DIY Hauling Beast

I said I liked one of the new releases very much. I won't pay that much money for it though, so I did something better, I tried to make my own. And this is what I learned: I will never be a good sculptor unless I start to copy well executed works. The design; the pose, capturing some sort of movement; and then trying to make that with your little tools and your stupid chewing-gum putty. Too much. So I will now just copy until I can start to stray away little by little from the original and try to get better and actually learn something from my mistakes instead of what always happens: Failing with legs. Failure again, but this time I learnt something.


I figured the GeeDubb Hauling Beast looked too much of a turtle (or is it tortoises that have those beeky faces?) in the face and too much of an elephant in the body. So, I copied the general pose of the official one, but made it more like a pig and a certain dog breed I can't remember the name of. The face got smaller and more toned down.

The result? It looks too much of a grazer, but it has a too short neck to actually be such a creature. The teeth will make it look better. I hope. The body is just a pig and a cow-mixture, but still, quite pleased with the three hours of work. Did a shortcut with the polystyrene pre-body (instead of a proper armature) - never tried to harden super sculpey with that under. It melted, as expected but it held the shape anyways! Much happiness in the Llama-building.

The missing pieces, toe/claw-parts mainly (and the eyes!) will be done in green stuff.


Do you like the red thingies I painted on the pictures? Those are for my enjoyment and learning :)




Didn't e-bob make Hauling Beasts? And I am quite sure I have seen Hauling Beasts in a White Dwarf Siege of Gondor-article... but they looked slightly larger than the new release with the Howdah. And speaking of Howdas! That's something that'll be great fun to try to do!

Golden Horde and Sand Wyrm

The brown Golden Horde. A small collection of trinkets and gold bars will be added. The Haradrim Chieftain is shown for size comparison. The Golden Horde's size isn't told in the WotR rulebook; it just says "token". So, I didn't go overboard like a TLA-powergamer, but instead went the reasonable way: A token.




I primed the Sand Wyrm black and thought it looked really nice so I'm wondering if it not will be better suited for the gobbo army. But then again, I've got a Dragon of Ancient Times (homemade), a Balrog (not assembled due to space limitations), two Cave trolls and a homemade Cave Drake (that needs some serious work and a new base), so maybe the Sand Wyrm will stay a Sand Wyrm. I have experimented with some yellow to make it look more like a bee(?).

Lastly, the package from Perry Miniatures finally arrived.

I am very pleased with the Perry Miniatures, once again. There were a few failcasts here and there, but with the price and the excellent design of these historical figures, there's nothing to really complain about. Au contraire... The Korean horse-archers were top-knotch. They are painted and now I've got eight Khandish Horsemen. They were well suited to be mixed in with those, both size-wise and especially quality-wise.

New releases for Lord of the Rings

FINAL EDIT: No, the goblins on the warg aren't copies of the old ones, of course, what was I thinking... However, I did finally found a rehash that I am sort of sure is just that, a rehash (thank gaaw): The horse that the Easterling Dragon Knight rides looks exactly like one of the Morgul Knights' horses (meant KoDA-horse!), except it got added scale-armour.

These new releases are according to local guesses: Gobbo-related in wait of the Hobbit. To be honest I actually thought they were going to wait with the gobbos until just after the Hobbit-movie. The casualties was a nice one - although any hobbyist with self-respect OR too much time have already done such objects. Post will follow on this matter.

A little tiny EDIT: Just on a note here, can't remember that the gobbos in the Hobbit rode more than two on each warg... did they? Again, the designers of the company that produces this probably have some artistic freedom. Which is, in my opinion, something good - even if you have to live with the Groblogg-Köning of Thieves, motherfucking king of jumping from pillars!

The small edit became large... what I was trying to say about the Goblin Wolf Riders were: The riders looks exactly like early the white metal Goblin Warriors released waaay back in the day. I shall look it up in my olde LotR SBG: Collector's Edition.


Thank you unknown contributor for the images.

Orcs on howdah, new release

My thanks to the finder of these two images. They came to Llama's War of the Ring blog via FoB, who in turn found them on frothers (ah, the explanation of the name of that website just cracks me up) where they were initially just linking to images from dakkadakka. So, that's the history of the following images:

Howda Orcs. I'm looooving it. The price, somewhere between 45 and 60 GBPs, isn't an issue to me since I can just steal it in my extremely low-staffed quasi-GW-store. If I weren't a crazy thief I would say: Darn it, that's one expensive piece of failcast.

I really like the model and paintjob, but somehow it reminds me of WC3:s "Orc drummer on rhino-looking-creature"...

Kraken, or Watcher in the Water. The GeeDubb design is interesting on this one. They definitely took an unusal route with the body. I have seen some nice designs of this squid/ancient cthulu monster, but never have the sculptors creativity taken them down this road. The front part looks classic, but the back is unusual.

