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Uruk Hai…Getting There

I had some more jobs today… spent an awful lot of it swearing but also went to the club… more if that later.

The shower thingy works (in a fashion) hot water pressure is so low that any cold over a trickle causes it to freeze you. On the upside four of us managed a shower tonight instead of us all fighting over a bath.

So after I threw myself in I managed to get some more painting done.

These are almost finished. The Uruk bows went a bit of a weird colour but really only the bases and the back of the shields to do, and the touching up of all of the bits I missed (but that goes without saying… it’s a standard).

So this afternoon three of us had a go at Journeys in Middle Earth.

In the party were, Legolas, Gimli and Beravor (a ranger). We played the first mission. This was simple… hunt the wilds for some pesky bandits. We managed to sort of achieve our aims. We located the bandit camp, but unfortunately we took too long and they saw us coming. We did a lot of things wrong and had to redo things when we realised our error, but we all enjoyed it. When the adventure ended Gimli was down to his last ‘hit point’ and Legolas was about to be eaten by a Wild Warg. Beravor was, I think, up a tree looking for signs of the camp. Luckily that was what we needed to end the session.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get the Uruk finished…. then I am in a quandary… Finish off the Marines, paint 15mm Samurai or make a start on these…

In the box are the heroes of Helms Deep as well as the full Fellowship set…

Or a further option is make a start on the undead GW nasties.

I shall decide tomorrow…

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Uruk Hai, Printers, Bathrooms and New Toysm

Earlier today I printed off some more corridors for the meeple game…

They came out okay, took five hours to print the three of them but on the upside the bump in the middle seems to have disappeared, or at least reduced.

The top two are the original ones.

The new bed certainly helped, but to make sure I shoved a ‘post it’ note under the middle to raise it up a smidge.

I had a bit of a stressy day, more if that later, but I did manage to get some more paint on the Uruk.

As for the stress…Today, you probably heard the swearing from wherever you live. My good lady asked me to change the bath taps and I went forward with good humour (okay that’s a lie). I muttered, grumbled and definitely made a fuss.

Good job I did because it became a right bastard. Our bathroom is just wide enough for a bath and a toilet. The sink has to sit at the end of the bath so really not much room to manoeuvre, or take bath taps off evidently. When I replaced the original bathroom, the bath went in first…. therefore getting the taps off was problematic. I managed to get the hot tap off, the one furthest away, but the cold wouldn’t come off. Not sure why but in the end I had to use the angle grinder to cut the thing off. This is where I learned that angle grinders cut through brass taps and into fingers when they jump.

To get into the bath we thought we were going to have to remove the toilet cistern, so we started to undo it, unfortunately the connector wouldn’t come off either so we ended up with a bit of a leak.

All in all the twenty minute job took about 4 hours. Next time I get a plumber out🤬.

But to cheer myself up I managed to blag a copy of this…

Not too bad really £2.99 for thirteen miniatures. Part of me wants to get another one. I am not interested in the stormcast miniatures but the chainrasps are a useful undead addition to various games.

We have eventually finished our Lord of the Ringsathon. It is either going to be Pirates of the Caribbean or the original Star Wars Trilogy.

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First Fire Festival

As mentioned yesterday, the first fire festival of the year takes place today in the original capital of Shetland.

I always go to the Scalloway one as it is my friend’s birthday round about it and we stand at their house and watch the procession go by… Tonight we duly parked up and set off walking to my mates, only takes five minutes but it was rather windy and rainy. We got to his about six thirty and waited for the firework to tell us they were ready to start at 19.00. We heard the bang, got our coats on and went outside expecting to see the torches being lit… not a one in sight. Due to the high winds and rain they re routed it. So there are no pics of burning torches and a galley being torched or anything else like that. However I thought I would send a pic of the sea in the wind the other day.

I blagged if off Facebook…

This was taken on the tombolo at St. Ninian’s. The people are stood on the sand in the photo below.

Hardly a wonder that we hadn’t had a ferry for a good few days. (It left three hours early today, to avoid the worst of the wind).

