That Games Workshop Balrog!

Yes, there must be thousands of well intentioned purchases of the GW Balrog figure when "The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" came out at the cinema and simultaneously hit the Games Workshop retail outlets. Yes, someone, with the gift of the brush, was assigned in each shop to paint the Balrog and told to "do it right" because it was going to be the centrepiece of the shop window display for the next six months (see below, my beastie was assembled years ago - no mean feat in itself and primed grey but got "stuck" in limbo):

But .. as good as the casting techniques were back then, figures of this size and complexity were always  "gappy" at the joins, so my Balrog has stayed many years imprisoned in a box awaiting the Milliput treatment, but alas the thought of rolling two pieces of epoxy putty together (the brown one always annoyingly harder than the green/yellow one) makes you want to run to the kitchen and "make a cup of tea and get very distracted from rolling Milliput" (see below, the next stage - gap filling, not Milliput but Vallejo Plastic Putty to the rescue):  

Vallejo Plastic Putty was an impulse buy, yes I have many plastic kits that would benefit from it, but if truth be told, for the, majority nobody would notice on the wargames table. The enigmatic bottle winked at me but was not put to great use, until one day teh urge took me to find the Balrog. Close inspection of a large fantasy figurine like the Balrog at a RPG (inevitably playing D&D) session is embarrassing though and it why this figure was put to the back of the painting queue (see below, horrid gaps and I mean horrid gaps at last being filled, even Sauron was smiling. The Plastic Putty is squeezed out in controllable amounts that can then be applied by cocktail stick or end of a modelling knife):  

Well if any of my D&D player characters from my ongoing campaign are looking in, firstly "Hi - stop peeking! No good will come of it!". Secondly rest assured I would not be so "mean" as to do something as "mean spirited" as introducing a large, dangerous, short tempered and obviously "too high a level" monster (with quick-kill player character eating potential) into the game, just because I have painted it, What do you take me for? Yes, of course I will quite happily wait twenty odd years until you are ready to tackle it. Please pay no attention to the Bugbear and Demon Prince figures that did that, appearing out of the natural course of events, we call those regrettable incidents, so unsightly. That was plain "mean" and I have learnt my lesson (which was go out of the room before starting to laugh out loud). Carry on, there is nothing to see here, move along Gandalf. 

Moria Troll "Washed"

Again a beastie that stares at me from the library shelf, strategically placed in line-of-sight. Taunted I first primed it in Airfix Grey Acrylic Primer then Vallejo Washed him in Sepia Brown (see below, he looks and angry chap): 

Anybody seen a hobbit? (see below, that is the spear aimed as in the first film at Frodo Baggins): 

Good first step. Watch this space for the next ;)

There Be A Dragon Here (a GW LOTR one, but not Smaug)

My eldest son is battling away trying to assemble a huge lump of GW LOTR lead for his Duke of Edinburgh modelling badge. The bid bits were put together with a good quality super-glue and a tiny bit of Blue Tack to help hold it in place as it dries (see below, not as big as Smaug, but still fairly impressive nevertheless):

My son learns the merits and patience required, filing small assemblies on big models is just as important as gluing the big bits on (see below, something to do with the head methinks):

Well he got there; he wanted something big to scare his friends RPG characters (aka PCs) in his Dungeons and Dragons adventurer (see below, assembled and ready for painting - that's what you get when you give levels to characters too quickly - they have got to earn that experience and gold pieces the hard way):

Stepping back to give you a sense of scale (see below, that is one big beast):

What colour? Red naturally!

GW LOTR Moria Cave Troll - Assembly

Along with, or apart from the Balrog, the most iconic "boss" monster from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, must be the Moria Cave Troll (see below, equipped with Hobbit hunting spear - be sure to pack your best "mithril" armour): 

He certainly is a chunky piece of lead, this being long before the resin Fine Cast 'experimentation' (aka disaster) and more modern injection moulding techniques replaced all the old metal "large monsters" (see below, from another angle you can see what a good pose the figure is in): 

I found it lying next to the Balrog and decided to slip it together and was pleasantly pleased at how well the pieces fitted. I toyed with the ideal of pinning the joints but (something I may well regret later) I used a bit of cheap to hold the pieces in place an d then applied a good quality superglue. It seems to have worked really well (so far)!

Games Workshop LOTR Balrog Project

In tandem with my sons Duke of Edinburgh "model making" activity (he is doing a GW LOTR Dragon, no not Smaug, it is the smaller GW Dragon model) I have finally decided to go "Balrog" and attempt the iconic monster from the first movie (see below, the disassembled pieces "lying in state" but cleaned):

To those with "eagle eyes" a 'Moria Cave Troll with spear' is to the top right. The Balrog beastie took a good hour fiddling away with before the flash and lead channels were snipped, shaved and filed away. It had to be said there is a vicious 'lead bend' in the model affecting the tail and head, so Milliput or green stuff" will be required and copious addition filing to get it right. This is not a snap-and-fit model for sure and probably one of the reasons GW abortively experimented with resin FineCast.

