Watchful Peace

When Ebob released his new Norman warriors, I immediately had to think of John Howe's famous painting  "Watchful Peace". In my opinion this might be the best depiction of the proud descendants of the Sea Kings around. Unfortunately Weta didn't stay too close to his design.

Although I like the catchy style of Weta's design for the warriors of Minas Tirith, it never felt consistent to the books. Plate armour is never mentioned in the books (with the exception of vambraces) and it always comes to my mind again, when I see GW's tin-can Gondorians of the 3rd age...  In this respect, Ebob's Norman infantry is much closer to the books and in terms of gameplay, the hauberks should suffice as heavy armour as well.

In order to make the Normans fit for warriors of Gondor or even as Citadel Guard, I  had to convert them a bit first... Their chainmail armour and the "high helmets" are already perfect, the Kite shields came in handy as well, when I tried to give them their signature heraldry, but they still lacked helmet wings and some black cloaks. Without further ado, I added those, using some Green Stuff. I tried to avoid too much uniformity here, since I wanted to conserve some of the Dark-Ages-feeling. This is something I consider very important about recreating Middle-earth. There's a multitude of influences that gave distinction to Tolkien's Middle-earth, but the Hastings-period has undoubtely been the most important one for the description of the Kingdoms of Men. (This might be the reason why so many people praise Weta's depiction of the Rohirrim so high.)

Although they only replace GW's Numenorians in my Last Alliance at the moment, I plan to extend my Ebob collection to some larger 3rd Age Gondor warband for SAGA. Ebob has already posted some WIP pics of Norman cavalry that will follow at some point and I really hope for some archers and axemen as well. The cavalry should make some perfect mounted messengers (those with the red arrow...) or Swan Knights of Dol Amroth. Ebob even has some fitting helmets for those in his components section, which I might try.

Reclaiming Moria

Some shots of my recent paintjobs on Grimhammers and Warriors of Erebor.

Tutorial: Azanulbizar Bases - Step by Step

This guide shows you how to create a rocky base similar to the Azanulbizar battle scene from the Hobbit movie.

Getting started
Before you can start with the painting you have to be a dwarvish miner to get some little rocks for your bases. I used a slate plate from the hardware store and crushed it with a hammer. Make sure that you get various sizes of little stones.



Step by Step
1. Pick up some little slate stones and stick them on your base for assembling a rocky scenery. Use super glue for best results.

2. Next step is sanding your base. As usual you can use PVA glue and modelling sand for filling the leftover base parts. In this case i used one of GW texture colours called "Stirland Mud". The advantage is that you get your texture and a basecoat brownish colour in one step.

3. Once dry, get your base a heavy drybrush of GW Baneblade Brown.

4. Now it's time for highlighting.  Drybrush just the slate areas with Vallejo Game Color Stonewall Grey or GW Administratum Grey.










5. Drybrush Vallejo Game Color Stonewall Grey and GW Ushabti Bone 50:50 mixture

6. Drybrush GW Ushabti Bone and after that a very light drybrush of GW white scar

7. Now ink the whole base with thinned down Vallejo Smoke. This step gives your greyish unrealistic  looking base a very natural beige-coloured look.

8. At least its time for painting the base edge. I suggest brown or grey colours. Advice for better looking bases: keep always the base edge darker than the base top. So you get a better contrast.

For my Azanulbizar styled bases I used Vallejo Model Color German Grey.




Thanks for reading!

Unboxing: Warriors of Dale

I have finally managed to get some of the newly released Warriors of Dale. GW has been stingy with these. It seems as if most independent retailers as well as GW stores have only got some few copies... I don't think I'll ever understand this company...

 

This box has been a controversial issue in the forums since it contains not the standard number of 12 models but only 10 (for which we don't even have a ruleset in the official books). Many hobbyists have detected some hidden price increase here but actually I don't see how the two additional models should have been forced into this frame. There are 4 warriors with spear, 3 warriors with sword and 3 archers in the box. 7 of them have the option for a shield. The frame is loaded with miniature parts. Especially the cloaks are quite bulky, similar to those of the new Elven cavalry, and take a lot of space. Nevertheless they add a great touch to those models and give them a very dynamic appearance. I really like Weta's Eastern European design and it has been perfectly caught in these models.

Im pretty sure the models will look gorgeous as an addition to an Erebor army, although I would prefer to field some warband of these on their own. I really could imagine these in some scenarios, defending a trade caravan against some Easterlings or patroling Rhovanion for marauding orc bands. I hope they extend the Men of Dale as a playable army some day... Otherwise it will mean a lot of conversion work for me... At least some characters would be nice...