Today, however there was some nice news, The delivery driver turned up around half four with my new base plates for the printer. It was just a simple task of removing t(e old one and then replacing it with the new. it came off eventually!

On the upside the new one looks rather smart…

For some reason the bed would not level for ages, but I got there in the end. I am seriously beginning to think that the metal base plate has a dip in the middle as I can get the edges dialled in spot on, but the middle is always just a little too high.

Anyway I needed a test print, so as these were stored on the usb card I gave them another go.

I compared the original prints (top) to the new one (below)…

As can be seen, the bottom ones are a lot better (apart from the top of the first one). I will resolve these and give them some more top and bottom layers to help with the missing layers, either that or give them a bit higher infil. I think this was pretty low.

The wind outside is howling, the rain is hammering on the roof and windows but this was this morning as I parked at work…

Red sky in the morning… shepherd’s warning….

Hopefully I will paint something tomorrow.

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Uruk Hai… Smidge Done

I really didn’t get much done this evening as I sat on the sofa after tea and nodded off. I really had to force myself to get off my backside and to get some painting done.

Pretty much all the plate armour is done, what is really interesting is that the more I get painted then the more bits I missed are becoming obvious.

I am not sure if I will get anything done tomorrow as it is the first of the fire festivals and we are off to my mate’s house to watch the procession and eat hot dogs.

I will post something about it tomorrow.

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Uruk Hai…Further Work

To be honest you can’t really see much, but I did all of the skirts and have started on the armour…

My eldest and wife were out until after 7.00 so I thought I would get loads done, sadly it wasn’t meant to be as my youngest wanted some help on the VR games so who was I to refuse 😉.

Hopefully I will get the rest of the armour done tomorrow. Not sure what colour to do the Uruk shields to be honest. I will have to have a think. In the films they are dark Iron, but then again so is their armour.

Sadly my hunt for the rest of the Wargs failed to turn anything up. I am sort of at a Loss as to where they are. I am now wondering if I got rid of them. They may be in with the ‘Hobbit’ miniatures but I really doubt it. I am beginning to think that I have got rid of them.

Whilst hunting for them I found a pile more Uruk and Mordor orks. I also found this chappie …

The kids had got him for me for my birthday in July.

I will get some paint on him sometime soon.

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Uruk Hai

Tonight, the VR was switched on, so I probably didn’t get as far on these as I probably could have done. Anyway I painted the skin on them all and then started on the leather armour.

Still a very, very long way to go but at least I managed to get my backside into gear and get some paint on these.

I still can’t find my other Wargs, but I have just this instant had a thought as to where they might be.

Hopefully I will carry on with these tomorrow evening as well as hunting for the missing Wargs.

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A Quiz on a Windy Winter Evening

So quick quiz…

Where is this the flag of:

And what is the relationship to this one…

5 points for the first question and 20 points for the second part …. no cheating.

My Shetland tale this evening revolves around the rather remarkable story of a School masters son who lived just over the hill from me.

Have you ever played the game, I would like to live there whilst driving around (a favourite game of my good lady and I) John Clunies-Ross took it one step further… in 1813 he was a mate aboard the whaler ‘Baroness Longueville’ . On a lay over in Timor he was offered the job of captain of the brig ‘Olivia’, which he took. In 1825 He was travelling with a cargo of pepper from Borneo when he stopped on the white sands of a deserted island to reballast his vessel as well as rebalance the cargo. He thought it would be a nice place to set up home and build a trade empire. Two years later he returned and set about building his empire. He arrived on the Cocos Islands, around 11pm on February 15 1827, with his wife, five children and servants. So the game is up, the flag is Cocos Islands.

And this is where it is (in case you didn’t know)

The island, did indeed become a trading post. Huts were originally constructed, wells were dug, coconut trees and gardens were planted with fertiliser coming from burnt palm leaves. John and his wife both died on the same day on May 24 1854.

A new house was built, it was quite a nice pad, a long way from the original thatched huts…

Various British ships arrived over the years, including the ‘Beagle’ complete with a certain Charles Darwin. Who mentioned the ex slaves who were working for the family. He stated that…”found the natives in a state of freedom”. But a following sentence was missed out… but in most other points they are considered as slaves”.

