The Painted Thumb

As it was mentioned in the previous post, I finally put clear coat on the old-style Lord of the Rings Wood Elves army, signifying that all modelling work was done.  My choice of colors wasn't the best. I tried to match green cloaks with grey/blue undershirts.  It never really worked. But, I recently acquired a box of the new Mirkwood Rangers from 'The Hobbit' line and they are absolutely gorgeous! The box comes with ten Mirkwood elves and each one has a unique pose.  Each elf has separate body parts on the sprue so there are potentially even more ways to customize. I'm so looking forward to painting them. This time I'll definitely get some advice on the color scheme. Also, I made progress on the Goblins from the Goblin Town box set I got last Christmas!  The box comes with 24 Goblins and I wanted to use some speed painting techniques. One technique is to apply a primer color that is not white or black. The Hobbit book suggests using the Rakarth Flesh from

In honor of the opening weekend of the movie, "The Desolation of Smaug", the local Hobbit/Lord of the Rings SBG group decided to have a special event.  We organized a large multi-player game with the Company of Thorin Oakenshield as the main characters.  Each of the players deployed a small warband of only 200 pts without any named characters (Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, etc.). We used several tables pushed together to create a huge tablescape with room enough for 13 players.  On each table was an objective representing an 'extraction' point.  The goal of the Good players was to escort members of the Company to one of the objectives, where they would be rescued by Giant Eagles.  The goal of the Evil players was to prevent the Good players from achieving their goal.  Each table had room for 2 Good players, 2 Evil players, 3-4 Dwarves and one objective. My warband was a small platoon of Wood Elves with a Sentinel and Captain. I was assigned the table with young Nathani

Readers of this blog will notice that I've started investing in more paper terrain.  Though paper walls and buildings do not compare to the excellent resin and plastic models, it certainly is a much more economical option.  Specifically when it comes to sci-fi scenery, which can be ridiculously expensive!  Just take a look at some of the Games Workshop models here Warhammer 40,000 Scenery | Warhammer 40,000 | Games Workshop . So, I used some paper models in the last "Song of Blades and Heroes" game at MillenniumCon 16 and they worked out just fine. It even inspired a discussion after the game about paper modelling with some of the game participants.  Who knew there were other players out there trying to stretch their modelling budgets? Paper Crypt Model in 25mm My process for making the models starts with a good PDF file.  I get my models from Dave Graffam Models .  Most of his products are available for less than $4, and some basic models are free downloads! A