It is Finished!

Well,

The Moria Goblins are done! I started the last push on Thursday and I completed all 48 models on Sunday. Now as I said before, my goal was to finish up all of my Goblin models (some of them from the first release of the game!) and now I can say that I have done it!

So to recap the 48 models I had 20 Goblin Archers which you see below.


There were 17 Goblin spearmen.


And there were 6 Goblin Swordsmen with shields.

Here is a shot of all 48 models together finished.

And here is a shot of the whole models completed for the challenge.


So, I took a picture of all of my Goblin collection together, that is 116 total models in the collection! I did not know that I had this many Goblins and it is a nice looking army (too bad I can only field 75 models in most games!) and it gives me many options when I do field the army.

Here are a few close ups of the whole army.



So now, all I have to do is play some various point games (175, 350, 525 & 700). We are all (Rob, Jerry, Mike and Myself) going to get together and try to play through our catch up games to see how the points shake out.

I have to say, that this little challenge was very fun to do. At first some people were worried that they could not stay focused to do this, but in the end we all did a great job of staying focused. And this show just how easy it is to paint up a army over a few months time. I have heard that our little challenge has sparked a few other LotR SBG gamers to do the same sort of thing. Once I here for sure I will post a link to their little challenge.

So there you go, I will post up more photos once we play our catch up games and off course I will let you all know who won and where we went to eat! I hope you guys enjoyed the coverage and I will leave you with one last shot of the whole Moria Goblin Army...
TK

The Final Stretch

So we are all now in the final stretch of our Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers, and it has been a great success. While talking to Rob (Drunkensamurai) the other day, he mentioned that he was amazed that we have all been able to keep this little challenge going. As of yesterday two people (Rob & Jerry) have completed their armies and that leaves Mike & I to catch up before the end of the month.

So today I decided to put together my last 175 points for the challenge. But my motivation with this challenge was for me to paint up all of my Goblins from the start, in which there are more than 700 points worth! So after pointing out my next 175 (which would be 35 more models!), I noticed that I still had 13 models left over out of my collection. So I have decided to paint up all 48 models by the end of the month! I will still only use the 35 models for my list, but now I will have extra options.

So here are 6 more Sword and shield equipped Goblins that will be in the list.


Next up are 17 spear armed goblins, a bunch of these are going into the list as well.


Next up are more bow equipped goblins that I can really use, there are a total of 25 of these little buggers.

Here is the group shot of all 48 models ready to go to the paint desk! So wish me luck since I have less than 2 weeks to get these little guys ready. Once we get to the end of the month, the four of us need to play a few more games (since we have not had time to do them) to see how the armies shake out at the various point levels.

One last thing, you may have noticed that these guys are sitting on desert terrain, well these will be covered in the next post and these are two new boards for GitD 2012. If you remember the last post, I had just gotten in a 4'x8' Realm of Battle table. Well last weekend with the help of Jerry, we got them all painted up, so stay tuned for that coverage and a few other bits I did.

TK

ToFLotR Gamers 3rd Installment

So here is my next installment for the Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers Series. The deadline for this month is August 1st and since last month I was late, I figured I better get my rear end in gear.


So Monday I will post up the standings to date. We did get together and play a few games last Friday and we had some interesting battles, but I will cover that on Monday.

TK

Better Late than Never!

So my last update was back on June 24th and I only had a few days to get my next installment of 175 points four our little competition. Well as luck would have it, Life got in the way and I missed getting my troops painted by 7/1 by only one figure.

You see the one model happened to be the Cave Troll, for some reason I hate painting cave trolls. No other model in the LotR range gives me more issues other than the Cave Troll. I don't know what it is, it is not a hard paint scheme, I just have built up this weird mental painters block for the Cave troll.

Anyway, on to my 175 points, first up are the 10 Goblin archers. I needed some long range fire support and these little guys are it.


After that comes the Shaman, although as I admitted in the last post, this model was already painted. In fact this little guy was part of my Dwellers Below list that one best painted in the Mayhem in the Mountains in 2010. but since I have only one Shaman, I was not going to strip him and re-paint him for our little challenge.

Last but not least is the one model that held me up, yep it is the Cave Troll! I went with the Spear armed model just because I liked how it looked and I hope to stick some Elves ad Dwarves with it!