A surge of metal mined from Moria

At last, the flush of WW2 projects off the painting table cleared in my mind's eye a slot for the LOTR HoTT project. specifically those Metal Morian Goblins. These are the boys (or things) who will stand by the Great Goblin and Goblin Shaman, so they deserved to be of a slightly better class, or should that simply read weight? ;)

Specifically the Goblin King of Moria (Note : Please excuse the glare in the photo's caused by the evil-smelling torches in the Goblin tunnels, and yes the basing is far from complete, but the plan is to do that all in one go at the end)  

The Evil Goblin Shaman of Moria:

The dead-eye Archers too are of a quality above the normal (plastic) "hoardlings".

A plastic 7Hd (incidentally I originally was planning to base them 5Hd but thought they looked too much of a "skirmish formation", rather than the swarming mass of writhing goblin arms, legs and bodies I remembered from the epic Fellowship of the Ring scenes - my painting arm complaints but artistic director is happy akin to Peter Jackson) :

Hoards of things (with two more bases still needed for the Moria OoB):

Next stop, back to the plastic to flesh out another two more Hoards (7Hd) of the above, (that's fifteen figures in all, two times seven plus one, as one of the above bases is a figure short) before I can move onto that Cave Troll which has been hiding in a box for simply years now :)

The HoTT GW LOTR "War of the Ring" Campaign project seems a long, long way off at the moment.

:(

Valiant's Multi-Pose GI's Figures

I had to face facts. I was avoiding the dreaded task of cutting out the the arms and torsos off the Valiant plastic sprue. It was one of those things that was something worse in thought than in doing, so with a sigh I gently picked up a craft knife. The result being the figures in gray below (with an escort of Platoon 20 British Infantry)

There that was not so bad, I said to myself. Mostly good in fact, although it took longer than I expected, and a few of the poses look a bit questionable, though let's see how they paint up. The two GI's with guns slung to the left could perhaps have been done better (somehow?). Another view of the same thing below:

In the background you can see my second squad of British Platoon 20 infantry have advanced to the "shades" stage. But look:

This angry man wants attention! A metal Morian Goblin, I avert my eyes and go do some housework instead, it's just a mental thing with me at the moment, akin to writers block, figure "brush freeze" :(

Metal problem in Moria solved

Gotcha Mr Metal Goblin!


Stop Press: Factory batch process abandoned on the Metal Goblins. Each figure is now treated as an individual in a 'holistic' arty manner before going onto the next one, sounds almost like therapy to me. I probably needed a well earned break from painting endless batches of GW "Camo Green" and GW "Bolt Gun Metal" body parts anyway.

The individual process is far slower but with only ten metals to paint some form of forward progress can be maintained, one down, nine to go!

:)

Troublemakers: The Goblins of Moria

Now the painting tray stands almost empty, quite forlorn .
Gone are the tanks and aircraft.


What is left is the evil Goblin hoard that has all but broken my will to paint them, but that is what Goblins are good at, being evil and sneaky.

The background to this madness:
It all started when I joined in a HOTT (Hoards Of The Things) Campaign down at my local wargames club. Despite my not having a 15mm army I became an Orc Chieftain (of Bogland) through a generous donation/loan by the campaign referee. The game was a blast (and is still ongoing) so I came away enthused and charged to do some HOTT fantasy figures of my own. The trouble was that I had a stack of unpainted 20mm LOTR (Lord of the Rings) figures from GW (Games Workshop) and couldn't really justify in my own mind doubling up with an equivalent army of smaller 15mm goblins! Rather than base the LOTR figures individually I would HOTT them in stands, a perfect solution, or was it?

The planned HOTT Moria Goblin Army:

9 x 7Hd (Hoard) = 9 AP
1 x 3Wb (Warband General) = 2 AP
1 x 3Wb (Warband) = 2 AP
1 x Shaman (Cleric) = 3 AP
2 x Troll (Behemoth) = 8 AP

Total 24 AP (Army Points)

Variations:
1 x 4Bw (Shooters) = 2 AP
1 x Balrog (God) = 4 AP
2 x Warg Riders (Riders) = 4 AP (2 AP each)
1 x Gollum (Sneaker/Lurker) = 3 AP or 1 AP

It all started well, I batched my "plastics" up in groups of tens and started off in factory production mode. It became an organised ritual part of the day and the figures stacked up nicely. I even decided to upgrade my hoard numbers from five on a base to seven as I was using the 25mm basing sizes. Five on a base looked like a skirmish formation rather than a seething, dangerous hoard. So far so good and I raced through forty eight plastics in about three to four weeks. Here are the "good" plastic Moria Goblins [Work In Progress = basing + 15 plastics to paint for my Army List]

:)


Then I hit the GW metals and promptly got "metal fatigue". The "bad" Moria Goblins [Work In Progress = highlighting and basing]

:(


They just broke my rhythm and concentration, instead of a set of familiar poses they were all oddly unique. I fought the urge to open up my last packet of plastics as I deemed that would be a severe loss of face in front of the metal Goblins. I stood at an impasse.

By way of distraction I started to tidy up, or not in the case of the Jaguarundi and the late war German stuff took my eye. I started searching on the Internet for an appropriate painting scheme, I fell into some blogs and thought I fancy a go at that. So its time to be "up and at those Goblins" (any inspirational comments appreciated) , watch this space ;)

Note: On the upside, after reading a friends recent post on their wargame blog: http://thewargameshed.blogspot.com/2009/08/jws-reunion.html, l liked what I saw on the creative use of a chessboard for Balin's Tomb. Hence I shall leave a good dozen of the plastics individually based after all for those inevitable AD&D adventure nights with old friends from school.

:)