What's on my plate

I'm thinking about making this a regular Friday post, something that will help me keep my projects in order and on track and maybe actually finish one or two of them before the end of the year. A couple of these do have real deadlines so that might help me stay on target. I'm going to sort of list these in a priority order, of course that is subject to change without notice.

1) RPG characters, finish. These are for my every other Saturday game. There are only six of them, you would think this was a slam dunk kind of thing. 1 Female Gnome Battlemage, 1 Male Dwarf Barbarian, 1 Male Dwarf Cleric (NPC, currently being played by someone interested in joining the group), 1 Female Human Rogue, 1 Male Human Cleric and 1 Male Elf Paladin. These only have to be tabletop paint jobs and are likely to see rough use. I would like to have these done for the next game so I have a week at this point.

2) SAGA Norman army, get started. These are the Perry Miniatures which are all prepped and just need to be mounted for painting and primed. I want to enter these in the army painting competition for Genghis Con XXXIV in February of 2013. So they are to get my best efforts. There are 87 miniatures here so I do need to get moving. I think rather than my normal assembly painting style I'm going to paint these up by SAGA points which should let me concentrate on just a small set of figures at a time. So 4 mounted Knights, 8 armored Spearmen, 8 Crossbows, 12 Archers or a single character. For the characters I plan on mounted and dismounted versions of the warlord plus a couple of small character vignettes.

3) SAGA Norman army, repair and touch-up. These are the Gripping Beast Miniatures which make a fine wargame army. Unfortunately some repair is necessary after they were returned to me. I have some new steel lances on the way to replace the cast pewter ones so those will become more survivable (and slight more dangerous to your opponent since they are actually quite sharp). I found some Gripping Beast crossbows to replace the two missing ones and I'm going to take a shot at sculpting a couple of tails to replace the missing ones on the horses (I think there are two missing tables). A little touch-up work after that and this will be an army to be proud of on the battlefield.

4) 15mm British Napoleonics, re-base and paint.  After initially being very enthused about the LaSalle rules my group has kind of soured on them. Although others may disagree they just don't have the right "feel" to them. It has nothing to do with the weird turn sequence either (I have several games I enjoy that have weird turn sequences), its like the armies are just to generic and don't really seem to behave the way you expect them to behave. I can't really explain it better than that. So I'm mounting these up for Napoleon at War. This will let me use them for Napoleon's battles as well. The bases are a bit larger than Napoleon's Battles but pretty close. I have remounted one infantry unit (74th Highlanders, non-kilted) and started another last night (88th Connaught Rangers). These are mounted on six stands of four for a total of 24 figures which means I have 8 figures left over from each LaSalle unit I rebase. I'll have a bunch of extra center company infantry after I'm done so I guess my British infantry force is going to get a significant expansion which means I'll need more command, grenadier and light infantry minis to fill them out. Of the six stands one is grenadier, one is light, one is command (2 flags, an officer and a drummer, this counts as center company) and three center company stands. Each unit also gets two little skirmisher stands. These will be filled out mostly with regular light infantry but I'll do a proportion of them as rifles as well. Hopefully this will be the kickstart I need to actually get the artillery and cavalry done as well.

5) 15mm ACW, finish. I just need to get the union cavalry done for this army. Its never been a high priority since the union side rarely has cavalry and I have some older stuff that can be subbed in.

6) 28mm WWI USMC next unit. This has always been a side project so I'll fill it in a unit at a time as I feel like it. I have everything I need for this army now, including a couple of little FT-17s for support.

7) LoTR Helmingas finish. Originally this was going to be a display/tournament army that would have taken place last month. Unfortunately that tournament was cancelled when the organizer moved to the other side of the state for work. I have almost all the pieces for this one, the infantry component has been started and I think I have most of the cavalry component now. I'm missing two characters Eomer and Erkenbrand to finish off the army. I do intend to finish this army as I enjoy the game. There will probably be re-newed enthusiasm once the Hobbit is released.

8) Legion of the Damned 40K, acquire. This is a truly long term project and again is meant to be more of a display army than anything else. I have slowly been acquiring Legion of the Damned miniatures, both older and newer models to create an army. Now of course its not legal as an army but I'm not letting that stop me since I don't actually intend to play 40K with them. This will be a highly converted army and some of the ideas are still gelling while I acquire the various components (the cheaper the better!).

9) Genghis Con XXXIV entries. Its never to early to start on competition entries. I have all the components for my diorama and construction and painting can commence anytime now. I haven't decided on which individual piece I'll do, but I'm determined to have at least two entries in the competition this year.

