Storage

Not necessarily the most exciting post of all time, but pretty cool for me. My wife found a great glass front cabinet going very cheap on eBay so...

My son helped me organise all the miniatures so that they look good with the doors closed and are all sorted out into warbands.

Top shelf is quite high (cabinet is over 2m tall) so you don't usually see it much. It has my few Space Wolves in it.

Next shelf has some miscellaneous stuff like the Fellowship, ents, eagles, wizards, wild wargs, fell wargs and Burdhur.

Then come the Harad army, about 912 points worth (mostly in the Mumak and Wraith on Fellbeast.

Then the goblin horde! 2197 points worth of Balrog, trolls, warg riders, spiders, bats and lots of goblin warriors.

Finally it's the dwarves looking VERY short with no tall models like the other armies have. 1828 points all up!

So there you go, for about $40 (which is less than some of the metal minis cost nowadays!) I now have a much more dust free and nice to look at place to store all my miniatures.

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!

100,000 is a big number!

Well, a bit of a self-congratulatory celebration post today, so bear with me =) the blog has had over 100,000 views!

I started this blog about four years ago. I had been quite ill for a number of years and one of the things that kept me going was painting miniatures and playing games with my very patient brother (thanks to my very patient wife).

The blog was to help motivate me and so that I could keep a record of my photos, particularly of my realm of battle battleboard gameboard. Then we played a game on it and took photos as we went. Since then I've written up a LOT of battle reports and have tried to make them interesting with lots of pictures.

Some interesting stats:

The site gets between 100 and 300 hits a day.

The battle reports get way more hits than the WIP blogs.

The goblins vs haradrim battle here (http://simbattleboard.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/lotr-sbg-battle-report-goblins-vs.html) has been viewed over 4,300 times.

Why? The Mumak!

"Battle Report", "Mumak" and "Balrog" are responsible for most of the hits from searches.

Most readers are in the US and UK with Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and Russia following in descending order.

Hello!

To all who take the time to look at the site from other countries (I'm in Australia) - hello and thanks for reading! Assuming you can read that. Well, if you can't hopefully you'll pick up the hello vibe anyway!

Thank you to all of the people who have read the blog! Hopefully you've enjoyed the reports and not laughed too hard at our occasional bumbles and poor paintjobs! Hopefully you can see the improvement in our painting skills over the years. Don't forget my brother's blog here: http://paulslotrminis.blogspot.com.au/

Just for fun today I put out most of my miniatures in two big battle lines. There are a horde of goblins, a balrog, cave trolls, spiders, bats, wargs etc. on one side. On the other side are an army of dwarves, one hobbit (see if you can spot him) and some great eagles or giant eagles, can't remember what they are technically called right this minute.



I know that some people play with almost no scenery. I think my brain would explode, but it sure makes for easier deployment =)

Here's looking from the other end...



And an aerial view...



I know I don't have as big an army as many of you, but it's plenty big enough for us!

Working down the evil side we have some captains and drummers near some lava. I still can't believe they used to be skull pits.






Durburz and the Balrog take most of the center of the army (as well as my original plastic troll who is painted more gobliny than the other three).






The eagle wings sort of get in the way of the spiders and wargs.






And here are the trolls.






And here's Druzhag hiding behind his bats with an entourage of giant spiders.






And the good side has lots of dwarves! Look at that gorgeous shield wall backed up with Khazad Guard, Iron Guard and a whole heap of rangers.






The shield wall continues to a Shieldbearer (Boggle) and Etako Ironfist, also known as Etako One-eye. You can read more about them in other posts if you haven't already.






Facing the mighty Balrog are my intrepid Vault Wardens, with a banner behind them they are pretty fun to play with!






Finally, there's Brynmor, more shields, a dwarven king and plenty of warriors.






Allied to the dwarves are the three giant eagles. Just as a teaser, you'll get to see them in action in the next battle report.






Some different angles to show off the Balrog and Durburz.






I don't use this troll anymore, but still quite like the painting I did as it was my first ever large model. Pre-washes I tried blending and other "advanced" techniques that I'd never ever used before (and rarely do now - slacker!)






