Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Bago wrote:I got a it into the Davale Stuff and finished some Mirkwood Elves.

Great work! Those Davale minis are ace. Fit quite well with the GW versions.

Slinky wrote:After a long hiatus, I have got a couple of things done...

Nice one! Really like what you've done with Eomer. You've just reminded me too that i never got around to buying those ring bearer minis. They're still available, so I really should.

I, too, have recently joined Davale's Myminifactory tribe. I've only printed a few of their not-Numenoreans so far, but I like what I'm seeing. Here's hoping they do a nice Dragon Emperor that will fit in aesthetically with the GW Easterlings.

I'm busy converting a crusader into Turin Turambar, I've finished painting him. Now I just need to convince my brother that he wants to sculpt a dragon for Turin's helm. I'm also finishing my crusader Gondorian army.

I have been working on re-starting the Mordor army I got when I was a kid.

I have been working on finally finishing some unpainted Orcs I never got around to and I have re-painted and re-based some of the old, badly painted minis from my childhood army.

So far, I got two warbands of Orc Warriors, a Ringwraith, an Orc Captain and a Banner Bearer. I still have a handful of Orcs and 2 Trolls to go.

I found an old blister with the Knight of Umbar (my favorite of the GW Nazgul characters) and I am planning to get the Battle of Osgiliath box and split it with a friend.

That should give me a decent army to start playing some games with friends again. I am also thinking about getting two of those Orc characters from FW. They seem fun.

Nice! Always good to reclaim the minis we painted in our youths

Any pics?

Had a lovely surprise this morning as my brother obtained the original GW books for Fellowship and Towers, which completes a set as we already had Return of the King. I think all told...£4.50 for all three books!

All are pretty much the same book with changes in units and scenarios, but its nice revisiting GW from the days of 2001 to 2003, where one remembers the wait between the movies. The first book's cover doesn't match the other two books, but you can't beat Alan Rickman on his horse - dramatically back-lit - delivering you the ultimatium "join us...or die."

I don't feel that we have the time or money to collect the model range on top of the other games we have on the go, but tokens are always an alternative. When not playing friends and family I do like to indulge in some solo gaming, and giving thought to adding Rangers of Shadow Deep to this little collection...

Hello all,
I've recently been on a huge SBG kick. Dug out my old miniatures that've been untouched for over 15 years, and have been touching up paintjobs and repairing damage to get everyone fighting fit.

Also decided to take some of my historicals and base them up for SBG and just use them in place of some of the GW model line that I don't really like. Kinda inspired by Wargaming in Middle Earth or whatever it was - those guys on Facebook who do LOTR stuff with no GW minis. I'm not quite such a purist but for example I prefer mail clad Minas Tirith over plate, I like them to look a bit more like the Watchful Peace artwork than the movie design. And I think Easterlings should really be medieval Russians and Steppe people, not what is in the movies, which I think work better for Black Numenoreans.

Also been hacking up and milliputting various Schleich monster figures for some First Age monsters. I'll post pictures when I get around to it, but I'm not a great photographer tbh so I'm never sure of the value of it!

Getting some good ideas, but the best ones are Hera & Olwyn being stalked by a nazgul-like pack of large wolves, and a "tower-crawl" with Saruman ascending the Tower of Orthanc for the first time since it was sealed by Gondor many years before.

Since Hera and Olwyn aren't available, I think the Tower of Orthanc is the best option for the time being.

I'm currently working on two projects that will see use in lotr and Oathmark. One is an army of Spiders. It was on my list for a long time and I bought spiders from several manufacturers years ago, but when I got the WGA spiders as a birthday present last year it kicked off to finally build and paint some of them. It turned out the best looking spiders are made by tabletop arts and the WGA ones' are actually very ugly spiders (and not in a good way... they just... don't look like spiders as if the designer never looked at actual spider legs) and more fitting for some SF alien creatures than just fantasy giant spiders.
I must say after all these years Shelob is still an awesome model and the most dynamic spider model I found. You could spray her black, place her without a base somewhere in your house and wait what happens...

My other project is a Khand army, though it features heavy elements of Fireforge Samurai and Ashigaru, actual GW Khand models will be in the minority once I'm finished, but I'm trying to convert Samurai into Khand guys by giving them similar axes like the GW guys have. They'll be the light infantry supporting my human Oathmark army, where the heavy infantry/ core is formed by Easterling soldiers.

Yeah, Shelob is one of the reasons I was excited for LOTR back in the day. The Balrog, Black riders and Shelob...they could keep the rest.

