Battle In Balin's Tomb - Team Evil

One of the interesting ideas that Games Workshop has been exploring in the past few years is producing hybrid board/miniature games using pre-existing models in smaller packaging at a lower price point.  To be honest most of those hybrid games haven't really appealed to me because I'm not their target audience (they're really designed to introduce non-gamers to hobby gaming) and if I was excited about the miniatures those games contain I would already own them.  The break in that trend and the game that finally drew me in was Battle In Balin's Tomb.  Lord Of The Rings was one of Games Workshop's biggest sellers during my time in the company and to be honest in the early 2000's it was my favourite GW rules system.  It's one of the few GW games I've kept up with consistently since leaving the company, and I still semi-regularly play Legends Of The Old West which uses the Lord Of The Rings core mechanics.  But I digress...

Battle In Balin's Tomb is the third box game to use the Moria Goblin plastics (one of the first Lord Of The Rings releases in 2000), and the second box game to use the highly underrated Fellowship Of The Rings plastic models.  The game itself is extremely basic, using a Heroquest-esque combat dice mechanic to play a 12 turn skirmish on a board largely devoid of features.  If you're new to hobby games or a big Lord Of The Rings fan and you want a simple introductory game with a fantastic selection of models this game is a great choice, if you're looking for an engaging strategy game that's honestly not what this is here for.

I'm looking forward to playing some games of Battle In Balin's Tomb with my daughter and possibly my niece over the Christmas season.  They are both squarely in the wheelhouse of the target audience for the game, both big fantasy movie fans, both like miniatures, and neither are interested in a complex game system.  I decided to start off by painting team Evil;  12 Moria Goblins, and the amazing and underrated Cave Troll model.

Moria Goblins with shields

Moria Goblins with spears

Moria Goblins with bows

Cave Troll

Team Evil!

That's basically half the box painted, I'm hoping to paint the Fellowship by Wednesday.

I'll show some more new/old models later this week and hopefully have a game to tell you about next week!

Battle In Balin's Tomb should be available now from your FLGS

-Jay

A Forlorn Hope Part 1 of ?

I've begun work on my series of Ravenloft one-shots kicking off on YouTube in 2020.

In my case "work" means writing, mapping, and plotting but also painting and building.

The adventures will kick off with our characters freshly escaped from the lands of Barovia and seeking a way through or out of the mists of Ravenloft.  This should allow for a variety of quests looking for key items and clues to help the characters move through various locations with the eventual goal of escaping from the domains of dread.  (Think Quantum Leap if it was directed by George Romero).

For our first of three planned adventures the group will find itself in the haunted lands of Forfar, the Ravenloft domain originally detailed in the outstanding Castles Forlorn by Lisa Smedman.

I've gotten my models done for 2 NPCs the group might meet in their first adventure, as well as 2 NPCs they will definitely meet.  Also some monsters, because; what's D&D without monsters?

The guide.

Bondi is survivor living off the lands in Forfar that the group will definitely encounter early on.  Her primary role will be to set the group on their path as well as potentially providing some knowledge about the area and depending on how the group relates to her being a useful ally further down the road.

The mysterious stranger.

This fellow will have yet more information for the PCs but the group will likely be left wondering what master he serves.  The stranger may or may not have a larger role to play as the narrative develops but regardless will not lose interest in the PCs.  He will also somehow seem to have eyes and ears throughout the land.

The warrior.

Michael is engaged on a quest of his own, unrelated but potentially running parallel to the group's goals.  Whether he will be an ally or an enemy will depend highly on the choices the group makes.

The knight.

Sir Donnegal will be encountered by the group near the end of the first session.  Is he a stranger, or have they met before?  Sir Donnegal may be the answer to some of the players' questions, but he will likewise be the starting point for many new questions.

The Goblyns.

I needed some Ravenloft Goblyns for this and my third adventure and once more my Escape From Goblintown goblins seemed fit for the job!

That's my first batch of hobbying for this project.  Another batch of scenery making lies ahead and then in January I'll update with DMsGuild and YouTube links for where you can find more Forlorn Hope content.

-Jay

Mystical abominations (or maybe just goblins?)

