Liebster Award

Ever since I've started reading blogs I've occasionally noticed this thing called a Liebster award. I mentally filed it under the category "that's pretty cool" and then forgot all about it. Imagine my surprise when I received a message from Scott of scottswargaming to say he had nominated me. Incidently, if you aren't aware of his blog then stop reading this drivel and go back through his archives. His terrain in particular is some of the most inspiring I've seen.

Anyway, the Liebster appears to be a community award for small blogs with fewer than 200 followers (thanks to the 12 of you by the way!). It works as a kind of chain letter that instead of being annoying, actually promotes small blogs.

First off I have to nominate up to 11 blogs that I feel deserve the award. This is hard, as I read far more than 11 blogs according to my Newsify account and I am sure some of these will have been nominated plenty of times before. Also several of them have more than 200 followers, and Scott has already nominated the LOTR ones that I read! I have decided I can't really justify nominating blogs that haven't been active recently.

The Metal Bikini  Clint's site is a wealth of X Wing info and funny to read too. Definitely worth checking out.
Certs Tabletop  This guy is an Infinity player (a game I've been drooling over for a while), and his terrain is fantastic.
Mid Table Obscurity One of the gents from York Garrison. He posts some thoughts about tournaments, and although I have little interest in 40K there is still some interesting stuff here.
Hobby Before I Die A whole range of stuff on here, but it's the X Wing stuff that draws my eye.
Dramatic Katastases Lots of LOTR stuff. I particularly like his use of plastic models to make heroes and elites.
Damn Dice Another guy from York Garrison. More 40K stuff, great painting.

I now have to answer the following 11 questions:

Why did you start blogging? I had been inspired by the blogs of other LOTR gamers and hoped to encourage some others. After all, there aren't many of us around!

If you could change one thing about the wargaming hobby, what would it be? Get rid of the blinkered view of many WH/40K players. I'd obviously like to get more playing LOTR, but there are so many great games out there.

What is best in life? Spending time with the people you love -  especially my wife and kids. Bizarrely I also love time on my own!

Do you want to live forever? I will need to if I'm going to reduce my painting backlog!

Fame or fortune? Fortune all the way. I would hate to be in the spotlight all the time.

What miniatures are you most proud of having painted? It's almost always the most recent ones, but I'm very proud of my dragon and Great Beast of Gorgoroth.

How do you deal with burn out? Depends what has burnt me out. I recharge my batteries ny being on my own, often at my painting desk. When I suffer painting burn out I either need to play some games or just paint some garish superheroes!

Why is a raven like a writing desk? I have no idea. I'm currently rereading the Discworld novels and am imagining Qoth the raven and his insatiable desire for eyeballs.

Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars all the way. Watching the original was such a key moment in my life and it has stayed with me forever. I tried watching Star Trek but it didn't do much for me. My son is 6 and we are watching the original trilogy at the moment. Return of the Jedi is next to watch and he is so excited.

If you could only buy from one miniature company from now on, which would it be? I would be torn between GW for their Hobbit/ LOTR range and Fantasy Flight for their X Wing miniatures. I really like the way FFG interact with their players so I guess I would lean towards them. I just don't understand why GW treat their customers with such disdain.

What is your favourite takeaway? Indian. For those in York I recommend the Jaipur Spice, although it has lost something after the refurb when they took out the bridge over the indoor fish pond!

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Epic X Wing and Triples

My rebel transport arrived last week. It's massive and the new X Wing pilots are great.

Friday night we had a chance for a 300 point game. It ended up with me taking the Rebels and Barry and Josh flying the Imperials. I only snapped a few pictures at the start as I got totally engrossed in the game.

The transport was great until they fired everything at it. Zero agility is a killer! The game ended out in a shoot out between the Millenium Falcon and Slave 1, each on one health. The Falcon fluffed its roll and was finished off by the Slave, despite lurking behind an asteroid. It was a fantastic game and I'm really keen to try some more epic play.

Josh and I also went to the Triples wargames show in Sheffield. We met up with Dan and had a good day mooching around and hunting out LOTR bargains. Here's my haul:

Dweller in the Dark, Dwarf Captain, 10 Misty Mountains Goblins and Groblog. Not as productive as last year, but pleasing nonetheless. Also picked up some new brushes and these:

Technically the TIE Bomber wasn't from the show, but still came from the same budget. The clix are Wolverine,Dazzler, Spiderwoman, Boom Boom, Sage and Chamber. Also got Wasp but forgot to put her in the picture. Thanks to Dan for some of these. 

On the subject of Dan, check out his blog: http://cultoftheskyfather.blogspot.co.uk

Wargs!

It's been a while. Sorry for my lack of posts. Hobby stuff has been slow recently, although I've managed a few games of X Wing, including trying it out on Vassal. My Rebel Transport arrived on Friday. The model is fantastic and the rules look great. I managed to get an epic game at Garrison on Wednesday, although we were too ambitious about the game size and didn't finish it. However, the X Wing pilots are excellent.

In LOTR I've finished up Sharku and 9 warg riders. The metal warg riders are great sculpts, although there are loads of odd bits on their backs that I wasn't sure how to paint as I didn't know what they were!

My next project is the old metal orcs. These were amazing models and it is a real shame they have been discontinued. They have so much character and look like a right mob.

This coming weekend is the Triples show in Sheffield. I'll try and get some photos.

Painting update

I've found myself in a unique (for me at least) position this month, with more games than painting time. This has been fantastic, but not made much progress with models.

I have finished this Warhammer Treeman who will be an Ent for LOTR.

I also took a punt on a Reaper Bones bat swarm (£3.20) as the GW one is rubbish and expensive. I'm quite impressed and may get a couple more. I had to scrape the markings off the grave stone, but otherwise it's perfect.

The other painting has been more on Sharku and his warg riders.

One of my gaming highlights has been a day of X Wing with my son (age 6) and a friend and his son (age 8). We managed 3 games and stopped because we ran out of time. The boys were fantastic and absolutely hooked. It is a tribute to the game that they concentrated all day and still wanted to play more. Great signs for future gaming!

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.