Mirkwood Rangers Part 1

Having finished the box of Warriors of Erebor I have rashly taken on another box of plastics for The Hobbit.  My daughter (it's her first pole dancing class tonight!) got me the Mirkwood Rangers for Christmas as a total surprise and she keeps demanding to see a painted one so I'd better get some done!  They are now assembled and based, ready for undercoating.  These figures are, for want of a better term, very 3D, moving away from the typical two plane approach to nearly all model soldiers necessitated by the moulding process.  These are two or three part models with, usually, a separate part for the coat tails which when fixed on the back takes them out of the two plane approach into something more dynamic.  I didn't like them when I first saw them as I thought they were too animated but now I am coming around to their very different look and wonder if the Perry twins will employ what they learned in the design process for these on some of their plastic historicals.

Tauriel has a particularly impressively sculpted posterior which is, sadly, hidden under her coat tails

For my birthday, two weeks after Christmas, my daughter the gave me the plastic Tauriel figure.  She is a five part model and literally stands out from the other elves because she is standing on a tree branch.  Now I can't stand scenic items on bases like this but, again, when assembled she looks rather fine.  It is, however, a staggeringly expensive plastic kit (more expensive than the Airfix 1/48 Hawker Hurricane, for example).  It makes you wonder what the future is for Finecast if they are going to make more characters as plastic kits, especially given the recent rumour that Games Workshop are shipping out all their old metal figures for scrap.  It's going to send the cost of second hand old metal figures sky high.  I just sold a set of metal Warhammer figures on eBay for more than I paid for them.

Now usually I undercoat my Lord of the Rings figures in black because it provides a good base for the very muted palette that Peter Jackson's designers use but my recent experience with the Warriors of Erebor was that I struggled to see some of the detail with black undercoat; especially given the bad light that persists in wind and rain riven Britain at present.  Given that these figures have no armour, however, I am going to take a risk and undercoat them in white.  My other issue with them is that I have no visual reference for them.  I haven't bought the two Desolation of Smaug Chronicles books yet, which always give a lot of costume details.  I don't trust the Games Workshop colour schemes.

More fundamentally, I haven't managed to watch the film itself as everyone I know who would have seen it with me has already seen it.  I think I've missed it at the cinema now, which means it's the first of Peter Jackson's Tolkien films I haven't watched on the big screen.  It's staggering to think that I first watched The Fellowship of the Ring on New Year's Eve in 2001 - more than twelve years ago.   I saw it with friends in a cinema in Bath and they switched off the heating about half way through.  The scenes in the mines of Moria still make me shiver as by this point in the cinema we were all frozen, as it was a bitterly cold night.

No date for the release of the DVD yet so I need to do some more research on the costumes.  I think I will start with Tauriel as there are a few pictures on the internet of her, although she seems to have several different costumes in the film.

New White Dwarf dumps The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings?

Games Workshop have officially announced their two new magazines to replace White Dwarf today.  White Dwarf becomes a very short 32 page weekly (stunted, indeed) and the monthly magazine is now called Warhammer Visions. From my point of view the interesting thing is that they have removed mention of The  Hobbit (and, therefore, by implication, the whole Lord of the Rings game) from the cover.  This means, I can only assume that only Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are now core games for Games Workshop.

I will have a look at them when they come out next Saturday.

Grim Hammer bases re-done

When I first painted my Grim Hammers I gave them bases to match my Moria dwarves.  Now, however, I want to build the forces for the battle of Dimril Dale which means a normal base.  I have, therefore, redone the bases to match my warriors of Erebor.  This is now starting to look like a force, as it's twenty five figures!  Positively an army, by my standards!  I've now painted over 90 Good figures for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit!

Next up are the Rangers of Mirkwood and the Tauriel my daughter got me for my birthday this month.

I think I better get some orcs next!

Warriors of Erebor

I got these done comparatively quickly for me.  I bought them on December 12th so to get them finished on January 19th was very rapid.  I painted them in a very muted colour scheme, largely black, as that's the way they appear in the film.  

I also didn't highlight the metal parts (of which there are quite a lot as many of them are basically wearing the same armour as the Grim Hammers) as, again, I didn't want them to be too shiny.  I used Boltgun Metal for the armour and then gave it a black wash to dull it down.

The box contains 12 warriors but there are not instructions on how to assemble them so I just followed the poses on the box.  With historical plastic sets I have got used to there being a lot of options as around interchangeability of heads, arms etc.  I am not sure to what extent swapping around some of the arms is possible with this set (heads are attached to torsos so no options there) but when I get the next set I will look at this.

Here are the sprues from the set.  Half the figures have, for want of a better word, polearms, and the others have axes and shields.  Although there are no optional parts in the box there are 12 shields so if you don't attach shields to the figures with two handed weapons then you do end up with some spare ones.  I am contemplating buying some of the normal Lord of the Rings dwarves and giving them the Erebor eight sided shields to add a bit of variety.

