had nothing to do on New Years Day, I manged to get a lot of painting done. These are more monsters intended for D&D this year.

First up, Reaper Bones Scorpins. Mounted on metal fender washers and textured with medium gel.

Some adventurers find out how deadly scorpions can be.


Next up are 2 Stone Golems. One is a Reaper Metal and the other is a Reaper Bones. The Bones line really shines with the larger creatures. Very hard to tell them apart.

 Here we have some very old figures facing off. Except for the golems, they are all old GW figures. Some from the mid-80s.

More figures to come, Xin

Making a textured base Stamper.

I cannot claim credit on this idea. I found it on a blog years ago. I would credit whoever I got it from but it is lost in the mists of time.

So this is the way to make a textured base like say cobblestones or Wood Decking for your figures without having to sculpt each one of them or buy premade bases. It's a little more work upfront, but down the road it pays off.

1.  Find a texture you'd like. In my case I used a cobblestone piece my friend Lou sculpted for me.


2.  Get some Modeling clay. I used an oven drying clay.

3  Using the clay, make your stamping tool with a small handle. Press it onto the surface of your chosen texture. Then Bake as directed.

4  Once your stamper is done, you are ready to stamp textures onto bases. The original post I got this from used a Plumbers Putty, so I did as well. I imagine you can use Green Stuff  or any other 2 part epoxy putty. So using your putty of choice, put a layer onto your base. Then stamp the base. You might want to wet it so it doesn't stick to the stamper.

5  Trim off any excess putty. Let it dry and your done. Depending on your putty you might want to cut it off before it drys or after. You can crank out a lot of bases this way.

The figure on the left has a stamped base on a fender washer. The figure on the right has base stamped on a GW slotta base.

 Cheers, Xin

Stocking up the dungeon

With the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons coming out this year, I thought it was a good time to dive back into Roleplaying. Playing D&D was how I got into this hobby when my brother brought the game home from college in 1977. All it took was one session and I was hooked. At some point my interests switched over to Wargaming and RPG's got shelved for about 20 years.

I bought the Players Handbook when it came out and for Christmas I got the Monster Manual and DM's Guide. The excuses not to play are getting fewer and fewer. In the last few months, the focus of my painting has been to towards monsters. So here are some Reaper Bones Mummies I bought recently. I'm pleased they were painted with in 2 weeks of purchasing them. That is not how it normally goes...

Here they are, in my Dwarven Forge Dungeon. I double stacked the walls for a better picture.

They come 3 to a blister and are all the same pose. I tried the hot water trick to bend them into different poses, but I didn't use hot enough water. So I cut the head off one and turned it. I cut the torso of another and turned it so the arm is more forward.

I tried to cheat on the bases. Using grey's and browns and a brown flock so they won't look horrible outside or in the dungeon. It's a compromise that I can live with. Mounted on one inch fender washers and the bases covered with a gel medium to hide the molded base. Other than that, it was easy just dry brushing lighter and lighter colors.

 This is a Reaper Bones Mocking Beast. Or better known in D&D as a Mimic. This clever monster morphs into something like a treasure chest too lure in greedy adventurers. Once in close the mouth opens and chomp chomp chomp.

 Mounted on a one inch fender washer. The washer has a thin layer of gel medium for texture and painted in grays as this is a dungeon monster.

 I painted parts of it shades of pink as I imagine it's morphing during the attack to get at the adventurers

 Some adventurers want to see what's in the chest after defeating the Mummies. Here are 2 Reaper(left) and one very old Citadel figure(right).

I hope he doesn't lose that hand. I just noticed 2 things about this picture. First is I didn't finish the base, Bad Xin, Bad. Secondly, the camera mode I used washed out the subtle drybrushing and it looks like crap. or half done.

I am building a new "stage" to photograph my painted figures. Once done I will have some more Reaper, Otherworld and an old Citadel figure to show off.

Thanks for reading, Xin

Battle of Five Armies, Battle Report

Last week my friend Lou was coming over to play LOTR Strategy Battle Game. We didn't have a plan other than we would play SBG. I had the day off so I was puttering around my basement working on too many projects at once. I was toying with the idea of doing a BOFA scenario. Just sort of a representative battle using figures I had. We would be constrained by time so we would have to keep it simple. About 30 minutes before Lou arrived, I decided to do it.

I have tons of pink insulation lying around so I cut some up and laid out the 2 spurs of the mountain. I added a 2nd level of foam for the gate. then taped it down to the table. I have some battle mats that we use at conventions, draped that across the table and we were almost good to go.

For the entrance to Erebor I had this gate I made years ago to play a D&D. So I pulled that out and it looked great. Next we added a latex River Running, and scratter terrain, rocks and bushes and things. I also added the Dwarven Statues that came with the Special Edition DvD/Blu-Ray Desolation of Smaug disk set.

Lou mentions that we needed a backdrop for the mountain, and maybe I had a sheet lying around. I told him to take 2 sheets of foam insulation and quickly paint them grey while I whipped up the army lists. What he did in 20 minutes was astounding. He painted mountains!

The army lists were pretty simple:
12 Galadhrim spears and shields with Tharnduil
12 Galadrhrim archers with Capt
12 Wood Elf archers with Legolas
12 Laketown Militia(Rohan) with Capt
12 Laketown archers(Rohan) with Bard(Rohan profile)
12 Dwarf Warriors with Dain
12 Dwarf Warrios with Capt
vs
12 Gundabad Orcs with Bolg(proxy Mordor Orcs)
12 Orc Archers with Capt
12 Orc Archers with Capt
12 Warg Riders with Capt
12 Warg Riders with Capt
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield

That's roughly the list. Not exactly street legal, but it was just us 2, and what figures I had available. The other thing we did was lower the Defence by 1 across the board. So fights with resolve faster.

Deployed, Elves on the left, Dwarves on the right, Men in the center.

That's a lot of bows.

 Evil advances.

I want to block off the ford, so I come off the hill. Lou the Orc player was going to ignore the Elves but my move to the ford made him come across. Archers showering anything in range with arrows. Not many hits early on.

This was Lou's one mistake. At the ford he tried to slip around my spears. And I got to charge him. This seemly small mistake would lead to lots of casualties. As we fought over the ford.

On the far right, Wargs slam into my dwarves, but being dwarves they hang tough.

Here I caught him trying to sneak past me.

I actually didn't do very well in the fights, but it stopped him and drew in more orcs. All the while I was killing off orcs with arrows.

 My line of Laketown Militia came off the hill to charge the wargs as they were going for my Militia archers. Anyone not in combat got hailed with arrows. A good number of Orcs got "unmounted"

The fight continues to rage on the hill and in the valley. Bolg and his body guard moving up in formation.

So what happened at the ford? Thranduil happened. I was tightly packed, and got charged by orcs everywhere. Almost surrounded. So Thranduil drops Natures Wrath. I could not have planned it better. I knocked over about a dozen models. Then my spearmen went on a killing spree.

 At this point it was late and the Orc general had enough. We both had casualties, but far worse were the orcs.

Last shot of the battle. My charge off the hill and about a billion arrows stopped any Wargs from getting to my Militia archers. The line of Dwarves held on the mountain spur so the orcs could not break into my lines.

Conclusions, it was a fun battle even if a little one sided. It was an equal points battle, so maybe if we do it again, we give the Evil a few hundred more points. Honestly I think we had more fun setting up, and the back drop the Lou painted in 20 minutes was stunning. For work of about an hour, I think the table looked great.

Thanks for reading, Xin