Another monster for Misty Mountains? Or just a generic monster to ally in in any darkly aligned faction? Or will we see a whole new faction for WotR or a totally new sub-system for said system, a BoFA-system in 28mm? One cannot know.

The Skulltower from GeeDubb have caught some flak ("flak", as the Podhammer-crew used to say when they were still podcasting), and rightly so:

silent25, waiting for app wrote [in regards of images of another Skull-littered towered from GW]:
Can we get a freaking peasant's house out of this company?

A nottinghamer answered:

Depends, how many skulls do you want on it?

Old Easterling conversions

Lots of work and little hobby during this weekend, so I'll let these old conversions sub for me. The update is part of my conversion theme that's apparently going on on the jaowsblog. And for anyone wondering what jaows means, I can only tell you it is an abbreviation of four Scandinavian gaming terms that have now been long forgotten.

Painting is done on the fellas above. Painting needs to be redone so no point in posting that picture.

I don't need to go into details with the different conversions, except to tell you their different roles - from left to right: Easterling Banner Bearer, Easterling War Priest, Easterling Drummer and the Sword master, what's his name... Amdûr, Lord of Blades. They turned out quite understated in comparison to GeeDubbs release, but I am still pleased with them, even though I at the time only used water as a release agent when working with kneadatite.

The four models in the background was apparently archers before. They all got press-mould shields. I think I repositioned some of their underarms so they all weren't pointing with their shields. The four dudes made it possible for me to field a little formation of Easterling Phalangists.

Mahdist Ansar made into Mahud Warriors

I think it is time for me to reiterate this: The jaowsblog is MAINLY about ongoing projects, it is generally not about the finished model in all it's tiny perfection. Which is why it is all DIY:s, BYO:s and DUI:s here. And especially since I don't care much to paint to perfection. Alors, voila:

I won't bother getting the blowpipe-guys any more gear, they'll keep the look just-going-to-war-with-a-stick, for a few years until I decide to redo them.


No time to comment further, except the usual: Bases not ready, movement trays will get the same treatment as the Golden King etc.

Llama warns about high prices!

Thanks to mr FoB for bringing this to my attention. Since I rarely visit news-and-rumour-forums I had totally missed it and acutally thought that GeeDubb had lowered their prices. No, they hadn't. I was this...

... close to order a bunch of stuff from their webshop. Thanks to mr FoB, from now on known as Arvedui (geekpoints there), I was forewarned and saw that the so-called price-lowering was actually a quite aggressive rise, especially in the currency I shop with! There is now just one sprue in every box!

Considering what state their plastic injection moulds seems to be (shit, when looking at the WoMT-sprues I just recently got, it looks like they're falling apart - the mould lines had started a life of their own, you'll see in the upcoming project I got, not much left of each warrior because of all the filing... ), I guess this is the right way to go to save the sprues, hahaha! No risk I would ever buy something from no on. Sad thing is though, this puts the probability that they aren't ever going to redo any of the old plastics ever again to a very high risk. One can only hope for the Hobbit to come to the rescue.

And something to cheer us all up: A young, probably rather stupid Llama, with his writing-feather ready.


PS, look further down for a better update about Orc conversions.

Mordor Orc conversions

Here they are, rescued from imploding websites and then finally an age old cache... someone did these Orc Warrior conversions and I thought they should be shared with other Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game fans and Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring fans. That's long for LotR SBG and LotR: WotR, respectively.

Not done by me. Use these as inspiration. Was never able to rescue the pictures of the finished, painted Orcs.



The following simple conversions were done by mr Llama (that's me writing) about two years ago. Hastily done, like all rank-and-file troopers I do. These are not included because I think they're awesome (I don't think that), but simply as inspiration. Mordor Orcs tend to be used en masse and conversions are good to not see the exact same miniature nine times in an Orc horde. Again, just slice and dice, add some green stuff and voila! Orc à la Llama!




And mr Dram Katastases, still not able to comment. What you've done as fillers is exactly what I forgot to put in my little article - I've got TONNES of similar one-base-fillers, thank you for adding that.

And to other readers: Proof reading will be done in the next litte mini-article.

Unit Fillers, part two

A lot if images are used without permission here, if you're the creator and you dislike it, we can meet outside and take it there.

This is a short wrap up of Unit Fillers. It will mainly show some more concrete examples of fillers and their general types. As noted in the first part, this isn't exactly university-level, but I hope you can get something out of it.


Introduction of part two of Unit Fillers
Something I didn't care about when doing this formation...

