Display cabinets

I finally got my display cabinets fully installed and wired up thanks to a local 'sparky' friend. Also secured to wall, so hope will with stand a wobble or two, that we can get in this part of the world.

They were ordered from Barrie at NZIW LTD in Auckland, and shipped flat packed to my home. It was quite an ordeal assembling them; instructions, yes I am a man but I read them!, were somewhat tricky, to figure out, but I got there in the end, and once I had figured out the first one, the second two were completed fairly quickly, with a little assistance; you nearly always need an extra pair of hands just to hold something, while you fit another part to it... I must admit I was constantly awaiting the sound of breaking glass, but thankfully it never came.

The last part was getting power to them and then fastening them to wall for security.

They came with Halogen lights, but I may look to switch to LED lights as these will be cheaper to run. However I will only have them switched on when I am using the room, which is not as frequently as I would like, so no worries really there.

Well they are up and full of the figures I have been busy with over the last 6 years or so. I can fit more in as needed, and get extra glass shelving too when the time comes that it is needed.

In the meantime, my unpainted hordes stare jealously at their potential new home!

Troll Chieftan

The Mordor Troll Chieftan, a great behemoth of a beast, intent on death and destruction.

A slightly tricky model to photograph for best effect as it has a very stooped forward pose. I tipped it on on a small prop to better view the face, although still somewhat in shadow.

I can't recall if a troll captain features explicitly in the books, but he makes a wonderful movie appearance fighting against Aragorn at the Black Gates at the end of the movie, The Return of the King.

Mordor Catapult

"As soon as the great catapults were set, with many yells and the creaking of rope and winch, they began to throw missiles marvelously high, so that they passed right above the battlement and fell thudding within the first circle of the City; and many of them by some secret art burst into flame as they came toppling down"
The Lord of the Rings, Book Five the War of the Ring, The Siege of Gondor.

The Mordor Catapult, assisted by a troll to load the heavy stone, that will crash against the City of Minas Tirith.

This will give my Mordor force some hard hitting artillery power from long range.

Pirate port takes shape

Over the past week I have made some progress on my pirate port and shipping.

In regards my small pirate sloop, I have attached the sails by 'stitching' them with yarn to the masts, and gluing over this with thinned PVA. The sails are made from cartridge paper, which is a thicker heavy gauge paper, sort of mid way between paper and thin card if I can put it that way. Its a bit stronger than regular paper, so you can pull it about a bit without it tearing, yet its still flexible as paper, rather than card.

I am awaiting the cannons, so I can get a feel for how much deck space they will take up before I add other detail, like ships wheel, and grated cargo hold cover.

I have also started assembling the medium brig from the Gary Chalk ship plans, here's the decks glued together.

I've also got some more work done on the buildings for the port. I added windows using a plastic mesh grid available from haberdashery stores, and 2mm thick balsa cut to strips for timber beams effects.

Finally the roof was clad with 1cm square thin card roof tiles. This was the lengthiest part of project by far. It took me all Saturday evening to clad the two small houses, and about 6 hours on Sunday to do the L-shaped house. That angle, was a real B*tch to work with!

Still they are done now and ready for paint.

I'd still like to make more general dock warehouse buildings, tavern(s) of course, shops and apothecary. A grander, 'Governors mansion' will also be required. And some sort of pirate hideout, and jail/fort type structure.

After chatting with Roly over a coffee on Saturday night, we came up with several ideas for developing land forms to go on to the sea area I have created;
'Treasure Island', pirate hideaway, dock/port with bridge over river mouth to extended town area, etc etc...

Its going to be a lot of work, but I hope the end result will be worth it.

It was interesting watching Sky TV tonight as they had a program on NatGeo, about Port Royal. Nice to see the costumes and more importantly the look of the buildings and town from 3d computer creation. Very interesting also to learn that they had shipped across large amounts of redbrick building materials from UK to Jamaica, and the town would have looked very much like Georgian England of the period.

