Etako's Expeditionaries Battle Company - Narrative Mission 2 Battle Report

After being beaten several times by The Falcon and the Harad group, Etako's band is hot on his heels, but get lost wandering through Mirkwood. Finally in a clearing they stop to rest and then notice eyes peering out from behind web-shrouded trees. Uh oh.

Seeing how close a match it was for my brother I was quite despairing of this mission, I don't have cavalry and my high defense isn't as good against the strength 5 spiders, especially if they web me up! So it was with heavy heart that we set up the board for me, fortunately I have healing herbs still saved up, so hopefully there won't be too much mess afterwards!

Round 1. Byrnmor charges with Boggle at the purple spider, win the fight and they each score a wound against it, slaying spider number 1! Only a bazillion to go! I really wish I had horses to charge with!

Both archers let fly, Loki scores a hit on the green spider, which leads a pack of giant hairy legged creatures towards the stalwart dwarves.

Round 2. I forgot to take a photo! Brynmor killed the already bow-shot green spider and Loki shot and wounded the yellow spider.

Round 3. Boggle attacks the purple spider, who wins the combat (Boggle rolled double ones!) and wounds the dwarf twice (even though he has Heavy Dwarf Armour AND a shield! His fate saves one of the wounds so he fights on!

Hilda hunkers behind the massive Iron Shield and deflects the orange spider while Kara stabs past with her spear and wounds the monstrosity!

Etako charges in and uses his iron fist to pummel the yellow spider into a gooey patch. But not before it paralyses Loki!

Round 4. The green spider rushes in, paralysing Mighty Monty then taking him out of the game! The first casualty! The yellow spider spits web and paralyses Skodi!

Brynmor and Boggle team up to take out the purple spider while Etako uses a point of might to kill the orange spider after he, Kara and Hilda roll terribly!

Round 5. Boggle uses a point of will to overcome his failed courage tests and charges towards the green spider in an effort to help the poor, paralysed Skodi. His throwing axe thwacks into the spider and he and Rocky take it out a moment later. Unfortunately Skodi falls beneath the chittering yellow spider, unable to do anything while covered in sticky webs!

The rest of the troop rally around Loki, who has been paralysed for some time and clear the webs from him!

Round 6. At the start of round 6 calamity strikes! the purple spider kills both Hilda Greatshield and Archie, rolling four 6s in a row! The dwarves are falling rapidly as the spiders seem to only roll 5s and 6s! As a matter of fact, my brother swapped dice to try and save the dwarves!

Loki draws and shoots, hitting and wounding the oncoming green spider. Boggle and Rocky together take out the yellow spider. Brynmor and Etako use a point of might to take out the orange spider.

Round 7. By this stage I was tempted to run for the edge to escape rolling on the injury table! But the spiders are way faster than me! 

Boggle uses a throwing axe as he charges in at the orange spider and wounds it, then Etako joins him in combat. The spider wins the combat and kills Boggle (dwarves rolled all ones, spider rolled a 6 to wound!)

Fortunately Loki kills the green spider in close combat, showing that he is quite a skilled dwarf!

Unfortunately the purple spider overwhelms Brynmor and Kara Longspear and kills Brynmor!

Round 8. Only four dwarves are left standing! Kara and Rocky take on the purple spider, who beats them back and kills Kara Longspear!

Meanwhile Etako and Loki attack the orange spider, win the combat and somehow manage to fail to wound it - even only needing 4+!

It's not looking good, the dwarves need two alive at the end of the game to win and there's only three of them left!

Round 9. Fortunately for the game, unfortunately for Rocky, three spiders are close to him so charge in and completely overwhelm him on his first ever game! However, his bravery is recognised by Etako and Loki who take out the orange spider.

And then the elves arrive, saving Etako and Loki from certain doom and helping disentangle the other fallen dwarves!

It's victory, but at what cost!?!?

Actually we get off fairly lightly, Rocky, poor brave dwarf, is injured and will miss the next game. But the worst of it is that Boggle gets an arm wound and can no longer use a shield - even though that's his whole, you know, thing! As a dwarf, not being able to use any two handed things is pretty rough!

However, all those dead spiders make for quite a lot of experience and my rolls for rewards were pretty amazing so let me go through Etako's Expeditionaries now...

