Middle-Earth SBG – Lair of the Lagomorph

Trip down memory lane: Hunt for the Golden Demon

40k, Middle-Earth SBG, Warhammer: The Old World

You might have noticed a decent-sized gap in my posts, with the last post well over a month ago! I’ve been pretty busy with work these last few months with a big project finishing, but primarily my spare time has been taken up with cycling. I’ve signed up for a charity ride in October, which will see me ride 200+kms over a couple of days so I need to get in shape! The ride is to raise money for cancer research, here is the fundraising link if you’re interested in contributing. I used the opportunity of having nothing on the painting table to spend some time refitting the painting setup which put my painting desk out of commission for a few weeks as I 3D printed the new setup – more on that later. Regardless with a window with no new painting to show off, I figured this would be a good time to do a post I’ve been thinking about making for a while: a retrospective on my attempts at display painting and more specifically attempts at the Golden Demon competition.

Hard to believe since I’m so into army painting these days, but for a few years around 2007-11 I was mainly into display painting, and had quite a few cracks at Golden Demon. I’ve never photographed these before which is a bit of a shame as a few aspects of them have aged poorly over the intervening years, but from that we can extract a bit of advice so not all is lost!

The Early Years 2007-2008

I had my first crack at Golden Demon in 2007, and got my first and only result (barring some finalist pins) with a bronze! This was an interesting category they called “Master” where we had to paint the special golden demon model for the year unconverted. You can see the Gold and Silver entries over at the Golden Demon Compendium.

Here he is next to the trophy looking rather chuffed with himself!

Of note (and you’ll see this again on the next model, much worse) is the water. I used PVA for it (I had nothing better at the time!) and while it looked fine at the time it has gone a bit cloudy since then.

Next up is my 2008 entry: Merry from the Lord of the Rings

This model is minuscule so I was pretty happy of the detail I managed to get into it at the time. Funny story about this model, the way Golden Demon used to work in Australia was that you would have a round in individual stores, then the models that did well in that were sent to Sydney for the “proper” Golden Demon event. This model was sent to Sydney and we sat around the Perth Games Workshop store waiting to hear results. The phone call came in and I had won … the Youngbloods (under 14s) category! As a 20 year-old that was a bit of an issue, and we duly called the Sydney store to let them know my model had ended up in the wrong category. They ended up re-judging the Lord of the Rings single miniature category and I ended up with a finalist pin for my troubles.

From an ageing perspective, a couple of lessons from this model: 1) as above I used PVA for the river and that has gone completely cloudy over the years – don’t use PVA for your water effects! 2) The moss I used on the base was nice and green when I put it there and as you can see it’s gone a lovely golden colour now. I believe you can seal moss with some products nowadays to prevent that from happening but I had no idea about that at the time.

The Staff Years 2009-2011

I joined the staff at my local store after that and so needed to enter the Staff category rather than the regular categories. This made trophy availability a bit tricky as the staff category was just a single category judged on top 3 across all the staff in the country and there were some very good painters in the staff at the time. I don’t quite remember which order I painted these miniatures in, but I think this is right:

Eowyn is one of my favourite models I’ve ever painted, she’s gone a bit glossy over the years unfortunately, but given the size of the model I was very proud of the detail I captured there. It was also one of my first attempts at Non-Metallic-Metal which was all the rage at the time.

Lokhir Fellheart is a very cool Dark Elf model from the old Warhammer range. I remember having lots of fun painting this model, trying out a more limited palette. The sculpted waves were fun to do as well. Also some NMM on this model.

This work nob with banner marked a return to a more “realistic” style with metallic paints and some nice grime. I was definitely inspired by some of the French painters a the time which had some really great treatments of metallic areas.

Wrapping up

I hope you’ve enjoyed my trip down memory lane, it’s been fun looking at and thinking about the context of those models. I was lucky to even get a trophy, looking at the standard in painting competitions these days the bar is so high I’m not sure I’d be able to compete.

As I mentioned at the start, one of the impediments to me doing any painting has been my painting desk has been out of commission as I printed new infrastructure. I backed the PaintPal Studio XP kickstarter which is a modular set of paint racks, and got the files a few weeks back.