Here are some pictures courtesy of SKY TVs Nat Geo program "Wicked Pirate City"

Blogger Outages

To folks who take an interest in my blog, recent blogger problems over the last weekend or so, seem to have have wiped some comments left on my blog posts. I am always grateful for comments, and I don't want you to think I have deleted them.
I hope you continue to enjoy my blog.
regards
Scott

So many periods, so little time...

A bit of a divergence from my normal style of blog posting.

After a recent and fortunate chance to get to play a fun and simple cowboys skirmish game on Joe Harrison's wonderful "Leadwood", and then seeing online a very impressive Napoleonic Naval and land game, I have become inspired once again to set to and start making terrain again...

A number of thoughts have come together; the quality and scale of Joe's town construction, the expanse of sea, as seen in the naval game with the glorious ships, the fact that the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is due out shortly and my past enjoyment playing Legends of the High Seas, the Corsairs ship I made for Lord of the Rings, and a desire to recreate Osgiliath, and other Gondorian locations near water; Harlond, Cair Andros, and Pelargir...


What I came to realize is, if I cover my games table which is 12' x 6', with a new flat surface and paint this as the sea, I can then overlay various land areas to represent coastlines, island, docks and the like. This will allow for some wonderful pirate skirmish war-gaming, and assaults against the various coastal areas of Gondor.

So where there's a will, there's a way, and I have set to once again with scalpel, balsa, card and foamcard and have churned out several constructions over the last week or so.

I have converted a building I originally made as a church for ECW gaming, into a Gondorian style dock warehouse.

I have followed the template guide and made the basic small sloop from the back of the Legends of the High Seas rulebook. The hull and deck was relatively straight forward to do, and I had a browse through internet images of sloops to get an idea of how the masts and sails should look.

Obviously still a work in progress. I need to properly attach the sails with string, and finish rigging and add the wheel, and paint it up. Its fairly small, the hull is only 6" long, but it is perfect for a small starting-out pirate crew for the game.

I have made a start on 3 pirate style buildings, to go towards my Port Royal / Tortuga.

Much work still to do here. Add windows and doors, clad with balsa beams, add roof tiles, and paint.

And I have just finished cutting out the materials from the plans from the Gary Chalk pirate brigantine.

Oh and of course I have made the sea base for the games table.

It just needs a coat of varnish to finish off.

Here's my corsairs themed ship looking the part on its new sea. I must get the LOTR corsair crew fast tracked to the painting table!

I have also put together the three flat packed glass display cases I ordered from Barrie at NZIW Ltd.

This is them just assembled, they still need to have all the glass and mirrors cleaned and polished up, and lightbulbs added. I still have to figure out the best way to wire these up for the lighting, and secure them to the wall, to make them at least slightly 'quake proof.

Lets just say I think I am going to be rather busy over the coming year putting all this together.

Oh and I still have to finish the ACW confederates sitting on my painting table!

So many periods, so little time!

Gothmog - Castellan of Minas Morgul

Gothmog, the Castellan of Minas Morgul. A great orc of fearsome reputation, and guile on the battlefield.

Here on foot and mounted on ferocious warg.

A very themed commander of the forces from Mordor that issued forth from the 'wraith city of Minas Morgul, Tower of Sorcery, at the time of the War of the Ring. Bringing his forces into the ruined city of Osgiliath, and with stealth across the Anduin, and onwards across the Pelenor to lay siege to the great city of Minas Tirith.

In the game a very strong battlefield epic hero, capable of great feats of generalship and heroics. Much debated on forums too!

I have to say sadly, of all the representations of characters from the book PJ made for the movie, I think only Gothmog displeased me. I couldn't help but think thoughts of 'elephant man' and 'piggy-orc', and 'gimp'!
Why have such a strong fighter and battler, with a gimpy malformed arm? And as for fighting ability his on screen action against Eowyn was positively pathetic, my ol' granny could have beaten him...