2013-10-31

Tiny hobby-update!

Work has been bearable this week, which is always something to strive for... Despite working slightly  less than normal I haven't had the time to do especially much hobby. Just got to basing the guys and girls below - which aren't fully painted yet! Except for Saruman and (sort of) Gandalf. Elrond needs his eyes painted... and so on...





Oh, and also, I got to paint the Elrond model I got in one of my model-exchanges (thank you thewarhammerforum for providing these opportunities for us enthusiasts to meet!). I am very happy for this model as I can now have one regular in the Rivendell army and another for...
      ... a themed tray for the next planned project, which will be The White Council. Haven't decided if I should use my bleak copies (DIY:s using official models as blueprints, they are not actual pirated models!) or the regular, official models from Games Workshop... The Galadriel model didn't turn out well enough, I think. Perhaps my double-plus un-good sculpting may be counter-weighted with my paintbrush. For Christmas, I would like to have three Galadriels: One as a regular Galadriel, one in war-form and a third to modify as a tree-broad for my Edheldu army.

2013-10-28

Congrats to mr FoB!

HEPP! This post have very little to do with miniature wargaming. It is just a little reminder to my blogging colleague (and of course to all you other kind readers, bloggers and hobbyists out there) that he needs to update his blog! It is also a little congrats to said blogger, FoB. I have painted the models in the title of his blog... hr-hrm... just sayin'... hr-hrm...

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Typically, a gift from this particular Llama, generally means it is a gift for Llama himself. This is of course because I am a rather self-opinionated man (this was the closest word for "självgod" that I found, there doesn't seem to be a better translation). And this post, meaning as a little gift for mr FoB, is mainly catering towards myself. Below are things that have amused me. Some of the images you might have seen before.
    Firstly, this (look to the left) took a large part of hobby time yesterday. A simple but effective hall0ween-costume. I intend to add sprouts and wear a green body-suit/one-piece (instead of my pajamas, as seen on the image - yes, that's how well dressed I normally am, that I consider this a pajamas*). Preferably, there will be a green bin present at the party place which I joyously can slowly rise from. Teeth will be added for biting young women's necks.
      Anyway, below a few demotivationals. We are all sick and tired of these things, but there still are a few that can amuse. Most of them are "played out", as it were, but still, I do not think that mr FoB has the time to look these things up, so here's a free sample of what the internetz have to offer:


*) I am lying. Rarely do I wear either pajamas or full, dark suit.





Please, do take the time to read the thread above, which I had to split into three pieces because blogger resampled the original image, it was too tall or something.
 Engrish translations... just can't stop laughing when looking at it!


I especially like this post from a rather well-known forum here in Ultima Thule. Quite typical. And in some ways symptomatical for the New Sweden. Notera det inringade.


Hahahaha!
This is how it is right now, considering the weather and the not-so-sweet damp rug of leaf-mash that covers every-flipping-thing! I hope you are all well in the warmness of Abroad mr FoB! I do, however, have my hobby to warm me:

Yours truly, making stuff!

Below we can see the same bro-tip I gave a co-worker a while ago, and a bro-tip which I luckily enough found before I was very fooled by a girl-human. Oh, the irony...



Gareth made a comeback... slightly meaner and less annoying. When will season four air? Finished the last book a few days back. Just realized the wedding I almost spoiled for someone was already shown in season three - SPOILER ALERT: Tyrion married Sansa...

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Hobby update will follow, just wanted this out of my system...

/Llama, autumn of 2013.

2013-10-27

Up in Saruman's Tower - Painting phase One!

One of Orthanc's highest levels could be this one. Why, you ask? Because the hexagon is so small. And there's not even space for the staircase. I can only assume Saruamn does a Raiden kind-of teleportation to get up there.