However, Captain Harding of the HMS Pelorus Mentioned in a letter to Clunie-Ross that after questioning the Malays about their treatment…”Not a shadow of complaint or misrule by you could be established or maintained.”

Clunie-Ross promised to provide the ex slaves an agreed wage and to provide houses and gardens and had to promise that they were allowed transport off the island should they want it.

The family were the self styled rulers of the islands. The representative of the Straits Settlements reported the following in 1885 “members of the Clunies-Ross family are to-day in every sense of the word proprietors of the islands, for Mr George Clunies-Ross makes his own laws and interprets them, polices his little domain, provides his own coinage […] controls the entire trade and acts as “the universal provider” to satisfy the wants of the community”

In 1886 Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies-Ross family.

The family sold the island to Australia in 1978 for the sum of £2.5 million.

Hopefully this has been a bit of an interesting read.

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Wargs and Riders

Tonight was ‘Return of the King’ Part 1. Huzzah!

So in honour of another Tolkien night I finished the Wargs as well as the riders.

To be honest, they aren’t the best painted for a couple of reasons. First is I did them fast and wanted them out of the way and secondly the soft detail on these isn’t much use for Contrast paint.

I didn’t bother with a lot of the straps etc. Having these the same colour as the main leatherwork.

The lighting has given these an odd colour, the one on the right isn’t actually green skinned.

Hopefully I will get some of the ork infantry painted tomorrow when the final Lord of the Rings film is done.

Back to work tomorrow, a couple of days of training etc then back into school with the kids on Wednesday.

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Coloured Furry Wargs

So the Two Towers is finished and we are onto the Return of the King. We watch part one tomorrow evening.

Anyway, these evening I undercoated the Greenstuff white and messed around tidying up the other Uruk minis.

I then proceeded to get some paint onto the wargs. The Gore Grunta brown, seemed a little pale, so I gave it a bit of a shake, then tried again on a second one… still a bit pale..”twas then I realised it wasn’t what I thought it was!

But in the words of Bob Ross, there are no mistakes only happy little accidents!

Still a fair bit to go on them as I want to darken the top of them a bit more as well as paint in teeth etc.

Today was a bit of a nightmare, okay total exaggeration there, as we are in the eye of the storm, or one has past and another is on its way, but anyway we decided to take the trailer full of rubbish into the tip, I pumped up the tyre as it was flat, got to the top of the track and it fully blew out… so I swore and undid the spare, only to find I needed a different sized spanner to get the wheel off. Luckily we were close to home, (200m in fact) so I mooched back down the track to find something in one of the other cars. Luckily one of them fit, so in 0c I had to get a tyre changed. Luckily the bolts all came out, one fought me all the way! So 25 minutes later we set off again. Only to find all the skips in the dump were pretty much full. Not to be stopped we managed to squeeze everything in somehow. I really felt for all of the people behind us as we just about got stuff in, they had sod all chance unless their cars, vans and pickups were all full of wood, metal or garden waste.

We will try and get the fridge in tomorrow, luckily that just get stood in a compound. I say try as the gales and rain are back with a vengeance tomorrow.

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Furry Wargs

There was no painting tonight during the Two Towers part 1. Instead I decided to tidy up the Wargs and riders…

I cracked open the Greenstuff and hid the joint lines along the leg and shoulder and across the rear. I bought these years ago from Ebay and have eventually got around to making a Start in them.

I will get the Greenstuff undercoated tomorrow and see if I can find any more in any of my hiding places. I also had a hunt on Ebay for some of the LOTR wood elves and there seem to be none. I have enough Uruk Hai for a whole army. Some more bow armed ones would be good too.

Well I just went on a Foray to both Sheds and I can’t find anything (apart from gazillions of Uruk). I did manage to just about freeze my nadgers off. Gale force winds and hail is not a good combination by anyone’s standards. I must admit I thought I had more than three of these Wargs.

So, although the Hobbit film Wargs are more like they should be, It might look a bit weird mixing up the two.

I may have to give you all a warming story tomorrow…