Thursday, August 20, 2020

Miniature Showcase: Frodo at the Cracks of Doom

Many, many moons ago, around the year 2000 or so, the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game was released by Games Workshop. This game featured miniatures based on the character designs from Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings trilogy, which was right up my alley.

The original range was very impressive and filled with fantastic masterfully sculpted miniatures.  As time went on I would occasionally pick up a few  here and there, though I never got around to buying any armies or playing the game.

Frodo here came in a three pack of models with Sam and Gollum all based on the climax of The Return of the King. I had bought this set shortly after they released, mostly for the Gollum miniature since he was my favorite character in the trilogy.

For a long time I had grand plans to build a small diorama using all three of them. Though in the back then I lacked the skills to make it a reality. Unfortunately, in the intervening years, Sam seems to be been lost o the ages. I've searched my drawers and boxes of stored miniatures and he's no where to be seen. Maybe he walked off with the Ring?

At that point I had decided that perhaps a Gollum and Frodo diorama would be nice to build and was all set to make that happen. But in the end I chose to paint Frodo by himself because sometimes you just want to paint a specific miniature, ya know?

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Miniature Showcase: Death Riders


Just before Adepticon 2019 I decided that my next army would be Imperial Guard, thanks to breaking the ice with my Commissar Yarrick conversion of Severina Raine. I had just come off building the Dreadnought list for Warhammer 40,000 Friendly Tournament that year, and was still in a slump with my Adeptus Mechanicus. So I was looking for something fresh, with a lot of options. It really didn't take that much convincing for me to jump on Imperial Guard either, due to my love of World War 2 and films such as Starship Troopers.

I'd always had a vague interest in that faction. But it wasn't until I read Dave Taylor's Armies & Legions & Hordes book that I really got the bug to work on them. Seriously, read that book it's a wealth of wargaming knowledge and inspiration.

I knew going into it that I was going to be transport heavy and the overarching theme would be mechanized infantry. With that theme in mind, I started looking at units in the Astra Militarum Codex and the Forces of the Imperium Index that went along with the idea of a highly mobile force.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Miniature Showcase: Lord Maarku, Knight Gallant of House Killkerran

Part of the joy that is 2020 is not being able to play Warhammer 40k locally. Luckily, my Twitter crew has started playing games via Tabletop Simulator. This has been a huge boon for us, since we can now play 40k together more often than just during Adepticon, if at all. It also allows us to play with list builds that consist of models we don't own yet.

Thanks to this I revisited the Adeptus Mechanicus, an army that I haven't played in two years due to having a massive losing streak with them.

I created a new list that included a Knight Gallant in it and a few other units that I've never given a fair shake. A few games in, I was hooked on this list and needed to scratch the Knight painting itch.

After a few weeks, the local shop opened up after the Covid-19 shut down and I decided it was time to pick up one of those bad boys. In the time since, I've assembled and began the process of painting him up.

Let's take a look!