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!

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!