... is the obvious difference in speed of the creatures. There's a wolf/warg, a wisp and a big bird present in the same formation as Wood Elves. It is unadviced to greatly mix two or more different unit types, for a obvious reason: It is difficult to tell exactly what the unit is supposed to be, rules-wise. I would, however, glady advice someone to mix different creatures like this:

The unit follows a theme (Narnia) and has understated bases. The rhino sits fine with a unit of centaurs, especially when the aesthetical circumstances are as calm as they are in this regiment. No matter how strange it sounds with rhinos and centaurs mixed, it still looks good - because of the theme, which we also will go through in the following text:

Unit Fillers, part two of two
So, when doing fillers, there is a great incentive to keep to a theme. I would even go as far as saying: If you do not have a theme, steer away from all other fillers than natural objects/terrain. This is a nice example of fleshing out a unit with some terrain that really suits the undead look:


If you don't have a theme, take it easy with the fillers, unless, of course, the image of the army lends itself to such a thing:


Broadly speaking, terrain and/or special command units are generally never wrong. But what if you just want to pluck down some crap and fill out a unit? Earlier, I noted that one can use a large monster. Fair enough. But these things cost money and if there aren't any money left after christmas, you do this:

Image stolen from the Warhammer Forum and part of a large army with a strong and somewhat unusual theme. But the idea is still very much usable for a filler. The traffic divider...

Traffic divider used to great effect: Not only does the unit look great, but if one were to fill a unit with other things than miniatures, this is the way to do it. Picture from Mantic's blog, unknown creator.

[]


Lastly, I would like to touch on diorama versus fillers. We have, hopefully, all seen the famous Ork army for WHFB - known from TWF and also known from Podhammer and probably other podcasts: The one with every regiment fighting within. This is a somewhat similar thing:

This Dark Elf army, done after the movie 300, have a really strong theme (and we will come back to this project in a future article called "Theme") and doesn't use fillers. Each regiment is almost a minidiorama, extremely dynamic... so, what can we take from this nice project to use as fillers? The movement. By taking some extra time by posing a few warriors a little more aggressive - like in the image above, but more spaced, you can fill the front or center of a formation quite easily and also get a nice little centerview for the unit. If you really think you're up to it, do a mini-diorama, but then it becomes something much more than a simple filler, and that's a whole other article.

Fillers are made for fun, in my opinion, they are not a decision forced by my wallet, and I think this is true for most of the adult readers here - we got jobs, don't we? That said, I am strangely enough equally proud of my Gondor army with its tidy ranks of soldiers and cavalry company, as I am of my Edheldu with its trees and Wargs and WHFB Huorns and dozens of rune stones...

Let's wrap this up with with some pictures that all have great filler potential, even if their original creators never meant it that way:

A Skaven regiment for WHFB. A barrel float in the toxic fluid. The creator have prepared holders for another five Skaven warriors in an area that would normally comprise of eight models and thusly saves three models.

Another great project, utilizing OSL, a filler, movement etc into a diorama. Lots of goodies to learn from this.

A bunch of corpses. The problems with things like this - as always is with static fillers, like the trees and all those stone heads on my Edheldu project - is it really looks stupid when you move the whole shabang :) but who cares, it looks kewl, doesn't it?



Thanks for reading and not just looking at the pictures. Next update is probably saturday. I wish you all a nice week on work with lots of bottom pinching.

Mordor Troll conversions

There has been painting going on in my life, but no picture-taking. So, in tradition, we'll settle for some different stuff made mainly by others. Except for the following Mordor Troll conversions.

As you can see, they are somewhat white. I would not (probably) lie if I called it an undercoat, so no need for annoyance of c*pyi*g llamas. These were done during the year of 2007 and they were stupid fun to do! Due to limitations of space in my apartment, I have stayed away of buying the awesome plastic Mordor/Isengard Troll-kit that were released later that year, or the year after...

Longer post will follow on this old project, and some pics of the painted models. Hopefully, the bases will be done until then. As of now, they are only acceptable tabletop standard, and these deserve better.

And now to something totally different: Painting. Look at the armour on these fellas! Just awesome! That's exactly what I would do on all my shiny good-guys armour if I knew how to do it. Unless, of course, it takes too much time... they really look worked... well worked as in taking a lot of time. I would mos def redo my Boromir model if I could, though. Is this some sort of mix between NMM and regular metallics?



These orcs deserve their own post, so this is just for teasing and for me to remember to post them. A user on a now dead website had these posted (think it was originally around 2004 or 2005) and I found around five pictures of these great, but old, Orc conversions in my old web browser's cache!

Orc head and Orc hand on WoMT body. If you recognize your work here, please write a comment.

Haven't forgotten the WoMT-Cmnd project, just unsprued a "fresh" box of Warriors of Minas Tirith, and starting to go thru them to see which ones can be used for the two planned: A muso and a mapper. Don't worry about the Dwarf climber and Ruffian dude, I had planned a different post and blah-blah-blah.

