Elrath'
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Posts posted by Elrath'
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Wow, that does look bad. I mean this looks like the first Imperial Assault figures which required green stuff to fill the gaps. Since then, FFG has improved a lot. But this seems bad. Maybe they changed the figure manufacturer or something. The giant especially seems to have lots of mold lines and cracks.
Since Asmodee is really, really, really bad at delivering products to Europe and it's going to be few more weeks before these are in stores here, I think I'm going to cancel my preorder on this. The extra cards alone are not worth the 18 euros this costs.
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Second cave troll painted. I wanted to use a more movie color scheme with this one but it turned out too ash colored. Also, I limited myself to just Army Painter paints with this one, except the base and washes. Mostly to just test them. Can't say I'm a fan but no Vallejo in stores here and Army Painter is a lot cheaper than Citadel. Plus it comes in dropper bottles.
But in general I think it's nice that each troll looks unique but still have a similar theme going with colors and all. So, I'm happy with these.
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I've copied all the data when I got a new tablet. I did that using the Android's (Samsung's) data copying option when doing the tablet's first time setup. I was honestly surprised that it worked for LOTR since it lost Imperial Assault and Descent app data.
I would probably use the Steam version otherwise but my 14" laptop is a retired business model which has Ubuntu-Mate installed so not possible to install LOTR on that since it doesn't support Linux.
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Finally managed to get another figure done. Been so busy lately. Here's one of the cave trolls:
This one I went with mostly the same color scheme as the hill troll. For the second cave troll, I think I'm going to try more monochrome gray and darker leather and maybe try to get the bone club to have more contrast. I think that's going to be an interesting challenge. I think I could have painted few areas a bit better but overall I'm really happy with how this figure turned out.
Watercolour Dragon and Birdman137 reacted to this -
I think more Hobbits would be nice. And weren't the Tooks supposed to have a more rogueish reputation. Would be nice to have one of these and then maybe a more "upstanding hobbit". The hero specific cards could be for more thrillseeking hobbit and then for a more reluctant adventurer type. I think that would be interesting.
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Yeah, another painting thread. Why not?
I've painted LOTR figures mostly based on Sorastro's LOTR tutorials although I don't have the specific paints and I've painted with whatever I happen to have. Which is mostly Citadel and some Army Painter. With the Shadowed Paths, I've done the whole process myself. This is the first hero (of the expansion) I painted: Eleanor.
I'm fairly happy with it. The blade didn't turn out so good. It looks good from a normal gaming distance but up close...eugh. Should have probably gone with the more traditional steel look. The contrast thing didn't end up look good. Another thing is the face where I had some trouble because my Cadian Fleshtone is drying up. I'm honestly surprised it has stayed good this long since the paint is from 2016. But it left a small mark on her cheek that altered the texture and made subsequent layers act weird.
I also speedpainted the Nameless things. I'm not a huge fan of these figures or the monster itself so I decided to just wetblend some colors. I had this vision of dark creatures with color highlight to make them easily identifiable. Should have probably painted in graytone and used washes to tint them. But I went with three different gradients. Still, it probably took longer for the paint to try than to actually paint these and they look good enough. The rocks I wetblended as well. Army Painter's Necromancer Cloak, then Citadel's Dawnstone and Dawnstone + Screaming Skull. Just a mesh of these, rough drybrush with Longbeard Grey and Nuln Oil wash on top.
I'm moving on to the cave trolls or the ghosts/wraiths. Those would be a good candidates to try some ghosts effects like ethereal green.
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Spiders are done and they turned out ok given the effort. Zenithal highlithing with spray as in my first post, then drybrushing with white and then a thin layer of dark gray on top of that (Army Painter's Hardened Carapace). Then different colored washes (Fuegan Orange+Nuln Oil+Lahmian Medium for two, Coelia Greenshade+Nuln Oil+ Lahmian Medium for two and Druchii Violet + Nuln Oil + Lahmian Medium for two). From these the orange wash makes the most difference while the other two just give a slight hue. Oh and after varnishing I added some glossy varnish to the eyes.