It was quite a lot of printing, but it’s made for quite a neat setup. I’ve already started painting again and hope to have something to show soon-ish, I’ve embarked on something a little bigger than my usual posts so it might still be a while away.

A Busy Few Weeks!

Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Middle-Earth SBG, Midgard Heroic Battles, The Silver Bayonet

As the title suggested, I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks, with some painting and some gaming to discuss in this latest post.

The Gaming!

I have a regular games night with some friends which is usually spent playing role-playing games or board games. The last few of these we had to change the program as a couple of us couldn’t make it, and we decided to get some wargaming in.

For the first one of these I introduced the group to Silver Bayonet and we played through the fourth solo mission of the main rulebook with my British warband.

The scenario had the unit attempt to leave the wilderness after its encounters there in the past few missions, but finding their way home cut off by some bandits (role played by the French Imperial Guard unit I painted a few years back). I didn’t take very many photos as I was too busy running the game unfortunately, so no battle report for this mission. Playing the game was very last minute so I had to improvise some of the terrain as you can see in the photo above, with the river being represented by some shiny blue cloth, and the bridge is a section of a ruined church I used for WW2 games!

The game went very well, the two players were running the unit together while I was telling them the rules and taking the monster actions. They were much more aggressive than I usually play, but it paid off and they cleared the mission relatively easily. Both of them really enjoyed the game so that’s always a plus!

On the second week we decided to try out a new (to us!) ruleset for fantasy/historical battles: Midgard. Midgard is a game by James Morris (check out his blog, it’s very cool https://mogsymakes.net/blog/) which came out last year and covers quite a lot of ground. At its core, it’s a system for covering historical (and fantastical) battles where the heroic actions of army leaders can carry the day. This is suitable for covering periods all the way from antiquity to mid to late middle ages when commanders started running battles from a bit further back than the front lines. Midgard also caters for more mythological/fantastical battles, with rule for monsters and magic thrown in. I’ll be talking a lot more about Midgard in the future as it ticks a lot of boxes for me.

We decided to play the game with some Lord of the Rings armies, and I dusted off two of mine: my Cirith Ungol force, led by Shagrat and Gorbag to rival orc captains, and an amalgamation of Elves led by Legolas and Gildor Inglorion.

If you’re familiar with Games Workshop’s efforts in the Lord of the Rings space, you might recognise the trays they produced for the War of the Ring mass battle version of the game. As Midgard also uses trays they seemed like a great starting point. Midgard however requires all the unit base sizes to have the same frontage so I 3D designed and printed some adapters for the cavalry trays (which are narrower than the infantry trays) and for the monsters (who never had trays in the first place). As I did these adapters the day of the game I needed to go fast and decided to make them simple and to include a little joke – the elven script reads “One tray to adapt them all“.

The game was great fun even for a learning game, and everyone was very impressed with the rules. They are easy to pick up and the system puts pressure on heroes to go out and perform heroic acts in a way that leads to some excellent moments. I look forward to playing much more of the game.

The Painting

My painting table has had some form of WW2 models on it for quite a while now, as the build up of forces to get ready to play games of Chain of Command continues.

First up some British Paratroopers, with a Bren gunner and a 2-inch mortar team to bring my 6th Airborne up to strength.

Secondly we have the first unit of a new army (don’t I already have too many WW2 projects on the go? Yes, probably).

The models are from Warlord Games’ German Infantry (Winter) set, that I’ve built up as Volksgrenadiers for use in late war games on the Eastern Front or the Ardennes. I have a full platoon of these to paint for a game I’m planning soon, so this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Painting-wise, these were quite straightforward as the greatcoats really simplify the models. I started with an all over airbrush of Fieldgrey, then got painting in the details. The process is my usual easy army painting one, with basecoat, wash, then highlight back up with the basecoat colour. The exception is the skin which uses a second highlight colour.

