The Rangers of the North are ready for War

These past two weeks I managed to finish the last few miniatures I needed for the armies I'm going to bring to the national Middle-earth SBG championship this coming weekend. I also painted some more miniatures for the Hassassin Sectorial of my Haqqislam army.

Pict 717: Rangers of the North Army

Pict 718: Hunter Orc Army

Here are the two armies I decided upon for this coming weekend: the Dúnedain led by Aragorn and Halbarad, both on horseback, Halbarad with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar. I really like how they all look together as a group an look forward to getting to shoot some evil-doers.
The evil army again is a variation on the hunter orc theme - Bolg, Fimbul, Yazneg and Narzug leading a host of two attack orcs on foot. Only thing I'm missing is a banner and maybe a hornblower. I missed the latter during a game trying them out against Mirkwoodelves lead by Thranduil, who made them all terrifying. The orcs have such a low morale that I wasn't able to charge into batte and had to get picked apart one by one...

Pict 719: Halbarad (Banner, Horse)

Pict 720: Halbarad (Banner, Horse)

This guy really came together nicely. The banner looks very much imposing (I don't quite kow how he can manage to stay atop his horse with any wind, but never mind that). And with him done I now have paited all the miniatures I own for the Rangers of the North armylist and I look forward to using him in some games!

Pict 721: Arnor Bannerbearer and Captain

Pict 722: Arnor Bannerbearer and Captain

Whilst paiting Halbarad on foot, I also managed to finish these two models that were missing for my Arnor force. Since I primarily built them for Battle Companies it's not really a force, but nevertheless these two will now bolster my ranks. I had started to paint them when I painted the Rangers of the North but didn't finish them until now. It's always a good feeling to

Pict 723: Hassassin Fiday, Hassassin Muyib

And here are some more Hassassin miniatures – I decided upon this sectorial for the secod escalation league I'm part of. I somehow managed to win both of my first games and now find myself on top of the table. That pits me against the two best players in the league and I'm sure after that I'll find myself back at the lower end of the table again. The Muyib with Spitfire already did some amazing work while the Fiday pretty much only let herself shot in the back by Senor Massacre who had picked up a Multi Sniper from a panoply.

Pict 724: Ghulam Infantry (WIP)

Lastly a quick WIP of some more Haqqislam miniatures. The Ghulam with Panzerfaust will likely be used as a Daylami with the same loadout to destroy some high armoured targets. The other Ghulam will be a gift to my friend who is organising the league as a birthday present – he wanted to get some linetroops of every army to use as impersonation markers with his aliens and that to me sounded like a great idea!

Finally back in Middle-earth. Painting Rangers

This week I found my way back into Middle-earth with some Rangers of the North that I want to play in a big tournament next month.

Pict 711: Rangers of the North

Pict 712: Rangers of the North

I very much like these miniatures from late in the Lord of the Rings era of the game. But mostly I really enjoyed converting them. Since last I showed them, they sat accusingly on my desk, demanding attention. But since I was distacted by Haqqislam miniatures, they had to wait. In all ernest though, my painting queue is highly influenced by the games I play and now that my dryspell with the Middle-earth SBG is broken, I'm back to painting for it again.

Pict 713: Halbarad on Horse (Conversion)

As I said at the top, I want to play my Rangers in an upcoming tournament and to boost their effectiveness, I want to field Halbarad with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar on horseback. GW never released that particular model, so I had to go chop one up in the name of sience! He's pretty much only stuck together right now and I will have to fill in the gaps with green stuff as the next step.

Pict 714: Halbarad with Banner (WIP)

  And since I'll want a model without the horse in case he looses it, I started painting one. The basecolours are down now and he's waiting for the washes and highlights. I mostly refenced the other Halbarad I already painted but they have somewhat differing armour so that I had to improvise a bit. He seems to have stolen his breastplate from the elves of Lorien but I didn't want him in shiny golden armour and went with lether instead.

Pict 715: Victor

Pict 716: Victor

And lastly, of course, I have one more D&D miniature. This time it's Victor, the somewhat insane blackpowder merchant from campaign one of Critical Role.