I also painted the big spider using more time on that. Same base method and then I made a gradient from light yellow to Stegadon Scale Green to black. And then basically rough wet blending with the lightest colors on top. Then just Coelia Greenshade+ Nuln Oil + Lahmian medium wash on top, wait for it to dry and another layer except for the topmost part. Again, this was pretty fast. The spider could be darker I think but it certainly looks interesting.
Also, my camera sucks. These shots look so dark even though there was literally a bright white LED right on top of the bugs.EDIT: Or I could check that the camera is in the right mode before taking the photos. Reshot the photos and it looks a bit better. -
I really like the bluish green one (first image, second one from right). Were these time consuming to paint?
And it's not that I'm horribly lazy but I just find painting multiple copies of the same figure a bit vexing. Especially if the figures get to the table and then taken out the next turn. I like to spend more time painting the heroes which appear in every scenario from start to finish.
doubletapdaddy reacted to this -
Our 3 player and 5 player maps are formed so that each player gets 3 map tiles + their own nations map tile. Then those are arranged in 2x2 grids that touch each other at the bottom corners. That means, that in a 5-player game, the map has a star shape hole in the center. When traveling the map, the edges of the 2x2 map tile grids match well enough that the map is easy to travel. And it's balanced since everyone has the same amount of space around them. It feels like playing on the surface of a sphere. Same thing also works well for 3 player games.
Another way to think about this is to make the map like the 4 player setup and then spread it to get the fifth player 2x2 tiles in or take 2x2 tiles out for 3 player game.
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I use sort boxes that are meant for storing screws, nuts, small bolts etc. Those are usually sold in stores in the hardware section and they're great for boardgames. I have three large sort boxes that just about fit in the game box stacked on top of each other. And then there's just enough space for the cards in zip bags. I think the storage boxes are Mano Classic 11". They have 20 small slots and and one wide. One my boxes has the heroes, tokens, battle map tiles and helper cards. Second one has the base game figures and the army flags. The third one has the expansion stuff (spiders are out for painting).
They go pretty neatly into the box. Although, the balrog won't fit into the boxes but it should be fine on top of all the stuff. I usually carry the box on its side so that the sort boxes are on the bottom. The expansion box houses all the map tiles.
Some of the minis "share a room" but they've stayed in pretty good condition. It is possible that some figures with swords such as the liches will have them slightly bent. And the expansion introduced some new undead which had a severe risk of bending their swords in the small compartments so I put them in the wide one. So, this is definitely the most mini-friendly way to package them but it works well enough for me and makes the setting up the game pretty easy.
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Anyone else finding painting a large number of same figurine boring? Are you constantly trying to make up new ways to get the job done faster and get the figures to the table quick? I certainly am. But I'm still pretty bad at it. It feels easier with limited color schemes like Stormtroopers (though good white is difficult to paint) but goblins etc. ugh.
Sorastro's LOTR JIME episode 1 gave a pretty good method on the base game goblins and orcs and I went with that for the expansion. The end result is not spectacular but it's fine with me.
So, zenithal highlight, drybrush with white to highlight all the edges even more and then really thin colors on top of that. The goblin loincloths, bracers and orc whips are painted with the only Citadel contrast paint that I bought for painting a wolf quickly or something. Then thinned washes on top of everything except the contrast paint and they were done except the base.
Where I saved some time is by cutting corners on base color since I had forgotten to apply it to some underside parts of the figure like some goblin hands and the right shoulderpad. But since they're not visible, I feel it doesn't matter. Also, I painted the rope belt with the same color as the loincloth itself. The few "extra efforts" are the orc taskmaster different color loincloth/skirt and the somewhat varying skin tones though it's not as apparent after the wash.