The colours are as follows:

Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with basecolour
- Coats/uniforms – VMC German Fieldgrey WWII
- Wood/leather – VMC Flat Brown
- Waterbottle/blankets – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
- Bags/Pouches – VMC German Camo Beige WWII
- Helmets/Gas Mask Boxes – VMC German Camo Dark Green
- Panzerfausts – Vallejo Surface Primer German Dark Yellow
- Cloth Helmet Cover – VGC Heavy Bluegrey
Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade – no highlights
- Guns – VGA Gunmetal
- Other metallic objects – S75 Black Metal
- Webbing – VMC Black
- Boots bottom – VMC Dark Rust
- Boots top – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
Skin
- Basecoat – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
- Wash – Citadel Reikland Fleshshade
- Highlight 1 – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
- Highlight 2 – 50/50 Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh/AK Beige Red
- Pick out the nose – Citadel Carroburg Crimson
Bases
- Texture paint – AK Muddy Ground
- Flock – some mix of foams and static grass I made ages ago
- Snow flock – Citadel Snow
- Rim – S75 Ardennes Green (Seemed appropriate!)

This scheme is very quick, I just lay down the basecoats (including the skin), then wash the whole model (Agrax for everything apart from the skin, Reikland Fleshade for the skin – doesn’t matter if they bleed a bit into each other), then highlight.

I’m happy with the way they look, the basing works well for me as I didn’t want to go full snow but rather light snow/frost. I’m also happy with the speed at which I can paint them, these were done in an afternoon/evening with some distractions.

Anyhow this was a rather long post, but I hope it was enjoyable!

The Three Hunters

Middle-Earth SBG

You might remember that quite a while back I painted some Lord of the Rings Dead of Dunharrow, and said at the time that I’d built the army so I’d be able to slot in the three hunters and make it exactly 800 points. Well it took me a while (and waiting for those models to come back in stock!) but here they finally are.

These are the new plastic set Games Workshop produced for the trio, and like all the new Middle-Earth plastics they’re excellently detailed and go really nicely together. I’ve actually had these on my painting desk since December, with Aragorn completed and Legolas and Gimli only about half done. I finally decided to finish them off tonight after a few months of staring guiltily at them.

The paint jobs relied pretty heavily on contrast paints with some selective highlights over the top, with most of the leathers and cloth areas done that way. The main exception are the elven cloaks, which I decided to paint in a more traditional manner (basecoat – wash – highlights) with Vallejo Field Grey, GW Agrax Earthshade, and Vallejo Green Grey respectively.

I tried to add a bit of texture to everything with highlights, although to be fair I spent a fair bit more time on Aragorn than on the other two, and therefore he has much more texturing on his clothes! I suppose I can rationalise that by his being a ranger with presumably poor access to new clothes!

Part of the fun of finishing these three off was to be able to put them alongside the Army of the Dead and recreate that scene from Return of the King where they disembark from their stolen corsair ship. Although I lacked an appropriate photographic background so picked the one that matched their colours best.

Anyway it was nice to tie a bow around this particular Middle-Earth SBG army, and I look forward to using them in some games!

Overgrown Ruins

AoS, Middle-Earth SBG, Terrain

I’ve done a bit of terrain painting over the last week, tackling a bunch of forest bases I’ve accumulated over the years. These are all the same kit, Citadel Woods which I believe are not sold anymore unfortunately. I’ve somehow amassed a bit of a collection of them and it felt like time to finally get them painted!

Taking pictures of these gave me the opportunity to take pictures of some more terrain I did up a little while back, this time not old kits, but pieces I 3D printed. The files are from RM Printable Terrain from their Stormguard collection. I was waiting to receive the mat you see the pieces on before I took photos.

I didn’t necessarily plan on painting these trees to match, but I think the ruins and the trees work nicely together and I’ll definitely have them both on the table at the same time for games going forward.

Look forward to getting some games in amongst these!

Wood Elves of Lothlorien and Rivendell

Middle-Earth SBG

It’s been a while since the last post (almost a month in fact!), the holiday period is definitely a busy time and it took me a while to finish up this latest project: a 500 point wood elf army for the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game.

