Building Osgiliath: Progress with the Putty

This week I was furthering my Osgiliath project, but I also got around to swing the paintbrush around a bit. Nothing completed but some progess nonetheless.

Pict 514: Osgiliath Ruins (WIP - Putty)

Pict 515: Osgiliath Ruins (WIP - Putty)

Here is a first look at what I want to achive with the putty on my ruins. I have gone over pretty much all of the seams and the bigger one on the edge of the building had some structure added to completely hide it. I'm not perfectly happy with how the flagstones on the upper floor came out, but I'll try and blend it in. It was my first time using Miliput and I have to say that I really like the rigid feel of it, now that it cured.

Pict 516: Goblintown Plattform (WIP)

I also mashed together the leftovers wooden floors from the Osgiliath ruins. I cut into the flat edges, put the three pieces together and glued on some remaining stilts from the Goblintown set. Once the plattform has been sprayed I will start to paint it and the walkways.

Pict 517: Defenders of Rohan - Théoden and Éomer (WIP)

Here are some miniatures I'm working on at the moment. They were started along with the mounted versions last week, but I didn't even have the time to get the basic colours down. They now had their first layers and the washes done. As you can see the eyes are in that comicly clownlike stage when I haven't cleaned them up around them with the skin colour.

Pict 518: Vax'ildan - Limited Edition (WIP)

And since I'm a butterfly I couldn't just stay with these projects and thus started work on this Vax'ildan by Steamforged Games. Since I backed their Critical Role Kickstarted but since we will have to wait a little longer I also got this limited Vax'ildan. The sculpt and casting are great, I only had to clean up little bits. I followed the scheme they put out on their website - the washes are down and like with Théoden and Éomer only the highlights are waiting to be done.

Arise, arise Riders of Théoden!

Putting the Osgiliath scenery on hold for a week, I painted up some Riders of Rohan as well as Théoden and Éomer in their Pelennor garb.

Pict 504: Rohirrim

Pict 505: Théoden (Pelennor)

Pict 506: Théoden (Pelennor)

Pict 507: Théoden (Pelennor)

Pict 508: Éomer, Knight of the Pelennor

Pict 509: Éomer, Knight of the Pelennor

With the new rules Théoden seems to be a must-take in any Rohan army so that I had to paint this mounted version of the King of Rohan. Since the Éomer, Knight of the Pelennor miniature is rather similar, I painted them in tandem. I really like the two sculpts - the only complaint I have is that Éomer does not have his sword Gúthwinë with the signature curved horseheads as the crossguard. Fortunately I had a spare and quickly replaced it.

Pict 510: Riders of Rohan

Pict 511: Riders of Rohan

And here are a few more warriors - I started two of the normal riders and the banner bearer back in 2015 so that I only had to finish up the eyes and the highlights. It went rather quickly considering I had put it off for over three years...

Pict 512: Rohan Army (555 points)

After painting these riders, I dusted off my Rohan army to patch them up a bit and give them all good coat of matte varnish. I used a contigent of normal Riders and Royal Guard led by the newly painted Théoden, Éomer as well as Éowyn as my army for a tournament on Saturday.

Pict 513: Weta Sideshow Collectibles Legolas Bust

The Riders perfomed very well - even though I lost the first battle (against Morannon Orcs and the Witchking - points for style!), I absolutely destroyed my second opponent (Morannon Orcs again with Gorbag, Shagrat and a Great Beast of Gororoth) and managed to eek out a small vicotry against the last (he played Isengard with some Berserkers, Lurtz and Vraskû with a contingent of crossbows). With that I made second place which is nice; but more importantely, I was voted the fairest player and awarded with this very nice Legolas bust by Weta. All in all an amazing day!

Building Osgiliath: More Ruins Built

Continuing with last week's big project, I built the rest of the Osgiliath ruins and some Goblintown bits since I was already doing scenery.

Pict 498: Ruins of Osgiliath (WIP)

Pict 499: Ruins of Osgiliath (WIP)

 As you can see, I got to some more construction work. The next step will be to fill in all the gaps with putty. I started the process after taking these pictures, but it'll take some more time - especially with the Warhammer scenery.

Pict 500: Ruins of Osgiliath, former Witchfate Tor (WIP)

Pict 501: Ruins of Osgiliath, former Witchfate Tor (WIP)

Pict 502: Ruins of Osgiliath, former Witchfate Tor (before/after)

And here is what I was able to do with the top layer of the Witchfate Tor. I like the arches, as they are an element prevalant with Númenorean architecture. First I removed spikes and pinnacles of the top. I then broke through the wall where I wanted the gateways to be. For two of the four wall sections, I only took out the middle wall. The two others will lose all of their walls so that only the arcades will remain - right now they are still good to illustrate the state before my saw got to them. Lastly there were still a whole bunch of skulls and shields that I didn't want want on my Osgiliath ruins. Some of them I could just scrape of, but the others' remains will have to be puttied over.

Pict 503: Goblintown Walkways (WIP)

I also built the last remaining Goblintown walkways I had laying about. I still have more of the posts, so maybe I'll cobble together even more, once I get the board out. They should be a rather fast paintjob with lots of drybrushing after the black basecoat.

