Orc Army

 The army of Gundabad meets the Army of Mordor at last. The new Gundabad Trolls, wolves and armoured orcs finally get taken upstairs to meet join the throng. It's nice to see the wolf packs grow larger and I still have around 50 or so to base up...can you have too many wolves? Well I suppose they did make up one of the five armies so there must have been quite a few, that's my thinking anyway. Out of around sixty odd wolves there are twelve large black Wargs, these are much larger than their grey coated relatives.

 Six bases of Gundabad orcs, two bases of armoured trolls and four bases of wolves join the growing horde of evil.

Need a new box, my beserkers are left out in the cold.

Bodyguard Of Bolg WIP

 Here are some working ideas for a unit representing the powerful bodyguard of Bolg that caused poor old Thorin so much trouble. Looking at It ( designed for Dragon Rampant) I decided to double the size of the unit, so four bases. In DR it means there will be two units of guard, although these figures are based to use with any rule set and I'm looking forward to the release of Osprey's/ Northstar fanstasy rules next year. Whatever rules used these guys will be a nasty tough nut to crack.

I was delighted after placing a test order to Alternative Armies miniatures on their new range of orcs to find that these guys were massive. I think they are called Western Uruks on the site. Well they are so big that they match the scale of the Great goblins I have from Black Tree. They come with empty hands so I found some long cutting weapons to make them look business.
 Also these guys proved to be unbreakable in the battle until Beorn turned up, I read that as the unit being of a shield wall in nature. So I ordered some pavise shields from Essex miniatures to act as an unbreakable wall of wood and iron.

I'm quite pleased with them so far and I'm glad I held off tackling the unit until now, the new figures from AA really are spot on for what I imagined and the shield wall idea is defiantly a winner I think.

They should tower over the struggling Dwarfs and their puny axes....that's a thought, I'd better put some axes sticking out of the shields.

The Table that Time Forgot.

 This was my painting desk a few days ago before I hit It head on and cleared it up. Having a small child only leaves a few hours each week for hobby work and this is the result. Sitting down once a week to snatch an hour or two does lead to a lot of unfinished projects.

 I was getting grid locked when it came to ideas so I decided to do something about It. My wife and little boy went away for a couple of days and I realized It was now or never.
I'm glad to say that the work place is clear now with two projects on the go...well, maybe three.

My weak spot is buying and reading new rule books, Bonnie Blue Flag is a new 28mm ACW game and has got me all aflutter after reading it. I am researching ACW artillery at the moment to finish off a battery or three. Hopefully more on that later.

Basing in process

 Last night I got to use my new flock box that arrived yesterday, after a tip off from a good friend.

 My quick base flocks were put down but when It came to the static grass I used the static box to make them stand up. I have never really used this static device before and was impress with the result. These bases still need the tufts of long grass and flowers to be added but are almost done.

  While the wood glue was still wet with the flock and grass on top, I pushed a brown paint into it with a brush to make muddy footprints and churn up the ground. The whether here is mostly wet and a field in the country would get pretty boggy pretty quickly with hundreds of horses and men running around it. So I made the decision to muddy up the bases..

Another huge decision I made was to split the musket blocks in half. I did this to give me a little more choice on how to field them, also things like entering building, lining hedgerows and spreading out should look better with this option.

 The pike block I kept as one solid block, I had them based individually before for pike man's lament and didn't like the look. So they stay as a solid mass. The musketeers once pushed together again look the same as they did before, so nothing has changed about the look of the formed up regiment.

ECW Cavalry

 The 6mm grass was a little bright I thought so a used a yellow ochre paint to dry brush it and knock it back a little.

 I am tempted to add a few more little touches to these bases like the mixed herbs to act as leaf litter and bracken.

Basing English Civil War Cavalry

 I had the idea of using 6mm static grass to base these Essex Miniatures ECW cavalry. I figured that 6mm would be long enough to look like a wild, rough field or an over grown meadow. I have been taking pictures of the meadow behind my house and making a note of what It looks like over the course of the year. My favourite time is summer when It becomes a mass of yellow buttercups. This I thought would look just the ticket for a unit base.

I didn't want to spend too long on these bases so opted for my usual fast flock approach. The first layer of flock is a dark earth, followed by a light earth then by patches of a subtle green flock. you could go on for ever adding flock of different colour but I wanted to get onto the static grass bit. I have never done this before and have had an applicator stuck on my desk for almost a year now, time to use it.

 this subtle green I have labelled American earth after using it for my ACW bases. It's dry look makes for a fantastic base for the Americas.

 After the three colours of flock were done I tried the applicator with 6mm static grass in. I may have to read the leaflet again as I'm not totally sure I was doing it right. I found it hard to put the metal nail into the MDF so just clamped it on to the side instead.

After a bit of working it all out I was quite pleased with the length of the grass and thought the effect was successful. Grass tufts are good but for larger areas this seemed to work. The flowers were tufts and these were placed in random places. I had planned to put loads on just like the buttercup meadow, but I found that less was more. Not too many, just enough making sure i left space for the earth flocks to show through.