From ScottB: 28mm Castellans of Dol Guldur from 'The Hobbit' (20 points)

From Scott:

With recent events hotting up in the Hobbit movie and Dol Guldur setting really getting developed, I've been playing some LOTR SBG games at home with my son. We've enjoyed some scenarios from the Fall of the Necromancer.. 

For the next scenario in sequence I needed 4 Castellans of Dol Guldur...

I've had these figures for some time (like most of my LOTR collection now), and have wanted to paint them up for ages, but never got round to it.

I am not sure how good they are in the game, but they fit the setting superbly, and I think they are wonderfully evil and menacing looking figures without going OTT in a Warhammer kind of way...

28mm scale figures for the GW LOTR SBG game. Simple black robes, much like the Ringwraiths, with old looking dark armour. But as a final touch I gave them a wash with GWs Green wash, to try give them a slightly ghostly/spectral quality. I didn't want to over do it, so it's quite subtle.

The bases I deliberately left looking rather sparse - didn't think they'd look right standing besides flower clumps!

I also got a pack resin skulls from Slave to Painting and was going to add some to the bases...but on closer look at the skulls, I think they are just a little too big to scale well with the LOTR range of figures - perhaps more akin to the oversize Warhammer stuff, so in the end left them off.

Hope you like them, and I can't wait to try them out in the game.

Lovely work Scott! I really like the effect the green wash gave to these figures - something that could be used on the Nazgul as well I would imagine.

These four Castellans of Dol Guldur will give Scott 20 points. Very nice and I hope you and your son have a great game with them.

From ScottB: 15mm WWII Hummel & 28mm Bilbo and Gandalf (38 points)

From Scott:

I managed to complete a fourth Hummel for my 15mm German Flames of War Heavy

Armoured Artillery Battery.

Painted in my usual style and my remaining paintbrushes were more of less up to the job for this work...

But I was really hanging out for some new brushes which finally arrived 2 days ago...

Which let me finish off Bilbo and Gandalf from my The Hobbit boxed set.

You never know how important a fine detail brush is to you till it dies! Thankfully Army Painter came to the rescue...

So that's my last submission for the Challenge.

I didn't manage a Ronin figure in the time frame of the challenge. I was belated in my figure choice for, not having any suitable figures in my existing collection, and not really knowing which I could find that I liked. I really felt a bit out on a limb with this part of the challenge...

Eventually Curt made the decision for me and I ordered a figure from Eureka in Australia, but it sadly has still not arrived... However a deal is a deal and a promise a promise. It may not score me any points in the challenge but I will still complete the figure upon its arrival and get it to Curt ASAP.

Thanks to all my fellow Ronin for making this a wonderful enterprise, it's been great watching all your work roll in, and quite an eclectic bunch of submissions it's been! 

I didn't hit my target but knew before hand I would fall short as I had several things on the go that were not going to score me any points, but no matter, it not the winning, but the taking part that matters! Not to take away anything from whoever wins! Some of you guys are real painting machines compared to my poultry efforts!

Many thanks to Curt for hosting a wonderful competition, and for the all the work he has put in, handling and documenting all our submissions, and also special thanks to 'Mrs Curt' for letting him do this!

Thank again, and best wishes to all.

Fabulous work as usual, Scott. That Hummel looks like a 28mm model the detail is so fine. Wonderful. Speaking of wonderful, your Gandalf and Bilbo are first rate as well. Mithril brushes apparently...

Don't sweat the Ronin. I know he'll make it North to join his comrades and your points are assured. Thank you Scott for joining in again for this year's round of fun. It's always great to be inspired by your efforts.

This submission will give Scott 38 points. Well done!

From ScottB: 28mm Goblin King & Minions from 'The Hobbit' (35 points)

From Scott:

The Goblin King, 2 captains including Grinah, and the scribe. Painted in a style to match the rest of the previous batch of Goblins of Goblin Town.

But a real variety in scale this time!

The monstrous Goblin King himself who measures some 6cm to the top of his crown. Truly a beast, and in the game will no doubt cause some chaos especially with the new 'monster abilities' in the new Hobbit SBG rules!

Played wonderfully by Barry Humphries (AKA Dame Edna Everidge) in the movie and masterfully CGI adapted/animated by the team at Weta. 

I was almost sorry when Gandalf dispatched him so easily!

Compared to the bulk of this monstrous Overlord, is the tiny and diminutive 'un-named' goblin captain, who I feel may be meant to be the one that tackled Bilbo in the movie then fell to his death, ultimately at the hands of Gollum. This tiny fellow measures 1.5cm.

The next Goblin Captain is named Grinah, and he bears a brutal whip to keep his charges in order. This fellow is your more typical nominally 28mm scale though is more likely 20mm or thereabouts...

And finally the hapless figure of the Goblin Scribe on his wooden 'gantry'... I don't recall him having any lines in the movies other than a sly chuckle... charismatic none the less. He was a bit a bit of a bugger to paint, quite small and fiddly and a little awkward to handle. Wonderfully detailed for such a plastic model. And quite a useful character in the game too, allowing goblin reinforcements to be brought to the fray!

I am going to finish the Goblin King's throne next. It's been quite a bit of work to get it to how I am happy with it , and realize it probably won't score me any points being a 'terrain piece' but that can't be helped as it's the next part of the 'set', to complete...

After that, Groblog, then the Eotd Police inspector and then I can make a start on painting the dwarves of the company... I don't think I am going to get them done in time for the end of the challenge, but we'll see how far I get with them...

