Monday, August 17, 2009

My Grey Company

My Grey Company for the upcoming BBB tourney this saturday is complete. This is a 350 point army consisting of Gandalf the Grey, 3 Rangers of the North, and 12 Rangers of Arnor. The Ent is just there for scenic purposes, I've been working on these guys solid for the last 3 weeks or so.
I spent a solid weekend getting the display base together..the trees are from the Citadel Tree set and need some solid touch up and repainting, the textures are Cork, Sand, with Woodland Scenics foliage, buffalo grass and some actual wood chips from the yard. Models are based on "forest" resin bases from back-2-base-ix.



The display itself is a MDF sandwich staring with a 12 x 12 1/4 inch tile, then I added mdf, cork, mdf, cork, mdf. All shapes where cut with my mini scroll saw and holes for the bases drilled out with forstner bits, I then used a rotary hand sander to clean up and bevel the edges of each layer. The it was just a matter of gluing it up adding sand, paint, etc.



This was my first try at making a scenic display base from scratch, normally I use full pieces of terrain, for instance I am using my Osgiliath/Last Stand Ruin for my Mordor display. I'm definitely happy with the way it came out and the combination of MDF, Cork and Hirst Blocks has my mind racing with new ideas (Lustria Blood Bowl arena anyone?)



The 40mm hole is if I want to run Gandalf or another Hero on a horse down the road, I have a 40 mm plug I made thats currently drying. I wanted to make enough holes so the base was flexible enough to be usable with a 600 point army..getting everyone but some additional grunts on the base.



I haven't really gotten to play these guys much, as I have mainly been playing my Orcs. tomorrow night thou I will at least get a few games in and see how they play. Both my armies have low model counts, my Mordor is way lower than I wanted it to be.. when you start making courage checks at 50% of your model count, you want as many models as possible at your point total. I just didnt have time paint everything so I had to use whats already painted, as it stands I still need to paint 2 Warg Riders, and Uruk Hai, and 2 Orc Spearman, shouldn't be a problem by Saturday.



I'm a ridiculousnewb at LotR SBG at the competitive level..unless I am playing other new players, like myself I think I am in for a rough ride but I have my rulebook ready, so well see how it goes. Who am I kidding anyway..I am just shooting for appearance awards these days..meta gaming the rules actually trying to figure out how to win just isnt my forte'. I'll make sure to do a good write up of the whole event should be a fun one. I'll make sure to get my Mordor army on their display base posted by Saturday as well.

8 comments:

Peter said...

Awsome job, making a scenic base it definetly worth it with these results, keep it up!

Tdubs036 said...

That is a cool display base - from the looks of it "best painted" should not be to hard for you to win.

Makes me want to go and build my own now.

Admiral Drax said...

That's stonkingly good, mate, and the base is simply fantastic!

Anonymous said...

John, those models and that display came out great! I'm really looking forward to seeing these up close and in person!

As far as the competition goes, you will do just fine. We have several very new LOTR:SBG players planning on attending. Hopefully it will be a fun day for everyone.

--Brent

Tim Kulinski said...

John,

The board & the igures look awesome man! You really need to make the trip to Phoenix for GitD!

Keep up the great work man!

Daen said...

Awesome job and great idea with this base. It's very impressive and inspiring!

Keep it up! :D

Unknown said...

Where do you buy those miniature Lord of the Ring figures? Anyone have a link?

JPL said...

Hi Brandon, sorry I missed this these figures are games workshops Rangers of Gondor
a plastic box set that came out about 10 years ago, they are somehow still available from Games Workshop but called "rangers of middle earth"

 

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