Arcane Cataclysm, Grave guard, Merry and Pippin! Oh my!

     Before the long weekend, Rachel and I scheduled a trip to Saskatoon to visit one one Rachel's nursing friends. Nancy has two kids, both of which we haven't seen yet! So we all went to the zoo together. It would have been smart to actually take some pictures of the zoo, but you know, toddlers and exotic animals makes me forget. 

    Fun fact, the Saskatoon zoo has zebras which were seized from some farmer. Looks like he only got a fine of $2,800? Yet the province payed $120,000 to take care of them properly? Like how do you smuggle zebras into the middle of the prairies and why!? Sure, he could have painted some horses. Miniature ones.

    We also had a stop at Dragon's Den, well, two stops, as I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to pick up more miniatures. And the answer is always yes, just don't go looking at all the miniatures I still need to paint.

    Dragon's Den had their 3rd Edition Age of Sigmar sets marked down 40%, basically I get one half of the box for free. This box has Vanari Dawnriders and Tzaangors Enlightened on Disc, which I might trade/ sell as I am mostly interested in the foot troops. I was informed that the Tome of Champions 2020 had co-op/ solo rules, so the Tzeentch could be painted up as adversaries. 

    I played WarCry on saturday night with James, he is in a narrative campaign that I have been playing in. He was hoping to play Kill Team, I mention, like everytime that Kill Team is talked about, that he should check out Acolyte. What's Acolyte? Why it's a campaign setting which you are an acolyte with 3 followers, to start with, doing all the dirty work for an Inquisitor. It is heavily inspired by Rangers of Shadowdeep. Also solo and co-op, for those wanting to learn the rules to Kill Team without the pressure. Anyways, I traded some Sisters of Battle for the Hand of the Archon. 

    I also found a local selling some grave guard and Merry and Pippin in armour for a good price. There! Now I should be set for several more winters worth of painting. Oh, I am also changing the point system to just a model count, that way I am just painting and not pushing myself to paint specific items.

Painted: 86 Troops, 4 Mounted, 7 Monsters/ Vehicles, 11 Small Terrain, 2 Large Terrain

Purchased:195 Troops, 22 Mounted, 1 Monster/ Vehicle

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    As I mentioned before, I think I will be preparing for October, making a bit more terrain for Don't Look Back and painting up some killers. 

MESBG Battle Companies - Haradrim

     After playing a demo game of Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game a couple weeks ago and Rachel showing interest in a small Rohirram battle company  I had the drive to paint up more miniatures. Battle Companies only requires 8 Haradrim Warriors, half with arrows instead of the normal 30% that other factions have to abide by. I painted up two Haradrim Raiders as reinforcements for later games. 

    Next for MESBG, I will be painting up Rohirrim for Rachel. She asked for the standard greens and browns they usually have. Once I get back to painting the Haradrim, The Betray on foot and mounted will be my focus as he is a Hero of Valour, meaning he can lead 15 warriors and gives a bonus to poison weapons. Add a Ringwraith and I would have a 300 point army, a good start.

    Researching more about the Haradrim, I found a small snippet from their wiki stating that there were two blue wizards that went to Harad, Alatar and Pallando. The two missionaries were sent to convert those that worshipped Sauron. Not much is know of their fate, but they might've founded a cult of magic. 

    This one line opens up the idea of Haradrim that fight against Sauron. Given that I have lots of Haradrim Warriors, I could paint some up that fight against Sauron's forces and thus have a narrative for fighting against Sauron's minions.

Painted: 12 (8 troop, 2 mounted)

Purchased: -55

Total: -43

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    Terrain! I sweat! I have some terrain looking things on my desk (as well as some Slaves to Darkness for the warcry narrative campaign I started) but there is terrain!

Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Demo Night

     I follow the local MESBG community on Facebook, which had a game night on Tuesdays. Josh recently changed the day to Wednesday to see if more people could come out to learn the game. Rachel is out in Fort Saskatchewan visiting her dad with R. The meet up started at 6pm so I was actually able to come out on time. 

