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!

Heap of Abandonment

     After Monster May(hem) I still had a few more giant spiders on the hobby desk, I added 2 more large spiders and 3 more of the smaller ones to my swarm. With that, I ran out of 50mm bases for the large spiders and called it a day.

Experimenting with colours

The whole swarm

    

    Spiders painted up for Rangers of Shadowdeep, which requires 6 plus. Extra spiders! I am sure some arachnophobic reader out there is cringing at the thought. And the box has 24, so only 13 more to go my multi-limbed opposed readers!

    Occasionally, a project will speak to you, painting and colour scheme comes naturally. Every model should speak to you in someway or at least did when you picked up the new shiny. You enter a zen like meditation while painting these figures, hours go by without notice. But, as Ian Malcolm says, life finds a way. In this case, it's to get in my way of my precious hobby! We moved in November so these Blackstone Fortress models just pushed off the desk into The Heap. We don't usually talk about The Heap on the blog, those miniatures that are just inches away from being whole painted models. Now is the time we do, if I don't have a theme for the month, I will chip away at these island of misfit toys. Maybe while listening to The Misfits (are they good? I don't actually listen to them.)

    

    Anyways! Cultists from Blackstone Fortress are done. I picked up the Escalation expansion for Blacktone Fortress at the beginning of the covid shut down to support the local hobby store. Two explorers are already done. The rest are on the painting block in various stages of progression.

    I have a second cultist flamer that I picked up in an ebay lot a few months ago, very well sculpted, good thing I have two!

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    From July to August is the Community Challenge, Season of Scenery, that Dave hosts every year. Seeing as I have used the same tree and 3D printed house for the backgrounds of my pictures a few times on the blog, it might be time to get more terrain painted up! 

Terrain and Rangers (companions)

     Already half way through February, where does the time go? For a birthday present to myself, I took holidays for the coldest week in February. *Knock on wood* The plan for this week was to get a lot of painting done and reading for the graphic novel book club I am part of. In reality, it was an excuse to not have to leave the house and relax. 

    And that was mission accomplished, had a relaxing week, painted some fantasy terrain as well as models. Besides driving Rachel to work and back, I didn't really leave the house besides doing a boost for one of my friends. Am I ready to go back to work tomorrow? aww man, it's tomorrow?! Ugh! That's alright, the key to a good week is to have a good routine on Sunday, warm bath, Cobra Kai, read before bed, and be glad that it's not -45°C for the week to come!

    Most of the terrain I have in my collection is 40k, with the exception of the Corpsewrack Mausoleum, I don't have much in the form of plastic fantasy kits. I ordered some MDF off of amazon a week ago, not paying attention to the thickness before purchasing it. The MDF was to be used as a base for the metal Colossal Skeleton from reaper miniatures. Once it showed up it, was way to thin to support the heavy metal colossal. With several sheets of the MDF kicking around, this would be perfect for the rivers. They turned out alright, but there was a lot of curling from the PVA glue. Using more MDF on the bottom helped to straighten it out. 

Modular River, curves and forks to come

    Rachel made a comment that the small island in the middle of the river looked like a large piece of poop, wanting to save face I told her that there actually was a giant upstream that was relieving himself. It's not happy little mistakes, it's world building! I do tend to agree as I don't think I cut the insulation form down enough, and it was dark brown at the time. 

    Each scenario in Rangers of Shadowdeep provides you with miniatures list for the adventure. The first one requires 6+ zombies, 3+ Giant Rats, 6+ Giant Spiders, and 3+ Survivors. Scouring my Castle Ravenloft Board Game I was able to find 3 Giant Spiders, 3 Zombies and 3 swarms of rats which is close enough. Undead Encounters comes with 7 zombies and oh hey! a skeleton rat maybe it will be one of the giant rats (if I can find them)

Two companions and one survivor

All Reaper Miniatures, I left the companions off bases as I would like to find some lipped bases for the PCs as that's what I used for my Frostgrave Wizards. I really enjoy painting up metal character models, quick to paint and they look great afterwards. The crossbowman has been kicking around as a metal thug for my D&D sessions for sometime, glad he finally will be on the table. As for the Ranger, you know, the leader of this intrepid band of heroes, she is a witch hunter from hasselfree miniatures. Like normal Jon fashion, I put the cart before the horse.

The wolves will be used for the second adventure.

3 Wolves from Ravenloft

    Four zombies finished, the two flanking ones are from the cultist set. The kit gives you an excess of bits, proving an abundance of variety for all your misguided sects. These two must of went a bit too deep into the forbidden magic.

Scatter terrain and 3D printed ruined house

Stand off in the tavern

"You shall not pass, unless you are 19"

Rachel and I also played another round of Root: The Underground Expansion. This time I was the Underground Duchy and Rachel had the Marquise de Cat. I felt like I was playing keep up most of the game. In true Rachel fashion, the dice didn't like her, rolling double zeros on attacks that should have been a sure thing, twice! I finished the game with 30 to 17, at the mid point of the game I started  cutting hard into Rachel's resources, making it extremely hard to come back from. Root is much quicker to play now that we had it on the table a few times. 

Next on the Hobby Desk

After playing Warhammer Underworlds this past week, it's gotten me excited to finish off the Dread Padgeant. Next weekend is also the release of all the new Slaanesh models and battletome. Debating if I NEED to get the battletome right now,  would be nice to see the new rules and lore but that all could wait for when I am actually playing AOS.