Fear not! The Azra'il have arrived to protect your Silk

This week was another foray into Haqqislam. I managed to finish the two Azra'il, that I started a while back as well as some more Infantry to further bulk out my roster.

Pict 702: Azra'il arrive to protect your Silk!

Pict 703: Azra'il

Pict 704: Azra'il

First up have to be the Azra'il. I love the bulky suits of armour and the two different poses with the (somewhat overly) large guns. Following my usual recipe for Haqqislam I was able to get through the base colours and highlights on the greys and reds pretty fast. The beige armour however seemed to take forever to do. Getting all those little individual plates and leaving it darker in the recesses was quite a slog that I delayed for some time...

Pict 705: Odalisque, Hafza

Pict 706: Odalisque, Hafza

These two were also shown with the Azra'il. I don't really plan on playing them since I feel the Spitfire is a gun that a sturdier plattform that can take a bit of punishing when targeted by the enemy. But the two were the last miniatures I hadn't painted from the Qapu Khalqi Starter set, so it seemed like the right thing to do.

Pict 707: Hassassin Muyib, Asawira

Pict 708: Hassassin Muyib, Asawira

And here are some more miniatures, that have gotten new sculpts in the meantime. I quite like this old sculpt for the Asawira with Spitfire however. He will definitely be used wome time in the future while the Muyib again is more a completionist thing.

Pict 709: Bailey Silverbell, Dwarf Ranger

Pict 710: Bailey Silverbell, Dwarf Ranger

And lastly here is another miniature for D&D. I had a look at my miniature collection and decided that I didn't own enough female adventureres (especially non-human ones!) and thus was on the lookout for some more. This female dwarf made by Reaper Miniatures one I settled on and I enjoyed painting her. In retrospect the red cape might be a bit to much in the way of Little Red Riding Hood, but I like her nonetheless.

Kobolds Attack!

This week, Kobolds attack! I did something good for my tally of painted miniatures and quickly put some paint on these minute monsters.

Pict 693: Kobolds Attack!

Pict 694: Kobolds

Pict 695: Kobolds

These Kobolds are rather cute but I wasn't that happy with the sculpts (Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures by Wizkids). The detail is somewhat washed out and that makes you guess sometimes what a particular detail is. I also didn't bother to paint the three versions of the same sculpts differently. I assume that the individual Kobolds will die fast enough in combat so that it wont matter. Nontheless I'm happy to have them in my arsenal to pester low level characters. I also like the little bright red spot I did on the heads that make them stand out and even cuter.

Pict 696: Female Gnome Fighter, Twiggy

Pict 697: Female Gnome Fighter, Twiggy

After that I finished the two gnomes I had started to balance out the Kobolds in the cosmic scales. Twiggy is a cool miniature, but I'm really in love with the female gnome fighter with the crossbow. Even if she should not be used as a hero, I will use her as a bandint or similar to ambush my heroes.

Pict 698: Goblintown Walkways and Plattform

Since I wanted to have some cool scenery for those Kobolds to ambush the Gnomes in the first picture, I also painted these Goblintown walkways and plattform. I had built and primed them at the tail end of last september and even tough they paint up super fast, they lay about on my todo pile for quite some time now.

Pict 699: Hassassin Fiday, Husam Spec-Ops

Pict 700: Hassassin Fiday, Husam Spec-Ops

I finished this Spec-Ops for a tournament last weekend but he seemed to suffer from new model syndrome and didn't really help me. The Fiday was then painted this last week to prepare myself for the next escalation league I'll be a part of and in which I'll be playing the Hassassin Bahram sectorial.

Pict 701: Victor (WIP)

And lastly here is a quick work in progress of the next Critical Role miniature: the insane blackpowder merchant Victor.

Again with the Haqqislam and D&D

These past weeks did not amount to much hobby time but now after two weeks without a post, I have to show something for myself: I painted some more Haqqislam miniatures as well as something for D&D.

Pict 687: Al Fasid, Djanbazan (Hacker), Ragik, Djanbazan (Conversion), Muyib, Hafza

Pict 688: Al Fasid, Djanbazan (Hacker), Ragik, Djanbazan (Conversion), Muyib, Hafza

With the completing our Infinity escalation campaign I painted some more miniatures, I wanted to try out in the last round and some that I just wanted to get some colour on. The old Al Fasid might get used as a Nahab with Boarding Shotgun until they release miniatures for them. The two Djanbazan might have to stand in as one with an HMG until I get myself the fitting miniaure - the profile is just to good in combination with the amount of smoke the rest of my lists can put out.

Pict 689: Kern, Orly

Pict 690: Kern, Orly

After my Critical Role Kickstarter miniatures arrived (more of them in the coming weeks!), I went ahead with these two resin Critical Role miniatures. Orly was quite fun since I got to look at lots of turtles for reference. Since Kern is a half-orc, I used the colourscheme that they established with Fjord. I like the two tones even if I don't really subscribe to green orcs in my D&D settings.

Pict 691: Haqqislam (WIP)

And here are even more Haqqislam miniatures that I started. The Fiday simply has to get some paint, becaus I have that one friend againt whom my old Fiday never managed to do something relevant. With the new miniature painted, I hope to remedy that!

Pict 692: Twiggy, female Gnome Fighter (WIP)

And to add to my growing pile of WIP miniatures, here are some more figures I want to use while playing D&D. Twiggy is again from Critical Role while the female gnome fighter is made by Otherworld Miniatures who really have a great selection of adventurers and monsters.

Umber Hulk Smash!

Well, this week I finished the experiment on what happens when a gorilla and a beetle really like each other: You get an Umber Hulk. And after that I got to do something for Middle-earth as well.

Pict 683: Umber Hulk

Pict 684: Umber Hulk

Pict 685: Umber Hulk

I started painting this Umber Hulk back in January and it really good to have him finished. He sat there sulking on my desk to whole time and finally I took heart and finished him. I had two things that were bugging me about him: I didn't blend the base and I felt like the armourplates looked like one big jumble without differentiation. The first problem was easily fixed with simply a new layer but the armour plates were more difficult. In the end I went with a slightly more pinkish tone on the parts that seemed more exposed and with the bright orange eyes, I think the creature came together all right.

Pict 686: Arnor and Rangers (WIP)

And here are the rangers from last week with some paint added. The miniatures went right on top of my queue after converting them and I look forward to playing some more battle companies with them. To that end, I also pulled out the remainder of my Arnor and got them the same treatment as the Rangers of the North.

More Critical Role Miniatures and New Projects

These past two weeks were I didn't have that much time for the hobby. I however managed to paint two more miniatures from Steamforged Games' line of Critical Role miniatures. After that I started the work on some more stuff for my Haqqislam and while that was going on, my Made-To-Order models from the latest batch of Middle-earth miniatures arrived and I got to building.

Pict 679: Calianna, Kashaw

Pict 680: Calianna, Kashaw

Here are the two miniatures I finished: Calianna of whom I showed a work in progress in my last post and Kashaw, the next one down the line in my set of Critical Role miniatures. I liked putting in the pink bows in Calianna's hair to contrast the greens and browns of her clothing, but I'm not that happy with how her skin turned out. My Pallid Wych Flesh seems to have very big chunks of pigment in it so that the skin doesn't look as smooth as it could. With Kashaw, I liked the bronze armour - I find mixing different metallics together great fun to get a somewhat tarnished look.

Pict 681: Ragik, Muyib, Al Fasid, Djanbazan Hacker, Djanbazan, Hafza (WIP)

Here is the next leg in my Haqqislam journey. These six I wanted to paint because, I liked the models not since I'll be using them in an upcoming game. I managed to put down the basecolours and washes rather quickly and without getting overwhelmed by the sameness. I hope to finish them up during the next week and the getting on with other stuff again.

Pict 682: Rangers of the North (Conversion)

And lastly here are some Ranges of the North, that I ordered via GW's Made-To-Otder programm. I really like the opportunity to get some models I didn't get the first time they were around. And since I didn't pay an arm and a leg for them on eBay, I can justify to convert them a bit to make six unique poses. I especially like the fourth guy in the row - after removing the spear I gave him the sword of a Rohan Warrior while the left arm is a leftover from a Lindir-conversion.