That said, the troops in the film have the polearms and shields but I think I prefer them as I have done them, which is the way they are done on the box cover.  Incidentally, this behind the scenes shot gave me the only picture I have seen of the reverse of the shields: reddish brown wood with black radial bands going into the centre of the shields from each apex. 

There have been lots of anti Games Workshop comments as a result of their poor profit announcement recently and although I did buy a few Warhammer and 40K figures I could never get into either the rules or the figures.  The Lord of the Rings figures (despite their ridiculous prices) are very nice, though, (better proportions help) so I will continue to pick these up (not that I am short of LotR figures to paint. I can see at least 12 boxed from where I am sitting and I have many more that that).

Next I need to get some orcs but, because of the non uniformed nature of these they will take longer to paint.

You're going to hear me Thror!

So, I have finished my first figure from The Hobbit: Thror, King of Erebor.  He is one of those ludicrously expensive Finecast pieces but at least I got him at Dark Sphere so got him at a discount.

Like some of Games Workshops Tolkein figures he is a bit of an amalgalm of looks from the film.  His distinctive beard jewellery comes from the scenes inside Erebor, particularly, in the extended version, from when he meets the elves.  Yet the model is in fighting mode but in the film the beard jewellery (beardellery?) isn't worn in his brief battle scene.  

Incidentally, most painted figures I have seen make the colour on his beardellery blue but the stills from the film show it as definitely black so I dug out mt little used Humbrol number 21 gloss black for this.

I had no issues with this Finecast figure other than the cost and a rather bendy sword which I couldn't get to straighten out however much I (carefully tried).  No holes or pits or any of the other things people moan about.  The only issue was the complication of cutting him from the sprue which has much chunkier connectors to the figure than a plastic figure and alittle more carving away of excess material is, therefore needed.

Some Erebor dwarves next!

The Desolation of Smaug supplement

The bear necessities

You don't have any posts on the blog for eight months and then two come along within a few days!  My renewed enthusiasm for all things Tolkien has been engendered by watching the extended version of The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey and listening to the new Howard Shore soundtrack for The Desolation of Smaug.

I went into Games Workshop in Oxford Street yesterday to pick up the warriors of Erebor, as I liked the Battle of Dimrill Dale in An Unexpected Journey between the dwarves and the orcs.  

I also picked up the supplement for The Desolation of Smaug which has five scenarios from the new film (including one for their £40 set of Thorin's company in barrels!) but also three built around the Battle of Dimrill Dale from the first film.  It also takes each of the scenarios for the first book and the second and puts them together to build one continuous campaign.  This, of course, is probably why we haven't seen any gaming articles in White Dwarf this year as there are scenarios in the book based on the film, plus some more generic ideas for battles in Mirkwood.  One of the scenarios, however, requires 18 mirkwood spiders.  These cost £22 for two so you will need to spend £198 on spiders for this one!

There are some pictures of a few figures which haven't been released yet, including Beorn in his bear form (top) and armoured orcs of Gundabad (above) which look like an imminent plastic box set.  I'm not sure about the design of these but at least they look quick to paint as they are quite uruk hai-like.  The Laketown guard look very silly, I'm afraid, but that isn't Games Workshop's fault!  What there isn't is any hint of Smaug so perhaps he will come for the final film.

So for me it will be dwarves versus orcs for a bit (although those Mirkwood rangers do look awfully nice!)

There are some painting guides and pictures of other people's armies to pad it out a bit and, of course, profiles for the new figures.

Starting a couple of Dwarves...

Despite the rubbish support for The Hobbit from Games Workshop I still like some of the figures and have started work on a couple this weekend.  I watched the extended version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this weekend in preparation for going to see the Desolation of Smaug over Christmas (I have to wait until my daughter returns from university!)  It was she who selected Bombur for me to work on.  I also wanted to have a go at a Finecast figure so pulled out my outrageously expensive King Thror to do.  I had hoped to paint him on Sunday but events conspired against me so I have only just started him.

Thror is a two part Finecast kit with an additional shield.  I couldn't find any faults on mine except for some slight damage to part of the shield rim which I have fixed with greenstuff.  The sword is very flimsy and is as bendy as an Airfix Ancient Britain!  I did need to use a bit of liquid Greenstuff to fill some slight gaps between the two halves when stuck together but it would have been the same for a metal kit too, I think.

I've got plenty of pictorial reference for both figures but they are very small so I think I may have to break out a new Windsor and Newton Series 7 for them!  I tried to do a bit on Thror last night but I have realised that I am going to need daylight to work on black undercoated figures.  I bought the new Howard Shore Hobbit soundtrack today but it seems, rather like An Unexpected Journey, to be lacking in strong melodies which certainly wasn't the case for his three Lord of the Rings scores.  Still, it's atmospheric stuff and means I now have 17 hours and 18 minutes of Howard Shore Lord of the Rings music to paint to, which should keep me in the right mood.

I also bid on a few metal LotR figures on eBay today as I notice that many of the LotR figures have disappeared from the Games Workshop catalogue and, eventually, I want to get them all!