    Josh brings his kids to play, this time they played against each other, but he did mention that his eldest son has been in tournaments.

     I played against Nathan, who borrowed some Defenders of Helm's Deep from Josh to play with. I had brought my recently acquired Haradrim... why I didn't bring the stuff I painted up like, trolls or ringwraiths? Good question! I blame lack of sleep the previous night.

This was basically the whole game, a giant battle in the middle

    We played the Capture and Hold scenario from the core rule book. My cavalry came in big to capture the objectives, I believe it was 2 points for each held and I had 4 of the 5 by the end. Nathan did wound my leader with ranged fire, which got him a victory point. 

    Either way, I think we both had fun playing. There was an amazing shot at the end of the game. One of my archers tried to shoot at Theoden, he successfully made the shot, weaved the arrow through 3 different skirmishes between his target and wounded Theoden. However, it was the first time he was hit and Nathan used a Fate to shrug off the wound, still cool though!

Falling off the Oliphaunt

      Whelp! It happened! I was doing pretty good at the paint what you got challenge for this year, only having 2 or 3 miniatures positive or negative of zero (at least points wise).

      But then I have been listening to podcasts about Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Battle Companies and I might've found a really good listing on Ebay......

       So that's 41 Haradrim Warriors (23 archers and 18 spears), 3 Serpent Gaurd, 12 Haradrim Raiders (6 spears, 1 banner and 5 archers which aren't shown) and The Betrayer on foot and mounted. 

       I think I have enough for Battle Companies.... running all this plus 

24 more Warriors I had before hand would be roughly 700 pts. The Betrayer is a Hero of Valour able to lead only 15 soldiers under his command. I did just paint up several Ringwraiths that all could lead an extra 15 each. Can't recall if there is a max duplicate heroes you can have, I'll have to check my rulebook.

       I'll probably trade some of these as this seems too much. Kitbash some to be chieftans heroes. Eventually get a 3D Printed Oliphaunt. 

Painted: 0

Purchased: -17

Total: -86 (ouch!)

Next on the Hobby blog

       I might have also went to Sentry Box during our stay in Calgary..... stay tuned for pictures of the haul.

"They are the Nazgûls, Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead."

    So far so good for the painting challenge this year, I haven't purchased any new models yet.... well, that's not quite true. I did buy some X-wing miniatures used for Full Thrust but I don't plan on painting those and thus not going on my pile of opportunity. Now to actually read the rules for Full Thrust to play with them! 

    

    Hot on the heels of the fellowship are the Ringwraiths. These beings that are devoid of anything expect their will to hunt down the one ring were great to paint up. I thought that using the blue/ purple on their cloaks would make them too bright and cheery but it seemed to work out well. I do have more to paint, I just picked out models that didn't need much work to get to painting. 

Nine would have been a better number.

Mounted Nazguls

Ringwraiths on foot

Forces of Evil

    A good start to my Evil forces, I would be able to run the trolls and wraiths together. Next would be to paint up some minions to be led by these leaders.

Painted: 10 points

Purchased: -32points

Total: -13 points

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Not much painting going on the desk right now, making some 10mm buildings for a game called Mech Attack! which is a simpler Battletech game. Nothing to show yet, but hopefully I can get some time to tinker around with it.

"I will take the Ring to Mordor!"

    The fellowship of the ring is ready to go on their perilous quest. I really enjoyed painting these up, they have good detail and the hobbits didn't take long at all. 

The Fellowship

The Hobbits, the hobbits, the hobbits! To Isengard!

    

    I appreciate the tutorial that I used gave each hobbit a distinct colour pattern. Merry and Pippin are pretty interchangeable in my mind, so giving them different coats and cloaks helps a lot.

