Going underground.

I think it´s pretty clear where I´m going this summer…

PS: Yes, I am in the southern hemisphere. And yes, I´m already building some amazing scenery.

 

Dwarves of high caliber.

Here you have them. Did I mention how much fun it is to paint LotR dwarves?

Here we have a Gimli, a Gimli, another Gimli, and yes, Gimli. Also a couple of dwarf kings, two dwarf captains, Murin, Drar, Durin, Mardin, Dain Ironfoot, and my second Vault Warden team.

Next up we have 8 spearmen of Minas Tirith and some horsemen which include Eomer, Theoden, Aragorn, Legolas and (yes, once again) Gimli. Oh, and my first two warg riders!

 

A bit of solo design.

I´m in the process of finishing a hack for the LotR SBG, to play it solitaire. I´m writing it in English with the intention of releasing it for comments and playtesting. It will be available in Spanish once a few drafts are corrected.

Game design takes a big part of my free time, though it´s usually pointed towards roleplaying games and therefore not mentioned in here. This time it´s all about the figures!

 

A refight.

We played a Lord of the Rings scenario again, switching sides as we usually do. To avoid creating a new post out of the same battle, I updated the original play report with the second game below the first one. Lots of pics! Check it out!

 

Warriors of all sizes, and scenery.

Here you have what´s just out of the painting table.

A few more warriors of Minas Tirith, swordsmen this time and two uruk-hai berserkers.

There´s also some scenery for LotR. The ruins are plastics from the first and second basic sets if I recall correctly. The others are specially made for a scenario. On their own they look strange, but if you see how they are placed against my recently made Moria board, you´ll get an idea how it works. They can also be used as hills or upper levels, specially nice to place against the borders of the table.

Last, I finally finished the 10mm Warmaster High Elf army I had laying around for at least 6 years. I had the gallery ready and waiting when I started this site, and now finally it´s filled with the figures.

Next up it´s dwarves. Lots of dwarves. Four different Gimlis (yeah, 4), two kings, two commanders, Murin, Drar, Durin, Mardin, Dain Ironfoot, and another Vault Warden team to be exact.

 

Clean up.

So, I´ve been thinking about the huge pile of lead and plastic I have gathered during these years. You probably know by the name of this site and the diversity of galleries to the right that I´ve been covering a lot of ground. But recently I´ve been more comfortable with the idea of selling stuff.

I´m not ok with selling my painted stuff. But unpainted masses are another story, and I´ve been doing that lately. Maybe you´ve been one of the lucky ones to grab some nice deals from me. So I though about writing down my actual interests and a little view to the near future. This is probably of interest only to myself, so you´ve been warned.

I will be keeping a few ongoing projects, those that continue to grow no matter what. I will also have some side projects, just to take a break from the main ones. I also have some stuff I´d like to finish someday. Everything other than that is going away. All this regarding figures I already own, no purchases planned.

Ongoing:

I will keep painting and gaming Lord of the Rings, and probably get into War of the Ring in the near future. I will continue to paint WW2 in 20mm, or 1/72 scale. I will also keep painting 1/72 DBA armies, since they are nice little projects that fill my Ancients hunger. I will paint some more naval WW2 ships in 1/2400, and hopefully start gaming. And finally, I´ll keep amassing Epic 40K squads and vehicles for grand battles in the far future.

That´s five very different ongoing projects, with different scales for painting and very different battles for gameplay.

Side:

Side projects are stuff I will paint once in a while just to get away from the ongoing projects. I will surely continue to expand my 40K Marines army, which I´ll never bring to the table, unless I´m very lucky. I will paint some skirmish games figures, like cowboys, gladiators, or pirates, for example. And between skirmish and big battles there´s always the El Dorado project and maybe even some Darkest Africa.

Need to finish:

While I do all that, there is some stuff I own that would like to finish eventually. A Warmaster Undead starter army for example. A few Blood Bowl teams I have laying around somewhere. I´d like to finish my 28mm celts, republican romans and carthaginians, but those are way behind on the line. I have a 6mm samurai army I need to finish too.

Now, after all that stuff I mentioned, you wouldn´t believe how much other stuff needs to go. ECW for example. Napoleonics. Falklands. Lots of 28mm WW2 figures. Some Warhammer wood elves and chaos. Some 28mm egyptians. And I´m sure there are some other odds and ends in those drawers I have.

 

Some warriors, first dwarves.

Painting table is clean once again.

Here you have 10 warriors of Minas Tirith. Two of them are the conversions you can see on the article below, the other 8 are archers from the boxed set. You can also see my first dwarves from the range. I´m completely in love with them and will paint a few hundred I´m sure (they are so easy to paint too!). Boromir with the huge standard is one of those figures I had laying around for ages, and finally he´s ready for the battlefield. As usual, you can already find these figures in their respective galleries.

What I´m missing here from the project sidebar is an Indiana Jones figure I did. It was a birthday present and I couldn´t photograph it before giving it to my friend. I´m hoping he will take some pics soon and I will share them here.

Next up we have some more warriors of Minas Tirith, a couple of uruk-hai fanatics, a complete (yes, complete) Warmaster High Elf starter army and some scenery I´m making for some LotR games to come.

 

Quick & easy LotR plastic conversion

This article shows how to make a quick and easy conversion with plastic figures.

The point is to create two new figures only working with a sharp knife and glue. No putty and no strange materials other than a couple of basic ones. No sculpting at all.

I got two plastic warriors of Minas Tirith in a lot of LotR figures I got online. The lot also contained a complete Return of the King set, full of these figures. But these two lonely guys, a warrior and an archer, stood there all alone and primed black. So I decided to turn them into a captain and a standard bearer for the rank and file in the sprues.

Yes, I know GW makes not one, but two blisters of metal captains and standard bearers. But I have none, and this looked like a nice chance to add some unique figures to the warriors of the citadel.

Items I used:

* The two figures. A plastic warrior and a bowman.

* A plastic sword, I got it from an old Mordheim sprue. You can use pretty much anything or even make a little sword out of plastic bits.

* A pike or similar rod for the standard. I used an ECW metal pike I had laying around.

* Sharp knife and glue.

So, I wanted to turn the archer into a captain and the warrior into a standard bearer. Why is that? Well, it might look easier to turn the warrior into a captain, but the archer would look extremely weird as a flag bearer. So I went the other route.

You will see one figure has very little work on it, while the other has some more. The whole process didn´t take me a whole hour I assure you.

Trying to remove the swordsman´s shield (to give it to the captain) was going to be messy and quite ugly without resculpting a bit of the arms. So a simple arm switch is in order!

Remove the left arms at roughly the same point. The arm with the shield is simple. The bowman´s arm needs a bit more work.

First thing is cutting the bow that´s sculpted behind the figure´s feet. Once that´s free you can remove the arm. That arm is now cleaned of any traces of the longbow and ready to receive the banner pole.

Standard bearer almost done. Really! Just drill the hand, slide the pike or whatever and glue the whole thing to the swordsman. Now just paint it and make the flag!

The captain though needs a bit more work. First you need to remove the remaining traces of longbow from the figure. Then remove the quiver with the arrows. Be careful not to mess with the figure´s hand. Remove it slowly, leaving more plastic, like doing it in slices. This will allow you to resculpt the segments of the figure´s armor (that was below the quiver) with the sharp knife. No other tools needed! Finally remove the sword´s hilt from the figure´s sheath in the back. Remember, he will be holding it in his hand now.

That´s really the end of the hard work. Now attach the shield arm and put the sword on the figure´s right hand. See? He doesn´t look strange at all. In fact it´s a very nice pose which would be very difficult to manufacture as a (one piece) plastic kit.

Captain and standard bearer. Two unique figures, with little work and lots of character.

 

Some more troops

Some more troops for Middle-earth right out of the painting table, plus some odds and ends. The 20mm EIR archers and the amazing Sharon Stone-like cowgirl. I have created a cowboys gallery just for her (for now anyways).

 

Cowboys

These are some historical (or semi-historical) figures that I can group under this huge topic.