LotR Fernando Touch Up Complete

Just a quick post to celebrate completing touching up my Lord of the Rings figures that I got painted by Fernando Enterprises.

First is Faramir and his Ithilien Rangers; Faramir needed more work than his men, which was slightly annoying as I paid for Super Showcase standard for him.

Then some more good-guys in the shape of some Rohirrim foot warriors.

And finally, some more opposition in the shape of Uruk Hai.  These didn't seem to be up to the standard of others so quite a bit of extra shading was applied.  Also, to make then a bit more visually interesting I added shields (3D printed from eBay) as only two of the original figures had them.

So, these guys should hopefully be taking the table soon for a game of Dragon Rampant.

***************ADDENDUM***************

As commented by someone on TMP it was a bit silly to show the retouched figures without photos of them as received from the painters.  As I didn't take any before retouching, the following photos are some of those provided by Fernando Enterprises for approval before sending them back; they are not high resolution but they didn't provide anything bigger (I did ask).

First some of the goblins - these were IMO the best painted of the different figures and I did nothing to them apart from the bases.

Likewise, the Warg riders (mounted on Ral Partha wolves) which also, IMO, needed no retouching.

By comparison the Uruk Hai were a bit disappointing (I added shields to these) ...

... especially the faces on the archers where not covered by helmets (some of these got small shields added).

The Ithilien rangers as finally received were pretty good and only had minimal retouching e.g. sword hilts which were painted brass all over and to the faces that where seen were pretty crude.

On the subject of faces, the initial sample photos (see next photo) had the eyes painted white with dots, which I requested them to change (as well as brightening up the green used for cloaks etc.).

And pretty much the same again for the Rohirrim on foot.

The mounted Rohirrim were quite heavily reworked by Fernando after I requested more work but and as re-worked were pretty good (almost nothing done to these apart from repair to a figure that lost an arm - the only damage in transit).

So, onto the Super Showcase personalities, and Faramir - with white eyes. 

I requested some rework which produced this.

I still didn't like his face so that was heavily retouched - faces seems to be a major weakness and I retouched them on all but the goblins but luckily most were obscured by helmets so didn't require much.  

And finally, Eomer in the first photo sent for approval.

This photo almost had me give up, but I requested a complete repaint of the horse and some more colourful equipment for Eomer who looked pretty dull for the heir apparent to the throne.  And the next photo received was a dramatic improvement. 

So, the lesson I have drawn from all this is that Fernando can be a bit hit and miss with their painting but are very willing to make changes or rework figures if you are not satisfied, so if not satisfied say why and ask for changes.  Obviously, it can be quite onerous explaining exactly what you want changed, but in my experience it is well worth the effort as they do their best to please.  

One final point, the figures look better in the hand than they do in the photos - I was pleasantly surprised when they arrived how much better they looked.  Of course, some of this is down to viewing them with the naked eye and not through a powerful camera lens.

WiP Basing and Some Away Games

While I've finished the basing fix for my SSM figures (last post) basing is still dominating my painting desk.  This time it's painting, texturing and dry-brushing the bases for some Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figures to allow my skirmish game to expand so I can play Dragon Rampant or similar.  Doubting I'd ever get the figures painted myself (too much else in the queue) I sent them[1] off to Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka.  

They took longer than I was expecting (c. 6 months) and there was a lot of to and froing as they sent pictures and I requested improvements but eventually they arrived.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the figures look much better in the hand than in the photos they sent for approval; the images they send are very small.  Now I just had some minor repairs and touching up to do, plus a lot of base work - I had decided to not let them finish the bases as I knew the painting style would be very different to mine and I wanted to make the bases the same as my other figures to help them blend in.

So, first, some of the 'bad guys', goblins ...

... and Warg riders (I don't like Peter Jackson's take on Wargs).

And, ready to ride down everything in their path, THE ROHIRRIM!

I still have some touching up to do on the Uruks, which seem less well-painted than the rest (different painter?) but that shouldn't take long now.  So with all these 'armies' gathering war is imminent; no doubt my giant eagles will keeping an eye on things.

As a pleasant interlude during all this, fairly tedious, basing work, I went down to Steve's place for a weekend's gaming get together with some others.

The first game was a 'chit game' of the Battle of Liegnitz (1241) which, true to history, was won by the Mongols.  I came seventh out of seven once the VPs were totalled but comforted by the prettiness of my troops (Martin's vintage 15mm Minifig Knights - I had more than this but I liked this close up).

