Setting the scene...

When I think back to my early gaming beginnings, I always recall playing with the typical 20mm or 1/72nd scale plastic airfix toy soldiers... tipping them out on the carpet, lining them up and knocking them down to the accompaniment of mouthed sound effects... boom, bang, dakka dakka, Aiiieeeeee!!!!

Simple 'rug-rat' fun... but then of course you want to have some scenery for your soldiers to interact with, take cover behind etc etc...

The next trip to the toy store and you start picking up bits and bobs of lichen or other spongy foam stuff from the model railway section...

And I think its this close connection to model railway materials that begins to transcend our humble wargaming efforts...

I can still recall, back to my youth, when sometime back in the 70's, the fire brigade went on strike in the UK... it was a period of strong trade unions, and it seemed everyone was having their chance to hold the country to ransom by striking for more pay or better conditions or both... My dad was in the fire service, and although he didn't agree with the strike, putting lives at risk, he had no choice due to the strength of the trade unions, and being unable to cross the picket line, as such...

With the forced time off, he built us a proper model rail layout, on a 8'x4' board complete with hills and tunnels, using chicken wire and cloth bandage and paper-mache, then painting it all up and adding clumps of lichen and sponge etc... and although relatively basic by todays standards, it rocked my little world back then.

But best of all, when not playing with the trains, the board was perfect for my toy soldiers... and I think its the connection between toy soldiers, model railway stuff and cool looking terrain and layouts that's at the root of all my gaming now... I want it all to look good!

We strive, well many of us wargamers do, to paint up good looking figures to build our forces for the game, whether a simple skirmish force or a large army. But I don't really see the point in striving for well painted figures, if you then plonk them down on naff terrain. Agreed, we all have to start somewhere and we were all beginners once, but I feel if we are going to try and improve our figure painting, we should be trying to improve our scenery to 'display' them upon too.

However in wargaming, we are not dealing with a simple static display, but terrain that needs to be interacted with as we move our models over and through it. Our models need to be able to stand on the terrain without falling over all the time, so a balance has to be struck, quite literally, between looks and 'play-ability'. On top of which, we don't want to be playing over the same board every game, so we often resort to making terrain pieces that can be re-positioned to vary the layout for each game...

I have always enjoyed making terrain, as anyone who has followed this blog over time can probably tell, whether its simple hills and hedges, or trees, walls, fences and buildings of all shape and sizes... but these have always been terrain 'pieces'. My relatively recent return to Middle-Earth, and playing through many of the journey book scenarios, has now led me off down another terrain building path... no longer just 'pieces' but now entirely themed boards, to match the specific scenario... and this has had me looking back more closely to those model railway scenic items and how-to guides...

So I have been looking over the Woodland Scenics range of materials and how they work together and compliment each other, and found their how to videos on their website and Youtube very interesting...

Here's one which seems to cover most of the basic techniques and materials...

Having watched this, I was all fired up at the weekend, to have a splurge at the local store... However I saved a few pennies when chatting to the chap there, who explained there was no need to buy the branded spray glue, as its just thinned PVA (interior) glue with water about 50/50 with a little detergent added. I did buy the spray bottle and some packs of fine and coarse turf to add to the stuff I already had at home... Only downside was they were out of Realistic Water, which I need to finish my Watcher Board... oh well, hopefully have some next weekend...

So I'll be giving these techniques a try, with the Watcher Board to finish first. Then our Fellowship quest continues through the subterranean realm of Moria, so things will be mostly rock and stone there for a while, then back out in to the sunshine, with the flight to Lothlorien, followed by the scenes at Amon Hen.

Lothlorien is fairly straight forward, though I am tempted to try building a model tree large enough to take a flet; an elven tree platform.

Amon Hen has several scenics items; ruins, statues and more water to arrange, and I have been ordering and sourcing components to complete this set up too.

I think, on the terrain, and thus gaming front, its going to be an interesting year! Wish me luck!

'Realisations' ... and 'Rationalisations'...

Here follows a long ramble, grab a cuppa, and take a seat...

Well that was the summer that was, and coincides here in NZ, with Winter in the Northern hemisphere, for Curt's Analogue Hobbies Winter painting challenge...

