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.

Back to Infinity!

These past weeks, I got back into Infinity with a few games and a bit of painting. I also finished my Rangers.

Pict 568: Hassassin Áyyār, Hassassin Lasiq

Pict 569: Hassassin Áyyār, Hassassin Lasiq

I'm taking part in an Infinity Escalation League and last weekend we started with a few games of 100 points. I enjoyed having the small group and limited rules so that I'll be able to get to grips with the system step by step. Sadly I didn't finish painting my list, but the games really gave me the inspiration to get paint on the Haqqislam miniatures. With that I finished two Hassassins just this week and I think I should be able to paint enough for our next gameday.

Pict 570: Rangers of the North

Pict 571: Rangers of the North

And here are the Rangers of the North I started at the tailend of 2018. They are similar enough to the Dúnedain so that I already had my colour scheme down and could go right at it. I only had to finish the highlighting, so that I could finish them during the course of an evening.

Pict 572: Aragorn, Halbarad, Arathorn, Aragon

Pict 573: Aragorn, Halbarad, Arathorn, Aragon

And here are the heroes I painted to go with my Ranger force. Arathorn and Halbarad obviously fit the Ranger theme and will lead them when I'm not playing them as the Gray Company. I'm looking forward to trying this new legendary armylist out with my next few games of ME SBG, and with yesterday's pre-orders I will add to the force with the new Three Huntes.

Pict 574: Umber Hulk, Hassassin Ragik (WIP)

And here's something I'm working on right now: The next Hassassin and the first monster for D&D. the Ragik is already at tha stage of highlighting while the Umber Hulk just now got the basic colours.

The Butterfly's Tally 2018

As I said last week, this will be a post to take a look back at 2018 and make some resolutions for this coming year. In between, I'll show what I got done in this first week of January

Pict 556: Tally 2018 - Tyranids

The Year in Review

Pict 557: Tally 2018 - Iron Hills

Pict 558: Tally 2018 - Hunter Orcs

First I want to look at my resolutions for 2018 again: I wanted to paint more Tyranids (check, but there are still some in a box...), Iron Hills Dwarves (check), Hunter Orcs (check even though it took pretty much the whole year), the Balin's Tomb Diorama (check) and the White Council in Dol Guldur Diorama (check), as well as a Shire force for Battle Companies (nope, but I did Arnor instead).

Pict 559: Tally 2018 - The White Council

Pict 560: Tally 2018 - Balin's Tomb

As you can see in the panel on the right, in the end I painted 232 models versus the 238 I bought. With that I added slightly to the pile of shame but I also managed to sell/give away quite a few. I didn't keep a tally on how far along the painting process any of these miniatures were, but I managed to get rid of 192 miniatures and thus reduced my pile considerably!

Pict 561: Tally 2018 - Arnor

With 45 posts over the year, I missed a few more weeks than the year before. Sometimes I just didn't have the time to paint during the week; others I missed because I was out of town and hadn't prepared a post. Still, I'm happy with the 45 posts as it is!

Pict 562: Tally 2018 - Illithid Raiding Party

Pict 563: Tally 2018 - Twilight Ringwraiths

Other than that here are some of my favourite projects of this year. Looking back through my posts, I really liked the Illithid Raiding Party, the Twilight Ringwraiths, Zuggtmoy and of course the add-on to my mounted Rohan army to make it ready for the new edition of the game.

Pict 564: Tally 2018 - Zuggtmoy

Pict 565: Tally 2018 - Rohan Army Additions

This Week's Painting

Pict 566: Rangers of the North (WIP)

This week however I only managed to get a bit further along with the Rangers of the North. Now the base colours are all down and the washes are dry. With only the highlighting left to do, I hope to have them done next week. I also added in two miniatures of Aragorn in similar clothes. And since I plan on using him with the others, I also changed his usual scheme and gave one of them the black livery my other Arnorians have.

Plans for the Future

Lastly I want to make a few plans for this year and write up my new year's resolutions for 2019. I want to continue with the Middle-Earth miniatures and right now, I'm most excited about the new miniatures I showed before priming a few weeks back. One thing I'm really missing however is an evil army from the Lord of the Rings era. To remedy that I collected Easterlings and Khandish Warriors. Beyond that, I feel that I painted very little for other systems other than the Middle-Earth SBG and I want to change that by doing the Haqqislam and more heroes and monsters for D&D. Both should challenge me the former because it's clean Sci-Fi and the latter by being very divers. And lastly there are those Ruins of Osgiliath still waiting in a box unser my table...

Pict 567: Haqqislam, Khand, Rhûn, Rivendell (WIP)

So, all in all here are my resolutions: I will paint an all mounted Rivendell army with dismounts, an army of evil men from Rhûn and Khand, at least 20 miniatures for D&D, my set of Osgiliath-Ruins and my Haqqislam army for Infinity. At the end of the year I want to have bought less miniatures than I painted and I will also attempt to paint a total of 365. We'll see if I can make it this year!
As for the blog itself: Since I missed some weeks, esspecially towards the end of the year, I'll change my posting shedule to every other week. Other than that I plan to go ahead as before with pictures of my painted miniatures and of the ones that stand unfinished on my table.

Picking up a few Projects

This week I picked up a few projects I started this year and that still stood on my table. I finished the mounted Hunter Orcs, Alfrid and the Morannon Orc Captain and started to work on the Rangers of the North I primed this month.

Pict 548: Mounted Hunter Orcs

Pict 549: Mounted Hunter Orcs

I finally managed to paint all my Hunter Orcs. These ones and their mounts were rather quick to paint and I find myself wanting another box of them to round out the army. I'll see if can't find some the first week of the new year in one of the local stores.

Pict 550: Alfrid Lickspittle

Pict 551: Alfrid Lickspittle

Just like the Hunter Orcs, Alfrid was also only missing the highlights and thus was painted during one evening. I'm pretty happy how he turned out - The miniature really lends itself to do different things with all of the textures on the layers of cloth and leather. I'm only unhappy with the face - the eyes make him look sceptical...

Pict 552: Morannon Orc Captain

Pict 553: Morannon Orc Captain

Pict 554: Morannon Orc Captain

This one was a fun little minitature to paint. I really enjoyed doing the shading on the armour and of course the reds of the cloth. The severed head came out ok as well - it's gruesome enough but not to over the top.

Pict 555: Rangers of the North (WIP)

Lastly here's a picture of the next leg of my Rangers. I started doing the base colours and I hope to finish them this year so that I can add them to my tally. In the first post of the new year I'll add up all my painted models, take a look back and make some resolutions for 2019.

State of the Table: Many Metal Models

These last few weeks have been a bit slow paintingwise so that I can't show any finished miniatures. What I did instead was to put together the pieces for a few new projects that I want to tackle in the coming weeks.

Pict 547: New Projects

So as you can see, there is the first leg of my evil men army from Middle Earth: A host of Riders and Charioteers from Khand and a few easterling heroes. Other than that there are addtions to my Arnor, my Rangers of the North and some pieces for Rivendell.
The models are cleaned up and the basing is done. Right now I'm filling the smaller gaps with layers of Liquid Green Stuff and after that I'll get some putty to fill in the bigger ones. I hope to prime the models once the weather changes to a bit warmer and more arid, but sometimes you just have to wait a bit for the winter.