Other games included chariot racing with a modified version of Circus Maximus using Martin's Essex Miniatures chariots ...

 

... and 6mil Napoleonic game on Steve's sculpted Waterloo terrain (really need to get the backdrop sorted).

This was a fictional Austrian-Bavarian clash (not sure how they ended up in Belgium) and really a play-test for my modified version of Jeffrey's Napoleonic rules as I very much like the command and control system.  The game showed promise but there's still work to do.  This was not too surprising as I had been adapting it to play on a hex-grid and had to rapidly adjust it for a free-form game on the sculpted terrain, but it is so pretty I'll add a few more photos.

That's all for now.

Notes:

[1.] The lot consisted of: 57 Goblins; 14 Uruk Hai;  7 Goblin Warg riders; 14 mounted Rohirrim and 12 on foot plus a mounted Eomer figure; and, 12 Ithilien Rangers plus Faramir (on foot). 

TOOL TIME

With an opponent unfortunately having to postpone a gaming session and my painting mojo running low, I thought I'd make a quick post on some of the tools I make for my games. 

First off, an example of my fondness for peg-boards, are my 'What a Cowboy' (WaC) peg-boards as used in a recent game.

I like TooFatLardies rules, but have always found their record sheets liable to shed tokens; these are designed to be more portable and less prone to upset.  The body is two layers of foamboard lightly glued together with the design printed on adhesive sheets (A4 labels) and wrapped around the boards with a nice picture stuck on the back to hide the joins.  The holes are punched with an awl and the pegs taken from games of Mini-Mastermind purchased off eBay.  For anyone who plays WaC the use of these should, I hope, be obvious.  I still have yet to make name plates to be attached by two pegs in the 'Name:' section.

I also made some dice for WaC, to make it obvious what the Action Dice indicate; these are shown below with similar sets I'd already made for the 'What a Tanker' (WaT) rules.

Next, my umpire's map board for my 'Breaking of the Fellowship' game (see previous posts), complete with my random movement die: four sides are marked with arrows indicating 'straight ahead' and one each for 'turn left' and 'turn right'.

This was just made from two layers of fairly thick card glued together, although I would be tempted, if making this now, to use magnetic tiles as the cardboard ones are a fairly tight fit.  As you can see, the tiles, numbered 1-25 are randomised both as to placement and orientation.  The players in the game move around a grid with the numbers reading from left to right and all oriented in the same way, thus when they leave a square through a given side only the umpire can tell them which side of which square they enter.

Finally, and including some of most recent pieces made for the cancelled gaming session, are some bespoke movement, and ranging, sticks.

The grand-daddy of them all, at the top, complete with its bespoke die, is a roundshot bounce stick for Charles Grant's 'The War Game' rules.  The rest are made for the reduced scale I use in my much tweaked (butchered?) version of Brigadier Peter Young's 'Charge' rules.  For these I equate 1" to 2cm as the 'Charge' movement distances and artillery ranges are too generous for my sub-sized table (sub-sized that is compared to Charles Grant's 9'x7' table on which most of the games seem to have been played).

Can't see the Orcs for the Trees

Well, my revamped 'Breaking of the Fellowship' game got run out at the club and seemed to go down very well; I've already had a request to run it again.  The only thing that did go amiss was that I forgot to take my camera with me so had to scrounge some images from others and rely on my memory for what actually happened.  What follows probably gets much wrong but hopefully captures the gist of what happened.

Things started poorly for the men in the Fellowship with Aragorn, fleeing a Troll (random event) and Boromir wandering through the wood and blowing his horn but failing attract any attention, good or bad.  

Legolas and Gimli got off to a great start finding Frodo who should be safe with those two redoubtable fighters to protect him.  This is the situation in the photo below.  

Things then started to go downhill when a large (c.20) band of goblins hove into view and Frodo promptly slipped on The Ring and departed to safer parts leaving Legolas and Gimli to face the music.  However, it was the elf and dwarf who called the tune, ripping into the goblins with such effect that after just two rounds of combat the remaining goblins fled.

Now it was Aragorn's turn to stumble across Frodo and convince him that they should stick together.  Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin still searching at random for Frodo started calling out his name (random event) only to call down on themselves a large band of goblin (goblins and Uruk Hai throw for their strength on each new encounter with Fellowship figures).  Pippin struck down one goblin but was quickly subdued while Merry fought on surviving two rounds before being taken captive.    