I'm still enjoying the look of my three trolls with the two collared wargs.






And here's a better look at some of the shield designs and dwarven kings who don't get used often.






I'm not really sure what this picture was for. Maybe just because I like my dwarves.






Brynmor is one of my favorite and least favorite conversions. I love most of him except for the blue gem type thing on his helmet. I love the shovel. I love that he's standing on a beer barrel, I think I did a pretty good job on the armour and cloak. I green stuff built the hammer and shovel and I don't really do much of that sort of thing, so am quite proud of myself for giving it a go.






And another shot of the dwarves... plus one...






Anyway, thanks for putting up with the self-indulgence =)

I'm sure there are some (actually, I've had emails so I KNOW there are some) who can't stand the way we play our games so leniently and for entertainment and fun instead of other, deeper reasons.

Oh well =)

We did play a battle today too, but I left the notes at my brother's place so you'll have to wait a few days for it sorry!

Thanks all for reading and contributing to making this a happy hobby for me! I especially appreciate the positivity!

Lord of the Rings Dwarf Army Finished!

In a frenzy of a day's painting, I finished off the batch! It only took three weeks, which isn't too bad given the small amount of time per day I spent on them.


Anyway, since last time, the first thing I did was the beards and some washing of the brown areas. I did a little detail here and there, fixed up some accidental splodges and whited the eyes.


I tend to think of them as zombie dwarves at this stage, you'll see why...

The redheads got some Red Gore followed by a little Blood Red in highlights. The Brown Beards had some various browns layered on. The greys had some fortress grey, a wash, then some more fortress grey. The belts, boots etc. had some Devlan Mud washed over them. Blondie got some snakebite leather and vomit brown all over his head.

And here are the zombie kings to compare to last time...

That was where they stood as of last night.  This morning I woke up early and decided to finish them off. Got up at about six o'clock and it's a little after midday now, so pretty much six hours today (although there was breakfast, second breakfast and photography as well).


First I dotted the eyes, then I had to fix them up. Some of them took two or three tries to do. Fortunately the Khazad Guard have those masks, so you don't have to do theirs =) Next I mixed some dwarf flesh and elf flesh to do little highlights on noses, cheeks and any other skin. Then a flesh wash in the recesses really pops out the detail.


Next I mixed up some codex grey and liche purple for a largish highlight. Then a little more codex is added for a final purple highlight just on the tips of things and the highest ridges of the cloaks.


Lastly it was detail work. Some patterns on the cloaks and shields finished them off!


And now I'm the proud commander of even more dwarves!


Here's the finished group (I turned half of them to face backwards so you could see that side of them), you might need to click on this one to see them properly.

And the Kings:

And from the back...

And here are the archers:

All of the Khazads (new ones and old ones):

And a close up of a few of them:

All of my shielded dwarves:

And the heroes:

And before you get totally bored (if not too late already!)...


The army before...

And the new, improved army...

So in all there are:


Five proper heroes (Etako, Brynmor and the three new Kings)
A Shieldbearer (Boggle)
Two banners
Five Vault Warden Teams
Six Iron Guard
Twenty Khazad Guard
Ten warriors with 2-Handed Axes
Fourteen warriors with shield
Twenty warriors with dwarven bow
Eight rangers with dwarven longbow
Eight rangers with 2-Handed Axes
Eight rangers with Throwing Axes.


In terms of points, giving the rangers with 2-Handed axes some throwing axes as well...
Base troops: 1137 points.
Heroes: depends on what you play them as I guess.
My usual loadout, Etako (Balin), Brynmor (Gimli) and Boggle (Shieldbearer), are 245 points. 
If the other three are Dain (125 points) and two Kings (75-85 each), that adds another 275 - 295 points.


So with everything together... 1657 - 1677 points.


Pretty cool, huh =)


Anyway, I'm super happy that I finished them before the baby came, due in a week from now! 


It can be quite disheartening when painting in a batch like this, it often seems like you spend hours to make no progress, but in the end you do get there, and it's worth it!


Thanks for all your forum feedback and messages, always happy to answer more questions, and hope you enjoyed following along!