Rohan Tower

I registered to run a LOTR game at NJCon5( LINK). Boy did my ego write a check that my painting hand could not cash. I figured I had 6 weeks and it would be a motivation to paint troops. So the scenario I submitted for the game was a Uruk-Hai raid on a Rohan Village. I had no village, no Rohan painted and only about half the Uruk-Hai painted. How's that for motivation? I had a few Aces up my sleeve, but more on that later. This is about Rohan buildings. Well one building, ran out of time for the others.

Games Workshop had some building guides/ templates of Rohan buildings, once upon a time. These were purged from their website during a redesign. I swear to God GW goes out of it's way to shoot itself in the foot over and over again. Why have a website that is useful for gamers? Why have a website that is THE go to site for help modeling and gaming and painting for YOUR models? Really they make money inspite of their best efforts. Once again I digress.

 I spent some time hunting around the net, asking on message boards, digging thru my 6 year collection of White Dwarfs. I finally got a hit. A very nice person that goes by the name of Haywire on TMP emailed me scans of the articles I was looking for. Excelsior!!! Now I just needed a time machine to be able to make what I needed. I did manage to squeeze in a enough time for the Rohan Watch Tower. Click on the pictures for bigger versions.

The instructions have a template. You print them out and trace them on to Balsa Wood. So I did just that. Then you are supposed to use an x-acto knife to cut out the pattern.

Fortunately I had a Craftsman Scrollsaw that I picked up a garage sale years ago

I printed out the pattern on to cardstock paper, and cut out each piece. Then it was simple just to trace this out on to the balsa wood

After carefully using the scroll saw I get this

I used some Fine grain sandpaper to smooth the edges down. With all the pieces cut out I'm ready to begin construction. My base is. a piece of MDF board I had. Cut big enough for the tower and a little extra all around. I also beveled the edges with a grinder. I applied a generous amount of Liquid Nail glue to the base of each support and put in the floor of the raised platform. Sometimes as things dry they shift some I placed some heavy objects around the tower to prevent that. Just touching each corner so there was no room for the tower to start leaning in any direction. Let dry overnight.

 Next I glued in the decorative supports. I had to sand the back corner where it attached to the support posts to make a smooth fit. Oops almost forgot at this point I also did a textured ground with Gel Medium/ mixed with sand.

While that was drying I started on the roof. I didn't read the text of the instructions and could have just made the roof out of card stock, but had already cut out Balsa wood. The Cardstock would have been easier as you can just tape it together. I had to glue the roof together, after taping it. Better to just use the cardstock.

Next up are the sides of the tower platform. You have to cut out the wall panel, support post and a front and back piece. The wall panel is one piece that you score with a pen to make it look like it's several planks. You alternate the support post and wall panels. Gluing a strip of balsa along the back and front to hold it all together. I also ran a bead of glue between the wall panels and support posts. You make a section for each side. On one side you have to leave space for the ladder.

Now Teddy Bear Fur time. Using the same template pieces you had for the roof, cut out your Teddy Bear Fur to match. Glue to the roof. Take as much care as possible to cover the seams. Once this is dry the instructions say to use a one to one mixture of white glue and water to wash down the fur. This will give it a "thatched" look. I just eyeballed it, kept adding water or glue till I got a consistency I liked. This took a long time to dry.

I did a test fit with the roof on the tower, and there was a big gap between the roof and the top of the support posts. So to correct that I cut 4 pieces to go along the top of the support posts. Then sanding the back corner to make them fit flush to the main corner posts.This covered the gap and looked pretty good. You can see an unpainted Eowyn in the tower. You might have to trim back the corners of the roof to fit snug. I had to.

That's it, ready to paint. Oh wait, I did the ladder with just strips of balsa wood, easy peasy. I did a dark brown(Americana craft paint: Asphaltum) on the tower with a drybrush of Gray (GW: Dawnstone). The fur roof I did with....uhm I can't remember. But it was a yellow brown then drybrushed with the same yellow brown and White mixed in.

Add in some Army Painter grass tufts, Poison Ivy and some static grass and your done.(Link)

I'll have a Battle Report up soon.

As for the rest of the stuff I needed. I had to sub in some non Rohan buildings for my village. A good friend of mine, Dowvoovoo, painted up the Warriors of Rohan and I did manage to squeeze out 18 Riders of Rohan. For the Uruk-hai, I cheated and bought some painted stuff off ebay. I'll post up some pics of the Riders shortly.

Cheers, Xin,

If anyone wants the file of Rohan Buildings leave me a comment. And I'll try to get that out to you.

Dwarven Forge Kickstarter

I have joined my first Kickstarter Campaign, the Dwarven Forge Game Tiles. I should have jumped on the Reaper Bones KS, but I waited to long. I have wanted Dwarven Forge dungeon pieces for a long time now. The price was always a big barrier for me. Now with this Kickstarter, it brings the new Game Tiles within reach.

Here is the intro video to the KS campaign:


Now I just have to wait till October.

Cheers, Xin

Painted up some Uruk-Hai

I've had this box of Uruk-Hai, sitting in my basement for 6 or 7 years. It's one of the old boxes, that had 24 figures. Man I wish I had bought more back then. Anyway, just a quick post with some pics.

I got them finished just in time to fight the Ents my friend built- See them Here.