Next one: the spiders. The unique one requires some extra effort but I'm thinking about ways to be lazy with the small ones:
They're primed and just need some drybrushing with white before I start painting. I was thinking about going thin dark gray base color with lighter gray wetblendedd on top and then maybe go with different colored washes like dark blue for two, dark purple for two and dark green for two. I think it could produce an interesting subtle variation. But...what do you reckon? Is the wet blend too time consuming?
Also, the big spider. Is it standing on top of webbed eggs or something?
If you've painted the spiders, I'd love to see how they turned out since I've never painted a spider or bug figure before.
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I hope that the expansion fixes the unbalance issues with the main game. Mostly that the main game favors heavily military strategy. It's always best to build military wonders and select few of the economy wonders. The others can be forgotten. Then just attack, attack and attack. Defending is difficult and expensive compared to attacking.
The best part of the game is the focus row mechanic and it also has some solid mechanics in addition to that. So if the expansion fixes the balance and buffs other style of play, I'd be really happy. Because then I would get a boardgame that I want to play and it's quicker than most Civ games, so it's easier to find time for it.
TLDR: I'm cautiously optimistic.
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The two are completely different games in mechanics, scope and game length.
The 2010 version is rather complex, has a tech pyramid where when you research a tech, you have it for the rest of the game. Military is used through army figurines that move on the map and combat is fought with unit cards. The game also has many rules and multiple ways to victory that make grasping it a bit hard since it's easy to forget some rules. With expansions, start of turn, city management and movement phases turn into a slog at the end game. Though the game is still rather intense since what players do and when has a great importance.
The New Dawn is a simplish, abstract area control game with a civilization theme. Every turn is a lot simpler than in the 2010 game. You basically have five possible actions you can choose one to perform each turn. Each action is represented by a card and they're on a line. The more right the action you do is, the more powerful it is. And then it's moved to the left of the line. Technology advancement is done by upgrading one of these action cards. When you research a new tech, you get a "better" version of the action card and it replaces the old one. Going through the map is done by placing down influence tokens and then creating cities. In the 2010 game, you can only have 3 cities max. New Dawn doesn't have that restriction but the number of cities themselves isn't as crucially important as in Civ 2010 where it was pretty much the number of actions you could perform each round. In the New Dawn, you cannot build buildings into your cities while on the 2010 version, you place them around the city, almost like districts though you can have multiple copies of the same building in one city. Fighting is done through the military action and you can attack barbarians or other players if they're close enough to your influence tokens. You get bonuses from the military action, the defending player gets bonuses from the terrain, city and adjacent influence tokens. Then you both roll dice. The dice roll + bonuses is what your combat power is. The one with the larger number wins (and defender wins ties). So, it's a lot faster albeit a less nuanced combat than in the 2010 game. As for winning the game, Civ New Dawn has agenda cards, each of them with two conditions. To win, you have to meet one condition on each card. These are randomized at the start of the game, so you never know exactly what you get. Alternatively you can win by eliminating all other players. The 2010 version has static win conditions with economy (get 15 coins), science (research Space Flight), cultural (get to the end of the cultural track) and military victory (conquer another player's capital city) conditions.
So, that's a short description on their differences. The 2010 is a more complete Civilization game with more of the Civ feeling. It does take from 2-6 hours to play depending on the number of players and if they're prone to analysis paralysis. The Civ feeling, the crucial difficult decisions are the big pluses of the game. The game length and downtime are minuses. The New Dawn is a faster, far more streamlined and abstract game. It almost feels like an abstract game but with Civ theme. The absolute best part of the New Dawn is the focus row and the action mechanics. However, I feel that it lacks on every other area. The technologies, with the exception of military, are not always better than their previous versions and the game is really unbalanced. The 2010 game suffers from inbalances as well and we always play it with a ton of house rules to make it more balanced but the New Dawn is heavily leaned towards military. I get that the designer's intention is to make city flipping common but it is frustrating nevertheless. Attack cards give you bonus power for attacking as well as multiple attacks. While the defender doesn't get bonuses like these. You can build wonders in your city and those go with the city when the city is conquered. From these, the military wonders are the most powerful ones and economy wonders come second. In our games, we haven't really bothered with the rest.
