Well, I finished this from undercoated tonight, quite an accomplishment as I was watching Battlestar Galactica at the same time.
Not so happy with his under robes based on this picture. I tried to ink wash it as I had used too wide a set of shades, and I thing it was more ink than wash. His outer robes look pretty good though.
I know its not properly based yet - but its late...
Thanks to Alex who found me a painting guide for this - I've had Radagast for ages, in fact someone bought it me as a present, and its been so long I cant remember who it was.

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures

We all stopped in tonight and I spent a long time with Roo and Zed helping them to paint something. As you see in the picture, we painted Aragorn and a Tyranid. Roo had painted Strider's face a couple of weeks ago and I've been trying to get him to think about where he puts the brush so that he doesnt foul other bits of the model with the loaded brush. Tonight I mixed up all of the colours for him, and loaded the brush, and he did the painting. It looks really good and he's a very proud 7 year old.
Zed's attempt was an exercise in dry-brushing, with a bit of purple inking. It looks pretty good though I drybrushed the final highlight of white over the bleatched bone. Ohh and you can see Radagast in the background, my project for when they go to bed.

Issue 66 is a break from the norm as it comes with a campaign map with cut out pieces and markers and rules for running a campaign this way. An article on converting the supplied riders of Rohan comes next, with instructions on how to build destroyed cottages.
Issue 67 has more parts of campaign, building on from previous issues. IT comes with loads of "Wild men of Dunland' cutouts, and some horse models for the riders supplied last time. More conversions for the horses, and some hovels that you can build for the cutout wild men to live in.
Issue 68 comes with several plastic wargs, something that has never appealed and I have never owned, however the painting guides outline how to paint these in brown, white and black, with separate pages for each colour, with a filler article about landscapes, yawn.
Finally issue 69 has some riders to sit on the wargs, more campaign ideas, a pretty pathetic article on 'assembling the riders' with no new paint ideas. Finally there's an article about creating a cute scratchbuild Wagon Train thingy, which ties in with one of the scenarios.

Labels: BGIME Review

No way to catch up with the painting now. Look what just arrived - no less than four issues at once, and look how many models! This is getting a bit silly now. I'm not going to review these in any great depth, I'll do them with all the issues in one post after this one. I dont really know whats going on with DeAgonistini at the moment, after no issues for 9 months I then get them once a week, all a bit too quickly. I'm noticing the money go out of my account too rapidly as well so if it doesnt change I'm thinking about cancelling.
Is anyone else annoyed by this?
In the mean time I had sprayed a Gandalf I had white, but thats about all I've done since I mounted Captain Nathan and finished Gollum..

65 comes with a mounted figure whom I couldn’t immediately recognise – which turns out to be Theodred, if you follow these posts (the counter keeps on going up so someone must be reading them…) you know I don’t get on with mounted models unless they have a metal horse, because they are way too fragile, made worse by the fact they are hard to store.
There are some rules and a guide to using different weather conditions in the game – which – if I played, would be useful, followed by The Fords of Isen scenario. Instructions on painting Theodred are followed by a guide to making winter terrain. Not the most useful issue for me.

Labels: BGIME Review

Hot on the tail of the last two issues, BGIME 64 and 65 have now arrived. 64 starts with some filler articles, and then a Escape from Edoras scenario, which spans for several pages. Then an article on painting the supplied standing Eomer, which I could take or leave. A mostly metallic and armour clad figure, which does have a few red leather straps to brighten him up a bit – this figure might go straight to ebay… The scratch build is a rather large Rohan Stable – which as I still haven’t finished my Rohan house (or indeed my Bree house) I’ll give a miss. For something you cant climb over though I think this one is much too big.

Labels: BGIME Review

Well Gollum was much easier to paint than Bilbo, with only about 3 base colours to play about with.
I followed the painting guide, but of note was using chainmail mixed with grey to produce the shiny skin of the fish. It was then suggested that you used a gloss varnish on the fish as well to make it look wet. i decided not to do the normal flocked base, but try and do a water effect on it, so several coats of regal blue, and highlighted with dark angels green, got the colour I wanted, then more coats of pva glue finished with quite a pool of gloss varnish gave me a very shiny pool like effect. You can see this on one of my other photos, but they look black on this one. Also for the first time in ages I'm happy with this miniatures eyes - I should be considering Gollum has the biggest ones you probably can get - for his size.

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures

I thought I could do it. I thought I could get Bilbo and Gollum painted before the next installments arrive, and had Bilbo undercoated and basecoated. I got home last night, only to find two more issues on the doormat, (and they've invoiced me for 3!!)
Anyway the detailed instructions in BGIME were great for painting Bilbo. There was lots of ink work in this one, and I like the step by step. Another reason this is good because it points out various aspects of the model you dont realise about, for instance in this model, there is a siver emblem on the cover of his book, and he is holding the one ring, which I hadnt realised.
This took me ages to paint, about 4 hours over 2 days, and as usual I'm not happy with the face (this has had about 3 attempts) and the static grass is stuck to some places that it shouldnt be..
Now onto Gollum

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures

Well here is a strange cross over between my main 'blog' and my miniatures one. Heresy Miniatures has produced Captain Nathan, who could be used in many SciFi RPG Gaming. I heard about this on The Signal, which is a Firefly and Serenity Podcast. I had to buy him, if only to encourage Heresy to make some more, similar themed models. How about a Jewel, and a Summer, and a preacher Ron? Watch out for my painted version sometime in the future. The last none GW miniatures I bought were a HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy set, many years ago, with an excellent two headed Zaphod which I never got around to painting. Loads of other miniatures news - but I'll paint something else before I post it.

A nice smiling Golum greets you when you open the packet, as well as the Golum eating fish miniature, that I didnt have. I'll be painting Golum and Bilbo from Issue 63 as soon as I get a spare evening.
Theres Golum rules and a painting guide, and The Path to Mordor, The Forbidden Pool and Shelobs Lair scenarios, with a card Shelob, supplied with Gothmog, and a standing and mounted Mouth of Sauron, which arent used in the scenario.
The forbidden pool is also described as a scratch build, and it looks really good, although it does have the Games Workshop designers skills behind it. It has a waterfall dropping to the pool, and several high ledges that you can stand miniatures on. Much too big for me to store and build, but impressive to say the least. I'd love to put a picture of it on here, but I dont want to get into any hassle about publishing them.

Labels: BGIME Review

Well I mean that I only just finished some painting before these issues arrived. Smug Grin. And as a good link, Bilbo has a very smug grin on the cover. Theres a couple of Scenarios, Ambush at Amon Hen, one update to a previous one, and a Gifts from the Elves section as well as Ambush in Hobbiton. The Bilbo Baggins miniature that you get with this issue has a nice brightly coloured painting guide, which I WILL use. And the scratch build is a really good looking Hobbit hole, which, given the chance, I'll build.

Labels: BGIME Review

Well here are the first two completed of my Army of the dead. I've struggled with these, as there wasnt really any colour guides that I could find anywhere. Finally I undercoated them, and then drybrushed them all with a slightly different shade of gray, then I washed them all with a mixture of a green and black ink wash, which gave them more of a consistent 'glow' look, which tie the army together. Then I picked out various details on them, such as the helmets and swords on these two, with metallic colours, and repeated the wash. I'm pleased with the result.

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures