The Hills are alive!

OWhat an unproductive month! I've managed to snatch small spells at the desk and done bits on the hills. They are pretty much done now and look good, although there are small gaps between the bark sections that I just can't get a brush to. With hindsight I would have painted them before putting the bark on. Next time...

Anyway, here are some of the photos of the project. First up the rock faces having been dry rushed with layers of browns.

And the nearly finished pieces:

Finally I finished Saruman off. I'm still playing with different methods of painting whites. This one used a grey base coat. I think I prefer a slightly browner base, but it depends on the model I guess. I haven't flocked the base yet as the wash on the beard was wet.

I haven't quite managed to finish Tauriel off, just some details on the tree stump on the base to do, like the fungus and the vines.

So Saruman puts my painting output at 8 for the month, with none purchased. My backlog is slowly decreasing. I have bought the Imperial Aces set for X-Wing though, which I'm looking forward to flying at some point soon.

Painting update

Sorry I've not updated for a few days. It's been busy round here and I've not got round to updating the blog.

I've finished 7 dwarves - 4 Iron Guard and 3 dwarven warriors.

Tauriel now has arms. I'm struggling with her as she's been a bit fiddly, but I'm nearly there.

Also Josh popped round for a game of something and instead we started making some new hills using pink foam and bark.

I'm hoping they don't join the pile of unfinished projects! 

I've also done a bit more on the X Men and the Warg Riders, but no pictures at the moment.

Current projects

Following last month's blitz to make my painting target, I've not painted so much in March so far and when I have I haven't stayed with one thing for long. So here are some of the things I've dabbled with this weekend.

More dwarves. I love the sculpts of the metal LOTR dwarves. They are a pleasure to paint.

I've started work on a detachment of warg riders. I only have a handful of Mordor troops to paint, and it would be great to have a section of my backlog complete.

There are only a few models left for Project Gondor too. Here I have a load of Boromirs. Not my favourite character, but the mounted model is a very nice sculpt. 

Finally for a cheerful diversion some more superheroes. Heroclix are variable in their quality but some of these are great. Others are horrible. Jubilee - I'm looking at you here! Nightcrawler is a bit odd though. I'm going to use Emma Frost to practise my white tones. 

Had a great game with And at Garrison on Wednesday. Introduced him to SBG rules with the Balin's tomb scenario. Hope to have some more skirmishes at some point. He showed me some of his Infinity stuff and I've spent this week drooling over that game too. I'd like to try it first though.

The Rescue of Faramir

Every now and then I manage to get a game with a friend in Harrogate. We both love over-sized games of LOTR and in this one played a scenario in which Faramir was retreating from Osgiliath pursued by a horde of evil cavalry. Imrahil and Gandalf led a sortie from Minas Tirith, Theoden led a charge of the Rohirrim who had turned up to the Pelennor slightly early and the Three Hunters turned up with some of the Grey Company. The evil side fielded the Nine, Gothmog and Suladan. We decided that victory points would be awarded for killing key characters, and the survival/death of Faramir and if he died the force that captured his body. In addition the evil side won outright if they got into Minas Tirith. Each side had nearly 200 cavalry. I played the evil side.

The board was 12' by 6' if I remember correctly and the terrain was all from the collection of my friend Doug (he also provided most of the figures and took most of the photos).

The initial evil set up, and Faramir's forlorn retreat. Evil was mainly warg riders with Harad, Khand and Easterling Cavalry present too.

The sortie from the city. It looks like a small force on this board, but that's 60 cavalry just there!

Rohan enter the fray.

The armies about to clash.

Here is where Faramir fell. Two Haradrim dragged off his body whilst the sons of Elrond and Imrahil got bogged down in evil cavalry and the fences. I had great luck with my courage rolls for Wargs, and by the end of the game had 8 riderless Wargs left on the board.

Faramir died early on, with a mere Captain of Gondor then knocking Khamul off his fell beast shortly after. if I remember correctly the good side scored points for Khamul, a Ringwraith and Suladan. Evil scored points for Faramir, Aragorn, Gimli, Elrohir, Grimbold. We also killed Eowyn for fun. Luckily for me  some warg riders managed to squeeze through the line and run for the open gate. Despite the best attempts of some Rohan reserves and a couple of. Knights of Minas Tirith the 6 warg riders got away and eventually a captain, a shaman and a warg rider got into the unguarded city. Victory for Mordor!

It was a fun game and we were trying to work out a scenario for a bigger mass participation game. In the end we thought nine wraiths made it unfair, although how else are you going to deal with Aragorn, Imrahil, the twins, Eomer etc? Particularly when outnumbered like we were. The starting place for Faramir was tricky too. Too close to the city and it would be too easy to escape, too far and he got mown down too easily. Also the board allowed a wide deployment for the evil force, was this unfair? We'll no doubt play it again at some point and tweak it. I love these mega games, and that the LOTR rules stand up even with such large model counts.