It is only phase one but I really have no idea on how to continue. The floors are important, giving it a black shine with some sort of stonish patterns - that much I know at least. The furniture... hm... perhaps I should give the stool (foot-stool which you sit on, I do not talk about p**p here) a little pillow to spice it all up colour-wise. My master-plan-image has such a pillow...
     And don't get me started on OSL: There's seven candles in there and originally the plan was to practise painting glass and liquids as well as OSL but looking at it I just sigh, deeply... Don't know where to begin. But fear not, I say to myself as I lift my heavy brow, the internetz are here to save the day!!!!111oneone. I have been using most of this Sunday looking through a bunch of blogs and tutorials so perhaps there will be at least some quality painting tonight...

I am also trying to catch up with all the blogs on the sidebar here, but Legatus' blog hindered me: I started reading further back and further back. That man travels a lot! I wonder what he works with? Some sort of advisorial legal stuff perhaps? Or is it plainly infrastructorial* questions in urban developing zones?

Abrupt ending.
 
*) It could be a word...

2013-10-19

Saruman's little workshop...

Seems I am listing towards making silly doll houses instead of manly miniature wargaming-stuff.

The tables were made a few millimeters taller (or do you say "higher" when it is an object and not a person?) because I didn't want to attach Saruman to his workshop since it is not a diorama. He would instead be placed on the floor on his base like a normal model and thus make him taller. But I might have overdone it. Whatever...


Colorama by Llamarama... Bottles, candles and books and a little throne for Saruman's skinny behind. The tables are almost as cluttered as in the movie:


I made a tiny scale but looking at this image it seems insufficient. I would also like to make at least three windowed walls to set the scene more appropriately. That's all until next weekend, good night!

2013-10-18

Army of the Crazy King of Rhûn

Finally done. It looks a little bit smaller than I thought it would. Missing are the two Rhûn Automatons that are still just in sculpting/converting phase one. There are few companies of Easterling warriors in the plastic hill (featured in the post below this one) but I have forbidden myself to assemble any more models for now.

Pictures were taken at night under a yellow light bulb. The trays and bases looks really boring, but they aren't IMHO, it's the light in the images that makes them look almost unpainted...

The banners aren't fully painted yet, but the basic look is there.

 Quite heavy on cavalry and charioteers. 

The Crazy King of Rhûn is carried into battle on 
his palanquin that looks like a flying mat.

Inspired mainly by WHFB, there has been a slight desire, from my part, to make some sort of slave unit. The slave unit's existence would be explained thusly: The Crazy King is carried by slaves and his kingdom is saturated with slaves so naturally, he'd use them as screening units. Also, I would like to have more infantry in this army as it is quite heavy on the cavalry side:


Army of Rhûn, led by the Crazy King

- Crazy King of Rhûn on Scarlet Palanquin.
- Easterling Phalanx, three companies with lion and drummer. Banner just for show.
- Easterling Regiment, three companies, captain, banner bearer, war priest and Amdûr.
- Easterling Archers, two companies.
- Easterling Cataphracts, four companies, banner bearer.
- Easterling Cataphracts, three companies.
- Khandish Warriors, one company. The only reason for this one is to make the army slightly more legal with regards to the common/rare balance.
- Khandish Horsemen, four companies.
- Khandish Charioteer.
- Khandish Charioteer.
- Khandish Charioteer.
- Khandish Charioteer.
- Khandish Charioteer.


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I do not foresee this army being used in 2013. Perhaps 2014 will be the year for the Crazy King to show what he's made of...

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Another torched car exploded really close to my apartment and made the windows judder. They just won't quit. Almost everyday something's torched or someone is getting hurt without reason... And the MSM won't speak of it, no "everything's fine, just fine"...
    The only good thing is I now know that cars do explode Hollywood-style after burning for a while, I always thought that was added for "dramatic effect"...

2013-10-14

Backlog!

This is the current backlog. Until I get a new place to live in, it will stay like this. Is it not sad? Well, not sad exactly, but it is a little... un-fun to just look at all this plastic and know it'll have to wait...



Below, I present you with a silicone mould that at least will let me finish the Rhûn project which is on again. I think I've stopped work/resumed work on that particular project around 20 times now. It is now on again.




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Personal BS added for my own enjoyment
I should add - probably a redundant statement - that I am pressed for time and hence updates will be super-slow. I have started spending some time with another girly-co-worker which is more serious about me wasting my time with her, but I'll soon have her packing. Her predecessor lasted exactly two dinner-dates and some evening-time before I almost got smothered (literally, she litterarly tried to smother me with a pillow! No, not really... but the looks I get from her nowadays at work, wow! If looks could... and so on). Also, search for new job takes a lot of the evening time I normally used for hobby.

2013-10-11

Nobel Prize in Litterature, Alice Munro


Last year's winner was mr Mo Jan (haven't read a word he's written - if anyone can recommend anything by him, please do so in the comments below), and before him we had a Swede taking it: Tomas Tranströmer (eng. Thomas Crane-Streamer) which was, for me, unexpected but acceptable - Tomas Tranströmer writes like any laurate of the Nobel Prize in Litterature - he knows what he's doing, he knows his handicraft - but alas, he is not my cup of tea. These two, as most of the laurates in the 2000's (with the exception of mr Pinter, naturally) are all good writers. Alice Munroe, then? She presents her slow stories with a steady hand and she does it well. I wouldn't say she is my favourite, but then again, I haven't read much of her. The point with mrs Munroe winning is that she writes short stories.
     The Japanese laureate of 1960-something (late 60's), mr Yasunari Kiwabata/Kawabata, wrote some semi-short stories which I have always appreciated. So, when a writer specializing in short stories won, I was happy. They made a barely acceptable decision.
    Still, the Academy is slowly degrading into a bunch of postmodern halfwits, like most things/official persons in this country. The fact that the extremely well read and cultivated Horace Engldahl was replaced with the globalist yes-man Peter Englund just shows what's going on. Not all is lost though, there are a bunch of other, real men on the list of members of the Academy... but the new tides brings the yoke of quotas even inside this old cultural pillar of society: Five or six women are also members! Two, maybe even three would've been almost too much... but now, women (no problems with women, I should say, it is just that it is the wrong type of women that gets chosen in these cases), globalists and leftists are taking over, just like everything else in this crime-riddled country...
    Maybe I am exaggerating, but it doesn't bode well for the Academy. Just look at the "Nobel" Peace Prize. Nobel never wanted to have a "peace"-price, knowing just how political it'd become! And remember folks: "Nobel" Peace Prize is not handed out during the true festivities of Nobel, in Stockholm, but in Oslo - it has nothing to do with the true Nobel ceremonies.
     Lastly, if you ever think that Bob Dylan should win the prize, please go kill yourself.


 
By the way: Nobel Peace Prize, what a joke... giving gold and money to terrorists, idiots and globalists... and an American president who had done nothing except won an election.

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Horace Engdahl

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Hr-hrm...in conclusion, Canadian writer Munroe won this year's Nobel's litterature prize.

EDIT: Oh, the irony of a pretentious post like this, to spell mrs Munro's name wrong as well as miss the difference between "price" and "prize".

2013-10-09

New Creatures and Units in Middle-Earth

I have been busy with work and life, which is why it's been quiet here for a few weeks. Still, I don't think there'd been much hobby done in here anyway. In case someone missed it: I can't really finish any more projects because I have ran out of space in my tiny habitat. Another reason is I have a few other hobbies that have been left on the backburner so I've enjoyed those with renewed vigour (and cost!).

Work has been super-weird these last few weeks. I asked for a transfer, again, and it seems it has has been declined, once again. Other stuff's happened also, but probably of no interest to you, I suspect, dear readers. One of the stories might be of interest, I think I will come back to that one in a future update.
       This update is part two of the catchy titled New Creatures and Units in Middle-Earth. The original title didn't make grammatical sense so this is the new title and below follows part two of it. I also hope this title suffice grammatically:


New Creatures and Units in Middle-Earth
This is more of a list rather than a semi-arguing article. I did one even farther back in time and the only thing I would like to reiterate is: Some of the creatures and contraptions mentioned then, I actually sculpted or converted up, which is satisfying in a light-dessert-on-a-sunny-Sunday-afternoon-kind-of-way. Here follows a list of rather high-fantasy ideas for new units and creatures to use in our battles of War of the Ring (WotR) or in Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game (LotR: SBG).

As always, focus is on the goodguys. This is because of the many weird and imposing and impressive beasts that the dark sides of Middle-Earth have access to – trolls, dragons, beasts of all kinds – and so I'd like to counter-weigh that ever so slightly.

Mountain Giant. But not in the Hobbit way, but more in line of Thomarillion's nice stone giant. The incredibly large Mountain Giants from The Hobbit are too large to be interesting gamewise. These beasts should be considered neutral rather than evil.
Forest Critters. On a 40mm base, inspired by different swarms from WHFB or WH40K. Pecking birds and porcupines and some larger animals. The biggest con with a unit like this is it will remind a lot, perhaps too much, of Narnia. Narnia is a nice little world, but it is not Middle-Earth. Still, if having The Hobbit in mind, this one's obvious.
Forest Animals. Not sure which side would use these. Beornings, yes, but whoelse? Wood Elves? Not if you look at the Tolkien-version of Wood Elves. There are some other races out there which I think could use small formations of angry animals as chaff units. I should mention that this idea is here only because it would be a joy to make a pair of companies with forest animals: Stags, lynxes, porcupines (again), beavers and Bofurs etc.
Pelargir Beast. Which was mentioned earlier as well. Then I had no idea what it would be. Now I have got a (bad) idea: A fastitocalon, of course! A huge turtle with a bunch of pelargir crew on a howdah. Only problem is when the turtle submerge, but then again, how often do you play your games on an ocean-themed tabletop? As with most of the ideas here, this one is purely a hobby-project and much like the entry below, nothing I'd ever play a game with. Pelargir Beast for Gondor.
Swan Chariot. Mentioned many times here. See below for a WIP-pic. Swan Chariot for High Elves of Rivendell or the other place on the west coast of Middle-Earth, whatever it was called... ?
[imageSwan1.]
Wilwarin. This one can actually be expanded a little bit more than obvious. But first we need to clearify what a ”wilwarin” is, in this world of ours. A Wilwarin is explained, in the Bestiary, as some sort of large butterflies, if I recall correct. So, the obvious would be another swarm: A butterfly swarm that would work similarily like the Bat Swarm of the Misty Mountains. Nice colours but only usable in a heavily themed wood elf army that would have very little with the official army list.
[imagelost1.]
       The second version I have forgotten what it was, but it probably was some sort of fairy-elf.
       Third version is, of course, a bad-ass fairy-dragon (a bit of a contradiction of terms there).
Bears! In advent of the next Hobbit-film, one would perhaps be better off waiting for Games Workshop to release this. Not to mention Beorn... It would anyways look nice with an indomitable company of Black Bears...
Captured Great Beast of Gorgoroth, armoured in shining metal and with banners flying in the wind. Oh, what great sight to introduce in a Gondor army. Not on my priority list, though... however, typing this gets me thinking...
[sketchlost1.]
Horn of Mundborg on Wagon. I just had to add something for Rohan, although I am of the strict opinion that Rohan is to be spared as one of the few ”clean” armies of the humans. Clean as in free from fantastic creatures and monster. I will still make a little sketch of this one. Just in case ”a feign mood” hits me.
Greedy Mountain King for the dwarwen armies. A king that wants to be carried around – I guess you could make it without it looking too much Asterix & Obelix. Again, a fun hobby project but nothing that is, for me, interesting to use in a game.
War machines. For the dwarwes. You could probably just go bananas here and do a little of this and that, as long as it is suitably mechanical and awesome.

Abrupt end. Have to go, looks like a part three is necessary....