Hobby Bingo 2024 - Tiberius's Board

Good morning gamers,

Happy boxing day - I hope your Christmas was enjoyable and fun! 2024 has been VERY busy here at TMAT and despite not getting a lot of hobby releases (and my simultaneous investment in Star Wars Legion), hobby bingo went pretty well! While it's not as complete as last year's run (there were two boxes that just weren't going to be filled in - more on that later), things went pretty well and I got a LOT of models smashed out of my backlog. So without further ado, here's how we did!

Row #1: TV Time, Smials, and Fiefdoms

Column 1 required us to watch the Hobbit Trilogy, which was easy this year because my daughter was reading the Hobbit with her book club and was allowed to watch the films as she finished the relevant chapters. This was completed on May 26th and while the book is superior to the film trilogy, I still like it - very enjoyable.

Column 2 required watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which I did on my own (though my son and daughter made it through Fellowship in book club this year too - and they really enjoyed the extended edition of the first film). I finished watching Fellowship on my own on May 29th, Towers on June 15th, and then because life got busy, I didn't get around to King until September 15th.

2023 Hobby Bingo: Tiberius's Board

Good morning gamers,

Well, 2023 has been a year - and it's been full of hobby fun! With Fantasy Fellowships, the Minas Tirith board, several tournaments, and lots and lots and LOTS of Morannon Orcs, there's been a lot to keep me busy during my off nights. I haven't officially done the hobby bingo challenge before, though I've always looked at the boards and thought, "I should do that." Well, this year, I said, "Darn it, we're gonna do it this year" - and I am proud to say that it turned out pretty well. Let's have a look!

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Row #1: Lots of New Models (and some movies and a tournament)

Our first square in the first row requires us to start a new army, and for me this year, that was easy: Corsairs of Umbar! Throwing weapons are my thing and these guys have them everywhere. I also had these models sitting around for a while, so I don't have all the guys I painted shown here because . . . well, I need a guy for another bingo box:

Box two is easy - watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, I watch the extended cuts every year at least once, usually while I'm working on batch painting something or working on a terrain project. It took me longer than usual to watch them this year, since I had to catch up on a bunch of Star Wars shows, but I finished watching the extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring on June 28th, The Two Towers on August 14th, and The Return of the King on September 9th.

Box three was checked off on June 24th when I attended our annual Grand Tournament - I got last place with a Quest of the Ringbearer Angmar army (you can read about my process of picking that list here and some thoughts on the scoring system - and a brief overview of my games - here).

Box 4 requires scenic bases for one of my armies and I decided to showcase my basing style for my Erebor Dwarves, as shown on Ori. The bases were done by painting white through a dryer sheet, then washing in black, then spot-highlighting in black, and then making piles of gold and emeralds from green glitter, PVA glue, and gold paint:

Finally, I needed to finish a Good army of at least 600 points. Because of the way Hobby Bingo works, I wanted to have a list that "just" reached 600pts (because I need elements of this project to cover multiple boxes, and you can't double-count a model) and since I spent quite a bit of time this year converting up Grim Hammers, Warriors of Erebor, and Thorin's Company heads into a War of the Ring era Erebor Reclaimed list, I figured I'd grab over 600 points from them. You can see here Thorin III Stonehelm, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Nori, Dori, Gloin, and 7 converted Iron Hills Dwarves with shields and spears:

Grim Champs: What Do You Do With 13 Broken Dwarves?

Good morning gamers,

If you've followed the last two posts in this conversion miniseries (here and here), you know that I have spent some time this year converting up some Champions of Erebor from a Thorin's Company blister and some Grim Hammers. With the converted models done, I found myself with a pile of headless, mangled bodies:

What does one do with all these? Why, we get our conversion hat out and we turn them into something useful: "bag" tokens for the Three Trolls! Let's get to work!

Grim Champs: Converting the Champions of Erebor, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

I mentioned at the start of the year that I was going to take a bunch of Champions of Erebor in my Fantasy Fellowship this year. The champs are kinda expensive (like everything in the Erebor Reclaimed list), so I wanted to look for conversion options. While I was puzzling through this, I got the Dain and Thorin set from Rythbyrt and I noticed how similar the shield design on Thorin was to the cheaper Warriors of Erebor. Picking up a box of Warriors, Grim Hammers, and Thorin's Company costs the same as the champs, but also nets me a bunch more models - so I began a neat endeavor to convert up our Heroes from these models. Let's start with the six Dwarves in our Fellowship.