So here is the whole army all 32models (346 points) all together. So far the army is looking pretty good on the table and these little guys have been waiting forever to get painted!


Now just to clarify, since the Cave Troll gave me so much issues, I also decided to paint my last Cave Troll along with this one. Now here is a shot of all three of my Cave Trolls. The model on the right was painted about 5 years ago, the center one is this months and the one on the left was an added bonus so I would not have to paint him later on. Now all my Cave Trolls are painted!


So what next you ask? Well first up are 36 points of Goblins with Shields. This will add a few more goblins to the army and these are the last of the few I used converted shields on.

Next up is a Goblin Drum for 100 points! What you say? Why is he taking this you ask? Well part of the reason why I choose Goblins for this little challenge was to get the army painted. I bought the Goblin Drum some time ago and heck, I just thought it looked cool, so there you go!

So I am up to 136 points spent out of 178 (3 points left from last month) so I purchased a Goblin Captain with shield for 40 points.

So for this month that gives us this break down as follows

Rob has 30 points
Mike has 25 points
I have 16 points
Jerry has 15 points

So stay tuned for more action...

TK

June LotR Update

Wow,

Where has June gone?? It seems that I am the last one again to try to get my next installment up for our little contest. Well I thought I could sneak in some painted stuff already done, but I have been warned that I will be ridiculed beyond belief. So I dove into my LotR box for my additions.

So first up is 50 points of archers, that means 10 goblin bowmen & Yes Jerry, I will be able to Volley fire on your precious elves! So here are the boys in bare metal.

Next up I needed a heavy hitter, so time to bust out a Cave Troll, yes, he has a cave troll! I have two models one with hammer and this one with spear, so I choose the spear armed model and that means he is 81 points.


Now one more addition was to add a Shaman to the force, but they only problem is he was already painted. So this is the only painted model that will be introduced into the army. I did add more highlights to the figure so I did put some paint on him.


So here is the motley crew in all of their glory, now to get them painted before the end of the month.
TK

Results for April of ToFLOTR Gamers

As some may have read here and on a few other Blogs, we are running a Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers.Well June first was the first deadline for the four of us to get our first batch of 175 point models done.

Just to recap, if you got your models completed by June 1st, you got 5 points. If they were submitted after the June 1st deadline then you got 3 points and if you did not paint anything, you got 0 points.

So how did we do?

Well I got 5 points for my Goblin Mob

Rob got 5 points for his dwarf's.

Mike got 5 points for his Uruk-hai

And Jerry also got 5 points for his elf's.

Now we also got in at least one game this month (some of us more) and we would be adding the points from painting to the points won during games. Now for each game there would be a set number of points handed out and I used the scoring method from Gathering in the Desert and was broken down as follows:

Major Win 20 points
Minor Win 15 points
Draw 10 points
Minor Loss 7 points
Major Loss 5 points.

So last week Rob's Dwarf's faced off against Jerry's Elf's in a High Ground game. Rob and his Dwarf's walked away with a Major win while Jerry got the Major Loss. Tonight Mike and I got in a game (due to Mike having life issues last week) and we played Seize the Prize, well the Uruk-hai beat the Goblins and Mike got a Minor victory while I took a Minor Loss.

So here is how the Battle points shook out:

Rob's Dwarf's 20 points
Mike Uruk-hai 15 points
Tim's Goblins 7 points
Jerry's Elf's 5 points

So for April this is how it stands:

Rob has 25 points
Mike has 20 points
Tim has 13 points
Jerry has 10 points

So there you go, that is the first month totals. We are going to try to get everyone together before next weekend to play a doubles game with the two good players (Jerry & Rob) vs the two Evil players (Myself & Mike) to throw in some bonus points. So stay tuned for that and the next few updates to our armies.

TK

Goblins Galore!

Well,

It is almost June 1st and that is the deadline for the four of us competing in this challenge. So far Mike over at Da Green Skins has his first models ready. Jerry at Jerry's Big Picture has his models finished, that leaves me and Rob of Drunken Samurai painting Blog to get our acts in gear to be finished by the 1st.

Well I am happy to report that I have finished up my first 175 points this weekend and with out further ado here is my Goblin army!

First up Durburz, the Goblin King!