For me, the New Dawn was a disappointment because of the military heavy game and just how out of balance everything is. So far the expansion seems to just introduce a bunch of new mechanics and ideas but I would be more excited if it fixed issues with the base game.
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I'm not really an expert with the various mediums and flow enhancers. That said, I've tried few different ones.
I think flow enhancers might be the same thing for the most parts. Usually, mediums are the same stuff as the washes and glazes but they don't have any pigment. Vallejo's Glaze Medium also slows down drying time making it great for wet blending. I have Army Painter's quickshade medium too but its consistency seems weird so I don't like that. Citadel's Lahmian Medium is probably the best medium I've used but unfortunately Citadel is costs 50% more than Army Painter or Vallejo.
My guess is that you'd be fine with mixing some flow enhancer to a wash to dilute it but maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can help with that.
Hannibal_pjv reacted to this -
7 hours ago, Hannibal_pjv said:Just asking, if you do white clothes fast.
What ink you should use if you want to add shadows to white cloth and still maintain the white color near white or is highlighting the only way?
Is there good option in contrast paints to do white clothes?
Don't know about contrast paints but white can easily show as uneven. You can paint the white areas first all gray and then highlight to white. Or you can paint white and then use shades to darken the shadows. This sort of thing works very well on sleeves in my opinion. Just dillute the wash with medium since pure wash is going to be too dark. The fastest way might be to wet blend. Paint shadowed areas gray and upturned areas white and blend the transition with a brush. You can then use dilluted wash to darken the darkest areas further.
If you try it with washes, remember to dillute it with wash medium such as Citadel's Lahmian Medium. It's better to be careful with the darkening effects so that you don't go too far and then have to work hard to highlight back. That's a mistake I've done plenty of times and always regretted it. Now I always mix in Lahmian Medium with my washes. It's easier to add a second layer of wash than highlight.
Hannibal_pjv reacted to this -
First half of heroes finished. These are the ones currently in our campaign which is why I prioritized these. They are painted using Sorastro's video and PDF guide with the exception of Legolas's quiver where I took inspiration from the gorgeous prop in the movies. It should be lighter from but I really liked the dark red leathery look so I went with that especially since it contrasts so nicely with the gray inscription. Incidentally the red color of the quiver I used follows Sorastro's Diala robe recipe from his Imperial Assault tutorial video.
Also, just realized that I completely forgot to highlight and fix Bilbo's vest buttons. Argh! 😫
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Finished Hill Troll today. Went with lazier option and I didn't add any tonal variations to the face. And I skipped highlighting the hammer shaft. I feel like I should have highlighted the left side of the troll's belly more though.
Overall I'm really happy with it and my color choices (except for my laziness). I didn't have any vallejo colors so I went with Citadel and Army Painter but I feel like I got the skin tone pretty close to what was in Sorastro's video. I love the closeup shots of the color mixing in these videos. It makes it so much easier to get a close-enough color mix done. I usually compare paint pots to the screen or paint few strokes to a paper and compare that to the screen to get a closeish color mix.
Here are my substitutes in case anyone finds them interesting:
Scaly hide: Army Painter Hardened Carapace (I wanted to try the paint because of its name) highlighted with Citadel Eshin Grey and White Scar.
Skin: Citadel's Baneblade Brown mixed with a little bit of black. Highlights with a mix of Ungor Flesh and White in a separate well (to simulate Vallejo's Buff) and that mixed into the base color mix.
Loincloth: About 1-1 mix of Citadel's Steel Legion Drab and XV-88 with highlights done by mixing in further XV-88 and then Citadel's Screaming Skull.