The War of the Ring Era Champs

These are the bits we're going to need for our War of the Ring champions (I didn't end up needing Dwalin's hammer). We mostly need their heads, but we're going to also borrow some other bits too. Let's start with the Champ that's being used by both me and my son for Fantasy Fellowships this season, Dori!

Quest of the Ringbearer: What Terrain Do You Need?

Good morning gamers,

If you're like me, you were both a little surprised and kind of excited when Quest of the Ringbearer was announced. I bought the Fellowship of the Ring journeybook a few years back (Centaur and I played through it - it was great) and to see many of those scenarios get some new life breathed into them was exciting. It was also likely to field many Legendary Legions that I wanted (a Balrog-focused Moria one, a Cirith Ungol one, a Riders in Black one, a Lurtz-oriented Isengard one, and of course a scrappy Fellowship one). Yes, I'm grateful for the update to the Rangers of Ithilien too - and honestly this is the first supplement where I've looked at all of the Legendary Legions released and said, "Yep, I think I want to play ALL of these." So, needless to say, I love the book.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

When it arrived and I started pouring over it, I noticed that there were quite a few models that one would need to buy to play everything - I did a post on that and it came up $2000+ to buy everything (AFTER you buy the Battle for Pelennor Fields box set, the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, and the Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook). Yikes. 

But what also struck me is that unlike most of the other sourcebooks released so far, there are a LOT of different terrain boards you'd need to build in order to play the scenarios in the book. You have the rolling hills and open spaces of the Shire, the wooded terrain of the Old Forest and Lothlorien, the rocky terrain of Moria and Cirith Ungol, and the urban terrain of Bree and Osgiliath (two VERY different places). You also have some very iconic terrain pieces like Weathertop and the King's Seat which are important for the few scenarios they actually appear in . . . so . . . with all that terrain ahead of us, how does one get started (and try to get the most out of a collection of terrain)? Well, I'm glad you asked - because that's what we're going to look into today.

Workbench Update: Building the Watcher in the Water

Good morning gamers,

So Christmas was wonderful - got some Galadhrim Warriors from Centaur to paint up, started painting some new Hobbits for the Quest of the Ringbearer missions, and got some flocking and flowers from my kids. Life is great.

One other addition I got was the Watcher in the Water (got a discount from Rythbryt) - and so during naptimes during the past few weeks, I've been slowly putting this guy together. Today I figured I'd show you how it's been coming along!

Workbench Update: Isengard

Good morning gamers,

Over the past few months, we’ve been working through our workbench projects on the Forces of Evil I own (since they don’t get their own time in the sun much). With recent journeys to Angmar, Mordor, and Moria, our current travels take us to the tower of Orthanc where Saruman and his minions see some minor repairs and some new arrivals.

Workbench Update: Moria

Hello gamers,

When I got started in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game in September 2010 (LOTR SBG back then), I bought the core game: The Mines of Moria. My first tradiditonal army (read, wasn’t composed entirely of heroes) was, therefore, Moria. Within a month of getting the core game, I picked up Durburz on eBay and converted one of my archers into a Moria Goblin Shaman. With 22 Goblin Warriors (lost one and never found it again), 2 Goblin heroes, and 1 Cave Troll, I had a very impressive 25 models in a 300 point force … or so I thought. At 300 points, it’s hard to get anything in your army, but the hardest thing for most armies to get are numbers. As my collection grew (Lothlorien, Khazad-Dum, and Isengard by the end of that year – and many more armies since), Moria has in many ways fallen on the wayside. This is true for a number of reasons:

• They don’t have good magic casters and I love magic casters;
• They don't have good archery and I love archery;
• They don't have any decently priced powerful heroes and I love decently priced powerful heroes;
• Cave trolls and other monsters don't resist magic well and I love magic casters;
• Their basic troops get crushed by high-strength archery and I love archery;
• They get lots of troops UNLESS they get powerful monsters, which means they don’t spam as well as some other civs that can field powerful heroes (and I love powerful heroes).

That’s a lot of reasons (really three reasons used twice each). So, today we try to rectify it by giving these Greenskins some love and helping them look a little better on the table (with the ultimate goal of making me want to run them more). This post will primarily focus on what you can do with Goblin bowmen models and in particular highlight how you can convert them into heroes.

