New Year, New Projects

These past two weeks, I spent pretty firmly in Middle-earth. Not only did I paint a lone Rohan Royal Guard, I also started a new branch of my Mordor army following a Black Gate theme. I painted up the Mouth of Sauron and started converting two Mordor Troll Chieftains.
After all that I did also have some time to finish the ArcWorlde Mjowls and Brutogg the Ogre from Cursed City.

Pict 1116: The Mouth of Sauron attacked by a Rohan Royal Guard

Pict 117: The Mouth of Sauron

Pict 118: The Mouth of Sauron

The Mouth of Sauron painted up very fast following my usual Nazgûl scheme and adding different highlights to the cloth. He seems like an interesting character to play. He'll be the magic user for my Black Gate force and I hope for some good synergies with the two big monsters!

Pict 1119: Mordor Troll Chieftain (Repose)

Pict 1120: Mordor Troll Chieftain (Repose)

Pict 1121: Mordor Troll Chieftain (Repose)

Pict 1122: Mordor Troll Chieftain (Repose)

Continuing on with the Black Gate army I converted these two Mordor Troll chieftains. The first one (really just a repose) was a raffle prize from the christmas stream of Battle Strams in Middle-earth and kickstarted the whole project.

Pict 1123: Mordor Troll Chieftain Conversion (Duel with Aragorn Elessar)

The second one is a bit more involved. He's an eBay rescue and was missing the left arm and his head but came with replacement bits from the plastic Mordor Troll. At first I wanted to have him standing on the rock from the Wild Warg Chieftain I still have from my White Warg. But when heroichighlights' diorama contest came up on Instagram, I decided to replicate that duel from the end of The Return of the King and have Aragorn Elessar crushed underfoot! Right now the main pose is sketched out – Aragorn is alredy lying down but I will still change both his arms to have him stab the Troll's toe with his elven dagger. And of course there is quite a lot of gap filling and sculpting of armour plates left to do!

Pict 1124: Rohan Royal Guard

This mounted Rohan Royal Guard was a quick project for a bit more than and evening. He was painted during the first Battle Stream of the year. The stream was themed around the 40th issue of the Battle Games in Middle-earth magazine. Incidentally you got a mounted Rohan Royal Guard with the issue if you were subscribed back then and that was a good excuse to paint up one more from my drawer of Rohan cavalery.

Pict 1125: The White Council

Pict 1126: Amon Hen

Since I was in build mode after converting the Trolls, I also put together some new models that I want to paint within the next few months. Among them are the beautiful White Council, that was made to order late last year as well as the ForgeWorld Amon Hen (too big for my lightbox of course!). Once again gap filling to do, but I hope it will paint up quickly since it's mainly just ruined stone and ground texture.

Pict 1127: Brutogg Corpse-Eater

Pict 1128: Brutogg Corpse-Eater

Pict 1129: Brutogg Corpse-Eater

Brutogg Corpse-Eater was one of the models I looked forward to the most out of all the Cused City box. He's not only an amazing Ogre miniature with a great pose but really tells a story with all the additional bits he's lugging around such as a procelain jug (what could be in it?) and substitude weapons (you can never have to many!). The best details have to be his face and the shoulder pad making him look right at home in the Old World as a Maneater.

Pict 1130: ArcWorld Mjowls

These cute little cat/owl chimeras named Mjowls were started back in April shortly before Cursed City took over my painting projects. Now they finally got the highlights they deserve and can get up to some mischief annoying the Wildelves and Halfings in the ArcWorlde shelf of my cabinet.

Pict 1131: Dagnai Holdenstock (WIP)

And lastly here is another WIP picture. Dagnai Holdenstock is the last hero from the Cursed City. I was not really inspired by the steam punk dwarf aesthetic and found it quite difficult to decide on the colours. Now he's had the washes done, hopefully I don't take to much time highlighting.

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.

Dol Guldur Diorama - finished!

This week was slow again - the real life seems to take over these last few ones... But at least I managed to work on Galadriel, Lady of Light.

Pict 429: Dol Guldur Diorama

Pict 430: Galadriel, Lady of Light

Pict 431: Galadriel, Lady of Light

I find her to be the weakest of the scuplts from the Vanquishers of the Necromancer set and thus postponed her from week to week. On top of that I had my difficulties with the dress - for one thing it's not all to clear what is flash or residue of the casting process, for anonther I was not to fond of the swamp-like design of the scene in the movie. I finally decided to go for a more colourful aproach with blue and green layers to her clothes. It's inspired by the colours in the scene but not as dark.

Pict 432: Dol Guldur Diorama

Pict 433: Dol Guldur Diorama

As you can see in the first picture, with Galadriel finished, I completed another of my new years pledges: The Dol Guldur Dioama. I'm quite happy to have it done and it will shurely stay on my shelf of the forseeable future. To stay within the scene of the movie, I had Radagast on his sleigh prepared and partly painted for some time. But after painting the Necromancer, I will have to paint the Dol Guldur Nazgul as well. But that will have to wait a bit - at least coming week I will probably wont have any time to paint.

