Its Alive!

Greetings folks, bit of an exciting week, though little in the way of modeling and painting. I can however tick off one of our works in progress (though all of the credit goes to my wife actually):my daughter Elizabeth Gloriana was born on Thursday, March 1^st at 4:15 am.

That said, my Games Workshop Direct Order shipment finally came in, completing my 750 point Isengard force for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Its seems like the highly sought after Finecast models are hard to come by, but I finally have my 8 Uruk Hai Crossbowman (though I haven’t taken a look inside the blisters to see if they are truly Fine or Fail cast). Alongside this much needed addition of ranged support, I also picked up all of the Uruk Hai special characters (hence the Direct Order) so we have plenty of evil options for leading the army of the white hand.

As you can see, they are mostly one piece metal models (Mauhur’s blades and Vrasku’s crossbow being the only extra bits), so they were easy to assemble. As you can see by the image above, I like to add sand to my model bases before priming. I use Elmer’s wood glue to add the sand, and figure that the primer just adds an additional layer to hold it down before adding the paint and dry-brushing later.

As I mentioned, the Lord of the Rings force is basically going for tabletop quality, so I am keeping it simple. Prime Black; dry-brush Bolt Gun Metal on all armor and weapon bits; flesh areas are painted Dark Flesh; finally clean up the cloth and leather portions with black or various browns. After this a healthy bath of Delvan Mud will be liberally applied, and then some basic layering to highlight will be added. Being that these four figures , Lurtz, Vrasku, Ugluk, and Mauhur , are special characters, I will take some extra time with the later stages, and try to clean them up, but we are still going to keep it fairly brief.

At the moment my 750 point Isengard force looks like this:

Uruk Hai Captain with Heavy Armor and Shield

5 x Uruk Hai warriors with pike

5 x Uruk Hai warriors with shield

2 x Uruk Hai Berserkers

Uruk Hai Captain with Heavy Armor and Shield

5 x Uruk Hai warriors with pike

5 x Uruk Hai warriors with shield

2 x Uruk Hai Berserkers

Mauhur

12 x Uruk Hai scouts with shields (upgraded to Mauraders)

Vraska

8 x Uruk Hai warriors with crossbows

2 x Uruk Hai warriors with pike

2 x Uruk Hai warriors with shield

This gives me Lurtz, Saruman, 8 x Uruk Hai Scouts with orc bows, and an Uruk Hai warrior with a banner as extra figures, a side board, or models to push me towards a higher point game (I can field over 1000 pts)… and I received a pair of large wings for another (secret) project for Lord of the Rings that has yet to be unveiled…

So far I have been enjoying Lord of the Rings SBG (Strategy Battle Game) though I have only played a handful of games. Some things that I have learned are: (1) Gimli is a murdering beast and I hate him. Don’t get me wrong, I love that he is “in” the games, as it makes everything feel cinematic and epic – but I have yet to put the plucky dwarf down, usually just feeding him a victim each round and praying for lucky crossbow shots. (2) Uruk Hai warriors are awesome! Their high defense and fight make them a very brutal force to deal with, and they shock me over and over with how resilient they are. (3) Mauhur is a beast! With 3 attacks and the ability to upgrade Uruk Hai scouts to movement 8 opens up all sorts of options on the battlefield.

Well folks, that does it for now. Just brainstorming my projects that I have claimed I will finish we are staring down the following:

Dystopian War – Federated States of America Fleet [by Norcon 7/28/12]

Lord of the Rings (SBG) – Isengard Force complete (750pt list)

Warhammer 40K – Scratch built Thunderhawk constructed and painted [by Norcon 7/28/12]

Warhammer 40k – Horus Heresy Emperor’s Children (500pts minimum, 1000pts if possible) [by Norcon 7/28/12]

Infinity- Caledonian Force fully painted [by Norcon 7/28/12]