Next up is the Goblin Kings bodyguard, 8 Prowlers with two handed weapons. I had a chance last week to pick up another 8 Prowlers while I was down in Memphis, but I passed, now I wish I had!
Next we have 6 Goblins with hand weapons and shields, these guys will be the core of the army, so that means there is going to be a ton of them to paint!

Lastly our 5 spear armed Goblins, like the hand weapons goblins, these guys will make up the bulk of the army as well.
So here is the gang all together, all 20 of them ready to unleash terror on the world of Middle Earth!
My next 175 points will see me adding some bowmen as well as more troops, or perhaps a Goblin Shaman to add some magic to the list.

So stay tuned, next up will be the points for this month, we are now waiting for Rob to get his Dwarfs done, than we can play some games while we work on our next increase.

TK

So, since my last post was detailing the rules, I thought I would start assembling my Moria Army and give you some thoughts.

Well as I said, this army will be based off of the Moria army list and since I only have 175 points to spend, I thought why not go with the Durburz, the Goblin King of Moria.

(Sorry for the blurry picture, but my cameras batteries died after taking these pictures!)

At 60 points, that took my points down to 115 points to spend. So what better way than to take some elite Goblins, so I opted for 8 Goblin Prowler at 7 points a piece. Prowlers fit the fluff since Goblin kings take these guys since they are loyal and the fact that they have two-handed weapons was a plus. Add the Backstabber rule which gives them a +1 to wound added on top of the +1 for having two handed weapons, and you have some scary goblins that can dish out damage. So eight of these guys come in at 56 points, leaving me with 59 points to spend.


So I spent 30 points to pick up 6 Goblins with shields for 30 points. Now these goblins have left over shields from other kits, I figured that I wanted some variety in my goblin force and these guys sure add that.
So that left me with 29 points out of the 175, so I went with 5 Goblins with spear leaving me with 4 points left over. I decided that I wanted to go with spear over bows since at this lower level game, there would not be too many bows (although with Jerry Playing Elves that could be a problem!).

So there you go, 171 points spent, that leaves me with an extra 4 points to add to next months points. (Yes guys, if you don't spend all your points you can bank them until next month!) So now with the army picked, now to get painting!

TK

A Tale of Four Lord of the Rings Gamers

So, well over 13 years ago, Games Workshop had an article in White Dwarf called "A Tale of Four Gamers" that focused on four Staff members while they built 4 separate Warhammer Fantasy armies. The article was a huge success and it even caused White Dwarf to re-run the article but with four staffers that would build four Warhammer 40K armies, which once again was a huge success.

Well that got me thinking, hey why not do one for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Well that's what I am going to do, so in the next few months you will see a few articles that are going to follow me building a LotR army. Now in order for this to work, I needed three other folks to join me on this little crazy quest. So who did I con..I mean convince, well here are the other three suckers that will be joining me.

DrunkenSamurai (aka Robert) from Drunken Samurai Painting Blog. It is no surprise that Robert would be one of the folks I invited, he has been itching to start on a Dwarf force, but I will let him talk about that.

Next up is Jerry of Jerry's Big Picture. Jerry is a great guy and had been hounding me for about a year to buy my Elf army from me, so about a month ago I broke down sold it to him. So that should be his army.

We also have Mike from Da Green Skins. Mike has been a recent addition to our little game group and has jumped in to the LotR gaming all the way. His army was outstanding at GitD this year and he is planning on building a Uruk-hai army.

Now as for me, well I have decided to build a Moria Goblin army. I figure I have about 100+ goblins waiting to get painted and it is about time that they see some paint.

So with that here are the rules that are self imposed.

This little quest will last for the next 4 months and we will start out with 175 points and each month we will increase it by 175 points to a grand total of 700 points.

Each person will be responsible for getting an update out of there progress by the first of the next month. So the May month will be posted June 1st and so on with the final update being on September 1st. Each person can do more updates but they must have one showing what they got done for that month.

We will also be using the point system that was in the 2008 White Dwarf article of the following:

Models painted on time +5pts
Models painted late +3pts
Models Not painted +0pts.

So, you may be asking what is the winner going to get? What are the stakes? Well the losers will have to take the winner out to dinner at his favorite eatery and they will have to pick up the tab for him.

So stay tuned to this and the other blogs as we do brief introductions and what we are planning on doing...

TK