Almost finished the Dol Guldur Diorama + Battle Companies

Pict 336: The White Council at Dol Guldur (WIP)

This week I made a foray into fulfilling my new year's resolutions and painted Elrond and Saruman for my Dol Guldur Diorama. Other than that, I contiued with the conversions and the painting for my battle companies.

Pict 337: Elrond, Vanquisher of the Necromancer

Pict 338: Elrond, Vanquisher of the Necromancer

Pict 339: Sauruman, Vanquisher of the Necromancer

Pict 340: Sauruman, Vanquisher of the Necromancer

As part of the Rivendell miniatures this week, I also finally finished Elrond, Vanquisher of the Necromancer. I do like the pose, but I think he could use some more support to stick to his base. Additionally the Elven blade seems oddly short - I think were I to paint him again, I might change it.
Saruman's pose is very exaggerated, it's all right I think, but there are definitly better ones. After this one though I wont be touching a brush to one anytime soon, since painting the white robes was quite the drag. Now I'm only missing Galadriel to finish the diorama, but I did't have the heart to get going on her robes after Saruman's. I then might add some other miniatures to round out the scene - Radagast on sleigh comes to mind and of course the Keeper of the Dungeons.

Pict 341: Naal, Noldor Captain

Pict 342: Naal, Noldor Captain

Pict 343: Rivendell Objective Marker

Next up are the miniatures I painted for my Rivendell battle company. I already showed the conversion for my Sargent Naal last week and he was in fact layered and highlighted super fast. I cant wait to get him to a table and encounter new adventures.
The objective marker was made in case I on of my heroes will roll the "Lost in Battle" result on the injury table and I have to play the scenario to recover them. The miniature is from the Rivendell Knight kit and due to it's sizeable cape it didn't really fit on the base I wanted it to - with it's 50mm base now, it is a bit big for a normal objective.

Pict 344: Gundabad Orc Warrior (Conversion)

Pict 345: Gundabad Orc Warrior (Conversion)

And lastly here is my first Gundabad Orc Warrior. Right now he's still missing his shield because I didnät have one on hand. I converted the miniaure from a spare Troll Brute's driver by cutting of the right leg at the knee and hip as well as the head and the right arm. After pinning it back together in the pose I envisioned, I scuplted a new tabbard and filled the gaps with green stuff. The hands are both from the Gundabad Berserker kit - I only bent the sword with hot water.
I really enjoyed converting these last weeks, but I think the hobby time in the weeks to come will have to be focused on painting to get the different battle companies ready fot battle (and those Tyranids keep on looking at me from their place on the desk...).

The Butterfly's Tally 2017

This post will be a longer one than the usual sunday's post as I'll be looking at not only what I got done this week but the entire year

Pict 318: Board of Miniatures

Pict 319: Board of Miniatures

As you can see with a glance at the tags on the right side of this text, 2017 was rather producitve. The focus of my painting was with the Middle Earth SBG, painting an army of Iron Hills Dwarves, one of Rivendell and getting a good start with the Hunter Orcs. Other than those, I also painted a few more Heroes and a host of Rohan Warriors.

Pict 320: Board of Miniatures

But I didn't paint stuff for the SBG alone - I also (re)painted some of my Asrai. But I added way more to that list early on in the year by having bought a lot of earlier edition Woodelves.
As you can see in the first picture of this post, the fantasy department of my miniatures grew with a few miniatures intended for D&D. Sadly I did't get to use them all, but it's nice to have them when preparing the adventures.

Pict 321: Zoanthropes

Pict 322: Zoanthropes

Pict 323: Tyrant Guard

Pict 324: Tyrant Guard

Pict 325: Sporemines

I also made progress with my Warhammer 40k backlog (especially with the Tyranid painting spree of the last few weeks). But I also painted a Chaplain Dreadnought for my Flesh Tearers and a whole army of Death Guard. As you can see, this week I added two Zoanthropes, a Tyrant Guard and some Sporemines and with that my total tally of painted miniatures is 317. I'm happy with that number even tough it's not quite a mini a day. But it is a new record for me!
Comparing this tally to 2016's - the ratio of painted miniatures to the ones I bought is better, but I didn't manage to paint more than buying. That means I'll have to do better next year - one resolution sorted! Other than that, I want to try and reduce the backlog of miniatures not only by painting them but also by selling projects that will never get done. I hope to be able to take inventory during the first week of the year, but we'll see how much time I'll have.

Pict 326: Tyranids (WIP)

Pict 327: The White Council at Dol Guldur (WIP)

These work in progress pictures will be the first things I'll paint in 2018: I do want to get some more Tyranids done to advance this project a bit. After that I do want to mop up some of this years projects, namely the Iron Hills Dwarfes (with the chariot and the crossbows) and the Hunter Orcs (including Hunter Orcs, Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs and the Keeper of the Dungeons). Staying in Middle Earth I want to finish up the Balin's Tomb diorama of the Fellowship and a diorama of the White Council in Dol Guldur. And since GW released the Battle Companies book for the Middle Earth SBG I'm planning a Shire force as well - this will be a colourfull and well converted band to take on the challanges of The Quest to Fornost. Once the evil campaign is published in White Dwarf, I'll have to take another look at the evil companies and get to work on one of those as well.