The army is lead by Galadriel on the Lothlorien side and Gildor for the Rivendell contingent. My goal was to cram as many elf bodies in the list as I could while also having access to relatively powerful characters.

Galadriel I’d painted many years ago, so she got a touch up and a rebasing to match the others. Gildor on the other hand is new for this army (one of the rare metal models GW still sells!).

The wood elf plastics are definitely showing their age, as single piece plastics from that time the detail is rather soft, and the single piece restriction leads to some significant filled in undercuts etc. I think they look good at the tabletop level though, if not under close scrutiny, and painted them appropriately (i.e. to tabletop rather than anything else standard).

I tried to stick to the rather desaturated colours you see on the wood elves in the movies while still keeping some variety of colours. The military colours I’ve been collecting for my WW2 models have definitely come in useful here! As you can see most of the areas of the models are 3 stages to keep things nice and quick.

I had some fun with the bases, I wanted to try something else than my previous attempts at forest bases and I really like the outcome, especially when considering how simple this was to do. I took some dry leaves I had ready for basing purposes, and broke them up using a spice grinder. I took the results and mixed in some Woodland Scenics foam flocks and ended up with what you can see in the photo below. Then simply coated the bases in glue and dunked them into the pot of my forest mix. I did seal them in watered down PVA to fix everything properly as an extra precaution. Nice and quick!

I painted these for a tournament that is coming up in February, so for once I have some time to practice games ahead of time! We’ll see how much practice actually happens though.

2021 Recap

2021 marked the first full calendar year for the blog (I started it in September 2020), and coincided with one of my most productive years ever when it comes to model painting, with 326 models finished for the year! It’s the first time I’ve documented a full year’s work so I can’t be sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t the most models I’ve ever painted in 12 months.

Here’s to another hobby charged year, and I hope you all have a great 2022!

Star Wars Legion Desert Terrain

Middle-Earth SBG, Star Wars Legion, Terrain

I played a Middle-Earth SBG tournament yesterday (more on this at the end), and was inspired by some of the tables I saw there to paint some terrain of my own. I’d done all the preparation for these buildings while recovering from my eye injury a few weeks back, but never got around to painting them as I got too excited by being able to see well enough to paint models again! My 15-month old had a three hour nap this afternoon that provided a window of opportunity to put my new found motivation to good use.

The buildings in question I 3D printed on my filament printer from models by Imperial Terrain who produce great Star Wars Legion terrain. To add to the look of them, I textured all of the walls with tile grout, which provided a great surface for drybrushing as well as hiding some of the layer lines from the printing process. I really love the look of this technique and will keep applying it to printed terrain where it makes sense.

For the walls of the structures, I started with an all over coat from a cream spray can, followed by a reddish-brown wash I made using a mixture of craft paints, water, and some window cleaner to break the surface tension. Once that was dry, I drybrushed a mix of ochre and white craft paint, followed by another drybrush of the same mixture with more white added.

The crates were painted in a variety of flat colours and hit with the wash and drybrush steps of the walls.

The rusted elements were done with a burnt sienna craft paint, followed by a mixture of burnt umber, red, and yellow inks all over. The same ink mix was used to do the rust streaks. The pipes were then hit with sponged on orange paint to add a bit more variety.

The roof of the tall building was done in a brassy-coppery look, which is something I’d seen on the painted examples on Imperial Terrain’s website and really like the look of.

I’m not sure how they did theirs, but mine was done using the airbrush, with an all over coat of Vallejo Metal Colour Copper, followed by a shading step done using Burnt Umber Ink. The verdigris was done using GW’s Nihilak Oxide through the airbrush (to avoid the wash running in the print lines), followed by some stippling of the same paint to add a bit of texture to the effect.

Overall very happy with the outcome, and the little guy woke up just as I was putting the finishing touches on the buildings so thanks a lot to him for giving me the time to get these done! I have a fair few more pieces to tackle before the table will be done, so expect some more Star Wars terrain posts in the future!

Radagast goes to war!

