Painting Work in Progress

I found a few hours over the weekend to pick up the paint brush and work on one of the Dwarves for the Unexpected Party.  Committing to paint one is a big step as I need to start deciding which Dwarf Character will be represented by which Dwarf model.  Why?  Becuase in the Hobbit each of the Dwarves are described by the color of the hoods (e.g. cloaks) that they wear.  I’ll post a full run through of all the dwarves and their color schemes in a future post.

However, here’s a nice WIP photo of Dwalin. 

Dwalin is characterized by a Dark Green Hood.  I was very excited to start painting again as I don’t think I’ve picked up a paint brush for anything specific since before Adepticon in April!  I did do a quick and dirty paint job on some proxy dwarves for playtesting puruposes but there wasn’t much care put into the painting of those.

As far as the painting of this model.  I’m very pleased with how he’s turning out.  In my opinion its one of the best faces I’ve painted on a miniature.  I’ve still got some work to do on the metal parts as well as the cloak as those have only received a basecoat so far.  However, the face, leather armor, boots  and tunics are nearly finished.   The only real complaint I have at this point is the speckliness (is that word??) on his left arm.  When I primed the model, the primer didn’t go on that part very flat and I probably should have tried to smooth it out a bit more.  I was hoping the painting could hide it to some extent.  In person, this is a very small area and its not nearly as noticeable; however these pictures do make it stand out a bit.  Oh well, I’ll learn more as I continue to paint the rest of the dwarves.

More Work in Progress for the Unexpected Party

I’ve spent some more time working on adding new conversions to the Unexpected Party.  Some have come out very nice and others I’m still on the fence about. Here’s the first three which were mostly straight forward weapon swaps or head swaps.  You’ll notice two of the bodies are exactly the same.  This happens to be my favorite Dwarf Ranger pose.  I’ve seen this same body make an excellent Thorin Oakenshield conversion on its own.

These next three involve a lot more sculpting. I’ve been using ProCreate as the sculpting medium here. Several people I know through the interweb swear by this stuff being even better than Greenstuff. I’m no sculpting guru so I don’t have a strong opinion yet.

This model started its life as Gimli from the Death of Gothmog. Add in an Iron Guard sword arm, Gimli from Mines of Moria arm, and some generous amounts of ProCreate and you’ve got a suitable take on an Iron Guard-Ranger-esque model that should fit the army nicely. So far this is one of my favorite conversions.

Next up is some more work on old Bombur. I’ve really bulked him up here and did my best to try and sculpt a shirt and trousers. I’ve also added a heavy hood and started working on the cloak. I really should get a picture of him next to one of his thinner kindsmen. If you can envision the original Balin Model who “dwarfed” (pun intended) most of the other Dwarf models and then added another layer of bulk, I think you’ll definitely agree he is the fattest of all my dwarves.

These conversions have been a fun excuse to try and improve my sculpting skills. I’ve got a long ways to go but I do start seeing some levels of improvement. This blog has been very helpful for me and I purchased Sculpting Tutorial by James Van Schaik which gave me a lot of insight into the world of miniature sculpting. I’m no wear close to being considered a sculptor yet but I do see some baby steps. These larger than life pictures certainly highlight the imperfections in the work. At a more natural size I think the miniatures look pretty good. As always, I’d love to hear any comments or criticism.

I’ve got some other WIPs cooking on the workbench but they aren’t quite Blog-ready yet. More to come soon!

Building the Unexpected Party

Wow, way to long between blog posts…  I know many people promise this but I’m going to try and post more frequently over the next few months.  All my primary 2009 tournament events have been completed and I’ve started to look towards 2010.  I’m looking at trying to make my 2010 tournaments more about fun/themed armies and no worry as much about their level of competitiveness.  Well at least I’m saying that right now, we’ll see how things go if I start getting my brains beat in.

First up in 2010 is the Gathering in the Desert which is an annual tournament organized by my friends Tim and Dean.  This is a very hardcore LOTR tournament with a ton of excellent players and painters.  I’ve wanted to try something new for a while and I know that I’ve blogged about this in the past.  I’m planning on playing an army based around the theme from The Hobbit – Thorin’s Company, aka, the Unexpected Party.  My plan is to have all 13 Dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf.  Given that it is such a small army, I really want to do something special with the hobby piece of it.  I’m going to convert each and every model for this army and hopefully, if I’m stick up to my end of the bargain, I’ll document the whole process on the blog here.

Here are some early WIPs of the first few dwarves.  For the most part, I haven’t decided already which dwarf will be represented by which model yet.  My goal is to have 3 dwarf heroes (Thorin, Balin, and Gloin), 8 Iron Guard, and 1 Dwarf Warrior with a banner. 

This model represents one of the Iron Guard. They are based on Ranger Models as Thorin’s company is described as wearing caps, hoods, and robes. However, to make the combat effective, I used the most elite dwarf warrior profile I could use – the Iron Guard. I like to think of the Iron Guard as the armored rangers anyway! This particular model was a simple conversion using a Dwarf Ranger and the left arm from Gimli from the Mines of Moria set.

This model is another of the iron guard. He was converted to hold a different Axe. I also added sculpting putty (ProCreate) to create some new hair for the model. The rangers are cool sculpts but some of them are lacking a bit of detail. Sorry, not the best picture of these.