Xin

Update, I've already got them on the table one time, and well lets just say Saruman needs to make some more Uruk-Hai. Battle Report Here

Isengard vs The Fellowship

I've got my 2nd big game of SBG in yesterday. I just painted a box of 24 Uruk-Hai. Remember when they were 24 to a box? So I wanted to take them out for a test drive. The other thing I wanted to do was see how heroes worked against numbers. Our first battle was lots of troops and not so many heroes (Battle Report Here). So this time we did the full Fellowship vs Isengard.

The Fellowship clocks in at 750 points, wow. The only options I took were armor and bow for Aragorn. I'm gonna have to scrape the bottom of my small but growing force to come up with 750 points for Isengard.

Here's what I came up with:
7 Uruk Bow, 1 Uruk Capt
8 Uruk Scouts, Lurtz
8 Uruk Scouts, Uruk Capt
6 Warg w/shield and 1 Warg Capt*
1 Troll *
4 Ruffians with Dunlending Chief*
Witch-King on Horse*
*all flea market acquisitions, not painted by me, yet.

As we are still learning the rules, we just went with a straight up fight no special weapon attacks or Heroic Actions. I really need to sit down and read thru that section of the rules. This time we are using magic though. This time it's me and Dowvoovoo vs Dr MM. The Fellowship on one side, and the mass of Uruks on the other. I just don't see how the Fellowship can survive.

 Isengard lines up for battle

 The fellowship arrays itself to protect the Ringbearer

 The fellowship decides this hill is as good as any to die on.

 The Witchking orders the advance. Stompy the troll complies

 The archers on the left flank

 Wargs and Ruffians move up the right flank

 The ruins in the center start to funnel the Uruks together.

 The wargs slipping around the woods to hit the good guys in the side.

 Closer

 Gimli has been tasked with holding off the wargs. This didn't work out well for me. The Wargs going single file meant that they hit Gimli one at a time. It also didn't help that Legolas gave Gimli some cover fire.

 Legolas shifts to the side to be able to fire off either side of the hill.

Boromir and Aragorn decide that the best defense is a good offense and move forward to meet the hoard. This was and was not a good move. The good part, it bottle up or attack, the bad part, only 2 heroes to stem the tide.

 Legolas shifts again. The Hobbits are now armed with stones. Legolas killing wargs off camera.

 Boromir and Aragorn surrounded! But wait, Boromir wins his fight and kills 3 Uruks. Nice rolling. The Fellowship player had a very hot hand.

 Aragorn fighting 3 Uruks and a troll. He wins and gets a wound on the troll. By this time, the Witchking has tried Your Staff is Broken, and Transfix twice. He is spending will for nothing.

 All the Wargs are gone, but one Warg rider sans warg fighting Legolas, he would join his warg shortly after this pic. The only thing left on the flank was Ruffians and a Chieftain.

 Boromir kills off another Uruk, and Aragorn charges the Troll but does not wound the beast. Both Boromir and Aragorn are burning through Might, but they are stopping the hoard from reaching the Ringbearer.

 Aragorn surrounded, but I think he lives one more turn. Boromir takes 2 arrows, so I switch out the model for the model from Ambush at Amon Hen.

 Here come the ruffians

 Ruffians charge Gimli

 And Gimli beats them back

 One Ruffian has a go at Legolas, that didn't end well for him.

 With Aragorn tied up, Uruks slip pass.

Wounds are starting to mount on the hill. Even Mithrandir takes a wound. One of the hobbits kills an Uruk with a stone. How embarrassing.

 At last Aragorn and Boromir fall. I think the Witch King finally landed Transfix on Aragorn.

Merry joins Gimli against the Ruffians. Gandalf kills the Troll with Sorcerous Blast. By now the casualties are too much for the Uruk-Hai to bear. With half their numbers dead. They flee back to Isengard.


I know I made some mistakes. At first, I really really thought this would be a slam dunk for the Uruk-Hai. We outnumbered them almost 4 to 1. So to be honest, I took it easy, I didn't push forward as hard as I could, and that came back to bite me in the ass. Heroes are...well heroic.

It did not help that my friend playing The Fellowship, had a hot hand with the dice. Not much you can do about that.

Another mistake, I think I left some Wargs off the table. Looking at the army list and the pictures, I was missing 2 Wargs and the Capt. He still could have beaten off my flank attack as it came in piece meal, but he would have had to  commit some of the Hobbits that way.

My last big mistake was not getting any mileage out of the Witch King. Well I got some, all the heroes had to use some Will to fight off my spells, and I think he helped bring down Aragorn in the end, but everything else was resisted. So magic takes a little time to master it looks like.

Good time was had by all. The other Uruk player took a morale victory from killing Aragorn and Boromir. Frodo lived to get the Ring to Mt Doom, but it can be argued, that he might not get there, with Aragorn dead, or even if he did, Gondor and Rohan would have been destroyed. With Gondor and Rohan out of the way, Saruman or Sauron would be free to roam about Middle-Earth unchecked.

I can see this game has some depth to it. And I can see the system to be used for more than just Middle-Earth.  More battles to come.

Ciao for now, Xin

Scratch built Ents!

My very good friend, who goes by the name of Dowvoovoo on some miniature boards, sculpted up some Ents for me. He is ridiculously good at scratch building. He already posted pics of the first one (TMP), but I asked him to do a 2nd one. Good thing he got them done, as Saruman has commanded his Uruk-Hai to get more firewood.

  

 Some Uruk-Hai out for a walk in the woods. They are about to have a very bad day.

 These boys are big, they make Treebeard look like a sapling.

  A face only an Entwife could love.

 I need to come up names for these Majestic creatures.


Thanks Dowvoovoo, you rock!

Ciao for now, Xin