Gimli, Aragorn and Legolas

Gandalf and Boromir

How are the fellowship boys going to get out of this situation!

    I was going to post earlier, but I have a bad habit of waiting till a set of minis are finished. It just seems like I would get the social media endorphin hit before actually finishing what I started, making me less eager to finish the miniatures? Maybe that's just me. 

    The fellowship themselves is around 600 points for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. Not the easiest list to field as they are all heroes with special rules, but still can be done. I looked through the Quest for the Ringbearer rules, which follows the ring to Mount Doom with like 28 scenarios. Might be a bit expensive to find all the different models for said scenarios though, but I would work with what I got. There is also a Fantasy Fellowship section in the book that allows for building your own fellowship. Basically a "What if..." rule set, which does sound interesting.

Painted: 9 points

Purchased: -32points

Total: -23 points

Next on the Hobby Desk

    *Soul piercing scream* That's right, time to finish up some Ringwraiths! They are getting their best cloaks from the drycleaners and will be ready to hunt for the ring.

For who the bell Trolls

         Oh boy, I need to work on my timing with these blog posts! These models have been finished close to the beginning of March. Once the bases were printed off, the trolls painted up quickly. They were picked up for about $30 for four soft plastic miniatures from Red Alliance, instead of $50-60 Canadian. This company specializes alterative Lord of the Rings models, perfect for MESBG if I am not going into anything official. 

Mordor Trolls - able to protect head with helmets

Cave Troll - Club smash!

School reunion outside Minas Tirith

    You might be asking yourself, hey wait that der troll are on different bases. But more accurately you are literate and talk normal in your noggin. But either way you say it, you are correct, the all powerful GW deemed Cave trolls lesser, providing them with a meager 40mm base for their impressive visage, while the Mordor trolls are on 60mm bases. The armoured trolls seemed to fit better on the bigger base too. Why worry about official bases on unofficial models? I'll tell you when I figure that out.

    They turned out pretty good for how quick they were, the cheap plastic didn't like the washes I used as much as something from better companies so there are some spots I had to repaint. 

    Reading through a new blog called Bedroom Battlefields, I found his list of companies that sell models similar to GW old hammer models. It's great to be able to see a curated list of the top UK wargaming sites as I am not as familiar with the hundreds that are commonplace across the pond. King Games, specifically Dunkeldorf miniatures, was one of the sites linked. I picked up a couple blister packs, Claudia "Schwartz" Hinkel, Agnes "Fleischer", and Esther the Zealot. Though they don't really invoke hand sculpted GW models, I thought they would fit into Rangers of Shadowdeep as survivors or rangers. I also picked up a swarm of rats that I quickly knocked them out to play RoS solo. I have been looking for a Canadian store that carries osprey and fireforge games without them being sold out, so I picked up the very well regarded female wizard box and a peasant rabble, the latter I hope to use some (there are 18 minis in the box!) for a non-combat TTG called applepicking28. One of many non combat games being worked on by the @4ydra community.

Shipped with some nice artwork...

.....and free goodies!

    So this is a first for me, finishing up models as soon as I buy them, what a quaint idea! The reaper bone rats were easy to base and paint. 

Rats swarming Minas Tirith

Get'em boys, he smells of cheese

    I played the first mission of Rangers of Shadowdeep which was split into two scenarios, first one finds the Rangers in a village that has been turned into zombies, and the second is rescuing the remaining villagers from spiders. 

    Playing it solo was fun, I used random painted miniatures, the stego Ranger leading humans and dwarves into battle against evil.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Should have some terrain painted up soon, and May is just around the corner. You know what that means? Monster Mayhem is upon us!

Ooo Shiny!

 So I bought a lot of miniatures, like what am I doing!? I mean I know miniatures are cool and playing new tabletop systems is a fun experience but I should at least PLAY the games I buy. But no, I picked up all sorts of random unrelated miniatures. 