Then, just like a Hollywood script, Legolas and Gimli arrived to save the Hobbits.  Hopes for another goblin cull were promptly quashed by the cards turning cruelly against the two heroes and compounded by the appearance of a Warg pack behind them (random event).  Gimli was torn apart by the Wargs and Legolas, badly wounded and near death, broke free and fled.  The goblins then made off with the captive Hobbits successfully exiting the map without further hold-ups.

While this was going on Aragorn and Frodo encountered the band of Uruk Hai and once again Frodo slipped on the ring and fled but this time at Aragorn's insistence while he fought to hold back the enemy.  While Aragorn indulged in some Uruk whittling Frodo came across the troll and kept ring on for longer than anticipated until clear of all threats.  As Frodo had now worn the ring for longer than one turn there was a small chance of a Nazgûl turning up.  So, with the advice to throw anything but a one, Boromir rolled a d6 and got... a one!

Boromir redeemed himself by arriving in time to finish of the Uruks freeing Aragorn to seek out and protect Frodo from the Nazgûl.  The first to encounter the Ringwraith was Sam who was unfortunately slain before Aragorn arrived and slew the Ringwraith's steed.  Aragorn and Frodo then reached the boats and with the Nazgûl slowly limping towards them launched one and set out for Mordor to destroy The Ring leaving the others to follow on later.  

This essentially wrapped up a fairly bad day for the Fellowship, with Sam and Gimli slain, and Merry and Pippin taken captive.  Can Aragorn get Frodo safely to Mount Doom?  And if so, with no-one to save Rohan and Gondor, what will be left to come home to?

 A Wizard Pair of Figures

With the imminent debut of the Fellowship game (see previous LotR posts) at my local club firing up my enthusiasm for the genre, I dug Saruman and Wormtongue out of my painting pile for a quick paint job.  So, fresh from my painting desk...

I'm fairly pleased with these, but as ever close-up a photograph shows how grainy the finish can be when using enamels if you have to rework the paint too much.  These figures also suffered from an accidental coat of spray gloss varnish (I picked up the wrong can!) but luckily a good coat of matt varnish over the top seems to have saved my blushes.

Not that there's anything wrong with gloss varnish - I am rather partial to it on vintage figures like my earlier Saruman from the Minifigs Mythical Earth range (see below); now supplanted by the Games Workshop figure.

Lost in the Woods...

                     ...The Breaking of the Fellowship

[Pre-Cabinette Archives c.2018]

I couldn’t resist the Games Workshop figures based on the Lord of the Rings films but not wanting to buy, or paint, large armies I needed a smaller game that would only need a few figures.  I also wanted everyone to be a ‘goodie’ as the ‘baddies’ are harder to identify with and tend to rely on numbers rather than heroics to win.  

Ideally, something like Pony Wars (by Ian Beck) but with players controlling a couple of characters rather troops of cavalry and a structure that forced players to split up to make them more vulnerable to roving bands of orcs, etc.  I settled on a game set around the breaking of the Fellowship where the remaining eight characters (no Gandalf) are scattered in the woods trying to find Frodo after he has fled Boromir’s attempt to seize the Ring.  

The next problem was how to handle ‘hidden movement’ in the woods to stop players knowing the whereabouts of each other and the enemy.  Somewhere, and I can’t recall where, I read about a hidden movement system where the terrain is gridded but laid out on the table in a random fashion, i.e. the grid on the wargame table is not contiguous and when leaving one square the unit appears in another elsewhere on the table.  The umpire uses a master map of the grid, as it is really laid out, to tell players leaving one square which square they enter next.  

Explaining is easier with pictures.  The following figure shows the grid as seen by the players, numbered consecutively and with the points of the compass all aligned the same way.  The second view shows the grid as it appears on the umpire’s map of 'reality' (I’ve shown a 3x3 grid for simplicity but I use a 5x5 grid in the game).

Thus, when a player moves off a tile (or square), he tells the umpire “Leaving the east side of tile two” to which the umpire replies, “You enter the south side of tile six” and the player’s figures are placed at that location.  A player trying to leave the edge of the map (highlighted in red), e.g. “Leaving the south side of tile one” would be told “That way is impassable”.   

The position of the tiles on the umpire’s map is randomised for each game and I made a series of cardboard tiles that slot snugly into a cardboard frame to do this.  Nowadays I’d use magnetic tiles and steel paper.  Assembling the map like this is quicker and easier than drawing it out each time and avoids accidental duplication of numbered tiles (yes, I did do it once!). 