Etako Ironfist, a warrior with Heavy Dwarf Armour, a two handed axe and throwing axes, with fight 5, 2 wounds, Furious Charge and Parry
Brynmor Deepminer, a warrior with Heavy Dwarf Armour, a two handed shovel and throwing axes with fight 5, strength 4 and 2 wounds.
Boggle Bootmire, a warrior with Heavy Dwarf Armour, an axe and throwing axes, fight 5, Blademaster and Furious Charge and suffering from an Arm Wound.
Skodi Strongarm, a warrior with axe and shield.
Loki Lightfingers, a ranger with a dwarf bow.
Archie Longsight, a hero in the making warrior with dwarf bow.
Mighty Monty, a warrior with axe and shield.
Definat Diva, a warrior with axe and shield.
Hilda Greatshield, an Iron Shield.
Kara Longspear, a Foe Spear.
Rocky, a warrior with two handed axe.
and the newcomers...
Yet to be named Mirkwood Ranger who was so impressed by the dwarves that he/she has joined their team.
Yet to be named Iron Guard!

So it's a pretty cool squad now of 13 (there's a maximum of 15, so hopefully will still get some more cool guys, would really like a Khazad Guard =)

Anyway, that was quite a tough battle! Next time it'll be back to versus games against the Harad force!

Dwarf Army - Warband Edition

As has been noted, the new rules (actually, even the not so new rules, but waaaaaay back when there wasn't a warband structure so I'm slow to change!) are based on leaders with warbands of varying sizes.

So my son chose warbands for the leaders and we realised that I'm short a few captains for this type of army.

I may be missing something, but there doesn't appear to be a dwarf leader for rangers or archers so there are a few mixed bands there.

Feel free NOT to click to see larger pics this time, the close range shots aren't always pretty! You can see (hopefully) which dwarves I spent more time painting than others, also a skill level increase, oh, and just the ones that are better since washes were introduced!

Here's the dwarves in their warbands (you may need to click to see this at proper size as it's quite wide).

Durin with a lot of Khazad Guard, a banner, some Iron Guard and some Vault Wardens. As High King he has a powerhouse of a warband!

Etako is my special character/king so he gets a big warband too, though not as impressive as Durin's, of course. My son decided that all of the important dwarves should have at least two Khazad Guard accompanying them, so you'll notice behind each main leader there will be some Khazads. I think it's a nice touch.

The King's Champion band is smaller, with a mix of melee troops. I kept all my archers to two warbands rather than scattering them.

Boggle, the shieldbearer, has a squad of throwing axe rangers as they'll probably be rushing around to protect leaders.

One King/Captain has his two Khazad Guards and ten archers. I actually did a bit of fairly intricate work on painting this guy, there's some freehand on the bottom of his cloak etc. I don't think I have the eyesight to do that anymore!

Another King/Captain has the same set of troops.

And finally, Brynmor has a squad of two Khazads, a Vault Warden team, some shields and some 2-Handed guys. A multi-purpose squad. As long as the purposes involve closing with the enemy and chopping at them.

So there you go, I need another couple captains to get all my dwarf minis on the table. Not sure what to do about that at the moment. Not that we're likely to ever get them all on at once anyway! Still. Have to think about what to do. GW prices are a bit nuts, so might have to hit eBay and hope for a cheap dwarf miniature!

Dwarf Armies

So my son and I got out all my dwarf miniatures to see how many there were now that I've completed the King's Champion.

We arranged them according to type so that I could see them a bit more clearly (with some creative license thrown in to keep things at aleast a little interesting for a 7 year old).

There are:
Balin (who we call Etako).
Dain (who we often call Durin).
2 Dwarf Kings (We often use as captains).
Brynmor (Captain).
Boggle (Shieldbearer).
King's Champion.
14 Warriors with shield
10 Warriors with 2-H weapons
20 Warriors with bows
2 Warriors with banners
8 Rangers with throwing axes
8 Rangers with 2-H weapons
8 Rangers with bows
6 Iron Guards
5 Vault Warden teams
20 Khazad Guards

Click on the pics for bigger sizes as always!

Here are the Vault Wardens and Dain/Durin

Etako with some other Kings and the King's Champion

Some more of the previous, showing some of the line of Iron and Khazad Guard

The back section shows some of the shielded dwarves, warriors and rangers.

Continuing along you can see the main body of axes

Here on the other side are more shields and bows in the back row.