Got a few more figures done for an upcoming D&D game and a funny thought occurred to me as I was painting them.  I really love Games Workshop's Lord Of The Rings games and I got The Hobbit Escape From Goblintown when it first came out.  Having said that, I've now painted 33 of the Goblintown miniatures for various games but haven't used a single one to play Lord Of The Rings...weird.

Anyway for my next game I wanted some broken or debased men rather than classic low level monsters.  To that end I decided to re-purpose the goblins from The Hobbit.  This is actually the second time I've done this as I previously painted a dozen of these goblins to use as 'Null-men' for Frostgrave.

It's funny that I've never wanted to sit down and paint all 36 of these goblins at one go because everytime I paint some of them I wish I had painted more.  The sprue comes with 18 separate poses and styles of goblins armed with an assortment of weapons.  These are absolutely tremendous figures and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for any kind of CHUDs for their fantasy gaming.

I also need 2 "big bads" for my game and for the muscle component I wanted something larger than a character model but not quite into ogre/troll size range.  Once more my Zombicide Black Plague box stepped up and offered up the Abomination.

This figure is exactly what I was looking for as its big and scary without looking like something that would be way beyond the capacity of my low (1st) level adventuring party.  It's kind of a zombie/flesh-golem hybrid that I can stat out myself.

That should have me all caught up on figs I need for RPGs for the next couple of weeks, now its on to pig-men!

-Jay

Catching up a bit on models for D&D

Hi all,

The last 2 weeks have seen far less painting than usual but I have gotten a few odds and ends done I just hadn't gotten around to posting yet.  I'm going to catch up on those today and then it will be back to "projects" tomorrow.

First up I painted a model to use as my character in an upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics game.  I'm playing a level 5 thief named Jaqar, I did have a model I had been using previously but he was just one of my Forstgrave figures being repurposed.

This time out I painted a named Pathfinder character as he had the perfect combination of armour and equipment, and I really like the fact that he has a backpack and other load-bearing gear to sell the idea that he's an adventurer.

Next is an NPC Dwarf Cleric I'll need for an upcoming game of D&D I'm running.

I wanted something a little different and this Games Workshop Dwarf Miner Champion seemed to fit the bill.

One of the things I have really enjoyed about DMing Curse Of Strahd is that the adventure us filled with interesting and characterful "random" encounters.  Before I start gaming again I want to cook up about a dozen detailed interesting encounters I can throw into the mix whenever I want.  Rather than sitting down and trying to write these up I thought I'd just do them one by one as ideas hit me.

My first idea was for an evil ginger hobbit (I used Lobellia Sackville-Baggins) that is a corruptive ruinous force on the countryside.  I also wanted to tack on some muscle so I threw her in with 'Frankenteddy' to give he some muscle from an encounter point of view.

I've got seven more models to paint for D&D and then if all goes according to plan I'll paint my Teknes starter set this week.

-Jay

It's taken me almost 4 years to start escaping from Goblintown

Over three years ago Games Workshop put their Lord Of The Rings range to bed and started with their new line of miniatures based on The Hobbit movies.

I really enjoyed the Lord Of The Rings game (still do) so I was at my local GW store about 5 minutes after the gate opened on release day to get a copy of The Hobbit Escape From Goblintown.  I started painting the forces of good almost immediately but I never really rushed to get them done so they only just got finished last year.  Embarrassing when you realise the good side is only 15 models total.

Even more embarrassing is the realisation that not a single goblin ever even got assembled.

Fast forward to now-ish and I have 2 separate games coming up where I need broken or unnatural looking men.  I don't have anything exactly right for what I need but these goblins seem like a really good substitute.

I really like the models as they are extremely well textured, they are great representations of the goblins in the movie and in-spite of being single piece models the game comes with 18 different sculpts so you get a huge horde without having a lot of repetition.

I have some other projects on my table right now that are a higher priority so I probably won't get the remaining 24 goblins done soon but now that I have a taste for them it won't take me another 4 years to come back around to them.

-Jay

Sellsword Captain and Les Impes!

This past weekend I finished up 4 more models for Frostgrave.  In spite of that I missed my deadline for getting my wizards done so boo me!