This model is a third in the Iron Guard Series. He’s started as an Iron Guard body with a Ranger head transplant. A lot of putty was used to try and blend in the hood with the tunic and beard.

This is Dwarf Warrior. Eventually he’ll be holding a banner as well. He’s going to represent Bombue. The fattest and most comical of Thorin’s company. Hopefully I’ll find some way to put some extra life into this model. He’ll certainly be bulked up to have the most girth.

finally, in addition to the dwarves, I’ve put together a simple conversion for Biblo. Just a quick headswap with Bilbo and Frodo.

Hopefully, much more to come in future days!!

War of the Ring DEMO Game

I finally got a chance to get to my local Games Workshop and try a demo game for War of the Ring.  Dave ran me through their standard demo game featuring Rohan vs Mordor with a couple allies for each army.  I chose to play Rohan (woohoo!) – My army was:

Three Companies of Riders of Rohan (6 Models), Two Companies of Oathsworn Militia (16 Warriors of Rohan), One Company of Oathsworn Militia w/bows (8 Warriors of Rohan), Two Companies of Army of the Dead (16 Models), and 1 Ent.  I was facing a similar army comprised of a Mordor Troll, 6 Haradrim Raiders, 24 Mordor Orcs with Hand weapons and 8 Mordor Orcs w/ Bows.  Comparing across the stat-lines, I’m pretty sure the Good Models had a huge advantage.  However, it didn’t really matter as it was just a Demo Game.

The mechanics of the game were pretty easy to pick-up.  It will take some time to get used to separate Moving and “Charge” Phases of the turn.  It will also take some time to get used to the new statlines for some of the models (especially the Rohirrim).  I like the rules allowing the winner of the Priority Phase to chose whether they want priority or want to defer. 

The rules for using archery were interesting in that depending on how far you were from your target, the strength of your weapon decreases.  Makes sense I guess.  Absent it seems were rules for volley fire.  I made the mistake of trapping my archery formation behind my lines and had no line of site for the first turn.  On the flip side, I lost a Rider of Rohan to archery from the lowly orcs.

The fun (for me) was the Charge phase.  Your charging range is based on a random die roll + a static number based on your model type.  So for instance, the cavalry can move up to 10 inches during the move phase and then they can charge D6+6 inches in charge phase.  In addition, if you roll a 6 on your charge, you can get an “Unstoppable Charge” which gives some addition bonuses.  Conversely, rolling a 1 means that your charge falls apart and you can’t move at all.  Sigh.  This happened a few times to me.  I felt like I was rolling my friend Jeremy’s dice!.  Anyway, back on topic… when I did get my first Cavalry charge into the Mordor Orc Formation, I was rolling 36 dice to wound – needing only 4s to cause the wounds.  Needless to say, it was a bloody mess for the Orcs.  The lost a bunch of models and then failed their courage test and became disorganized (never again to find organization).  As I hope to ultimately have a Cavalry formations into the 40-50 model range, I think I’m going to have to invest in many, many, many more dice.

Wounding is slightly different in that your model has a “resiliency” statistic that must be overcome with wounds before it is removed from play.  Resiliency isn’t cumulative through a turn either.  Most infantry models are resiliency of 1 but cavalry is 2.  That means that even though 3 wounds were caused, only 1 model was removed.  In addition, that “extra” resiliency doesn’t carry over to the next phase or next turn.  The wound is just wasted. 

Combat with the monsters was very interesting.  We got to a phase of the game where the Mordor Troll was facing off against the Ent.  Although I had a superior stat line, I ended up whiffing on 4 rolls to wound (only needing 3s mind you!) while the Troll wounded me all four times.  Monsters don’t have “wounds” per se.  They are only wounded through rolls on the “Hard to Kill” or “Very Hard to Kill” table.  That means every time you cause two wounds (corresponding to two resiliency) then you roll 1 dice on the Hard to Wound Table.  Adding wound counters are some of the results that could occur on these tables.  For every wound counter you have, you add one to your die roll on the Hard to Kill table.  Eventually, you’ll net out the “6″ that is required to kill him.  So, back to my game… The troll managed cause two wounds and rolled on the Hard to Kill table.  He rolled a “6″ and instantly killed my Ent.  Sheesh.  Just for fun, I charged two Cavalry into the Troll and managed to secure 4 wounds.  Two rolls on the Resiliency Table yielded 2 wound counters for him. 

Our game ended after three turns.  I’d eliminated all his orcs while he’d killed all my Warriors of Rohan on Foot, my Army of the Dead, and my Ent.  All he had left was the Troll. 

Obviously, we played a very simplified game.  However, I can see how this would be fun.  Having never really played a game based on “movement trays”, I was unsure how maneuverable the models would be.  I wasn’t sure how much tactical knowledge would be useful.  I can say, that I think there will still be a lot of tactical maneuvering in full fledge games.  As LOTR players, we’ll need to get used to playing on 4×6 boards however!!  I think adding in Heroes and Magic will make the game a lot more tactically challenging. 

I’m very much looking forward to expanding my own Rohirrim to a full-fledge WotR army!  I’ll also be expanding my Haradrim to represent an WotR army.  Definitely two major projects for the summer!

Download Available 

For what its worth, Games Workshop has provided some downloads for Quick Start Rules.  Check them out here: QuickStart Rules Downloads