And lastly a sort of side shot to show off the new banners =)

So there you go, roughly 1700 points depending on some of the options for the Kings etc. I know there are bigger armies out there, but I quite like how you can just paint and paint for a while and then put them all together to look pretty cool =)

Next up I need to finish painting some goblin prowler conversions and then do the same for my goblin army!

King's Champion - Second Herald

Well, here are the trio!

My son is looking forward to helping me get all the dwarves out to take a group army shot later today, so I'll post that when we get it done.

Here's a view from slightly higher up...

And from directly behind to see those dynamically flowing cloaks.

And from the other side...

I realised the other view from behind obscured the banners a bit so here's another shot showing the banners a bit more. 

I had a lot of trouble with my ancient paints and the yellow in particular, but from anything other than really close up I think it looks okay.

My blending wasn't very smooth either, but I'm sure you all know what it's like when you just don't have hours to spend!

Looking forward to seeing the grand dwarf army =)

King's Champion - First Herald

I know I haven't named them yet, I'm working on it!

In the meanwhile, here is the King's Champion - First Herald.

You'll have to excuse the slightly garish colours in the up close photo.

Now the King's Champion is accompanied!

I still think that there's need of a second Herald when going up against a Balrog! So I'd better get painting!

King's Champion

One of the dwarf models I've always thought looked cool but didn't have was the King's Champion.

Well now I have it and have painted the champion (yet to do the heralds). 

I'm pretty happy with it, though I'm still not 100% happy as some of my paints have not reconstituted well (maybe I should buy some paints that aren't 10 years old!). Also, my freehand skills are not what they used to be so the cloak is highlighted and shaded, but I haven't done any freehand on it as I used to do. Maybe I will some time when my confidence and skills are back!

Anyway, here he is being ordered to battle by Etako (click photo for larger image)...

View of cloak on back...

And a front view (the last thing a goblin facing him will ever see!)

Eagle Eye View

Well, after lots of spending time whenever I could get it, I have finally completed my second great eagle. This is another Gamezone Eagle. Like the first eagle (and, I think, any metal mini in general) it was a complete pain to put together, but at least I had the knowledge that they come out looking pretty good so it was far more bearable this time!


Like last time I did a google search for lots of images and decided on a red-tailed hawk.


Here's the underside completed apart from a few other finishing touches I did later.

As you can see there is lots of banding on the feathers and I had to paint the bottom first before setting it up on the base, which I used some more Lord of the Rings terrain on.

I've had a few comments and messages lately about my armies. 


Firstly I'd like to point out that I paint straight from the pot. 


Secondly I need to say that I paint my armies in whatever colours I like. I don't even want to get into any more discussions about my "lack of realism" or that I'm "doing it wrong". I don't even know where to start with that level of stupid.


Thirdly I tend to only do WIP stuff if I haven't already done that style before, and I am trying to label my posts better for ease of finding details!


Anyway, on with how I painted the eagle, now that you've seen the underside, I'll go through the same process on the top. Firstly it's Scorched Brown on the main body and front of the wings. White on the wings. Vermin Brown on the neck and tail feathers.

Then it's another two or three layers of white on the wings, a drybrush of bleached bone on the neck, a drybrush of bestial brown on the body and another layer of vermin brown on the tail.

A layer of red gore on the tailfeathers and a very thin line of sepia wash edging each feather. Yes, that is tedious, but that's nothing compared to the stripes to come. A brown wash is also done over the whole body and neck.

Next it's several layers of brown washes in lines along the wings and on the wing-tips. Yes this does take a long time. Yes it is wise to be listening to something while you work and to stretch every few minutes. Yes, I do think it's worth it in the end =) The tailfeathers also get some brown wash to dull down the red.

With a bit of a bleached bone (really light) drybrush on the tailfeathers as well as some more brown wash lining the tail was done. The body had a few random feathers picked out with bestial brown before getting some more brown washing. The wings had another brown wash on the tips to darken them up and voila! One more giant eagle!

Here he is on my boring home board...

And here he is fighting Durburz. I deliberately posed him at such a height that the claws are right for goblin grabbing =)

And here are the two Giant Eagles (or Great Eagles if you're that way inclined). Both Gamezone models.

And from a higher vantage point...

 Lastly, while I'm here, I put some of the dwarves in my lightbox then mucked around with some super simple editing (level balance and unsharpen mask).


Here's Boggle the Shieldbearer...

And Etako Ironfist...

If only it didn't show blemishes as well =)

Anyway, there you go for now! One eagle to go!