As I mentioned above, I played a one day tournament yesterday with the models I showcased in the last post. I ended up with two wins and two losses, finishing up somewhere in the middle of the field which I was happy with. For the tournament I put together the small display board you can see above and the effort paid off as I took home the best painted army award which I was very happy with. All in all a good fun day, and as always has motivated me to paint even more Middle-Earth armies!

Radagast’s Alliance

Middle-Earth SBG, Uncategorized

*Radagast and his allies brave the foul weather to venture deep into Mirkwood*

We have a small Middle-Earth SBG tournament coming up in a few weeks that I’ve planned on attending, and what better excuse to get more of my models painted! This tournament is limited to 400 points, which coincidentally is what Radagast on his sled and two giant eagles add up to! I’ve had these models since they were released (sometime around the release of the hobbit movies I assume), built and sitting in a case ever since. This seemed like a great opportunity to put some paint on them, and so off I went!

This is a three model army, and I have no idea how it will go in games but I hope it will be a lot of fun to play! I made the decision to experiment a bit with these models, and learned quite a bit in the process as I made quite a few mistakes that I hope not to reproduce!

For Radagast and his sled I used GW’s contrast paints primarily, the first time I’ve really experimented with these in their “intended” use, i.e. one coat that does basecoat, shading, and highlights. I’ve always found the MESBG models to take really well to washes due to their tight, small details (as opposed to other GW models that have a lot more large flattish areas), and was intrigued by how the contrast paints would work with them. The answer I think is really well. The rabbits are only painted with a single coat of 3 different contrast paints: Cygor Brown (Thinned down 50/50), Snakebite Leather, and Skeleton Horde. Radagast and the sled were also painted with contrast paints but were followed up with highlights of regular old acrylic paints. This model has a massive base, so I knew I wanted to make it a feature. I used a variety of Woodland Scenics foam flocks, and their more bushy clumping foliage. The flowers are tufts from Gamers Grass. The leaves are the usual seeds you can get for that purpose, I’ve had them for years and can’t remember where I got them. I had some issues with all this being pretty loose on the base and ran some thinned down PVA all over to glue it all down. This ended up drying all white in patches and made me very scared I’d just ruined the whole thing. No idea what happened there, but I ended up using some green contrast paint to tint the areas affected by this and they blended right back in, got very lucky there!

The rules for MESBG account for your mount being shot off under you, so it’s expected to have a dismounted version of any mounted models. Here’s my Radagast on foot, carrying his faithful hedgehog Sebastian. Painted exactly the same as the sled version.

The eagles were another experiment, I decided to try shading them with oils to cut down the amount of time I’d need to spend on highlights. This worked very well, but I made the mistake of being impatient and varnishing over the oils too soon, and ended up with a very unstable coat of varnish that came off with gentle rubbing! I left them alone for a few days, then went back over the white areas with some highlights and finally gave them another coat of varnish and that is holding much better. The lesson here: when painting with slow drying paints, don’t expect them to dry fast!

Overall I really like the look of the “army”. They were painted fast and there are definitely areas that suffered as a result, but I think they look nice and cohesive on the table.

The Dead of Dunharrow

Middle-Earth SBG

This past weekend was Father’s day here in Australia, and during a fun family trip to the park a detour was organised to the hobby store for me to purchase a new airbrush. I’ve been using my Badger 105 for a little while now (maybe a year? can’t remember when I got it!) and it’s been great for a lot of things, and has seen regular use for undercoating and basecoating models. I’ve been trying to push my airbrush skills, and found that I really struggled to get smooth transitions and precise applications of highlights with the Badger. Cue a lot of research and I determined that to get smoother, more controlled results I was going to need a higher end airbrush with finer atomisation of the paint and a smaller needle. I settled on a Harder and Steenbeck Infinity, which is not cheap but a very nice piece of kit by all accounts. I was considering Iwata airbrushes as an alternative, but the tiny size of some of the pieces drove me away, I know how likely my fat fingers are to drop airbrush bits when disassembling! After a successful trip to the hobby shop I had my new airbrush, and all I needed was something to point it at.