A new big project: Building Osgiliath

This week I used my hobbytime by starting on the terrain for a new gaming board.

Pict 494: Ruins of Osgiliath (WIP)

I bought one of the Ruins of Osgiliath multipack with my set of the new rules. I had my eye on these ruins for some time and with the new edition, I felt like I had a good excuse to pull the trigger. The kit is really nice, but it really takes a long time to scrape all those moldlines... After building one of the sets as suggested, I looked for ways to customise the remaining pieces.

Pict 495: Ruins of Osgiliath (WIP)

Pict 496: Ruins of Osgiliath (WIP)

As I tried out some combinations, I rembered my second Witchfate Tor that's laying about in pieces.
I knew that I wanted to incorporate parts to get some circular pieces. The biggest problem here are the unnumbered skulls littering the place. But I'll see what I can do. For now the next step is to put the rest of the ruins together and fill all the gaps with putty.

Pict 497: Ruins of Osgiliath (very WIP)

Spooky Twilight Ringwraiths

Again with some progess this week - I painted some more old Middle-Earth SBG miniatures: The three Twilight Ringwraiths. Other than that I also made headway with more Termagants.

Pict 490: Attack at Amon Sûl

Pict 491: Twilight Ringwraiths

Pict 492: Twilight Ringwraiths

I had these on my table for some time now - I put them off because I didn't want to highlight the white parts. It always takes so many layers... But I finally powered through and I happy with them how they are right now. The contrasts and shadows are quite stark - more than I'd usually do them. It's a bit of a different style - maybe if I had additional copies I'd do them differenty, but for now they will do.

Pict 493: Termagants

And here are some more of the Termagants. As usual, I followed my standard for Kraken - with one exeption: One of the Gants has an additonal highlight of Wild Rider Red on the carapace. I'll use him as a specialist in Kill Team and wanted him to stand out some more.

With the release of a new edition of the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, I might focus on that in the next weeks. First up I want to dust of my Rohirrim and maybe add some Riders.

Balin's Tomb Diorama - finished!

So I finally managed to finish the Battle Games in Middle Earth Diorama for the original Fellowship miniatures.

Pict 483: The Chamber of Mazarbul

Pict 484: Balin's Tomb Diorama

Pict 485: Balin's Tomb Diorama

Pict 486: Balin's Tomb Diorama

Pict 487: Ori, the Book of Mazarbul and Balin's Tomb

I had this diorama for quite some time now and I already started to paint it for almost as long. Now that I had gotten around to the Fellowship miniatures the diorama base jumped right ahead to the front of my paint queue. One of the challanges was the GW logo in the back. It is scuplted roughly like the current one but to get all the colours and lines right I had to have one ready to compare. It was a strange experience - that logo is one I looked at almost every single day for years, but I never even noticed the strange font. It's rather whimsical with round 'e' and the 'm' and 'w' with their swelling lines. My paintjob of the logo is not perfect but it'll have to do.

Pict 488: Termagants

After finishing something for the ME SBG I wanted to get back to 40k and finished these five snap-fit Termagants. As always I'm really happy how the carapace looks once the second set of red stripes are on. Now there are only 30 more to go!

Pict 489: Termagants (WIP)

And here is a quick WIP of my progess with the rest of the Tyranid project. I started with the black parts on these nine Termagants and added a few washes and spot colours. The black always takes the longest so that I had to break the pile of Gants up into smaller groupings.

Minsc, the beloved Ranger and his fearless companion Boo!

At long last I had some time to relax while painting. I got to some inividual miniatures such as the amazing Minsc and Boo as well as Boromir and Gimli - the remainder of the fellowship. After that I started a big project I'll try and finish over my summer vacation.

Pict 475: Minsc & Boo

Pict 476: Minsc & Boo

Pict 477: Minsc & Boo

 As soon as I saw that Gale Force Nine would release a miniature for Minsc and Boo, I wanted to get and paint it. They are some of the best companios not only in the Baldur's Gate series but in any videogame and recently had a run in the D&D comics as well. I went with the aesthetic of the comics and I'm pretty happy with the different purples on them.

"Go for the eyes, Boo!"

Pict 478: Boromir

Pict 479: Boromir

Pict 480: Gimli

Pict 481: Gimli

And here are two more heroes. This time it's more for the Middle Earth SBG. With Boromir and Gimli done, I'll have to get to the diorama base soon. They were quite pleasing to paint - the sculpts from 17 years ago do show some age, but still hold up nicely. Strangely enough I had already painted at least one of each of the Fellowship but  Boromir, so that I had the pleasure to collect source material (i.e. watch the Fellowship movie) to get a feel for the colours.

Pict 482: Gants and Gaunts (WIP)

And lastly here is the start of my next big project. The last remnats of grey Tyranids will have to succumb to my brush this summer. Right now all the skin parts are mostly done with serveral layers of drybrushing to get my usual effect. Next up will be carapace and claws - the black always takes to longest, so I'll break up the 35 critters into smaller chunks as to not wear me out.