Workbench Update: Mordor

Good morning gamers,

I’ve been spending time recently updating my Rivendell and Numenor armies (giving them the tender loving care they deserve). Last time, we gave some tender loving care to my Angmar forces. Today, our attention turns to an army that I’ve enjoyed playing, and will enjoy using a lot more now: Mordor. Mordor is seeing a new model, as well as some conversions and weapon swaps, so let’s get into it!

Workbench Update: Angmar

Good morning gamers,

In our last workbench update (Numenor), I said we'd be going to Mordor next and talking about what's been going on for my Mordor army that I'm building. While I can say that Mordor has seen some work on the workbench, they were quickly eclipsed by my Angmar work. So...today we visit Angmar and see what’s been cooking up to help one of the weirdest factions in the Lord of the Rings game. While I’ve had some Ringwraiths, Wild Wargs, and Orc Warriors for a while (and even acquired some Barrow-Wights), Angmar as a civ has always evaded my attentions. Today changes all that: we focus hard on getting Angmar up to snuff with some enhancements that will help them sweep over the Elves and Men that challenge them. Some weapon swaps/additions will be at work, as will some conversions – lots of fun to be had, so let’s get to it!

Workbench Update: Numenor

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we looked at the work I did on my High Elves recently. Today, we look at the other side of the Last Alliance and visit with Numenor. The last time I did a workbench update on Numenor, I had only just finished painting most of them and was still working on cleaning up new acquisitions of Isildur and Elendil. Today we’ll look at finishing the work on most of the infantry and some touch-ups on the heroes.

Workbench Update: Rivendell

Good morning gamers,

Today our travels take us to Rivendell, where we catch up on what we’re doing for my High Elves. Those who follow our blog know that I took a Last Alliance list to Brawler Bash this past January, taking the power of Elendil and Elrond to fight all comers. Had a bit of a rough go against a full-Rivendell list (Elendil and Gil-Galad had a not-so-epic show-down), had a good time though overall.

There are three big projects that have been in the works for Rivendell since that time: a) adding spears to some of my guys (can’t rely on Numenoreans being in position to support), b) converting a Cirdan model out of an old Celeborn model (because Cirdan is awesome and I didn’t want to pay a ridiculous amount of money to get the made-to-order one that was released recently), and c) making a banner for them (as well as one for Lothlorien).

Workbench Update: Minas Tirith

Recently, I put up a post (two, really) on Minas Tirith armies that I liked that centered around Gandalf the White. Today, it's show and tell for Minas Tirith, with painting, basing, and conversions to show for all our work.

Painting

Not much to say here - pictures will show more below. I will note that in all my previous armies, I've adapted my painting scheme so that no two models were alike. If you have 48 Moria Goblin Warriors, for example, you could paint up all 48 to be exactly the same. From what I hear, this is a slog and a real psychological hurdle. For me, I do the following:

• 2 colors of Goblin skin: Green, Gray
• 3 colors of Goblin tunics: Red, Orange, Brown
• 2 styles of armor: Black (with metallic highlighting), Metallic
• 2 styles of weapons: Black (with metallic highlighting), Metallic
• 2 colors of sandals: Brown, Black

With this method, I can make a grid that has 48 total combinations, making all the Goblins look different (but keeping a united color pallet). Minas Tirith, however, works differently: all the Warriors of Minas Tirith will need to have the same brilliant metal shine and their weaponry will want to look uniform too. To accommodate this, I took a leaf out of my Uruk-Hai book, where I focused on highlighting details (hand prints - took a long time to do) on my models and adding blood/gore to some of their weapons. This still kept all the models looking unique while keeping a very uniform appearance. For Minas Tirith, I made small differences - gold hilts vs. black hilts, brown boots vs. black boots, and various different hair colors (brown, black, yellow, gray, white - a trick I did with my Dwarves too). Where I got stuck were the swords, because I decided to do brown spears/bows vs. black spears/bows - so I used a little plastic cutting and gluing to change the poses of the swords (which was easy, considering the wholesale changes I made to my Numenoreans a little while ago).

Top 10 Wraiths, Revisited

And after a VERY long move and get-the-old-place-ready-for-renters kind of month, WE'RE ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

And naturally, once we're back to being alive, we blog about our hobbies. :)

A while back, we did a post on the "top 10 Ringwraiths," with the emphasis being on an all-Ringwraith team (because that's what we were taking to THRO that year). Today, we're going to do that again, but consider how these guys have changed under the new rules. We'll also be expanding our horizons to discuss each Ringwraith in the context of their more traditional usage: as one of several heroes leading lots of warriors. I will note that even in an all-hero army of Ringwraiths (like we did a while back), the order wouldn't change much in my opinion. So gather up your blackest robes, prepare that screech you've been working on, prepare your dark steed, and let's get to it!