I’ve been slowly painting the Riders of Rohan from the current Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game starter set (I’ll get them all done one day!), but haven’t yet touched the other half of the included good army: The Dead of Dunharrow. During my airbrush research I’d come across this tutorial from the Cult of Paint Youtube channel that had a great example of painting on the these dead warriors with an airbrush (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_EoU1tGxw). Armed with the airbrush and a couple of playthroughs of the video I set about to painting these ghostly warriors.

Above you can see the finished result. 21 warriors, one mounted warrior (that’s been gathering dust for years), and the King of the Dead (also in the gathering dust for years category). I equipped this bunch so that adding Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli gets me to exactly 800 points using the “Return of the King” legendary legion (I don’t own the correct models for these yet, so the three of them will have to wait!). I picture this army as representing Aragorn and his army of the dead arriving at the Pelennor fields. To that end, I decided to base these models on cobblestones to represent abandoned Gondorian ruins. The bases were done using a textured roller I printed on my 3D printer.

The painting went smoothly and the new airbrush was a joy to use. The steps were relatively straightforward:

The models were primed black (with the badger!)
A mostly zenithal highlight was applied with white ink using the new airbrush (I say mostly as I did emphasize the head and shoulders of the models more than would normally occur in a straightforward zenithal highlight)
An all over drybrush of pure white, kept very light and really just there to pick out edges to finish the underpainting
Airbrushed an all over coat of Vallejo Game Air Escorpena Green to set the tone
From below, airbrushed GW Terradon Tuquoise to set the shadows
Applied a wash of Prussian Blue oil paint to the recesses of the model. This really helped define the deepest folds and detailing on the models that may have been washed out by the airbrushing.

Here are some close up photos of a few of the models:

Overall I’m very happy with the results, the mostly airbrushed look works well for ghostly models and they were a great crash course in the new airbrush. This was all a very quick turnaround too, I built the models Saturday night, painted them Sunday, and finished the bases a couple of hours ago!

Riders of Rohan pt1

Middle-Earth SBG

I had a little break from painting last week, but back in the saddle this week with the first mounted Rohan warriors!

The riders were painted as per my last post, the focus for these and where I spent the most time was on the horses. I’m painting these one by one rather than coming up with a repeatable scheme, the goal being to have some nice variety there, but also to keep things interesting.

For each horse I looked up some photos until I found a colour that I found nice or interesting and tried to replicate it. I kept things on the simple side this time around, by mostly sticking to single colour coats, but I’m keen to try some more complex ones on the next batch of riders.

We’ve just entered a snap lockdown over here, which is unfortunate, but if last time around is anything to go by I should get a fair bit of painting time over the next few days.

Rohan Warriors on Foot

Middle-Earth SBG

The Middle-Earth motivation train is still rolling forward and showing no signs of slowing down! I’ve started building and painting the current starter set for the game, centered around the battle of Pelennor Fields, with Rohan and the Army of the Dead versus Mordor. I’ve wanted to do a Rohan army for a very long time, they are the focus of some of the most evocative scenes in the books/movies in my opinion.

For me Rohan means Riders of Rohan primarily, and I’m mostly excited about putting together a set of models that will let me represent Eomer’s exiled warband that serves as the relief force at Helm’s Deep and the charge of the Rohirrim at Pelennor. These warriors on foot are most likely to be used as dismounted riders rather than starting models, which made them excellent test subjects for a colour scheme.

This army is less about a mad dash to the finish, and more of a passion project, so I’m planning on spending more time on the painting than I did on my goblins.

The rohan plastics are close to 20 years old now (I feel old!), and it shows with some pretty soft details in some places. Overall though the models do a good job of capturing the feel of the movies, which makes them enjoyable to paint. I’ve tried a new format for recording my paint scheme, based on what I’ve seen in some of the official publications, which hopefully is a bit more informative than just listing the paint colours in a paragraph. Feel free to let me know what you think about it or how it could be improved in the comments.

Next step is to get cracking on the rider models, there’s 12 in the starter set and I’ll need around 24 all up to put together the armies I’m interested in, which is a fair few horses to paint!