I entered, just to be involved, but knew I was kidding myself that I was going to amass any points...

If it hadn't been for the timing of my few meagre entries with the bonus themed rounds I would have scored bugger all!

I started off well, or at least prepared well, and had a whole load prep'd and primed ready for the go, including stuff for Flames of War, Empire of the Dead and other bits and bobs, including The Hobbit dwarfs which were supposed to be completed for last years event!

But the wheels kinda came off early... I had a pretty naff game of FOW early December last year, which had me questioning myself as to whether I was going to bother to play the game anymore at all...

So when the Challenge kicked off, my enthusiasm to paint FOW stuff, was pretty much rock bottom... but I forced myself onwards, simply out of a sake of completeness...

I managed to complete a set of five Plastic Soldier 15mm Panzer IV F2s... for the Vehicle round.

Panzers

A Begliet Tank escort platoon got half done, as did a sFH18 Howitzer battery... they are still annoyingly taking up space on my table... staring me down, taunting me; "finish us!"...

I also managed to get a few bits and bobs done for Empire of the Dead, and entries being timed for the themed bonus rounds.., the Villains:

A vampire in humanoid bat form, the sculpt inspired, I presume, from a scene from the Gary Oldman Dracula movie.

And also...

...the hound of the Baskervilles... who's a nice doggy?

And finally...

Alluring, sensual?

... a conversion! My mate Brett bought me the figure, a Hasslefree pole dancer, for a fun birthday present (better than a bottle of wine!) a year ago or so, but I never got round to doing anything with it. Mostly because I had no idea what to do with it! Then I found the Empire of the Dead game, and the idea of converting her into a naked Vampiric Consort was too much to resist, so I cut the base off the pole and added a blade to make an ancient spear, and painted her as pale as I could manage.

Ahem, yes , well... eye popping no doubt!?

I think she makes for a rather alluring character! Perhaps her nakedness is a little OTT for the Victorian setting, but she is meant to be an Anti-Hero after all, and if the old Hammer Horror films were anything to go by, it seemed there was always just about any excuse to get their kit off! ;-) Which of course is why I watched them, as a teenager ;-)

Nice bum too!  ;-)

Next up... the Non-Combatants;

'Nanny'

...Mrs Hudson, or as I like how Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes character refers to her as; 'Nanny'. 

"Tea Mr Shifter?" - so who remembers the PG Tips Chimps?

But if anyone who has followed my blog recently may have guessed, things took a different tack about half way into the Challenge; the recent Hobbit movies have had my whole family excited to be enjoying Middle-Earth again, and a re-visit to Hobbiton (the now fully developed movie set in Matamata) seemed to crystalise this.

On top this, my young son was motivated to start reading the novel, The Lord of Rings, and in so doing, then wanted to play through the scenarios in order, through the GW LOTR 'Journey books'.

This for me has been almost a complete, yet much looked for, turn around, and has switched my gaming focus, to play games with him. He turned 10 middle of last year, and seems to have hit that 'golden age' where gaming with Dad is cool and his physical and mental faculties now mean, he can reach the gaming table, he can be trusted to handle the models carefully, respectfully without busting them, and is mentally well up on the play (though still learning the tactics of the game, much like me!), including creating his own army lists for other LOTR scenario games he's coming up with...

I have long loved LOTR but had few local opponents and so, have often collected other rule-sets and figures in the hopes of playing games with local adult folks... but in some way I feel I have been chasing my own tail a bit in this respect ...

And thus I feel I have had one of those epiphany-like moments, and jumped up and down in the shower crying Eureka!, whilst being mindful not to slip on the soap...

So having found I have come full circle, in my hobby, I have decided to focus back on my main love; Lord of the Rings, though now called, The Hobbit, SBG. With my son being 10, I figure I have six years ahead of me where we can enjoy gaming together, until either girls become more interesting or exam studies become more important, or both; life gets hectic at 16!

Consequently, I have enjoyed a major clear out of the Lead / Plastic mountain, seeing SYW,  ACW , Naps, Ancient Celts, Saxons, and rule-books and supplements, and other bits and bobs sold off through Trademe (NZ's ebay), and thus winging their way off all round the country.

