Gandalf and Escape from Goblin Town

I have now finished Gandalf, the last unpainted model from the Escape from Goblin Town set, which I had resolved to get done before the end of the year.  I used the Tale of Painters tutorial, but changed the order of things to suit me more.  See the link here.

I have added in picture of the Goblin Town set, showing the dwarves in particular as well.

Bifur, Bombur and Bob(?)

Balin and Dwalin

Goblin King

Oin and Gloin

Nori Ori and Dori

Fili and Kili

Break now until the New Year when I have a fair bit of accumulated Flames of War to paint.

Aragorn Kills a Spider!

When I went into my gaming room this morning I got rather a fright. There was a rather large spider impaled on Aragorn's sword!  Three possibilities presented themselves:

1) Said spider jumped from great height and impaled itself on sword (thereby accidentally killing itself)
2) Spider died and fell onto sword
3) My models come alive at night and get up to mischief.

You see the photos and decide:

Radagast the Brown

The last of two models from the Escape from Goblin Town set that has sat unpainted for a year now.  In the interests of completing things before the end of the year I have finished him off, and nearly done Gandalf, the last of the group.  I followed the very good Tale of Painters tutorials for the two of them, which are excellent, but follow a slightly different process than I would - finishing each item up to the final state before starting the next (I like to base coat all, then wash all, highlight etc).  See Radagast's here.  Here are the photos:

You might notice his staff looks a little different.  It snapped off while I was outside holding my one year old daughter (don't ask).  And it fell into a small pile of twigs and stuff.  All I can say is that my painting skills are obviously so superior that I had no chance of finding this model staff among real twigs and had to use an old Gandalf model from the fellowship instead.  Don't look too bad really.

Radagast from the first Hobbit film has had mixed reviews.  Not quite fitting the model of an Istari, who has been sent by the Valar, he has been compared more to Jar Jar Binks, than his illustrious companions.  He didn't irritate me too much, but I would like to see him made a bit more serious than he is.

All in all, a cool model and not too unhappy with the final product.

Merry Christmas

It's that time of year again, I thought I should put on some Christmas jingles while writing this post. Anyhow it has been a good year for Dan and I in the blogisphere and we want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. A week or two back our gaming club had our christmas function where we gambled away our money with a game of "black tie" texas hold em' poker. Here are a couple of photos of us dressed up, admittedly we didn't wear a strict black tie dress code however it was fun playing poker in shirts and ties (one per person mind you).

Chris who won it all, nice work Chris

A blurry photo of Alex (left) and Dan our other resident blogger,
you may notice Dan either a) forgot the dress code or b) missed the memo

Ben and his poker face, very hard to read...

Myself (Stephen) on the left and Ben again, both striking poses
Can't say my poker face is going to fool anybody (shh I have double ace)

Zac came late and didn't dress up (except the bow tie)

It was a fun game although I wouldn't want to play poker to regularly. Neither Dan or I did hugely well and Dan had to buy in twice (we had a $5 buy in) and lost it all twice.

Now for important business. What is the best Christmas movie of all time? Easy, Die Hard, can't comment on it's sequels as I haven't seen em but Die Hard definitely takes the cake as best Christmas film.

Once again Merry Christmas and happy gaming. 

Empire of the Dead Requiem Finished

I finished off the last of the stretch goal miniatures that came with the Empire of the Dead Requiem Kickstarter.  A good feeling of completion at getting the job done.  I am now turning my attention to Radagast and Gandalf, the last of the Escape from Goblin Town miniatures I have left before jumping back into Flames of War.

Here's Tom Gaunt and Deathlocke Bones and the Bad Doctor:

Here are all the stretch goal guys together:

Here are the guys that I chose:

Plus Gentlemen with Guns:

And here is all eighteen together:

I love basking in that warm feeling of task completion.  Very satisfying.

Red EOTD stretch goal

Well it has been little while since I have last posted. Namely because I moved house almost 2 weeks ago and Internet is still not working. So a brief filler post from my cell phone.

These are a couple of photos of Red a Empire of the dead requiem stretch goal. I quite like this model and think it's a lovely addition to a lycaon faction.

So that is all. Oh and I hope you enjoy my fantasy lords box in the background.

 Side note blogger mobile is rubbish and messing with formatting and auto-correct.

More Empire of the Dead: Iron Head Ned and Raphael

Another two of the kickstarter stretch goals painted up.  I now have only three left (Tom Gaunt, and the zombie versions of Holmes and Watson).  Here's Raphael and Iron Head Ned painted up:

Revisiting the Hobbit SBG - Tactically Limited?

For the first time since around February this year, we got in a game of The Hobbit SBG (formally know as LOTR SBG).  The setting was somewhere in Mirkwood forest, and Thorin's company (without Gandalf) were coming up against some goblins, warg riders and some of Saruman's Uruk Hai (who had wandered unknowingly into the wrong movie).

We wanted to get a feel for the rules again and see what we thought of the mechanic.  I am deciding whether to pay the astronomical price for the new models (see Scott's post here) and wanted to see whether the game is worth it.  Here are some pictures of the game:

The Battle line and where the game was played out

Marauding Goblins a little lost in the forest

Are you sure we should be here?  Don't we appear in the next films?

The Dwarves about to be taken out by Goblins and Uruk Hai

My view of proceedings

Our thoughts after the game were that the SBG game is tactically limited.  All our games end up being focused on a small part of the table with combat roll offs, going across the line and picking out the casualties.  Once the forces lock into combat, that is really it until the end of the game.  Terrain and tactics seem to have little impact, from that point of first contact at least onwards.

This might have been due to a decision to choose few ranged weapons and not to play magic (for simplicity reasons), but even when we have played with magic and more ranged weapons, the same outcome occurs - a clumping at one point and an epic dice roll off to the death.

Might Will and fate do add to the game and these are nice tactical options to have, as are the heroic actions available, which have been expanded in the Hobbit.

Playing Thorin's company is also difficult with all the special rules applicable to each dwarf, so I accept we may not have been getting all we could have out of the game - but back when we were more on top of these things and playing normal warbands of one hero and 12 warriors, the same outcome eventuated.

I wouldn't mind seeing what other's thoughts are on this, and if our experience are the same as others.  Lovely models and all, but just not particularly challenging tactically at all.

More Empire of the Dead: Jade Dragon

I have been a bit quiet recently on the hobby front - family stuff and the like going on at what is quite a busy time of year.  I have managed to finish another of the Empire of the Dead stretch goal miniatures - this time the Jade Dragon.  An assassin who is allied to the Chinese Tong gang.  I am unlikely to ever use her, but I need to move through all the Empire of the Dead models before getting back into the Flames of War lead pile I have.

Here she is from different angles:

Reasonably happy with the freestyle gold on the dress and top.  Supposed to be a dragon motif on the dress, but you would be pretty hard pressed to pick that out.  On the back I drew the chinese symbol for dragon, which was a little lost in the pleats of the skirt.  Still, I think it has the desired effect.

Here is the picture of her from the Requiem Kickstarter, so you can see what I was trying to achieve: