Tomorrow's Harvest - Boards of Canada 2013!

Some news not related to our hobby:

Found over at WATMM-forums... alleged 2013 Boards of Canada release.

Tomorrow's Harvest by Boards of Canada contains:

• Gemini
• Reach For The Dead
• White Cyclosa
• Jacquard Causeway
• Telepath
• Cold Earth
• Transmisiones Ferox
• Sick Times
• Collapse
• Palace Posy
• Split Your Infinities
• Uritual
• Nothing Is Real
• Sundown
• New Seeds
• Come To Dust
• Semena Mertvykh

Example-tune.

If this is not a joke, then thank you formenverwandler and LOL Alzado for linking to the breadcrumble trail of hints and codes.

Example of BoC's earlier works: Dawn Chorus and Daywan Cowboy. They have a tonne of other even better songs. This is very good music, it is difficult to ever listen to anything else after having listened to their creations - that is the only negative I have to say about Boards of Canada.
    Total fan-boy overload...

New and updated links.

I have taken the liberty to update the links list to the right, as well as provide some new ones:

- Carroll's timber commercial. A must see.
- Secret Weapon's Kickstarter, modular gaming table.
- Larry Elmore. Fantasy illustrations.

And also, provided by a contact over at TWF, the reason why we see so very few Dwarf armies in WHFB with LotR-dwarves... the old pdf with explanations to why. I now remember reading this many years ago, but had forgotten it, so thank you for providing this link!

Tom Meier released a ninja cannon which amused me.

GW pre-order: Radagast on Rabbit Sleigh

Up for pre-order or normal order, don't know, won't pay 40 quid for it, how characterful and charming it might be. Radagast the Brown on Rabbit Sleigh. Model's based on a 120 mm oval base.

It is unclear at the moment whether the scenic base parts are included. This is obviously a boxed product, not a clam-pack which might suggest the parts for the base is included.

Otherwise, I am nearing completion of the Elven Sky Chariot, whilst we are on the subject of whimsical chariots. Pictures will follow, ATM most parts are under the green stuff lamp to cure faster. I have riff-raffed up the base. If God wants it - inch'allah - I'll decorate it with some purple flowers. Inch'allah and if I know how to do it. The red berries made for the Council of Wizardry  tray turned out barely acceptable, so we'll have to wait and see.

Lastly, I shall finish with this picture of an eleven year old girl and her colleague:

Wait, colleague? Yep, turns out she's a Bangkok top-cop aged 27... or something along those lines, my thai isn't all that great. Whilst looking for how to spell the word "van" for the post earlier about cops and undercover vans in the area, I searched google images for "wan" and found this one. The investigators are pointing at drugs... I hereby take back everything I 've said about Swedish police girls being small and weak... But they are cute... and so are she, despite looking a tad too young. Ah-hrm...

Elven Sky Chariot, blue-tacked assembly

Elven Sky Chariot consists of five main parts: A pair of giant swans, a sea-and-sky chariot (swans are waterliving birds), the base and the soon to be magnetized transparent pins and lastly the crew.
     I consider the yoke - well, not yoke, really, I intend it to look more of a set of ropes and heavy fabric, rather - to be my weakest part... I can't bring myself to copy the WHFB Sky Chariot's pulling ropes that are attached to the giant hawk, but I might just have to do that if I can't come up with something better on my own. I'd rather not, though...


And thanks to mr E.J J* this beutiful youtube link can be shared with those who might have missed it: Dom Hill's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Videos as well as his blog which seems to be a little slow at the moment due to personal reasons.

*) Trying to find E.J J's home on the net led me to youtube and I found a comment from someone called Dom - and I thought for a moment it might be the Dom from The Black Sun podcast! Naturally I clicked away further on and found the blog and YT-channel.

More pictures

I shall have to file the head on the leftmost swan. This is the general appearance of the whole model. The little personality a swan has, I think I managed to get a bit of it into the white flyer to the right by modeling it so it had a slight tilt, like it is veering a bit off course, whilst the lower one (tried to make it look like a female swan - they have slightly different heads - especially depending whether it is song swan or hump-beak swan) I tried to look passive.
      Swans aside: Models below are from GW's latest WHFB release. A phoenix that I might buy and further below, their Sky Cutter or what it's called... They are pertinent to the project presented in this post.

Pictures of sprues included for our enjoyment. Who doesn't love looking at sprues? Tell me one hobbyist that don't like watching them?

 

Elven Sky Chariot and "Five-O"

Elf Sky Chariot. The riders will be a little mixture of high elves and galadhrim warriors. Bodies and weapons: Galadhrim. Heads and shields: High elves.

The swans are turning out okay but not as sleek as I wanted them. I am really pleased with the first one's head who got some sort of personality. Planning for the difficulty to align these in a safe and secure way from the beginning will make it easier when going to the next phase:

A majority of the parts collected in front of me. Base is a polyurethane-copy with thrashed edges that might or might not get polished and GS'd. The blueprints for the little boat-chariot is hidden below the oval base but it is a simple construction, really.

Other local news for today
Police arrested two of my criminal neighbours today. Finally. They almost ran over two of the four in the process of "stopping" them. Later, a rusty white wan arrived and I figured it was either friends with the crims that were going to start a fight (as the crims do nowadays since they have almost no respect for our Swedish law enforcers) or just some onlookers, but it turned out to be some sort of undercover wan that collected the bikes and bags of all four of the guys. A short walk home for two of them.
    This hopefully means slightly fewer hobby-disruptions.

One of my idiot-neighbours can be seen to the left, under control by a police officer that didn't make the shoot. Or didn't take the shot, as I half hoped for, moahahaha!

This is how a true "biker gang" rolls.

General Blogging Update (GBU)

EDIT No 2: After reading this pointless little piece of text I have added some good news in Llama-GW-relations which I encourage you, dear and in fact respected, reader to look at.

Changed the template to this more reader-friendly look. Got tired of the old brown look but mainly because it didn't work well with my portable computer, or "laptop" as one might say. But as always, it was slightly difficult to do and I got the feeling of "one doesn't simply change the layout in Blogger".

Turns out it was my old stationary which I have standing besides my hobby desk that seemed to be the problem. Not Blogger... sorry Blogger for throwing crap at you for circa 5 years.

And here follows a few little inspirational pictures for a swan chariot.

I especially like this one. Where a man with a single incredibly skinny leg and with two left arms is standing in a baby carriage throwing a broken spear. For locomotion he wisely chose a barfing dog with glued on wings.

And above we can enjoy a dog sitting in the air (also with the highly fashionable bluetacked wings) while winged horses are playing tag with two civilians and a dog. An archer shoots friendly arrows in a merry game of Valentine's Arrow. Below are portrayed the four rejects that would forever have to play on the bottom floor, listening to the happy games of the cool kids on the top floor. One of them looked into the camera when the shot was taken and was later ridiculed for this.

After posting this, I will take to reading Klaus Heisler's latest novel: Shut your mouth. It seems like an okay read. Good night, one and all.


Ooops, forgot this link. Fieldsofblood talking about Forums versus Blogs. A good read. Probably better than Klaus' latest from Olympus Pre... sorry, Goldfish Press.


EDIT NUMBER TWO
Some readers might remember that I had some problems with my Escape from Goblin Town-box: FoB suggested the problems with the loose hands and weapons (with rather strange, conical breaks on three or four joints) might stem from removing the sprues too fast from the moulds. And so, I did something I very rarely do: I complained. And got answers and suggestions what to do from GW customer services. Not only were they polite, the person answering me also stated his name AND he could actually spell and format his e-mail!
    Now, you might think this is common decency, but I say no, not in this country it is. Common decency is all very unlike my bank, internet-provider, insurance-company, stores I shop in, ANY state-run business or services etc in this former nice little country we know as Sweden. With the exception for figurspel.se which always delivers in time and are behaving like they want others to treat them.

This was all good in itself and to actually get some sort of positive response made me much less annoyed with the premium priced models being broken. However, weeks later, when I did the "Number of Nice" contest, the goblins again became current in my hobbylife and I decided to do as suggested in the email: Either go to the "highstreet gw" or send them to GW Freepost Europe, or something similar. As I do not know anything about this "highstreet gw" I sent them by mail.
     And waited. And waited. But today, they explained the delay and said they'd be sending a whole new box to me! This was surprising, for me at least, used to Swedish customer services as well as any form of state-run business/service-place and it's Soviet-alike workforce. So, GW gets five stars out of five, from me for this. And not only for giving me new goblins, as I have tried to explain above.

Swan Chariot, part one

So, I decided to run with it. The Swan Chariot-project. A swan pulled sky-chariot piloted by elves. I recommend read the ramblings posted before for the correct history behind this demented idea. Never will it be used in a battle of War of the Ring or SBG, it's just too out of context with the rest of the armies.
     What's been done then?

Six of the eight sides to be feathered are done but I am spent on sculpting wings I have no real idea how to do - despite around twenty images of swans that I've looked at during sculpting. The problem isn't the anatomy (granted, I mixed up ALL the different swan wings into one "fantasy" swan-wing) but the way it will look when painted: Rarely do one notice individual feathers on a bird in flight and especially so with white water-living birds since they have these perfectly designed little fluff-feathers at strategic places.
    So we'll see how this goes: First a sort of raw sculpt where I finish the basic shapes and a few extras (feet!), then prime it and paint it sloppily to see how it looks. And then try to make some ad-hoc solutions to make it seem full of speed and sort of... living. The heads will be interesting to try give character. I can't imagine an animal with less joy in their faces...

Yeah, that's where you belong: In BAGS!

Swan drawn chariot.

You may remember me typing a thing or two about this when talking about bad ideas for models. Well, everybody have heard the old "stare into the abyss", well I stared into the abyss of extremely high fantasy and it stared back and shot this horrible idea into my brain. Presented here, hidden in a wall of text, about new creatures and models for our gaming world.

To the left is a part of the image that set it all off a year ago. I was flipping through my Tolkien Bestiary with it's... "characterful"... images and found a little story about swans pulling the ships of some or another group of elves. Later, my reminiscence of this image was mixed up with other things seen, and I figured they were flying with the ships in the air and in fact remember a new image of some dramatic elves standing on top of a swan ship pulled by actual swans. Turns out I had mixed this image up with another picture from the same book. An image with a really over the top elven swan ship.

And just recently, this image started to circulate our web-world. I had made a similar sketch but not as elaborate as this one - the sails might look silly but they are still a good and, in its own way, logical detail. The link I provided earlier in this text have the benefit of a little time stamp to show I in fact didn't get inspired by Warhammer. Not this time...

Humble beginning. What I really am looking forward to is to make the chariot. And how to crew it?
    The model will never be used in an actual battle, it is just for fun.

Inspirational swans. I really have to start sculpting the wings. In fact, two pairs if I follow my first plan... a boat-like sky-chariot (it lands and takes off from water, was the first idea) pulled by two giant swans.
     I can honestly say I find swans beautiful but such annoying birds, in fact I really hate these so called white beauties - more like bleached bone-coloured longnecked voyouns, breadcrumb-eating marauders. Bullies, that's what they are, when one is trying to eat one's little dinner out in the cabin by the sea, these little f*ckers come floating "oh, look at me, I'm beautiful, sweet and lovable" and the next second, BAM! Starts to hizz and behave in a general aggressive way. Not appreciated.

Hobbits from 1:72 peasants?

... is this possible? I think it is worth a try. I really wanted a batch of hobbits for my upcoming Arnor army.


Time to throw bottles at my neighbours. Good night one and all!

Grand EDIT: Removed a large portion of text for obvious ice-related reasons.

Mixing it up a little bit.

... with the help of Heroes of Might and Magic III, or HoMM3 as it can be called when you prefer to type 5 characters instead of around 30.

HoMM3 is a rather old PC-game (PC as in Personal Computer, not Politically Correct) which has a very high fantasy theme. Regardless, I like it. It has seven or eight different factions, all with a very mixed unit roaster - the idea seems to be to have a very big spread of types of creatures and humanoids instead of the normal way (I.E. a mountain-faction might consist of only different types of dwarves, which IMO is more "realistic" and feels better), however, this is one of Heroes of Might and Magic's characteristics and I gladly accept it.
    When I am talking about mixing it up a little bit, I mean that I am a little tired of painting goblins, so instead, I'll just do a novelty (or whatever it is called) and make one representative of each of the seven units from a random faction of HoMM3. I chose Rampart. A foresty, good alignement with centaurs, dwarves, wood elves, pegasi, dendroids (tree-dudes), unicorns and green dragons. These can each be upgraded to a slightly better version and gets a new and fancier name, ex. Silver Pegasus.
   The old Rampart, from HoMM2 contained phoenix(-es?) which I really liked, so these nice models will fit the bill perfectly:

Image from Pins o fWar.

I have collected some pieces and will probably work a little on this project just as an extra layer of relaxation, whilst drinking an uneccessary extra cup of coffee. Just a lot of extras, to put it simply.

To the winner of Number of Nice, mr McInnes, I am waiting for a reply from Games Workshop about some goblins I've been having some troubles with. When they get back to me I'll be able to pack your parcel and send it on its way. These last three weeks I've sent four or five small parcels to the UK and the USA and only one have been confirmed to having arrived to its recipient... Postal services all over the world, you have my respect... not...

Future hobby plans.

This post has the characteristics of a unit filler and in many ways, it is.

I was going to list my future plans but time is limited a the moment, so we'll settle with Swedish Ordinary Meal Time giving a walkthrough on how to assemble a box of Warhammer 40000-models. Linky.

I'll probably post something pertinent to hobby tomorrow... Last Sunday I actually worked, as well as last Friday night, so there's been a lot of that going around meaning very little time over for hobby.

True to the format of this blog, I avoid lifting serious issues and will not comment on the very bad things that happened in Boston, but still, my thoughts go to the victims and their families...

EDIT: The coffee gave me strength to post this picture which shows what needs be doing with the Edheldu Wood Elf army:

Painting of the eagles, the banner on the Wood Elf and a whole lot of crap. I would also like to add some more nature things on the trays and some small animals...

Winner of the "Number of Nice" Competition

Congratulations Daniel McInnes. A "couple" of gobbos will be sent to you wherever you live in the wide world. "A couple" means anywhere the wide spectrum of 1, 2 or even 3! Not specified type either. With bad luck, you'll get a batch of my own failcast goblins!

The correct answer was of course seven (7). Seven times did the word "nice" appear on this post.

Competition announced here, here and here. It was sort of a way for me to celebrate finally taking the plunge into the icecold waters of TMP... I know FoB have spent some time there and actually liked/tolerated it, so I figured, if he can, so can I...

The proud Llama-God of Competition* (an actual Indian deity!) 

 brings joy and minis to grown up kids all over the world.

That's all for today. I think I'll announce another competition later on, if just one person take part, I'll be just as happy. Spreading the joys of our hobby around :)

And thank you Panagiotis for the help with my sidebar. Now I am just like all the rest of the boys in the class and have a proper sidebar with freshly updated blog-links! I might have promised a cyber cookie, but the internet is all out, sadly... considering mr Dramatic got himself two Gulavhars almost for free (while we have to try to sculpt our own up here in the cold) I believe he's just as well off without a cyber cookie, hmph!

As last news this Friday I have some postal information: I have sent four small parcels this month. Two to the UK and two to the States. None have arrived. I am especially interested in the one sent to Games Workshop Freemail the 4th this month. Granted, I forgot to give them the email used when talking about sending back some bad models, but since I enclosed them, the matter should be quite clear? Is there anyone with an opinion or experience on this?

*) Hindi: Pedjukidaki llamadefta. प्रतियोगिता के लामा देवता.

Finished Grim Hammerers.

And the beginning of the end for my Misty Mountains army. Time to deal with these models once and for all. The army is almost too big:

- 9 companies of Goblins with shields and full command + Bat Swarm (DIY-rule). Themed trays and bases.
- 4 companies of Goblin Archers. Themed trays and bases.
- 1 Cave Drake with barely themed base.
- 9 companies of Wargs. Barely themed trays and bases. The 5 wolves from 40K look good though.
- 2 Cave Trolls.
- 3 companies of Gundabad Blackshield with lots of conversions.
- 1 Dragon of Ancient Times. DIY... not that great...
- 4 companies of Giant Spiders.

Left to do:

- Goblins from the Hobbit. 36-37 of them.
- Goblin King - will become a Cave Troll.
- Gundabad Blackshield command. Finally found some discount ones! 75 SEK for a blister full of metal, yay!
- Goblin Drummers. To replace my DIY drum. Also a sweet discount.
- Goblin Contraption.
- Giant Bats to increase the chaotic goblin-feelilng of the trays. The silhouette of them fits well with the large warbands of zerging goblins.
- DIY-goblins that looks kind of crappy.
- One company of Moria Goblin Prowlers.

Speedpainting is the solution to the above - especially with my goblins which I really enjoy in large, chaotic groups. And I've never particulary liked painting goblins. We'll see if it will turn out differently this time.

 

Below are the finished Grim Hammerers, I skipped the last phase - tidying up and some fine highlightning as well as different coloured beards - because I didn't feel like finishing them to a much better standard than my other dwarves. Still, I will go back and fix the dragon scales because you can barely see them, and when you do, they look like green bills or leaves...

Also, you can see naked green stuff on the coins. The reason for this is because my work-station is on the dark side of the apartment and the sunlight just comes in for a little glimpse at early evenings this time of the year. So when I finally time it right to take a picture the models look totally new to me, it's like I've found them and see them for the first time when put in the sunlight. This picture is the first one with actual sunlight as lightsource in over a year!

In fact, you might have noticed I stopped complain about the lack of sun because it wasn't fun at all. Seriously, there's more sunlight on Pluto than it is here! I look and will soon start to behave like a ghoul!

Grim Hammerers - Phase Two

Just some pics today. Finished typing some other things from work so I'm rather tired of keyboards.

I trimmed down one of the corners on one of the movement trays because I had some unstable idea about the back company looking "kewler", but it didn't work out so well. I blame the bad light.

Left to do for phase three: A few dragon scales, the troll head, trimming the gold a little bit and the best of all: Scattered gold coins! I am considering blood spatter which is something I've steered clear off during these 10 years of hobby... there's a first for everything I suppose...

EDIT: Competition: Count the number of times the word "nice" is used in this review of Escape from Goblin Town. First to post the correct answer will win a goblin from the box. Free postage included.

The Council of Wizardry nearly done.

Still need to paint the faces better. Saruman's nearly done. Four to go. I think I'll skip Gandalf's since he got a big hat that covers most of his features.

To be something done by me there's an unusual large amount of colours. I think it balanced out nice enough. In fact, it looks nearly exactly as I planned which is something to be happy for in itself.

The shattered shield was the thing I was most sceptic whether to keep or not, but in the end it stayed. As did the little grains of sand that I couldn't be bothered to remove. They can only really be seen in photos so it's okay...

Grim Hammerers phase one just completed:

Resin bases for some of the models. Two fillers - a broken pillar and an anvil - and two converted old dwarf models. I will put some flairful detail on the trays to lively it up - the paintscheme on the trays will be dark stone to contrast the armour and the sort of bright colour-scheme I planned on them in order to make them fit in with my Dwarf Holds-army for War of the Ring.

I think I'll go prime them now. And here's hoping that I sealed the polystyrene pillars enough so they won't melt...

Grim Hammerers - Phase One

Now I have put both the Rhûn-project and the Five Istari-tray aside, to mix things up. Too much painting gets me tired, so it's time for some modeling.

Another dwarf will be added, just like when I did the Hunter Orcs. They, like these models, came in an even dozen at a preposterous cost!
     Again, two models will be converted to fit in two of the four empty slots in the two movement trays (holds 16 models) - two models from the sprue of the first Dwarf Warriors that were released for Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game more than... what is it now, six years ago(?) - and two fillers will take the last two open slots in the trays. I could've gone the way like with the Edheldu Elf project which was to simply fill the holes in the trays and add interesting terrain, but these trays are supposed to be inside an orderly cave that has been civilized so there's a limit to the battle damage I dare doing. Not to mention I want to keep them simple in case they are to be snugly fit in my current dwarf army which has simple, flat trays with just some static grass on them...
    I guess the overall plan is to upgrade those twenty or so movement trays!

This little image below illustrates how much work I have been doing. To go the down the fish-stick route is a slippery slope indeed, and next you know, you're standing in front of the local kebab place ordering your breakfast there. Oops, already did that four days ago...

The sinful lazy cooking of fishsticks can be explained with me being totally burnt from work:
      There was a total distaster there a few days ago and I played the not so great main-character. Sort of an anti-hero if you will.

I had a little story here, explaining the mess I made at work but I cut it, figuring my Llama-identity wasn't safe. It wasn't overly dramatic, just me not really knowing what to do in the section I got the responsibility over.

Back to fishfingers and Grim Hammerers then? The only thing I really don't like is the cave troll's head on one of the bases. It has clearly been cut off, but the supposed beheader is wielding a warhammer... I'll leave it there, clearly the dwarf killed a troll and later cut its head off.

Latest news comes from mr Flower of Battle tonight. I know other blogs have reported this, but FoB:s stood out because he's been silent for a while... A little something about Gripping Beast's Generic Dark Age Warriors. Good for Wildmen of Dunland.

Also cut a rant about companies here. Which sympthomatically ended with:

"     ... this turned into a rant and I forgot whatever point was to be made, hahahah! That's all for tonight I think... "

GW pre-order models, April 2013

I didn't get me this month's WD so I am not entirely sure of how new and shiny these models are. They are shown in the "Pre-orders"-section, so my best guess is that they featured in the current April-issue.

The captain of Dale looks utter garbage :D

And as a last little thing: Over at Tell me a Tale, Great or Small... an insightful and highly enjoyable read about soft lists in tournaments.