First up I needed a captain to join my Frostgrave warband.  There are a lot of different options for what kind of captain you can have but I wanted a fairly traditional older warrior type.  I had an extra Denethor (Boromir & Faramir's father) from Lord Of The Rings and he felt perfect.  He's wearing mail armour, armed with a sword and as a bonus has a fur-lined cloak so he felt he fit the background very well.  I went with a largely black colour scheme so he will blend in with some Darksword miniatures I'll be starting in a couple of weeks.

I also needed some Imps to add to the ever growing pile of wandering monsters.  I actually painted 5 of these same figures (on bevelled bases) last year for a D&D game but I wanted consistent basing across my Frostgrave stuff so I painted 3 new ones.  These are "Les Impes" from Ex Illis a Canadian wargame that had great figures but failed to get any traction in the market a few years ago.

Alright.  Here's my new "to-do" list  (all by Friday):
- 6 Rangifers (Frostgrave)
- The Mad Hatter (Batman Miniature Game)
- Mature Nephilim (Malifaux)

Maybe I'll get it ALL done for once

-Jay

Closing out 2015.....can we pretend it's still 2015?

I've been hobbying steadily but I've been super-slack about posting stuff on line lately.

I wanted to wrap up (and show) the last of the stuff I painted the last week or so with the goal of setting a clean slate for 2016.  My hobby focus has been on Frostgrave since I got back from B.C. and I'm starting to look at what I'm painting as possibly supplementing a D&D or Pathfinder game in the near future.

My friend Stan and I are trying to get all the scenery and models done that we need to play through Thaw Of The Lich Lord.  The next scenario on the schedule (we've already played through the first two) involves four cultists defending a broken down cart filled with their loot.  Sticking with my traditional lack of attention to detail I picked up a scenery pack for Malifaux with a broken down cart....not realising I had already bought one, so now I have two for when I need some extra scatter terrain for Malifaux.

One of the elements that is different with Frostgrave from a traditional fantasy skirmish game is that as warbands snatch treasure it can attract wandering monsters which function independently of the players' forces.  I have a fairly extensive collection of 'classic' fantasy gaming monsters however there are some uniquely Frostgrave critters I wanted to add to my collection.  To that end I got some Constructs (basically magic powered robots) which I thought were great because they broke with the traditional steam-punk look of most fantasy robots as well as a Snow Leopard and Ice Toad which basically call out that we're not playing in Middle Earth or The Forgotten Realms.

I finally got around to replacing my Bretonian Men-At-Arms figures with some proper Frostgrave soldier models.

In addition I've rounded out my force with a wizard (Malbeth The Seer from  GWs Lord Of The Rings line) and apprentice (Bretonian plastic from Warhammer).  Eventually those figs will also be replaced but for now they are my Thaumaturge and Apprentice.

Last but not least I touched up and rebased Boromir (again GWs Lord Of The Rings) to use as my knight.

For the first time in a few years I also got some models for Christmas so 2016 starts now!

-Jay

Return to Erebor

The other night I was watching The Hobbit and it suddenly hit me that I never finished my set of Thorin & Company that I started when GW released Escape From Goblin Town over a year ago!

I love these dwarf figures but lately every time I've gamed Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit it's been using elves so there hasn't been a huge push to finish the dwarves.

Anyway I got back to it and started painting in small batches based on families.  My first go round I had already done brothers Dwalin and Balin as well as Thorin and his nephews Fili and Kili.

Re-watching The Hobbit reminded me how much I liked some of the other dwarves so the first familial group I did was Bifur, Bofur and Bombur.  These guys seem like the comic relief brothers (maybe a Marx brother analogue?) and as miniatures will probably have the least practical applications outside of a Hobbit game but they're great figures and painted up really well.

Next up were Oin and Gloin.  Oin I was pretty quick on although I definitely spent some extra time and effort on his facial hair, but I felt Gloin presented a different set of challenges than the other dwarves.  I felt a need to make Gloin a close match in terms of colour-palette for my earlier Gimli models but still needed him to look like a different character.  In the end I went one shade lighter on the beard and changed his belt colour, other than that they look really similar.

That leaves me with Ori, Dori and Nori and the dwarves will be done!

-Jay

Elves!

My much delayed Elves are finally done for Lord Of The Rings!

I still have a few more characters I want to add but I think I can now in good faith start looking at elf miniatures from The Hobbit.

My last dozen figures were basically a repeat of my first dozen figures, 12 of the basic plastic elf troop models that used to come 24 to a box.