I bought a bunch of Copplestone halflings which I think are the best Halflings on the market no contest. The GW ones are a bit too comedic for me, whereas these ones look sensible without being too military. I usually get bitten by the LOTR bug in the autumn so I'm gonna get going on them then, but it'll be cool to have a Halfling force after all these years. Really want to put together some modular Barrows/craggy hills/hobbit holes to go with them.

Recently I did a whole bunch of my "Watchful Peace" Gondor and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I did Swan Knights using Fireforge Teutonic Knights with the winged helmets from the Victrix fantasy sprue, and a bunch of soldiers of Gondor and Knights of Gondor from the Conquest Games plastic Normans. They had double handed axes on the Sprue so I also banged out some Axemen of Lossarnach and some Mithond Vale Archers too, and I did up some Guards of the Fountain Court with some Fireforge Foot Knights. The last bits was bashing some Frostgrave soldiers into Rangers of Ithilien. I'm pretty pleased with how it all came out I have to say, and I'll hopefully paint it before too long!

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I must say after all these years Shelob is still an awesome model and the most dynamic spider model I found. You could spray her black, place her without a base somewhere in your house and wait what happens...

Fun fact*

The spider movie Shelob is based on (the Sydney Funnel web) reaches 2inches in length with about a 3inch legspan, which makes it not altogether smaller then the Shelob model which comes on a 60mm base. They're also well known for making the rearing pose the model has. So yes, you could actually quite easily go to any given house in the greater Sydney/Blue Mountains area, place it on someone's floor and scare the ever living gak out of them.

Funner Fact

Earlier this year, scientists classified a new Funnel Web, the Newcastle Big Boy, that can reach twice the size of the Sydney Funnel Web with the biggest found so far a whopping 10cm in length. No word yet on the potency of venom.



*The funness of this fact is entirely debatable depending on your stance on spiders.

 Da Boss wrote:
I bought a bunch of Copplestone halflings which I think are the best Halflings on the market no contest.

Oh I've been meaning to get some of those. Thanks for the reminder!

 Da Boss wrote:
I bought a bunch of Copplestone halflings which I think are the best Halflings on the market no contest. The GW ones are a bit too comedic for me, whereas these ones look sensible without being too military. I usually get bitten by the LOTR bug in the autumn so I'm gonna get going on them then, but it'll be cool to have a Halfling force after all these years. Really want to put together some modular Barrows/craggy hills/hobbit holes to go with them.

Recently I did a whole bunch of my "Watchful Peace" Gondor and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I did Swan Knights using Fireforge Teutonic Knights with the winged helmets from the Victrix fantasy sprue, and a bunch of soldiers of Gondor and Knights of Gondor from the Conquest Games plastic Normans. They had double handed axes on the Sprue so I also banged out some Axemen of Lossarnach and some Mithond Vale Archers too, and I did up some Guards of the Fountain Court with some Fireforge Foot Knights. The last bits was bashing some Frostgrave soldiers into Rangers of Ithilien. I'm pretty pleased with how it all came out I have to say, and I'll hopefully paint it before too long!

I look forward to seeing all of this! While I actually really like the GW Hobbit Militia/Archers/Shirrifs models, actually fielding a whole army of them would be kind of a pain, between the cost and the fact that you would have many copies of the same 4 fairly distinctive sculpts. It's nice to hear that there are alternative models out there that would work; I actually looked into the WGA Halflings but those look way too "regular military", and the Hobbits from LotR were literally a bunch of farmers and shopkeepers forced to take up whatever tools that could stab/slice/bludgeon someone and defend their homes. Most of them had never even seen a real sword or spear in their lives. So the WGA halflings are totally unsuitable for MESBG.

As for your Gondor project, I really like the idea of using those different kits to make them. The armor in the movies (which the GW models are based on) is probably not quite right for how Tolkien imagined it, with the full platebodies and stuff. Finding alternative models with more chainmail and leather hauberks and stuff rather than plate armor is probably a bit more appropriate to the books' version of Gondor's soldiers.

I've actually considered doing the same thing for Army of Lake-Town/Survivors of Lake-Town, perhaps combining WGA's Guards and Villagers into the appropriate Lake-Town Militia models. Not sure I'll ever have time to actually do it, but it could work, and would no doubt be cheaper than buying a bunch of the Finecrap models from GW.

I'll try and take some pictures of the Gondorians - they're fairly straightforward kitbashes with no sculpting to speak of. I am thinking of giving the elite guys cloaks from Greenstuff though.