10) Danish TYW in progress. Another display army for me, currently no one is playing so I don't feel rushed to get it done. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes on this one, however, I do want to get some work done on it to see my painting style mixes with the oil-wipe technique.

11) ATSF "the Patch" general work. Although construction proceeds at a snails pace it does slowly move forward as I work on rolling stock, motive power and the occasional building. The first priority there is to finish the brick freight house that I started. I found the clerestory windows that I misplaced that I need for the roof so I can get back to construction on that.

I think that's a reasonable accurate list at the moment. Of course its going to change on a whim, as other miniatures surface. I'm pretty sure that I have pirates and cowboys hidden away in drawers that would like to get painted. I'll probably add those to the list after I get my ships from the Laser Dreamworks Kickstarter and I get a look at the buildings from Battle Flag and Sarissa Precision.

So what's on your plate?

Grimbold's Helmingas Warband - 1st Painting Session

I have finally got started on the first of my Rohan warbands. I admit that I have lost a little steam because the tournament I was looking forward to playing in has been cancelled. The organizer had to move to Grand Junction for a job. So I'm through the faces, hair, helms and a start on the armor. So here are the first results (not very impressive, I might go back and rework a few things).

Hunted down some minis

I have finally had a bit of success finding some elusive items to fill out some of my forces. I scored two boxes of  Dragon Models HMMWV M1114 off Ebay over the last couple of days at only $10 a box, that will give me the four HMMWVs I need for my modern USMC force. In addition a GW LoTR Erkenbrand model showed up on eBay at a reasonable price and I was able to grab that as well. It was listed as new but it has been primed black and the shields are missing all of which can be dealt with. Right now that means that my Rohan force for September is just missing Eomer to complete and he seems relatively easy to find on a regular basis.

LoTR Rohan; Grimbold's Warband

Of the three warbands that will make up my army for September this is the first one that I at least have all the troops for now. I was so excited about the Mounted Royal Guard that I forgot to mention that the box also had two blister packages. One was Grimbold himself and the other was his command; a horn blower and a standard bearer and they are metal not Finecast!. That gives me 16 warriors that have all been converted and primed white, Grimbold and his command which need to be cleaned up and primed as well. I definitely won't start painting this bunch until Grimbold and crew are primed and ready. I'll have an easier time making everything match if I do that. I will also need to figure out what type of conversions I can pull off on the metal miniatures. Conversions are a tad bit harder with those than the plastics. I'll probably keep it pretty simple.

LoTR Rohan; Carrot on a Stick

Sometimes I just need something to really keep me moving on a project. Right now I have two things to keep me working on these Normans. The first is the competition entry for ReaperCon, which must be finished by the time I leave for the convention in mid-May. The second is the converted Rohan miniatures that I finished up. They have all been primed up with white and I'm pleased that I was able to blend in the head swaps pretty seamlessly. A number of the heads are definitely a little big, but most have blended in okay, in several cases I think the new head is much better than the old. I have come to realize that a couple of these poses have heads that really are just a bit on the small side. So any way here is the carrot:

LoTR Rohan; Mounted Royal Guard Update

I received a very early birthday present last week. I wasn't expecting these and really I did not buy them. In the box was a bunch of the Rohan miniatures that I needed for my army in September. Amongst these were five very precious Mounted Rohan Royal Guard. Considering the difficulty I have had even finding some anywhere online (yes I know I could buy them direct from GW) this is quite a haul. It was a very good box and I'm very thankful for it arriving.

LoTR Rohan Helmingas Warband - The Hair Pics

I got in a little more time on the Rohan the last few days. Mostly in between trying to write papers for work and school. I wasn't satisfied with a couple of the original head swaps that I did so I removed three, did a little filing raided a few more sprues and now I'm quite happy with the look. I think once they are painted up you won't be able to really tell the difference. I had to resculpt hair in order to get a seamless look from the new head to the old body. Instead of green stuff I decided to try out some Apoxie Sculpt that I have had laying around for a while now. Amazing stuff much easier to mix up and work with than green stuff. I'm not sure if it will have the same strength in the end but for my purposes strength is not a requirement. So here are some pictures of the hair on the eight miniatures that received head swaps:

And now some group shots before the primer goes on. I'll have to set these aside for a bit while I work on a commission job I accepted today. I have always wanted to paint a batch of Normans but didn't really want to own any. With LEG getting into the SAGA miniatures game I have my chance now. So a 6pt force of Normans is waiting to get prepped for painting. And now on to the Helmingas Warband (hopefully I will be able to find Grimbold soon, he too is currently out of production):

Can you tell what my favorite soda is from these pictures?