At the start of my last game I was really lamenting the fact that I didn't have more Galahdrim Warriors (the armoured Wood Elves) and less of these guys but by the end of the game I really felt that the basic models were more bang for the buck point-wise.  The great thing about the Galahdrim is that they have a higher basic Defense stat and they can add shields on top of that to bolster it whereas the basic Wood Elves have a lowly Defense of 3 and are quite easy to take out once you hit them....once you hit them.  This is one of those things that I can never wrap my head around until I've actually played a game with models on the table.  Although I was well aware that my elven cloaks would protect my lightly armoured troops from shooting while they crossed the table I was sure that once they got into melee their Defense 3 would be their downfall.  What I forgot was that a low Defense in Lord Of The Rings is not that big a deal if you pair it with a high Fight value.  So basically my regular troops were immune to bow-fire and won two-thirds of their fights so their low Defense stat seldom became an issue.

If it hadn't taken me a year to get around to finishing these guys I think I'd be headed out the door to get another box!

-Jay

And so it begins...

I think my elves are beginning to wonder why they are always the next thing I'm going to paint instead of the thing I'm actually painting.

This morning I finished my first 12 (I need 48 eventually) Moria Goblins for Lord Of The Rings.  As anticipated they were pretty quick and easy to paint so I should hopefully be able to crank out another 12 or so at some point this week.

If all goes according to plan (does it ever?)  I should also finish my last 12 Wood Elf warriors tonight.

-Jay

This old house

I've been bouncing from project to project lately but one of the things I've realised I need some more of is fairly generic fantasy scenery.

I have a fair bit of undead and horror themed scenery but I need some good solid regular buildings and woods.

The set pictured below is one of two Osgiliath Ruins sets I painted up this week.  This set is specifically for Games Workshop's Lord Of The Rings game but I feel it will work well for any fantasy game setting.

My only regret (you were right Stan) is that I should have bought a third set.

-Jay

Oh captain my captain!

I didn't have a lot of time to paint today so rather than struggle my way through some portion of a sprue of Moria Goblins I decided to take on the reasonably unique looking metal models and do him up as a captain.

In largely unrelated news it looks like I've figured out which 25-30mm sci-fi skirmish game I'm going to start the year off with and it won't be Warzone or 40K, more on this this weekend!

-Jay

I have the attention span of the dog from Up.....SQUIRREL!

.....I feel like I should be standing up in front of a group called "Miniatures Anonymous" admitting I don't know why I keep passing out and waking up in piles of hobby projects.....

So the other day I was playing a very enjoyable game of Lord Of The Rings (which continues to be my all time favourite GW game), with my work-in-progress Elves facing off against a force of dwarves.  It was good fun and reminded me that I should play more Lord Of The Rings this year instead of constantly hoping from fantasy skirmish system to fantasy skirmish system.
...but...
and this is how my troubles always start...
My opponent mentioned early on during our game that he had collected his dwarf force with the intention of gaming his way through the Shadow And Flame scenario pack but had never found a goblin player to play against.  I immediately said "if you don't mind me using goblins from The Hobbit instead of Moria goblins I'm sure I can make the bad guy force".
...but...
and this is how my troubles always start...
A few minutes later I realised 'oh, but I don't have a Cave Troll', luckily my friend had an unpainted Cave Troll he was willing to give me.
A few more minutes go by and I realise 'oh, the goblins from The Hobbit don't have bows or shields', that's okay he's got 5 sprues of Moria Goblins I can have too.

So somehow I had gone from a plan to paint 48 miniatures I already owned and could get out of my backlog to getting 60 new miniatures I was going to paint to play 4 games.  I realise the only real hitch was I was still going to need Durburz, Goblin Shamen and a Goblin Drum.  I had also offered to give my friend any unpainted LOTR dwarves I had in return so when I got home I opened a figure case I had with 'LOTR Dwarves' written on it and this is what I found inside....

So I guess the point of my story is; my name is Jay and I think I may have a problem.

-Jay

Return to Mirkwood!

About a year and a half ago I started painting up an Elf force to play through the Fall Of The Necromancer Campaign for Lord Of The Rings with my friend Stan.  We played through a couple of scenarios but then real life got in the way, I started working in a different area, and we got a little derailed. 