And again, I have a top-secret project I can't share with you... *sad face*. Wish I could, it is sort of related to miniatures. This means though that the updates for January will be a little fewer, but not too few, I hope.

And BTW, I've been having trouble when commenting back (soon to be fixed), so mr Annatar: Many thanks for your kind words! Always encouraging :)


Next update: part two of the old article on Unit Fillers.

Mahdist Ansars into Mahûd Warriors

Paints and shields will make these great miniatures from Perry Miniatures into Mahûd Warriors. I bought two or three boxes when they were released in 2011 and so have been able to sort the bodies into three main stacks: One for the Abrakhan Guard - the most naked ones; one for Haradrim Warriors (the two body types with most clothes on - especially those with some sort of trousers on); and these guys, which will serve as Mahûd Warriors.

The shields are made from push-moulds. They turned out acceptable, especially considering I am after the general tabletop look in this little project. A fourth of the formation will get wicker-armour ("armour") around their necks and another quarter will get some other minor addition to tie them into the Mahûd theme, like those strange bone-clubs or some wicker-stuff or maybe a red cloak or cape.

The Golden Horde is done. Still no sunlight... It is really shiny when looked at in real, but here it just looks brown. But I said, one month ago, that I would have it done in a month, so here it is.

Oh my, these images really make the Golden Horde look like garbage rather than a crashed litter with gold... better pictures will be taken.



And the Sand Wyrm is nearing completion. His teeth are laying in front of him, those gray little things. I have cut each little tooth in half and put each in his mouth and now he looks like a monkfish (marulk?).

The Golden King's Golden Horde

The Golden Horde, as mentioned before. A pile of gold bars could be added in the middle... the coins will be difficult for a lazy painter like myself to paint because there will be sand added.

There really isn't that much gold coins and pieces (except a few bars, done in the styles of the Incan gold-ingots), but I think the tusks will really make it shine*. I have actually seen gold-plated tusks on pictures from a museum.

I remind you, the idea behind the Golden Horde - instead of the obvious big pile of gold - is a litter that's been lost and now is to be retrieved. This is why there is a strange little tower on the construction. Also, a KoMT banner, as a captured one.

Hot date coming up soon. It will be like this:

"She closed her eyes and I could be myself for a little while." Image courtesy of Jan Stenmark, great-success-cartoonist of Swedistan.


*) Pun?

Knights of Dol Amroth

There's been a lot of bad guys on the blog lately - even Vic from the Shield - so there's definitely time for some good guys.

There's a guy on a kataphract horse in this bunch, try to find him. Painted the horse armour (it is not barding) silver...

As one can see, there's only six true Knights of Dol Amroth (KoDA), the other half of the dozen are regular KoMT:s with shields taken from Foot Knights of Dol Amroth (ugly warriors, those are - turned the lot into WoMT:s instead, painted black and put in one of the back companies) and two copies made by pressing Super Sculpey into a White Sculpey press-mould.

The idea is that each true knight has a Sergeant with him, like the guys who did the crusades, forgot their names - a certain Norwegian lunatic claims to have ties to this old group... what's their name again... I think Kingdom of Heaven featured these Euroknights IIRC. Anyway, that's it for the weekend, tomorrow's a big day, so I'll see you (well... ) in a few days, good readers. Good night.

Oh, almost forgot, the kataphract horse is to show that they fight in the south of Middle-Earth. Captured horse etc, really didn't want to go any further with that, it's just a little nod.

PS2) Templars! Templars, they were called. So, I normally put one knight and one sergeant on each company tray, that way it is easier to see what they actually are rules-wise.

Bases done for Great Eagles

The Edheldu project is now nearing 97% done. It has been educational with all the static grass, forest thingies and moss and lichen etc. I've learned a lot. Hopefully, some reader may have picked up something from this project, like I did when looking at some of the WHFB Wood Elf projects on TWF.

Another runestone on a base, how expected. Idea stolen from one of the earlier linked projects on TWF. I would probably have come up with a similar idea, but this saved time :) Obviously, the hawk isn't done yet.

The dried glue-blob above is necessary since the transparent plastic pin just snapped and snapped and snapped, so finally I lost it and put knaedatite and superglue in a big blob and hoped for the best. I got the best, didn't I?

The guy with the bootlegged wings. This was the first bird for the project. Still the one I'm least satisfied with. Will be needing some more paint and work on the base.

Will be adding some more moss on the slate/stone here. This is the bird with the runestone on its base.

And finally, here he is: The massive, 2kg heavy, WHFB War Eagle. Mounted on a homemade dead tree. It has experienced two crashes and a lot of harsh love, which in turn made it the most successful bird in the Edheldu army. I am actually more happy with the base than the bird, so much I just stopped painting it. Got bored.


Mushrooms and toadstools are done and ready for the bases once the birds are all painted.