LoTR Rohan Helmingas Warband - 1st Look

If you have been reading this blog then you already know that I can be all over the map with my projects. I like to be able to go back and forth between periods just to break things up. My armies get done slower but it keeps my interest up.

I spent some time working on one of the three warbands for my Rohan army for the September tournament. Since I'm unlikely to actually win the tournament through strength of arms I'm going for the painting win. This is an official GW tournament and as such there is straight forward checklist of items that a judge is looking for when he is judging the paint work on the armies. Conversions, even minor conversions, add huge points to your painting score, but there must be conversions on something like 90% of your army to get the check. With that in mind I'm working on doing at least some minor conversion work on every miniature that will make up the army.

First up is Grimbold's warband made up of 12 Rohan Warriors. These are all plastics from the basic Rohan Warrior box. I'm trying to go very wysiwyg with these guys, so no throwing spears or bows, just shields and hand weapons and since the Helmingas prefer the axe to the sword I have swapped out weapons on half the miniatures. I sacrificed weapons and other interesting bits from a couple of sprues of Hirdmen from Gripping Beast and Bondi from Wargames Factory. I'm not sure I'm happy with all of the head swaps that I made. In particular the heads from the Gripping Beast sprues just seem to be to big, the ones from the Wargames Factory sprues look a bit closer to being the right size. Its a little difficult to use these heads to begin with since the GW LoTR figures are much closer to true 25mm miniatures and the Gripping Beast and Wargames Factory are definitely 28mm miniatures. They may look fine after I get them painted up but if I'm going to make any changes I need to do that now since I will need to resculpt the hair before painting them. Head swaps are usually the hardest thing to do but they really are a piece of cake with plastic miniatures. The same is true with weapons swaps and in this case I swapped out the whole hand, that was much easier than cutting weapons in two and grafting them on to existing hands. Everything else is just the addition of belt knives and pouches. Very minor stuff and very easy to do with plastic miniatures.

I have also run into a problem trying to acquire some of the miniatures for this force. A lot of the models particularly the mounted versions of the Rohan Royal Guard are out of production. My guess is that they will soon be available in Finecast resin. I don't want to wait that long or spend that much money on them either. I spent some time looking at images from the movie and determined that there isn't that much difference between the Royal Guard and any other Rohan warrior. The biggest difference is the helmet. Only the Royal Guard have a crest on the helmet with some horsehair flowing off of it. Two of the plastic Riders of Rohan have this style helmet (with the cheek guards). They will take more work but I'm going to use these two riders as the stock models for converting all ten of the mounted Royal Guard that I will need for Eomer's warband. I will probably do a little extra work on the horses to make them stand out a bit more as well as the horse in the Royal Guard blister is the same horse in the Riders of Rohan box.

Let me know what you think about the heads. Its definitely not to late to change things out and they are only plastic and I have another box to work with if something doesn't work. At this point the work is going smoothly and I'm on schedule to complete the painting in time for September.

In Search Of: GW LoTR Rohan Royal Guard

Well, two days in and I'm likely to fail Anne's challenge of not buying any more minis till 1/4 of what I currently have is completed. But there is a good reason, honest. You see I'm in desperate need of minis for my proposed Rohan army which has to be ready by September. I have kept the numbers low, 35 total miniatures, but to do that I opted for a good portion of Rohan Royal Guard miniatures, well because they are expensive and don't come with bows! Even more expensive when you actually have to buy them. I dug through my stuff and came up with 1 pack of 3 on foot which means I need 6 more on foot and 9 on horseback. So if anybody out there has some of these guys they are willing to give up I'm interested in talking. I'm quite certain that I can come up with something to trade for them if necessary or out right buy them. I'm not going with the throwing spear option with these guys so if you have them assembled and have long since tossed the sword arm then I can't use them. I prefer unpainted because if they are painted then I'm going to strip them back down to bare metal and plastic. Quiet frankly with this list I'm not going to win the tournament or even come close so I'm going to have to go after having the best painted army.

