Painting Stone Walls from Mantic Games Terrain Crate

Terrain is an important aspect of any miniature game.  I have a reasonable collection of 28mm models and I'm always looking for things to add to my terrain collection.

Several months ago, Mantic Games had a kickstarter for several Terrain Crates.  Each option gave you terrain for a different table top theme.  I went in with a friend and we got 3 of the crates.

The first models from these crates to hit my paint table are these stone walls.  Linear terrain is great because is breaks up line of sight and movement without taking up a big footprint on the table.  It can also provide models a defensive location (maybe with some bonuses) depending on the scenario being played.

These models are well detailed (if a little bent) and will work for a variety of games.

My first game of Dragon Rampant - Goblins vs Gondor

I've been painting armies for use with Dragon Rampant for a while.  I finally was able to put some models on the table and play a game.

Randy took control of the forces of Gondor and I led the Goblin horde.  We played the Death Chase scenario from the Dragon Rampant rule book.  The forces were pretty basic as this was a learning game.

I thought I would share a few pictures of the game and a few of my first thoughts.

The Goblins where the attackers and were trying to stop the men of Gondor from crossing the field of battle.

The men of Gondor set up their forces with an archer unit on each flank and their foot units and general in the center.  The Goblins split their forces pretty evenly between the north and south sides of the board.

The men of Gondor had better quality troops, while the goblins had a bit larger force.

I like the generic nature of the rules.  You can use any models and call them whatever you want.  Of course, there is a certain amount of common sense that should be applied, but that is necessary in any game.

Another neat idea is allowing units to have different sizes by allowing models to have multiple wounds.  This lets you play the game with larger forces or small warbands.  We only had a one unit that had multiple wounds, but I plan to try a game using a single model for each unit to see how these work for a skirmish kind of game.

At first I thought the activation rolls were going to be easy and everyone would get to activate every turn.  That was not the case.  I'm sure you could have games that play out that way, but we were missing 5+ or 6+ regularly.  I wasn't sure if wounds on the unit affect the activation roll, we chose not to apply any reduction to the roll as it would have been very hard to activate a unit after it took a few wounds.  I think we did it correctly, but it was our first game.

I like that units that fail to rally take another wound as they run away.  It gives a feeling of your unit actually running for their lives.  Alternatively, it also makes rallying more difficult each turn if you fail the roll.

Overall, I was impressed with the game and look forward to playing it a few more times.  I'd like to try more options and see how this works for skirmish level engagements.

Lord of the Rings - more Men of Minas Tirith

It seems that I've done a lot of Lord of the Rings models lately.  And looking at what I've got painted and I have got a lot done.

I picked up some Minas Tirith soldiers from eBay and they were already painted.  They were not painted very well, but they were cheap so I wasn't mad.  I didn't want to start over so I thought I would try to "fix" the paint job and see how they looked

Below you can see how these looked when I started..

Most of the work in fixing these was just applying a better layer of silver on the armor.  I did a little bit of work on the weapons and faces.  Then I applied a wash to the whole model and then based them in my usual way.  The results are below and I am happy with the results.

These aren't going to win a painting contest, but they will look good enough on the table.  I now have 4 units of warriors of Minas Tirith for Dragon Rampant and I will also be using these as the basis of a Kings of War Army.  They will probably be used alongside some Rohan models.

Lord of the Rings - Men of Minas Tirith

More Lord of the Rings models recently hit my painting table.

This time, I put some paint on some models from the good side.  The men at arms of Minas Tirith are actually pretty good looking models.  These are from the old strategy battle game box so they can be gotten for a pretty low price these days.  I will be using these models for Kings of War and Dragon Rampant games so will need a fair number to field a decent force.

I'm always looking for simple paint jobs that still look decent so I thought I would test out a very simple paint scheme for these guys.

I started by spraying the models silver.  Next, I painted their robe black and highlighted it with grey.  I painted their face and hands a flesh color.  Lastly, I painted their belts leather brown.  With the base colors all in place I inked the entire model with Nuln Oil.

After that dried, I did my usual grit on the base with a base coat of burnt umber and a tan drybursh.  I will be adding some flock, but have not decided on which flock color to go with yet.

All in all, I'm happy with how these guys look given how quickly they paint up.