Making Trees (a.k.a. don't throw anything away)

Good morning gamers,

As the TMAT GT 2019 approaches, I'm making terrain! I've always believed that the best way to get a terrain project done is to give yourself a deadline and I've been working on forests for quite a while (read, since I got started almost nine years ago). Today's post is informed by YouTube videos from The Terrain Tutor, though there are other channels on YouTube who will show you how to do this too (I'm subscribe to Lukes Aps as well).

Workbench Update: Minas Tirith

Good morning gamers!

So before last Christmas, I bought Faramir and Damrod from my good mate Glenstorm along with 6 Rangers of Gondor (with the intention of double-using all eight of them as Dunedain when playing my Fellowship of the Ring campaign). Over Christmas and a wedding in January, I acquired 48 Warriors of Minas Tirith. About three weeks later, Gandalf the White (foot and mounted from the Two Towers edition) arrived from Australia. With buckets of Warriors of Minas Tirith to paint, we had a proper project on our hands (and LOTS of decisions to make). So, here's what we did:

Workbench Report #2017-1: In Which We Are Not Dead

Happy 2017 gamers!

I find myself alone most Tuesday evenings with my wife hanging out with friends and I took a look at the blog and realized a great travesty: 6 posts came from this blog last year. I know what you’re thinking – how in the WORLD did you only get up 6 posts (and not all of them were yours)! Where were you last year!?!?!?

TMAT 2016 Preview: The King's Champion

Hey everyone,

Long time no write, I know. Been working on a few things before a short trip this week, and got some time in for a picture or two. Behold, the (nearly finished) King's Champion and Heralds conversion for my upcoming TMAT list:

Here's the list (missing a few models I'm going to borrow from Glenstorm's collection). 10 of the units are Defense 5 and flexible skirmishers, while the rest are Defense 6 archers, D7 front-liners, or D8 (or D9!) heroes. 

Workbench Update: Orcs and Elves

At long last, we're back! October is going to be crazy, but finally got time to pull the camera out and showcase some of the stuff I've been working on.

Here's the full complement so far - plenty of Ringwraiths, a handful of Spectres (hoping to grow up to 10 of them), and plenty of Orcs. Army is all in dark hues and once I get the basing done, should have a menacing horde.

Busy Weekend: Workbench Products

Good morning gamers,

I had a very productive day yesterday and got a few projects done that have been sitting on the workbench for a LONG time. Most of them are woodland terrain pieces, so hopefully you'll get to see some Elf games coming up in the next few months. All of these are still WIP, but here's a look before they get to their final state.

1) Large Mountain

The mountain was provided to me as a free bonus after purchasing a new vacuum...great deal right? :P Spray painted dark brown with some added gravel to it, I'm preparing to paint it up grey in some spots (to include the rocks, I think) and add some towers and ladders. I think I even have some stone stairs that will be added too...

  2) Small Abandoned Wall

I'm growing my Wild/Lonelands collection to support my Weathertop map and this is one of the pieces. The wall is very low, providing a minor barrier bonus and an in-the-way for short/crouched models. Besides that, there's a rock and a "pillar stump" that might become a well. Not yet figured out what that will be. This too will get some gray and some grass flocking around some of the wall, pillar, and rock.

3) Small Woods

Three small woods that have been in my collection and in dire need of repair/creation since I started the hobby. Been working on twist-tie wire trees for a while and I think I have enough of them now. I need to add more flocking to the ground and find a way to get leaves on the trees, but we'll work on that later - especially with the following project...

4) Larger Wood

Ah, nothing like a woodland clearing with lots of trees surrounding an open space. Some of the entrances restrict deployment with woods that can be crossed through, while others are nice and wide, allowing for large battle lines to walk through. Tried to not mess up too many formations, but we'll see how much of this becomes woodland terrain and how much of it is open after the next spray-painting session (ran out before I could do this one).

Some Elves defending a copse of trees - you can see from here that an individual model can navigate through the tight trees.

Northern side, other models can walk through that one too.

That's it for now gamers - expect to see some additional content this week, as I try to get some detail work on my armies (especially Goblins and Elves)!