Backlogs and New Projects

As most of you have been able to tell from watching the horde of miniatures coming in to my house I sometimes  have a hard time focusing on just a single project. Currently on the list are:

1) WWI US Marines - I have everything for this army but only 1 platoon of 15 is painted.
2) Modern US Marines - I have almost everything for this army either in hand or on the way. I may need a few more troops and I definitely need more HMMWVs and probably MRAPs (a 6x6 Cougar and a 4x4 Cougar are on the way).
3) ACW Union - Infantry and artillery are all finished, I need to get to the cavalry but that's a low priority for this army. Currently all my Generals are old Stone Mountain minis or Old Glory, I'm planning on replacing them with some from Peter Pig painted up to a much higher standard. The only other thing I would like to do is finish the Fire and Fury game markers that I also acquired from Peter Pig.
4) Napoleonic British - I may go through a re-basing exercise for this army. Currently mounted for LaSalle which I have now decided I don't like very much. I may go back to Napoleon's Battles basing or perhaps the Napoleon at War basing, actually for the British infantry it should work out to be the same, just the cavalry is mounted differently I think. So most likely the infantry component is finished, I need to work on artillery and cavalry at this point.
5) Flames of War DAK - This army is basically finished, there are a few odds an ends that need to be completed but it is a playable army. I am considering going back and stripping down vehicles and re-painting them with some new techniques that I have learned since I painted that one.
6) LoTR - I have one army based around the Knights of Dol Amroth that is about 1/2 done, but I'm unhappy with it. I may go ahead and just go with the Grey Company, or make a left turn and do Rohan. How can I pass up vikings on horseback?
7) SAGA - Still up in the air on this one but I already have a bunch of vikings painted up so really all I would need are a few leaders painted up and I would be done. I need to dig the miniatures out and see what I really have. Certainly more than what SAGA requires. My biggest issue is that these rules are irremediably expensive for being a paperback set. I have hardbound rules with considerably more content that cost less than SAGA.

So those are the armies that I have currently. I am contemplating an TYW army (Danes) and maybe a Confederate army for ACW.

Tons of Fantasy and Science Fiction stuff floating around the desk. This stuff is primarily intended for competition painting. I do need to pick out a piece or two to get ready for ReaperCon in May

NEWEST project. My Dad called last night and he has decided that he wants me to paint another one of his carvings. This one is not a carousel animal but more of a statue type piece that would be a decoration on a carousel. It was one I had considered painting when they went to Europe in 2011 but I painted the Hippocampus instead. Sounds like I made a good choice because he has something pretty definite in mind for this one. Its also small enough (about 2' tall) that I can bring it home and work on it rather than having to drive up to the shop. Since its for my dad everything else will probably come to a stop while I work on that. I think its time to break-out the airbrush and get used to using it again. Airbrushing is going to make this go much faster than working it with a brush.

Lord of the Rings - Rangers of the North

So here is the beginning of my Lord of the Rings Army; a bunch of old metal Rangers of the North. They were nearby when I took pictures of the Marines so I figured I may as well get them up in their own gallery. Right now I'm unhappy with the sculpts, and unhappy with the paint work. It could be that they are just in that ugly stage but I think the greenish grey tunics are just not working out for me at all. Anyway, one shot here and the rest in the gallery.

Miniature Wargaming

Like every miniature gamer that I know I have far to many unpainted miniatures and interest in far to many periods. This year I'm trying to cut back a little and will probably have some miniatures that will end up being bartered or sold off. I think I have narrowed my periods down to the following: WWII, WWI, ACW, TYW, Napoleonics, LoTR and 40K.
For WWII I have a 15mm DAK army for Flames of War and I'm slowly gathering the components to do a later war army based on the Hermann Goering Division again for Flames of War. I actually prefer the Command Decision rules but I know with FOW I can always get a game in.
For WWI I'm working on an American force in 28mm. I'm focusing on the 5th Marine Regiment of the 2nd Division. I have a lot of unpainted pewter for this force right now.
I have an 15mm ACW Union Army that is just about complete. I need to finish up some more cannons and do the cavalry and that one can be called done. They are mounted for Fire and Fury. Currently we are playing the newer regimental rules but I still have my old brigade level rules too.
The  advent of some nice plastics for the Thirty Years War/English Civil War sucked me into this period. I'm working on the Danes for the TYW, of course nothing is finished yet and there are some more miniatures to buy. Maybe with the tax return this year.
I have British in 15mm for Napoleonics. This army is actually almost finished as well. Originally my group (the League of Extraordinary Gamers or LEG) was playing La Salle, I think we are leaning towards going back to Napoleon's Battles. The infantry is just about finished which leaves a small amount of artillery and cavalry to round things out.
Lord of the Rings is my fantasy rules choice and I'm working on a Dol Amroth force that I hope to have ready for Mayhem in the Mountains later this year. It will be a double duty army in the end so I'm painting more troops than I can field so it could be used as Rangers of the North or Rangers of Ithilian.
The final piece is my 40K army. This is not something I'm really gung ho about but both of my boys play 40K so it would be nice to have an army to play against them. I have been collecting Legion of the Damned figures as the basis for my own chapter. I have been slowly accumulating kits and miniatures for this army, most of which will end up being pretty heavily converted.