Books and Hobbits

It's not often I cover news on here. Quite frankly, my erratic posting schedule would make that a bit of an exercise in futility. The latest release from GW has gotten me ridiculously excited though. 

Quest of the Ringbearer is up for preorder this weekend. Its the latest sourcebook for Middle Earth and as well as giving us some pretty cool new Legendary Legions, it also focuses on narrative play.

As much as I like Matched Play in my GW games, Narrative is where my heart is at. I've been wanting to dive into the narrative side of things for a while.

You might remember me saying I wanted to dive into some solo narrative scenarios during lockdown. That never really materialised due to various reasons, but my attention has been firmly swung back in that direction now. 

I've got to wait for the book to be in my hands before I decide for sure what I'm doing, but at the very least I'm using it as an excuse to build some terrain. 

Whilst I work out what I'm doing with that though, here's some Hobbits to look at:

They're the first completed batch from the group which I showed you last time. I'm really happy with how they turned out, considering that it only took two evenings to get them done. That was helped immensely by the fact that I deliberately kept the scheme very simple. I didn't want to do anything too complicated, considering I've got another 68 of the buggers to paint for my final force!

If I can work to this standard across the army though, I'll be very happy. 

The only thing I'm not 100% on is Baldo's face, (he's the one on the far left for those uninitiated into the dark rabbit hole which is SBG.) which I can't decide whether it's an issue with the sculpt or my painting skills. Probably a little of both Hobbit faces are even harder to do than even normal ones.

Either way I'm happy to call these done and move on. I'm feeling my momentum return on the painting front, so I'm just going to roll with it.

Hopefully I'll be back with more finished models soon. 

Indomitus stuff

Considering how excited I was about 9th Edition 40k and the Indomitus box, you may be wondering why I haven't posted about anything since release.

Well the recent heatwave was part of it. For a while it was just way too hot to even think about sitting down to hobby. I'd imagine a lot of people in the UK were in the same boat. It's really been ridiculous.

The other reason for my lack of posting was that I really didn't want to post about it until I actually had something substantial to share. I've really been taking my time with these models, trying to do justice to these gorgeous models. 

I'm happy to say now though that I can show you what I've been up to.

May I present the first three finished models for my Golden Knights chapter: Sir Auron Malakai of the Red Blades (Judiciar) and three Knights of the Black Griffin Brotherhood, warriors of the Bladeguard Veteran Cadre. 

These have taken far longer to do than I imagined. What I predicted would be a week or two's worth of work turned into a month and a half! Granted the heatwave slow things down, but that's still a pretty substantial misprediction! 

I'm not entirely happy with how certain parts turned out. In particular, I need to have a think about how to improve my recipe for swords in the future. Overall though I really love them. They were lots of fun to paint and (not to blow my own trumpet too much) I feel like they're some of the best models I've produced to date. 

The heraldry was a lot of fun to do too. 

Every squad in the army is going to have its own unique heraldry. I'm terrible at freehand so it's mostly going to be produced by combining parts from my vast collection of transfers. 

The Black Griffins were made mostly from the extras on the Indomitus sheet, but also by stealing the House Coldshroud symbol from my spare Titanicus transfer sheets. 

Custom transfers from Fallout Hobbies really helped the whole process as well. The crossed sword Chapter symbol was really important to me to incorporate in there. I always said it was the Chapter's symbol when I played them years ago, but I never felt brave enough to attempt to paint it onto my models. Luckily the wealth of third party companies producing 40k gubbins these days means that I don't have to!

The sheets were really nicely made and gave me enough symbols to do the entire army. They were pretty cheap too considering I had to pay for shipping from America. Only £25 delivered. I'd definitely recommend them! 

So now I've finished this squad, it'd probably make sense for me to finish the rest of my Indomitus stuff, wouldn't it? 

Well yes, but also no. 

I think I need a break before I paint my second squad. I want to do something a little simpler as a palate cleanser. Each of these was basically a character model in their own right in terms of detail. I think I'd go mad if I jumped straight into another squad of them right away. 

Luckily I have plenty to keep me busy. Because I'm terrible at keeping to hobby pledges, I've got a bunch of Hobbits to work on, some of which are probably going to be next on my agenda. 

Just a few! I blame the Green Dragon Podcast and their Shire episode. 

I also bought the new plastic Eomer, so I definitely need to crack on with that at some point. I also fancy working on my EC's again now that I know how I want to run them in 9th Edition. 

Whatever I work on, I shouldn't be too long in doing it. Finally getting these models finished has put me in a productive mood. Considering how precariously large my backlog is getting, I hope it carries on!