The Gang is All Here

Zoinks! Another mystery is on our hands; the case of the missing green stuff and who broke all those pinning drill bits....

Scooby's house of horrors is developing nicely with the pouring of it's dried up river bed.

 This was the first layer of sand and will be getting a couple more to develop some contours. The whole left side of the cliff is glued down now, the castle is waiting on the electronics to arrive.

 Finally found a use for the last bits of moria goblin ruins....

Here was the concept art of the river bed.... I totally passed 1st grade.

The last of the pin drill bits ate it while finishing up the orc and warg bases. In the end, it was just melting plastic through friction, not drilling. Here are a couple of my favorites.

 All the cork basing will match up with different parts of the river bed for the most part. These models really started to grow on me after initial distaste.

 I was able to again get some life out of 1 GW kit, and used the extra fell warg heads on the old warg models to give them a unified look.

While this guy doesn't have the Predator shoulder mounted plasma canon, Arnold would still have a little trouble with this guy if they met in a jungle somewhere. I like to throw in a bit of movie inspiration in some models.

 Thankfully the writers block on the tower left me and I got to hacking up wall sections for this ruined bell tower. The shade will be sitting up there and 2 LED lights will be fed up through the floor combined with cotton ball fog effects.

 Going to add the rest of the collapsed top to the courtyard, there is too clean a feel to the abandoned Dol Guldor.

The shade is finally where I want him to be. Added in another spooky hand coming out of the abyss and more wispy ghost goo.

Scooby Doo's House of Horrors

 Ruh Roh! Well it has been too long! No excuse here, need to keep the updates coming much faster!

In the mean time, the masons were in town and after some union trouble I got them back on task.

 Blasted through my supply of green stuff on all this brick work. The tower still needs fixing up as well as some windows but it is kinda there?

  The dried up river bed has not been textured into it yet, that will be coming next when I add the last couple orcs. They're bases will be modeled into that terrain.

 All the pink foam work has only had 1 pass with the exacto. Looking to do another fine detail carving and some sanding to spruce it up.

 The window eyelets were cut out and will feature some LEDs. All of which will run under the floor to the circuit board and batteries in the tower.

 Tales from the crypt. This door "leads" down to the caves below. This will also feature some LED lighting for that extra spooky effect.

Had some commissions that were taking up most of my orc time; but we are back on the FUBAD track now. Got to building some of the hunter orc grunts.

 2 box sets end up at 24 total models, so I went with 12 stock poses, and did variations on the 2nd set. The diorama is going to be based on a surprise attack so a couple of the orcs are drawing weapons...

and maybe waking from a nap. While GW's prices suck, the stock poses and dynamic nature of the models made it hard to come up with unique conversions....Will post up the final 6 once they get solidified. Waiting on more green stuff to start gap filling.

Now the piece di resistance, Scooby Doo's arch nemesis; oil mongols dressed up in ghost costumes...

 

Nope not that one....

There he is!

 This will be my shade stand in as per the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings rules set. As always I wanted to stray from the GW stock model. Dug out some old unused models you do not see, got some wrights from a friend and slapped them all together.

 Really extended the robes to go for a whaspy whispy look. Going for this ghost cloud look; way to beat me to it Harry Potter.

This bottom guy still needs some work, going to blend up some more robes into the twilight wraith and extend another cloth trail flying out. The goal is to make each of the models blend into 1 greater being, while at the same time having them tearing apart and trying to reach out.

Pink Foam Rising

1 Warhammer Fortress
2 New Hack saw blades
1 pot of coffee

Enough plastic shavings/powder to look like an extra from Scarface...

Keep in mind all pieces are in they're raw state, lots of repairs and gap filling await my future....

I knew going into this stage it was going to be a lot of sawing, but I completely underestimated the level of frustration one can reach with hack saw blades... waiting for the consumer micro lightsaber to be released from Apple any day now.

In complete FUBAD fashion, I was told,

 "Make the tower bigger."

"But I am going to add more ruins onto the stock tower size"

"Just make it bigger anyway."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

So the tower got a expansion.

 The concept is a mash up of what we have seen so far from the hobbit + on hand materials (fortress pieces) + original Lord of the Rings Mordor home decor.

I am regretting not adding on the giant tube of green stuff to my most recent Warstore order. The white bridge is a stand in for reference, Will be trying to match the movie bridge exactly once that step is upon me.

 The inside of the keep will have a Scooby Doo dungeon entrance leading to the caves on the outside of the walls. Originally I had planned to enclose the entire piece in walls, but it ended up looking too small for what Dol Guldor should be. The one back side will be left open ended with the floor tiling giving the impression of continuation. This is simply the gatehouse.

These had to have been bought at least 5 years ago, but they are going to add some much needed character to the stock kit walls.

Without taking a sludge hammer to the newly cut pieces, a lot of the ruined look and feel will come from the painting and scenic elements. It is a mash up, not a complete recreation. I like to think of it as a West side Minas Morgul.

The Last of the Orcs

"The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the Red Man of these wilderness forests in front of it until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us."

Moving forward to our main antagonists, the Orcs of Dol Guldor. From what we can gather, the next hobbit movie, or the one after that, will have some sort of big old battle in Mirkwood. So this will hopefully be an accurate guess as to the participates.

The first hobbit movie introduced the new "hunter orcs"

Some sort of cross between the warg orcs in The Two Towers and Native Americans. Which in turn gave me some inspiration for how to make this army stand out.

.

I plan on taking, mainly war paint designs, from Mayan, Aztec, and Native American cultures. A very tribal feel for these orcs. The first couple of heroes are in they're beta test, no base work have been done, so judge those kindly.

The first orc will be a hunter orc captain from the Hobbit rulebook, and the 2nd will be Bolg. The enemy from the battle of five armies. From the 1-2 photos we have seen from the movie versions, his character could predominately be situated around Dol Guldor and the white orc could carry over to the battle. We will have to see. 

 Going to be using some green paint to make these brave heart warpaint pop on the orcs.

The silent shadows that will protect this creepy castle will be a castellan of Dol Guldor.

So hopefully this will be a quick tease as to the future evils that will be developing in the dungeons of FUBAD...

The World of Men is Weak

"There's no strength left in the world of men"

Finished up a custom Elrond conversion. I know I may have said previously that the GW knight kit allows for this model, but I just wanted something with a little more armor... close to 9 models went into this armored tank. 

Base is just for standing, looks a little rough with the mix match of parts, but it flows nicely and is clean.

Just a quick update, but this was the start of our FUBAD project, lots of cutting, kicking, scraping, and drilling. 

 Wolf approved.

FUBAD

Adepticon has come and gone and with it great times and plans for the future. Due to some work issues, I only got to play in the team format event. Big shout out to my teammate Charly, who, without him I do not think we would have walked away with the Best Sportsmanship award; first wining that!

The Watcher in the water did pretty good, turned out to be more of a mental model with opponents worrying about where and when he will pop up. Of the 3 games, had some close ones games and interesting match ups.

 As we progress towards the next big thing, November's Bilbo birthday bash tournament, plans are being laid, big plans.

I have always had a certain thematic curse with my army lists and this will be no other. A fellow gamer and I have begun the FUBAD club in preparation for the event. Details will be kept secret, but as steps progress more will be revealed.

Some plot points are,

-Super thematic
-appearance oriented
-as always, not that competitive

We are going to be working on some new hobby techniques and skills, some new, some just refined. Check back for developments.