The Rohan house looks brilliant and your Goblin warrior looks great - did you just follow the steps in the painting guide?

VG

_________________
"Dark have been my dreams of late."

Thanks VG! I found the painting guide to be a bit lacking in all honesty. I don't like their approach of applying washes like regular paint. I posted a breakdown of my steps in reponse to freddybear. Mine probably ended up being similar though!

_________________
(WIP Thread)

Lots of great work on this thread. I particularly like your Rohan house and interchangeable trolls. Great idea!

_________________
"...that there's some good in this world Mr Frodo - and it's worth fighting for."

Wow, i must say your wip is really awesome, will definitely be followwing this in the future.

_________________
My work in progress thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=27503

Welcome, great idea for your roof, I will use that idea as it looks really effective, thanks

_________________
Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

Thanks as always for the comments guys. This community is definitely growing on me!

I've taken shots of all my progress so far, but i'll only upload some of it today, as uploading that many photos at once is probably bad form!

Anyway, I made a lot of headway with the EFGT box, and got everything I needed for the first scenario finished. Here is my first finished warband of 12 Goblins, with their adorably small Captain on one of the two platform pieces.



I tried to get a few different focused pics to show off the individual models rather than the whole warband.





Next up are the four heroes of the scenario; Oin, Gloin, Kili and Fili.



I wanted to base everything so it fit the subterranean theme, but still could be used on my regular mud/grass board and wouldn't look out of place with the rest of my armies. I used the textured GW brown paint and drybrushed with lighter browns/off-whites so that it could pass as dirt/mud rather than the grey rock you see in Moria etc. I may even do the rest of my Moria and Dwarven bases like this too. As you can see i've also decided to move away from my black-rimmed bases, and gone for the same brown as the mud used on above-ground models. I do like the black rims, but I feel this new approach makes them look a lot better on the board itself. I went through and rim-painted the rest of my finished figures, including the troll and spectres (to which I also added some more reeds).

As a bit of a non-hobbit bonus, I finished up Durburz, the Goblin King to lead my Moria forces.



C&C as always, looking forward to hearing what you think!

_________________
(WIP Thread)

Looks great. The dwarves are particularly nice and recognisable.
I, too, prefer brown rimmed bases for gaming and black bases for display.

_________________
My Youtube Channel

Magnetised troll: full marks for innovation. All I can suggest for the drummer troll is to build up the gaps with some green stuff to minimise them but they can never be completely eliminated.
Rohan house: very nice!

_________________
Published ebooks:
Instrument of the Empire
A Note of Defiance
Phantom Ships, Ghost Flotilla
More to come!

Clean looking models what did you use on the escape from goblin town goblins?

_________________
Who ever said swimming was easier then running never swam a 400 I.M.

@Knife in the Dark - I posted a quick step-by-step on the first page if you're interested.

@Dorthonion - Thank you! I totally agree on the arms. It's on my to-do list, but seeing as I have no plans on using a drummer anytime soon I may put it on the back-burner for now!

---

Great to hear what you all think!

This time, I need your help & advice. I'm having a bit of a basing crisis. So far I have only based around 20 models with my new technique, but since playing with the textured GW paint on the subterranean bases, I have begun to really like it's look more-so than my current one. I am tempted to remove the bases on what I have done and use the new paint instead. I am very keen to know what everyone else thinks before following through with this idea though.

My current 'standard' bases are like this;



They were a vast improvement on my previous 'just flock-it' approach, but now looking at them, I feel they are rather messy and a bit boring. I did these by adding a thin layer of polyfilla to the base, painting it brown, and then dry-brushing with a lighter brown and white, then finally adding static grass.

You can see my goblin/dwarf bases above, which I like the look of, and decided to try out a desert-style base using the same technique for my harad force;



I really like the look of this one, and it is still brown enough to fit my board without looking too out of place.

So, I took the dive and scraped off the base on one of my tester uruk-hai, and tried a 'standard' style base with the new technique;




Here is an example of them side by side on my board, so you can get an idea of how they match it for gameplay purposes;



Finally, here is the same base with some leaf-litter. I am on the fence about the litter as perhaps it is a bit too much? I may reserve that for elves/rangers. Thoughts?



So there we are. I just wanted to find out what your two-cents are on the looks before I go ahead and undo the work on my previous models, and before I base so many that i'm past the point of no return.

Thanks for taking the time to read all my waffle!

_________________
(WIP Thread)

I think the texture paint is better but still too flat IMO. I just use sand (along with a lot of others I would say) and a bit of flock. Give it a drybrush over whatever base colour you want and its done - easy and effective. And not as expensive as texture paints as you can just use regular paint.

As for the leaf litter, I personally would only use it on elves or other forest-based armies but it still looks good on the uruk. One comment would be that the leaves are Too central on the base and attract too much attention so just move the to the side a bit or put them more on the edges of the grass.

_________________
My trade thread
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=25957&p=325932#p325932

I would look to adding some bigger rocks to help them look more interesting. The textured paint is something I've never used but from what you've done it does look ok.
Below are a couple of options for you to consider. The first with a few larger stones but unpainted. The second is using a piece of stone from the garden, the options are limitless.

_________________
Commission Service Available

mallysminiatures.blogspot.co.uk

Thanks for the tips. It really helps!

@Hodush - I agree with the leaves, it did look a bit out of place. On your advice i've decided to scrap that and just use it on woodland creatures and my wood scenery.

@Gandlaf - That is a great point on using larger rocks. As you and Hodush both mentioned, the bases were looking very flat and I think that is what was missing. I've made a few revised bases and used bits of cut up sprue as large rocks/boulders, and even small details to break up the flatness, such as the ferns and logs (bottom right - hard to see in photo).




Are these much of an improvement?

_________________
(WIP Thread)

These do add more to the bases but I can't help but feel the flat areas seem untouched. I think that using sand to cover the base with additional rocks will help. It may be along the lines of many others but it will look more complete.

_________________
Commission Service Available

mallysminiatures.blogspot.co.uk