Hobbit Battle Company or Shire Battle Company

I'm not sure if it's technically a Hobbit Battle Company or a Shire Battle Company, but here's my initial squad!

Meet Rose's Ragers!

Raging Rose leads Farmer Maddock and Andwise (Andy) along with their mates.
Cooper (Fatty), Robson (Rob), Marmadoc (M.C. Hammer), Flambard (Fred), Wilcom (Jolly) and Wiseman are on the next row back.
The archers are Tolman (Tom), Doderic (Dick) and Halfred (Harry).

They may be small in stature but they're big in... stomach? 

More hobbit archers (plus friends)

A Hobbit Battle Company can have up to 25 members, so with 1/3 of them being able to be archers I needed some more! I'll max out the archers simply because they're less useless than the others! The hobbits use a short bow, which is way better than most of their (pretty pathetic) melee skills!

One of my heroes is the one with the yellow sash (he won it by getting first place in the archery competition).

One of the problems with collecting hobbits is that there aren't many models to choose from. There are only 4 militia models, 4 archer models and 4 shirrif models. Obviously I've also used some of the variants of the main characters too (especially Frodo and Sam). In an effort to minimise obvious repetition I've tried to paint them all different colours. I guess when I put them all together we'll see how successful I was.

And speaking of which, here's Frodo on a pony. I have the others, but not having painted horses before I put them off for ages! Also, in the new rules, ponies are almost pointless. You don't get any cavalry bonus with them, so they're really just a way of moving more quickly. Also they look kinda cool I guess =)

And since you can hire local guides or elven friends I picked up a few. They're a different brand as we really were desperate for some female representation and there's precious little of that available. I wanted some of the cool Mirkwood ones, but I can only find them for sale in large quantities and don't have the cash for that! They're an ever so slightly larger scale, so I have them on flat bases instead of the normal raised ones and I think that'll smooth things out a bit. I guess, also, they'll mostly only be next to hobbits so it doesn't really matter!

Hobbit characters

And, of course, there are a host of other characters that have to come with a Hobbit Battle Company so here are a horn blower, the Lobelia model who will actually be the leader of our battle company, Rose (Raging Rose), the Paladin Took model and the Fatty Bolger model, who we will be calling Cooper. Why Cooper? We'll get there in a second!

And then we have a couple of slightly sozzled hobbits and the old Bilbo model, who we're calling Wiseman (his weapon is a big heavy book).

Because the world may be a dangerous place, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't stop and enjoy some fine drink!

Cooper is well known for making barrels, and, well, he fills them up with the good stuff! The Frodo model that was holding the ring ready to drop it into Mount Doom is now bumping tankards with his good mate Jolly Wilcom. The Sam model who used to look exhausted is now a very disheveled hobbit with a large (mostly empty) skin of XXX drink tucked under his arm.

So I think that's most of the hobbits I've painted so far. I've got a few more nearly finished, but I have enough for the start of my Battle Company and hope to have the first game on Saturday! Maybe tomorrow or Friday I'll take a pic of Rose's Ragers ready to go!

Hobbit Militia

Here are my Hobbit Militia.

Two guys with axes, one blacksmith and one of the guys I showed you in a previous post that seems angry that his drinking time has been interrupted!

These ones do have names, Robson (Rob), Marmadoc (M.C.), Flambard, and Wilcom (Jolly).

I just wanted to straight out call the blacksmith M.C. Hammer, but my wife and son decided it had to be at least a little more "hobbity". I'll show you Jolly Wilcom's drinking buddy maybe tomorrow.

Farmer Maddock (Farmer Maggot)

One of the leaders of our Battle Company is Farmer Maddock.

Obviously I've used the Farmer Maggot model for this one!

We haven't named the dogs yet (but I'll definitely be getting some once I've earned some influence!)

I went with fairly drab colours here, painting him before I thought he might be one of the leaders. As a result, if I do get another model I'll do something a bit more interesting!

I was pretty pleased with how the dogs came out too, they're so tiny!

Hobbit Shirrifs

Next up, the Shirrifs!

Brandishing their big wooden branches, they look ready for action!

And afterwards, a trip to the pub.

Hobbits on the way!

It's my birthday coming up and I want to play a new Battle Company with my brother and some adjusted rules. So I have to get cracking on my hobbit painting!

Here's the first four - the archers

I began by spray painting them all white (I usually do black, but I wanted brighter colours).

We (my son and I) decided to make a couple of the hobbits a little different. I had an old Sam and Frodo at Mount Doom. They look very disheveled so we decided that maybe they were just a little under the weather from all their drinking. These two hobbits have been nicknamed the "Cheers" hobbits.

The Lobelia model is going to be our leader - Raging Rose of Rose's Ragers (or something).

I used some filler to go over all the bases.

Then got on to putting a single layer on them. I've chosen just a few colours, blue, green, brown and cream. Oh, and grey. 

Now they've had a wash...

Up the back you can see a couple of other miniatures. We saw them at the shop and thought, why not! A couple of rangers or something.

And from here on I'm just finishing them off. The four archers show the technique. Once they're base coated and washed it's just a matter of doing the highlights and putting some grass on the bases. I've not based using anything other than grey sand before, so this was kinda fun!

Shire Houses

The spare Hirst Arts blocks that I used for the hobbit hole were actually so that I could build some houses, but the hobbit hole was so much fun that I did that first!

I had enough blocks created to make the Dragon Inn, but thought I'd actually just make a few houses instead. I'll maybe do the bigger building next time =)

So I have three houses, one small, one medium, one large - there are probably three bears or something involved.

When I first got the blocks I started just by rearranging them in different ways to see what they looked like.

Then, after a lot of mucking around (and you can see in the background that I was watching the LotR DVDs while doing so) I glued it all together. The angled pieces were my main limiting factor, so I decided I needed one house that used both sorts and had an asymmetrical roof.  

I watched a lot of youtube clips on how to do roofing and went for the cheapest option I had - cardboard. If you look up cardboard shingle roof you'll see many versions. Here's a picture of when I realised I hadn't cut the little notches in this side of the roof even after I'd glued it. That was fun. Not!
I also managed to really warp one of the roofs as I let it dry before gluing it onto the building. D'oh! Anyway, it's all good now, I just heavily glued the back side of it then sat and watched more LotR while holding it in place until the glue set.

The small house has one door and window, the medium has one door and two windows and the large one has two doors and two windows. I used the same paint scheme as for the hobbit hole.

So there you have it, some more scenery! With my birthday coming up I'm hoping to get a green grass mat to put it all on!