Earlier this week Games Workshop posted their pre-order info for their new Hobbit miniatures and there were a TON of awesome new elf figures.

I want to get a pile of these but I'm putting it off for a week or two and in addition to showing what I'll be painting next I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about why I'm deferring my purchases slightly and my thoughts on miniature pricing (trust me, it goes hand-in-hand).

When new figures come out, especially from Games Workshop or Privateer Press the first thing that usually happens is a bunch of people jump up and start moaning about the prices.  Now I wouldn't make a statement as ridiculous as saying price is irrelevant but lets keep in mind what exactly we're talking about here; miniature war gaming is a first-world luxury purchase based pastime, no one is forcing you to buy more miniatures or to replace the old miniatures you already own, those are your choices.  Having said that I found myself thinking the new elves we're a bit too pricey for me and I probably wouldn't buy them...that thought actually caught me off-guard, I've never decided not to buy something solely based on price before, where did that idea come from?  And that's when I realised why I thought they were too expensive, because I still have a bunch of unpainted elf figures.  It has nothing to do with price difference from last year, or figure counts in boxes, it just felt like bad value to me because I still had stuff for that collection I wasn't already getting full use out of.  It's funny how all the figures I've gotten use out of feel like great value for my money but all the ones sitting unpainted in boxes feel like a waste, huh?

So to that end I'm going to paint my last 16 unpainted Lord Of The Rings Elves (shown below) and then I'm going to get started on the new Hobbit Elves.

Anybody else out there excited about the new Hobbit miniatures?

-Jay

Fall Of The Necromancer Scenario 2: In The Nick Of Time

After multiple delays Stan and I finally got down to playing the second scenario of the Fall Of The Necromancer campaign.

In the second scenario the forces of the necromancer are on the offensive against the elves of Mirkwood while the forces of Elrond half-elven rush to their aid.  Will the wood elves hold out?  Will Elrond's forces arrive in-time?  Will I remember to use the Sentinels special abilities before the thrid turn?  Let`s find out.....

Turn 1
The basic deployment is Wood Elves set up within 12" of the northern table edge, the Necromancer`s forces set up in the middle of the table and the forces of Elrond advancing in from the southern board edge.  The goal is to knock the oppoenents force below 25% of it's starting model count.

The forces of darkness advance on the Wood Elves



Turn 2
I started off by being very aggresive with my Sentinels, immediately running one of Stan`s giant spiders off the table.  Unfortunately this did a great job of reminding Stan to kill my Sentinels as quickly as possible a task he set to with immediate effect.  As painful as the loss of my Sentinels was in the early turns Stan's biggest offensive punch came from his Wargs.

Trust me there were alot more elves in this area before this picture was taken



Turns 3-4
I was racking up a decent body count with my elven soldiers but inspite of using 2 heroics charges (a new mechanic in The Hobbit edition of Lord Of The Rings) Elrond was still taking his sweet time getting to the fight.  Stan and I were running pretty much even for casualties which meant I was going to run out of troops before he did.

Khamul The Easterling protected by his elite bodyguard of pincushions

 

 

Turn 5



Thranduil was doing a great job of holding off the orc horde almost single-handedly which almost made up for the terrible rolls I was getting from Legolas.  During his advance across the table Elrond had has his stores of might, will, fate and wounds sorely drainned and it looked like he was not going to turn out to be the saviour of Mirkwood after all.

Thranduil`s (second) last stand



Turn 6
After fighting off a half-dozen members of Stan`s army completely unsupported for 3 turns Thranduil finally fell.  In the meantime Khamul had gotten so tired of waiting for Elrond to show up that he sent some of his faster moving forces to engage him directly.  In his weakend state Elrond was no match for the monsters of Dol Guldur and after fending them off for one turn he too was laid low.

Thanks for coming Elrond...next time ride a horse or something!

 

 

Conclusions



Another fantastic game, this time I came out on the short end.  In hindsight I would key on 2 gross tactical errors I made that I never truly recovered from.
The first-I should have rushed the Wood Elves up (even though it would have cost me more casualties the first 2 turns) to hold the bad guys in the center of the table.  It would have meant taking alot more damage early on but would have put me in a much better position to engage with Elrond`s forces sooner.
The second-I have alot more experience playing the bad guys in LOTR than the elves and the thing I kept forgetting is that while advancing across the table if I had put my spearmen in front becuase they are equipped with shields they actually have a higher defence rating than my sword armed elves.