As I already mentioned, the Warriors of Dale have no entry in the rulebooks so far. It's a shame that GW seems to have planned the Hobbit releases in such a sloppy and insufficient way, especially since it degrades the value of the hardcover rulebook... Why should I prefer the hardcover rulebook to the cheap one in the EfGT box set if it not even contains all the new profiles? Not very smart... 

On the other hand, I like GW's solution to this shortcoming. They simply relased the rules with the miniatures. The cardboard stat card that comes with the box contains the profiles of the Warriors of Dale in 6 languages. There's not much on it but some crappy text about their background (which I can't bring into context with the books at all...) and the profiles for warriors and a captain. Actually that is all I needed. I didn't expect some fancy artwork or some new special rules. All I wanted was some regular, well balanced troops and it's a real pleasure that the rules reflect that. Unluckily they don't seem to have the options for horns or flags. I'm curious if this is only because someone in Nottingham has been sloppy again, or if they really are intended to get no flags at all. Since they are guardsmen, I really would have loved some alarm horns or bells sound off...

 

Fin

Tutorial: Stripping Paint from Miniatures

Stripping paint from metal miniatures is easy... Nearly every dissolver out there works for this purpose to a greater or lesser extent, but as soon as people try to strip paint from plastik miniatures, people start thinking, since mostof these dissolvers will not only disintegrate the paint but probably the whole miniature...

My preferred agent for cases like this is Sterillium, a German germicide which you can get at most pharmacies. Actually this stuff is quite pricey and since my bottle was nearly empty I searched for a cheaper solution...

... which lead me to 99,9% propan-2-ol/ isopropanol/ isopropyl alcohol. In fact, this is the active ingredient in Sterillium. You can get this stuff in most pharmacies as well and it's much cheaper (ca. 2,50€/l). You might even get better prices online if you buy it in 5l jerrycans, although I doubt that you will ever need that much.

Test object to propan-2-ol was this Balrog, whom life hasn't been good to... He had a nasty cover of paint an glue.

Once soused with some propan-2-ol, the paint started to rub off immediately. 

Please note: It will not come off completely on its own! Best way to strip the miniature is to use an old toothbrush to get rid of the paint.

After a reaction time of 5 minutes I started brushing the paint off. As you can see the agent works pretty quickly. A longer reaction time would be helpful, but I had to speed things up a bit since I was a bit in a hurry.

Although the propan-2-ol looked quite nasty at this stage and had dissolved most of the paint, I put another miniature in to check if the agent still works once used.

Please note: You can see that I'm working with my bare hands. You should not do that! The propan-2-ol does not only dissolve the paint but will effectively degrease your skin as well. Wearing gloves is highly recommended. If it comes to working with chemicals, alsways have Breaking Bad in mind: Lab security comes first!

Test object 2 was stripped clean after some few minutes. Propan-2-ol can be reused several times. If you're discontent with the colour you might filtrate it through a coffee filter, but this will only remove the larger bits of paint. The changed colour will stay.

Final results: After 30 minutes of work the Balrog was completely clean. Only some of the metal-glue can still be seen at some parts. Maybe a longer reaction time would have helped here but I doubt that. This stuff is really nasty and needs to be removed mechanically.

Fin

The Trolls

WIP: Ebob Normans?

Some weeks ago I got a delivery of the brand new Ebob Normans. These miniatures have absolutely stunning detail which I'm still fascinated of. Although I never cared much about Normans, who are kind of the Vanilla Marines of the Dark Ages, I couldn't wait to see how they would fit in with my other Middle-earth models. As usual, Ebob' scale is pretty close to GW's true 28mm scale. They will mix pretty well with the rest of my collection!

You ask what the hell I would need Normans for, if I want to depict Middle-earth? Well, I'll give you a clue:

Any suggestions yet?

Fin

Showroom: Fin's High Elves

Some recent shots of my finally based High Elves warband, ready to hunt down some Orc.

Fin

This is Jomada!

Welcome travellers,

back in the time when we started our hobby career, other hobbyists were primarily found in our local gaming stores. Wargaming was pretty much a regional thing back then. The internet was of much minor importance but when we finally discovered it, we were at once flooded with useful hobby information and helpful tricks by friendly veterans.

The Jomada team has its roots in the German LotR SBG community tabletop-hdr.de. This is the place where we were introduced to the mystery cult of drybrushing and applying static gras to bases. This is the place where our understanding of the hobby developed. With the release of the Hobbit-movies and the return of Middle-earth to the big screens we started focussing our hobby activities on Middle-earth again. We wanted to give something back to this community and all those other hobbyists worldwide from whom we learned so much and whose inspiring projects left us marvelling so often. This place is dedicated to all those from whom we learned and still learn.

Thanks for the wonderful time and feel welcome on

Jomada - Adventures in Middle-earth

On the Horizon