Scale part of loincloth: Citadel's Stegadon Scale Green mixed in with Army Painter Necromancer's Cloak
Loin cloth stitching: Citadel's Ushabti Bone. Highlights with Screaming Skull
Rope: Karak Stone
Hammer's stone: Citadel's Dawnstone, Mechanicus Standard Gray and Mechanicus Standard gray darkened with some black.
Hammer shaft: Citadel's Gorthor Brown and some black mixed into it
Now I just have the heroes to paint. Also, so excited for the balrog. The shadowy creature with flaming mouth is going to be a fun challenge to paint.
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Finally got to painting LOTR. So far I've painted the ruffians, orcs and goblins and now the wargs and wights. The wights were the most surprising to paint since I for some reason loathed painting them somehow convinced that they'll be so difficult. They turned out to be great fun although I found myself struggling a bit with the lighting effect. I didn't have access to those fluorescent paints so I initially went with dilluted Citadel glazes. Since I wasn't really happy with the results I got with them, I finally painted one figure (the middle one) with Citadel's Temple Guard Blue (heavily dilluted with Lahmian Medium), mixed in some white and kept adding layers. Turned out perhaps the best of them. Oh, a sidenote, with the red warg, I tried Citadel's new Contrast paint with the darker red fur. It works on this kind of figurine but I'm a bit skeptical on how I can apply it elsewhere.
I love your LOTR painting tutorials, Sorastro. They have a different approach to the Imperial Assault or Descent videos yet I feel they're also a very good starting point for anyone who's starting painting.
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Hera Syndulla painted:
Ugh, with this closeup I can see that I didn't neaten up from under the gloves properly.
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I really like the clone trooper's face. It's just saying "I'm too old for this s`**t." But at the same time, you know he gets the job done.
Nice work!
Rogue Dakotan reacted to this -
Thank you for the tips. I didn't actually know about the White Balance function. My camera is an old Canon Powershot 240HS and it didn't have a manual setting for White Balance but it had presets. "Artificial light" was the closest thing that showed basic blank A4 paper as white. So I went with that. Here are a couple of shots:
Hondo again:
Death Troopers vs. Rebels:
Pirates!
I think I need a new desk light. Maybe a LED with a decent arm so that I can move it around when I paint and position it better when taking photos. The camera I'm actually fairly happy with it. It seems better than my phone at any rate. And it has a lot of other manual settings that I don't know how to use but I probably should in order to take better shots.
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This is my storage solution. I have a large aluminium briefcase which is made for tools. And I have all the stuff except the rulebooks and the map tiles which are in the game box.
The small figures are in a plastic sort box which is sold in stores usually in the tool section. They're probably meant for screws, bolts and other small things. The 2x2 figures (Nexus, Jabba) and Wampas are in a plastic box that's below the character sheets. It has a tray which is perfect for damage and stress tokens and below that is enough room for the figures. Jabba cannot be glued to his base though or the tray won't fit back in. And the large figures I have just somewhere in the box where there's enough room.
Here's a closeup of a rebel figure box:
Some figures share a "room". The varnish protects them well enough so that they don't stick to each other and rub off paint. I have similar boxes for scum and Imperial figures. And I have all my deployment cards in a collector's album to make browsing them easier.
This is my solution and it's a compromise between space saving and protection. For better protection each figure would need its own "locker" or "room" where it would go. But my briefcase wouldn't be big enough then. And this is already bordering on what I'm willing to transport with me. The game box with map tiles fits into my backpack and then I carry the briefcase.
My 2 brushstrokes...painting Lord of the Rings (added some heroes)
in The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth
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The sculpt on Elena's face is pretty bad. Given that, I think you did an excellent job. My Elena looks ok too except for the face. Plus I forgot to paint the eyebrows so it looks more like a swamp monster than an elf.
Awesome work with the terrain. I bought a plastic bag full of scenic bases but I've been too lazy to rebase anything.
Oh and good work with Legolas's boots and bracers. I really like those. The "straps" (or seams or decorations) being different color makes the figure stand out more.