Now with the players having to cope with so much geo-spatial uncertainty I wanted a REALLY SIMPLE movement and combat system to keep the game moving.  For this I use playing cards, each player having a number of cards each turn they can use for movement or combat (unused cards are retained with players being dealt cards each turn to bring them back up to a total of 6 cards).  If a player is dealt a Joker at this stage a random event is diced for.  

To move, costs one card to advance a player’s figure(s) one spot on a tile – there is no measurement required.  Figures can be either at the centre or the centre of the edge of a tile as per the figure below (arrows represent a single card’s worth of movement).   

The above diagram is a single tile, the broken lines just delineate the 5 spaces that figures can occupy and move between.  Precise position on the tile is not important so long as it is clear which of the five spaces they are in i.e., the centre or one of the sides.  A player can spend up to three cards on movement (or two if moving Hobbits).  This means players cannot move far enough to both enter and leave a tile in the same turn (other than by doubling back).  I put trees in the unused corners of the tiles as all this is supposed to be happening in a forest.  Players attempting to cross an impassable tile edge still expend a card but stay where they are.   

Hobbits, until ‘convinced’ by other members of the Fellowship, and the enemy move 2 spaces at random.  Such figures will however move faster directly towards/away from others they are seeking to avoid or attack if they are on the same tile.  The roving Uruk Hai and Orcs will leave the table if they capture any Hobbits being moved towards their designated exit points by the umpire.

Combat, when it occurs, also uses cards, red suits to attack and black to defend.  For combat the score matters so players will expend low ranking cards for movement retaining higher ones for combat.  Player characters can make as many attacks as the player has red cards or at least one per figure.  If the attack card beats the enemy’s defence card, then a wound is inflicted; one wound is enough to kill most baddies but the Fellowship are made of sterner stuff.  The enemy figures which don’t have any cards in hand draw at random from a deck (ignoring the colour). Player characters can decide which card to play from their hand after seeing the enemy’s draw.  Player characters draw from the same deck as the enemy if the player has no cards of the appropriate colour in his hand.  Shooting is treated the same, with different modifiers, except figures only have to be on the same tiles as opposed to on the same spot for close combat.  Enemy figures will all make one attack if in position to do so.

The game sequence followed for all this is:
1. Deal cards to bring players up to 6 each (test for random event on Jokers).
2. Random movement (Hobbits, Uruks, Goblins, Gollum and Nazgûl).
3. Enemy movement if not random.
4. Fellowship movement.
5. Fellowship attacks (& Boromir’s horn).
6. Enemy Attacks.

So, putting all this together with some extra rules to drive the scenario along and a few special abilities for some characters I ran a game with my friends and surprisingly it worked a treat first time.  By sheer chance I seem to have got the balance just about right and unlike so many of my rule sets this one has hardly been tweaked at all.  

Terrain Tiles for the Breaking of the Fellowship 

I've been running a game based on the Breaking of the Fellowship scenario that takes place at the end of first part the Tolkien Trilogy.  Intending to run this at my local wargaming club I thought it needed to be tarted up a bit as the while my green cloth marked out in biro was functional it wasn't that pretty.

Having some spare vinyl flooring in the loft I used this and some railway modelling grass sheet to make a 5x5 grid of 9x9" squares for the game as shown below.

The idea of using vinyl flooring was to avoid warping, however as it was on a roll cutting it square so that the tiles would butt up properly was a real pain but I persevered and finally achieved an acceptable level of precision(?).  Then muggins went and glued the grass sheet down with pva, which being water based promptly caused the paper backed grass sheet to ruck up and then shrink as it dried making all the tiles curl up!  Much swearing and bending of the tiles ensued until they laid flat, albeit with lots repairs required for the resulting tears in the grass sheet.  Not great, but it'll have to do.

As the action takes place in the woods, trees are placed at the corners of each tile.  The numbers, made from children's magnetic fridge numbers, allow players to rapidly identify where they are.  This is needed as the hidden movement system means that figures leaving one tile don't necessarily appear in the adjacent tile.  I will post again on this topic explaining how this system works once I find an old article I wrote on this.  

Also shown, as can be seen more clearly in the next photo, is the dice used for random movement by unaccompanied Hobbits and the 'enemy' when they cannot see any Fellowship figures. 

The players, as the non-Hobbit fellowship characters have to find the Hobbits before the enemy does and get them to safety using boats.  The boats, shown below, are visible in the far corner of the grid in the first photo.