My Haqqislam Army and a few Characters from Middle-earth

These past weeks I finished my Haqqislam Army (fullfilling my first new year's resolution) as well as some more Characters from Middle-earth.

Pict 600: Haqqislam Army

Fist up is a picture of all the models I have for my Haqqislam right now. I only had the three Ghulams finished last week and those three alone didn't seem the warrant a blogpost. Since then I also got around to the Najjarun Engineer with his little Nasmat Remote, a Djanbazan Sniper and a Jannisary and Asawira for some more heavy hitting power.

Pict 601: Ghulam Infantry

Pict 602: Ghulam Infantry

Pict 603: Asawira, Jannisary, Najjarun, Nasmat and Djanbazan

Pict 604: Asawira, Jannisary, Najjarun, Nasmat and Djanbazan

With all of those finished, I fullfillied the first of my new year's resolutions - but I'm pretty sure this was only wave one for the Haqqislam since I'm still part of an escalation league and Corvus Belli really produces some amazing miniatures.

Pict 605: Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, Éowyn

Pict 606: Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, Éowyn

And here are the heroes from Middle-earth. I was inspired to complete the old Three Hunters set with Legolas and Gimli, the both of them mounted on Arod as well as the Merry and Pippin on the run from Grishnak when I read the Two Towers in the past weeks. With my Haqqislam hype I neglected Middle-eath a bit as far as painting goes and I am now onto the Return of the King with my reading. Luckily Éowyn also has some scenes here, so that I had a good reason to paint this version of her (I doubt I'll ever play with this miniature since the armour is pretty much a must).

The Haqqislam Hype Train

Choo, choo! I seem to be steady on the Haqqislam Hype train and painted some more miniatures for my army: Not only the WIPs from last week, but also the rest of the Hassassin Bahram Starter Box. If I continue in this vain, I'll have painted all of my miniatures before we hit the next league gameday!

Pict 593: Haqqislam Group Shot

Pict 594: Hunzakut, Naffatûn, Ghulam Doctor

Pict 595: Hunzakut, Naffatûn, Ghulam Doctor

This trio was quite fast to paint after last week's posting. I'm looking forward to using the doctor and the Hunzakut with his Camo special rule. And of course a flamethrower is always a nice thing to have, no matter the game!

Pict 596: Hassassin Bahram Starter Box

Pict 597: Hassassin Fiday, Hassassin Muyib

Pict 598: Hassassin Fiday, Hassassin Muyib

These Hassassins complete the first box for my renewed interest in Infinity. I'm not sure when I'm going to start using them, but the smileyface on the Impersonation marker really makes me want to fit the Fiday in somehow! With the state of the escalation league they just might be to many points

Pict 599: Djanbazan, Ghulam Infantry, Nasmat Remote

I had my friend from Out of Couriosity over and while he painted his Rodoks, I got to work on my Ghulam Infantry as well as the Nasmat Engineer Remote and a Djanbazan Sniper. While the Ghulams are almost done, the Remote and the Djanbazan only had their washes done. After those there won't much left to do for the Haqqislam!

Fog on the Barrow-Downs

These past weeks, I was pretty productive and finished quite a bit starting with Tom, Goldberry and the Hobbits. With them finished I went on to the Daylami Infantry, after which I completed some more Hobbit miniatures.

Pict 582: Fog on the Barrow-Downs

Pict 583: Goldberry, Tom Bombadil

Pict 584: Goldberry, Tom Bombadil

Pict 585: Paralysed Hobbits

Here is the completed Fog on the Barrow-Downs box. I very much enjoyed painting Goldberry's green dress and building the bases with the paralysed Hobbits on them. I wanted to recreate the scene from the book and thus added the shields, swords and some coins.

Pict 586: Daylami Infantry

Pict 587: Daylami Infantry

The Daylami made for an interesting paintjob - the colours were easy enough to translate on the sculpts. The faces, however, were as always a bit difficult... I blame the older scuplts and I'm looking forward to trying my hand on some of the newer ones.

Pict 588: Beorn

Pict 589: Beorn

Turns out you can get quite a lot done during the course of two week, if you can spare the free time. So this is what I started after I had completed the WIPs from the last post: Beorn as the man and as the bear. I used some Armypainter brown tones on the bear - as an experiment with a different paintline; I like them! I also tried my hand again at wetblending and the result on the coat is goodand I want to incorporate the technique more with my painting.
The base is done up in the same style as my Ironhills Dwarves so that I can ally Beorn in. I also have a spare Beorn in manform and I might convert him to fly on an eagle since I don't have anything better to do with it. Maybe later in the year...

Pict 590: Gundabad Captain

Pict 591: Gundabad Captain

Lastly I also painted the Mickey Mouse Gundabad Captain. This one was quick to paint - Now I might just have to get some more Gundabad Warriors since I was able to whip this one up in just a couple of hours...
 

Pict 583: Guhlam Doctor, Hunzakut, Naffatun

And here is a quick photo of the next leg of my Haqqislam. I picked these out because they seemed to do something cool in the game and sculpts are similar enough to paint the three of them at once.

Hassassin Ragik and many Works in Progess

Just a quick update: I finished painting the Hassassin Ragik and managed to progress on a few different projects: other Haqqislam miniatures as well as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and paralysed Hobbits from the Fog on the Barrow-Downs set. I also busted out the green stuff to finish filling the gaps on a big D&D monster.

Pict 575: Hassassin Ragik

Pict 576: Hassassin Ragik

First up is the Ragik. I really like the model with the wings and the landing pose. But it was a nightmare to put together (the wings have two pins each...) - I guess that's what you get for playing with miniatures that are maximally delicate. I changed the red arms from the last pictue to the grayI use for body armour. It fits better with the way the colours are placed on the model and is consistent with my use of colours on other models. Right now he's a bit shiny from the varnish since I didn't want to mess everythign up by spraying Armypainter's Anti-Shine in the cold and humid weather.

Pict 577: Daylami Infantry (WIP)

The first WIP are these two Daylami Infantrymen. With these I'll have finished the first 100 points and will be looking towards way of expanding the list to 120. The faces are rather small and I wonder how I will paint the eyes.

Pict 578: Tom Bombadil and Goldberry (WIP)

Pict 579: Paralysed Hobbits (WIP)

I am right in the middle of my annual rereading of The Lord of the Rings and at the beginning of the week the four Hobbits had reached Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs after that. With those scenes in mind I started on the basecoats of theses miniatures. I don't plan on really using them in games but reading of them made me want to paint them as a short distraction from the other Middle-Eath projets going on. And with the Arnor shields towards the Hobbit's feet, I might use them as objective markers with my Rangers of the North and Arnorians.

Pict 580: Behir (WIP)

Pict 581: Behir (WIP)

After building the bases for the Hobbits I had still quite a large batch of mixed up green stuff so that I went to filling in the gaps on this Behir. I pretty much had to fill in all the seams because the fit of the pieces was not that great. I am sure that I could have done more by bending the resin with hot water but I should have done that befor glueing. I enjoyed the challence and working with green stuff more and am esspecially proud of the scales midway down the back: I had to rescuplt some of them to close the gap and think they came out great!

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.