36 Goblins, 3 Goblin Officers, and Two Frodos

For the Balin's Tomb scenario in the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game rulebook, you need 36 goblins (12 each of spear, shield, and bow guys), 3 goblin officers, and one cave troll for the evil side.  Of course, on the good side you need the Fellowship.

I started this project about one month ago (I checked on the date of the first posting about goblins I did) which means that I've been working on this project off and on over the past 5 weeks.  During that time I completed 36 goblins, 3 goblin officers, and all of the Fellowship, including an "invisible Frodo," except for Gandalf (who is at this moment on my painting table almost fully constructed, so he'll be finished this week).  There is NO WAY I could have ever painted this many regular miniatures during this time, not to the standard that I like to paint to.  As for the cave troll, I can't decide whether to go with my old cave troll (who frankly looks a little outdated at this point ... he is after all almost 2 years old!) or make a new cave troll with my more developed construction and conceptualization skills so as to be consistent with these newer LotR figures.  I'll probably end up making another one.  But my point is that a little over a month ago, I decided I wanted to put on a fantasy skirmish game for my gaming club.  In what will end up being about 6 weeks time, I will have completed all 50 figures for it (you need two Frodo figures).  Not bad!

Onto the figures.

Rather than showing you the "new goblins," I thought it would be more impressive to show the three different types with an officer all in one picture (almost as units here even though they do not all stay together in the same unit during the game).  So I've got a group of 12 spear goblins with an officer, a group of 12 bow goblins with an officer, and a group of 12 shield goblins with an officer all in the same picture.  I think they make quite the impressive horde!

Event though these miniatures are identical to each other in terms of body and feet, the variation in the arm position and the head tilts really makes them look a bit less uniform (more like a horde of angry goblins!).  I continue to be impressed, actually, with how much just varying the arm position increases the diversity of appearance of these clearly simple miniatures.

Onto Frodo ...

I wanted a regular Frodo and an invisible Frodo.

Nothing new construction wise, and this close up picture makes me realize I need to go back and make his blue pupils round again ... forgot to do that after I added the whites of his eyes.  Obviously there is no way to make a wooden figure "clear," so I went with the "ghostly" gray look for him when he is invisible.  I just stuck with the exact same pose of him holding the ring between his fingers, even though it wouldn't be correct when he is invisible as the ring would be on his finger.

Same traditional Hobbit construction.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, Frodo's clothing except for his bright green cloak is quite boring (just different shades of brown with a white undershirt that you don't really see because of all the layers he wears!).  The only new thing really with the non-invisible figure is Sting.  I just painted the sword blade a white undercoat and then used the florescent blue paint, that I sometimes use on my sci-fi figures for bright lights and buttons, and coated the white blade with this blue paint.  I ran the brush along the edges of the sword blade while the blue paint was still wet to take away some of the paint to allow the white to show through more, giving the impression that it is "glowing."

When I get Gandalf finished, I will do a shot with all the Fellowship, and then I will do a shot with my new Fellowship figures next to the old Fellowship Craftees I did a couple of years ago and let you be the judge of which you like better.