Oh well live and learn.  The important thing is that I had a great time playing and I look forward to my next game against Stan and his....wait....Castellans Of Dol Guldur....that can`t be good...

-Jay

Dwalin & Balin

Back to the dwarves!  I took a break from; dark grey, dark blue and black to paint some of the more brightly coloured members of Thorin's Company this week.

I liked both of these figures for completely different reasons.  Balin was great because I got him done in under an hour which made me feel like I was getting my painting-legs back under me again and Dwalin was fantastic because he is simultaneously a cool character in LOTR but also looks like exactly the dwarf miniature I always wanted for roleplaying.

I now have 5 of the 13 dwarves of Thorin's Company done as well as Bilbo and Gandalf.  This week I'm finally playing my long awaited and repeatedly delayed second game of Fall Of The Necromancer so that coupled with the fact that Tuesday night/Wednesday morning look like they may be spent watch Dredd 3D again means the dwarves will probably be moving to the back-burner for a week.

By the way.   For anyone watching The Hobbit and thinking "I don't remember that from the book" alot of it ties in nicely with Fall Of The Necromancer so if you can lay your hands on a copy I highly recommend it!

-Jay

Balin & Dwalin

 

The Hobbit: Fili & Kili

Today's addition to Thorin's company are the dwarf brothers Fili & Kili.  I'm intending to work through the dwarves from The Hobbit in pairs and these two seemed like a great jumping off point.  They are attired in similar colours so it was a fairly simple thing to paint them together and they also make logical start to the troops if I play a small game given their disposition as Thorin's bodyguards.

Next up are Dwalin & Balin as I'm hoping to brighten up what has so far been a fairly somber looking collection of dwarves.

-Jay

Fili & Kili (is it just me or does Kili look like Aragorn Jr?)

 

Thorin Oakenshield

It seemed like the logical first step to getting Thorin and Company done was to paint Thorin so here we go.

I have to say I'm excited about painting Thorin & Co. for 2 reasons.  First up they are cool figures that I can use to play through an exciting campaign with, secondly when they're done I will have figures to fairly accurately represent every dwarf character option in either a D&D or Pathfinder game.

Thorin himself looks like he should stand out on the tabletop from the rest of his company.  Inspite of the fact that he is both dark and monochromatic none of the other members of his group use any blue in their clothing at all so when the whole lot of them are assembled he should still stand out.

Up next; Fili and Kili.

-Jay

Thorin is ready to lead his band of dwarven brothers.

 

 

Bilbo Baggins

Tonight saw the completion of the non-dwarf good-side models from my Hobbit box set.

Bilbo Baggins joins Gandalf and Radagast in their quest!  Tomorrow night I hope to get started on the first of my dwarves (probably Thorin himself) with the goal of ultimately getting all the good forces I need to play through Escape From Goblin Town done before the year is out.

Tomorrow I should also be able to show the model I painted for Strategies Games & Hobbies www.strategiesgames.ca Secret Santa as I believe tomorrow is the day of the big reveal!

-Jay

Preparing for a hobbit's holiday.

 

Radagast The Brown

The unexpected journey continues today with Radagast The Brown.  Radagast is the extra bonus figure contained in the Escape From Goblin Town box and I was pretty stoked to get him given that I was going to need a Radagast figure for my Fall Of The Necromancer campaign.

Radagast is defintely the most detailled figure in the set and he comes with an extremely well sculpted plastic base.  This interpretation of Radagast is interesting because it deviates so much from the traditional image of a fantasy wizard.  Radagast basically looks like a cross between an absent minded professor and a tree-hugging hippie and I think it works really well to create a distinct and unique character model.  On a side note unrelated to modeling I was also suprised to find out that in The Hobbit Radagast is played by Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor, for Doctor Who fans).

I'm caught up on elves for my Fall Of The Necromancer game so I think I'll paint Bilbo next and then get started on Thorin's Company.  My Hobbit games are still a few months away so I've got time to paint each one like a character model.

-Jay

Radagast and his loyal companion Sebastian