I am always looking on the buy and sell Facebook page for Saskatoon and Regina. Which now I have stopped looking or at least tapping the proverbial brakes instead of just jumping on everything. 

One of the individuals on there was selling a load of dark elves. I justified this purchase as it would a good fit for all sorts of skirmish games or specially Warcry. But I didn't think it was this much for how much they were asking!

I was expecting 10 archers and 20 spearmen, looking back on the message they were saying he had a least that many plus extra! And of course, no deal is complete without me getting a few lizardmen. 

This dark elves isn't going to be the HEAD of a major corporation anytime soon!

Looks like I have:

24 dark elf spearmen 

11 dark elf darkshards 

12 glade guard? 

4 high Elf shadow warriors?

5 dark elf executioners

High Elf mage 

Eldar Bonesinger

    I have been following Leadballoony's blog. he has been doing a 'Realm of Warcry' campaign, in which the warband is randomly generated from the tables found in Realm of Chaos: Lost and the Damned. Since reading about this, I have been rolling up chaos champions with the people I support at work as fun little activity to do while it's cold outside. 

    One I rolled up was a Dark Elf that rolled immense as a trait, which brought me to the idea of this Dark Elf corrupted by nurgle, wishing to be a more of a girthy presence. I'll have to go through my bits and see if I can start making this champion a reality.

    With the new starter set of the Middle-earth Strategy battle game coming out, I got a bit of FOMO and picked up the older Battle for Pelennor Fields box set. I know the rules might be a bit outdated, but I found the models in this box a much better deal then the new one. (I also wasn't into the dynamic posing of the heroes). As for the models, the forces of good have 45 and the forces of evil have 38 (two being the witch king on fellbeast and a troll). The new Battle of Osgiliath has 27 and 26 respectively between the two side. Once I get the fellowship painted up, I think I will try to track down the Quest for the Ring mission book, which takes you through the key moments in the hobbit's journey to Mt Doom.

    I might've gotten a targetted ad for Barbaric Splendor, which had 50% off their model range and claimed to be going out of business. Which doesn't seem to be the case anymore, I will assume that I single handedly saved the business with my purchase. I picked up 7 as follows:

• Desdire
  
• 2 x Jeyra
• Llama Queen
• Kaegan
• Katja
• Thorn

Jeyra and Thorn could be tribe leaders for PrimeEvo, I liked the sculpt of Jeyra which is why I bought two. I am sure I can figure out a kitbash to make them a bit different from each other. The Llama Queen I bought because I have a saber tooth tiger from Hassle Free miniatures that she could be a rider on.

    On the buy and sell facebook page, I found someone selling off two forces of Bushido. The Yutei Clan and the Temple of Riso. Should be a good start to learning the game.

Bushido Lot from Facebook

Temple of Ro-kan

    Temple of Rokan, is located on the Rokan mountain. Masters and monks hone their skills at summoning powerful spirits and harness the fury of natural elements to fight back against the darkness.

Cult of Yurei

    Cult of Yurei are worshippers of the dark god Yurei, giving his followers the power to control life and death. Though they might think they aren't bound by fate, to his will, every puppet has a master.

    The blister packs contain two Cult of Yurei: Yugio & Rokuro; as well as one Rokan: Master Akari. From the small amount of reading and videos I watched, a standard game of Bushido is 100 pts. The Cult box as 99 and the Rokan box has 70, giving me options with the additional blister packs. Master Akari boosts the Rokan to 90. 

    The seller was saying he didn't have time to start another profile, which a second baby on the way. Hopefully I can find time to paint these two factions up and get some tutorial games in. Looks like he bought two factions that thematically would appose each other.

    Alright, I think that's it? I do have some Kingdom Death pin up miniatures coming in from Aliexpress, but those won't be here till like February. Boy do I need to slow down on my purchasing and get some games and painting in!

Next on the Hobby Desk

Some miniatures that I painted to round out 2022!