It has been like a breath of fresh air blowing through my games room... and relieved me of pangs of guilt and stress; wondering if I'd ever be able to paint all the figures I have amassed... More to follow as I get really ruthless, and start looking through all those boxes, shelves and cupboards...

With these newly liquidated funds realised, it has allowed me to source and order up on gaps in my LOTR collection, sourcing models via trademe, ebay and facebook groups, that have gone out of production, or likely to do so shortly... Or direct from GW where the items have become mail order only...

I had always hoped to field vast armies of my own to play Black Powder and Hail Caesar, but, whilst I genuinely like those rule-sets, I think the reality of me ever getting such armies painted seems to get more remote, the older I get, as time passes by, and the Lead mountain continues to grow... I hit 44 earlier in the month, and have already noticed a slight yet gradual decline in my insight, which kinda terrified me as to how many good painting years I have left in me...???

This again put me in mind of a wonderful quote from Gandalf; "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

So Gandalf, how much time do I have left....?

Is this the 'Wargamers Mid Life Crisis' ??? Maybe I need to get out and ride my Harley more instead of worrying about it all!? ;-)

But, not to give up on the BP and HC rule-sets, I am going  to use my LOTR troops for mass battles using these rules. I set up the Yahoo Group 'Hail Caesar-Fantasy' (originally named 'Hail Sauron'; far more catchy, but changed in case of copyright issues - I now wonder whether "Fair Use" would have allowed me to leave it Hail Sauron?) originally for this purpose, but have then done little with it. About time I changed that...

I have also decided to stick with the 'Pirates' gaming, as I find that tremendous light-hearted fun, and with Empire of the Dead, as I like the sinister setting of the game. I have all the models I need to play either game system, so its just a matter of getting them painted too, and making some more terrain...

In truth I think my gaming is very much motivated by good movies, I obviously love the LOTR / Hobbit stuff, then there's the on going Pirates of the Caribbean saga, and also the Sherlock Holmes movies and other Gothic Horror/VSF/Steampunk stories to inspire some fun gaming...

So that was my "Eureka!" moment, and where my head is currently at...

Now,  back to the painting challenge, and the focus switched to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit...

Chris and I initially had some fun playing through a couple of the missions in the Fall of the Necromancer supplement, as this was themed very well with the recent The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug movie, and I ended up painting up 4 Castellans of Dol Guldur to play some of these missions;

Castellans of Dol Guldur

Castellans of Dol Guldur - I love these figures. I have another 4 I could paint, but think 8 might be too much for a regular SBG game? I had bought this many when I was going to use them in WOTR (GWs War of the Ring Battle game), which had minimum company sizes of 8 figures for infantry... but that game has fallen by the wayside...

I also managed to get some work done on the The Hobbit dwarves and got Balin done for the themed Hero Round;

  Balin - the brains behind the Company?

Throughout this whole time, I have had various terrain interludes which have already been documented in prior blog posts.

Then it was time to crack on with terrain and models I needed to complete to continue our Fellowship of the Ring campaign...

This got the LOTR Casualty figures done;

 Frodo, after being bitten by beastly Shelob!

And Shelob, just for scale! She's truly monstrous!

Battle Report

And then also the set of Paralyzed hobbits from the Fog on the Barrow Downs set...

Again with a pair of ghostly Barrow Wights! Eek! ;-)

Battle Report

I was just about to put the following forward for the "Last Stand" bonus themed round , but cocked up the closing date for entries submissions, so missed my chance... Ah well, no worries, at least I have been painting something for my son and I to enjoy gaming together shortly...

Noro Lim Asfaloth!

So finally this weekend, too late for the challenge, I put the finishing touches to the "Last Stand" entry; Flight to the Ford, from the Fellowship of the Ring:

I loved the Ringwraith flying wedge formation scene, chasing down Arwen from the movie, I found it a moving sequence...particularly as Arwen urges Asfaloth on; 'Noro Lim' (Ride on!)

Confrontation at the Ford of Bruinen.

"Give us the Halfling, She-elf"

"Come and claim him, if you want him!"