Tremendous work Scott. Again, I love the skin tone you've created for your goblins (and the buboes are particularly disgusting, but in a good way). Makes me want to go see the film again!

The Goblin King and this three minions will give Scott 35 points which includes some extra for the monstrous King and the Scribe's harness-contraption thingy.

From ScottB: 28mm Goblins from 'The Hobbit' (180 points)

From Scott:

I burned a bit of the midnight oil last night and finished off the 36 goblins I have been working on, off and on, since the beginning of the challenge.

The quality of the plastic sculpts was very good, and the amount of mould line to scrape away was minimal. As for painting them up I was in a slight dilemma as to what colour to paint them. They were not going to be classic 'green' as the majority of the Moria goblins are.

In the movie they come across as having a yellowish hue, yet a lot of stock pictures show them with a pale grey skin colour. I can only assume the lighting effect in the movie from the flaming torch-lit caverns of GoblinTown would have cast a yellow colour to their actual pale grey skin.

So I went with the pale grey base tone.

After this they had shading washes and heavy drybrushing to set the flesh tones. The loin cloths and equipment were painted up, and finally the disgusting spotty lumps and bumps were given red and purple washes and the yellow spot heads added, just ripe for popping! An adolescent kid would have a field day on these buggers! ;-)

Finally facial features were added, including eyes and teeth/mouths.

I have to confess to the eyes not being the best - normally I do the eyes at the mid point of the models, but with so many washes and dry brushing going on they would probably have got messed up, so I left them to the end. Typically by which point my fine detail brush had given up the ghost! So with nothing good to hand to dot the pupils I resorted to trimming a cocktail stick to a sharp point and used that! Not the most accurate way of doing things and some of the eyes went a little off centre, but in the end I think it actually added to the character of the mis-shaped limbs and general ungainly poses. Bases were PVA sand textured and painted and drybrushed.

So I am rather happy with the way they turned out. Suitably loathsome!

So now I need to finish off the Goblin King, his throne, 2 Goblin Captains and the scribe. Then the 13 dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf who are all undercoated... And there is still an LOTR Groblog Goblin King (that's 2 goblins kings on my table at the same time!) and a Victorian EotD police inspector to finish off!

Hopefully I'll get these done before the deadline!

Wow, you've done a superb job on these, Scott. I really like the blue/grey skin tone and I love the disgusting buboes - they really are quite zit-tastic! Painting eyes with sharpened cocktail sticks?!! Awesome. This 'technique' reminds me of my first efforts at 14 with fabric pins and testors oil paints - though my results were, ahem, rather less successful than yours!

This mob of acned goblins will give Scott 180 points. Well done!

From JohnM: 28mm Dwarves from 'The Hobbit' (60 points)

From John:

The minute I saw these figures last weekend in the GW store in Montreal, I knew that I had to have them. They are just really cool. Painting them was great because I could see immediately how I wanted to paint them. No googling away this time. 

Here we have 12 dynamic poses of heavily armoured dwarves. It took a bit of time assembling them, but all in all they went together easily. 

They were primed white, I know this sounds strange, but the car primer I use, has really a great bite. They were then airbrushed with the old GW Boltgun Metal. I then heavily washed them with a really oldie Citadel Tin Blitz. A very new paint Citadel Dry Necron Compound was brushed on. 

The beards and the clothing was then painted and AP Dark Tone was sparingly applied. I then touched up only the beards and the clothes with AP brush on Antishine, leaving a lot of the metal shiny. I really like how they came out. 

I will leave the Hobbit now and get back to some Napoleonics.

Lovely work John. I really like how you did their armour - you're getting very good with the airbrush (something I've never had the patience for). I'll have to try out some of the Necron compound as it seems to give a very nice effect.

These dozen dwarves will give John 60 points. Good stuff!

From JohnM: 28mm Goblin King and Goblins from 'The Hobbit' (200 points)

From John:

Well here is the first of my 3 planned submissions of my Cunning Secret Project: GW Figures from the Hobbit.  Here we have 39 goblins. Why cunning you ask, well I thought that I could throw these together at a rate of less then 10 minutes a figure. So 195 points in 6 hours, I thought that sounds clever. 

My initial plan was to prime white, followed by an immediate dip of very slightly red tinged AP soft tone (minimal pigment). I would then paint the loin clothe, weapons and eyes and that would be it. Never happened. The mistake is to think and research about things and not go with your gut. Well I googled painting goblins from hobbit and got this as the top hit.

Seemed easy enough, quite a few steps, but they are very nice figures and I wanted to do a good job. Well I should have realised, I am just not that good a painter, layering escapes me as I really can not be bothered. It went well until the step after the application of the Citadel Dry Eldar Flesh (if you have not tried these paints take a look, I have never seen anything like them). 

I just had a difficult time getting the figures back to white as I wanted. I eventually almost got there with another dry paint Praxtis White, but I still feel that they could be whiter. By now I had well over 30 minutes plus per figure in, and that is really my limit, so I stopped. Not so cunning after all, but I am generally happy with them and they are great figures. First photo is the king, the captain (filthy little fellow) and the task master.

Wow, I think you did an excellent job on these John! I find they're very evokative of the film and I particularly like the gritty layering effect you've achieved with them.  

This horde from Goblin Town will give John a base of 195 points but I'm adding another 5 for The King ('Thank you, thank you very much.').