I have had the mounted Arwen with Frodo figure for quite some time, but it had languished for some time in the lead mountain as its more a scenario or diorama piece than a gaming piece for the most part. Likewise, the mounted wraiths have been in my collection for a long time; an ebay win, but the motivation to paint up all the mounted wraiths was always fairly low priority - how often would you field 9 in a game?

But playing through the FotR scenarios in order, tied in nicely with the theme of the last bonus round for Curts challenge. So that was motivation enough! So ten figures to paint and a Ford Section to make.

I made the Ford section to match my existing river pieces, rather than the rocky film location...

Then right at the last minute I managed to source the discontinued mounted Witchking model, on rearing horse, via Facebook Wargames buy trade sell group, and it winged its way over to me from Australia...

TheWitchKing was the last piece to finish off...

So I ended up with ten mounted wraiths, but that's cool as it makes it possible to pose the two shots; "The chase", and "The last stand".

So that was my challenge for 2013/14...

And a complete, yet very welcome,  turn around in gaming and painting motivation!

Last night we also had a rather large, and ongoing, Helms Deep re-fight utilising the wall sections I made, and resin gateway set, on long time loan from mate Mike...

Helms Deep

We played all last night till 11pm, and have had another hour this morning, and hope to finish this afternoon...

So tonight, its the Battle report for Flight to the Ford... report to follow...

Thanks for reading!

Panels and putty... the Tavern continues to take shape...

A little more work managed over the weekend... Having added the wooden trim to frame out the ground floor, I pressed on and added a simple paneling effect by cutting out rectangles from thin card (cereal box type stuff), and rounding-in the corners with a hole punch.

These were simply glued into place with PVA. I also started tidying up some of the joins in the framing with a liquid Greenstuff and DAS clay. The Greenstuff is OK to use but annoyingly shrinks on drying, invariably revealing the gap you have just filled... hence I went back to using the DAS...

Click Picture for a closer look

Just have to add the card stock doorways, and I can press on with clay cladding the top two stories, then brick etching to follow... At the rear I have added the lean-to... though I have not glued this into place, as it will make the brick etching around it a pain, so I'll do it separately then glue it into place.

It's all slow but steady work... as usual I have several things on the go at once and kids off school wanting to play and do stuff with me when I get in from work... plus my Dad arrives for his visit from UK on Friday, so there has been a noticeable amount of spring cleaning and gardening going on, for 'His Lordships' arrival ;-) .

One good thing about having folks in UK - it gets round some of the dumb restrictions on the GW website... Some stuff is listed as mail order only, and when you twiddle around with the country portals, different stuff shows up, and if its not in your country's slot you can't order it. Ridiculous! So Dad is bringing with him the Hobbit/LOTR set featuring Lobelia, Paladin Took, Fatty Bolger and a Hobbit Horn blower, and for good measure Gandalfs Cart too. The cart I could have ordered from the NZ site, but its way cheaper from the UK... On the flip side I managed to order Bandobras (Bullroarer) Took from NZ site which wasn't on the UK site, so in that case availability was on my side, but sadly at NZ prices, oh well, sometimes you have to bite the bullet... All these are going to go together for my Hobbiton build...

So I have two weeks annual leave from the 20th to enjoy... I hope to still try and fit in some hobby work... there's only so much sitting in the sun together (if summer actually arrives this year!?) and chatting, quaffing foaming ale together you can do in one day! ;-)

Plus as part of my holiday we are all going to head north and visit Hobbiton (Matamata) again - I am looking forward to a pint of ale in the Green Dragon ( It comes in pints!? I'm having one...) - more photos will be taken, for inspiration for the Hobbiton build...

And finally, I caught the first episode of Ripper Street last night on SKY - great stuff, really enjoyed it... I don't watch much TV and rarely tune in to 'shows', as most are garbage and I always feel I could be doing something more constructive. I am more a documentary or DVD/movie watcher, but this show has my attention... I am sure I can spare an hour a week to enjoy it :-)

If nothing else, it will provide some inspiration for more buildings to make - I was having a close look at the police station building for one of my next builds. I was wondering if I can add some kind of transparent blue film over one of the model street gas-lamps I have to effect the police blue lamp...