Men In Boxes

It was that time of the year when one gets to the point that he really, really has to get stuff arranged. The Southeast asian summer had already come and gone but my hobby room is still uber messy with little space left to engage in model making. Last week, I hunkered down and began the long and tedious task of arranging everything. Lo and behold, an old, large box yielded packs of 54mm plastic toy soldiers. I sp[ent the next few hours sorting them out and decided to try and make some HOTT armies out of them. Here are a few of the figures I found. Hopefully, they'll be repainted and rebased as HOTT armies before the year is out. And hopefully, the hobby room gets cleaned up too. These pictures were also earlier posted at my toy collection blog . You can find notes about them there.

Marcus Nispel’s Conan The Barbarian opened in Philippine cinemas last week and I caught it on its second day.  The film stars Jason Momoa as the titular barbarian with Stephen Lang as the warlord Khalar Zym. As a youth, Conan becomes the sole survivor of a vicious attack by Khalar Zym’s forces on his Cimmerian village. Zym seeks to reassemble an ancient mask of evil power to resurrect his dead witch-wife and gain otherworldly powers with the help of his witch-daughter, Marique played by Rose Mcgowan. Conan joins forces with Tamara played by Rachel Nicols whom Zym seeks as the only possible bodily host for his dead wife’s soul. Jason Momoa makes for a great looking Conan, even better suited to the role than old Arnold Schwarzenegger. He does look like someone Frank Frazetta would paint. There’s just itsy-bitsy, teenie-tiny little problem. By Crom! This is NOT Conan the Barbarian. The story itself disregards any source material written by Robert E. Howard, or even the pastic...

In 1988, TSR released the second edition of Battlesystem designed by Douglas Niles. Although it was written to be used with 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the game itself doesn't really use the mechanisms of Ad&D. The unit-based combat system uses different sided dice and I think that speeds the game up as well as adds nuances to the fantastical aspects of playing with exotic soldiery. Recently, a new board for the discussion of things Battlesystem was launched at The Miniatures Page. It seems that the rules still have a sufficient enough following. Personally, I really liked this game and we've mounted a lot of silly and sometimes serious campaigns using old Citadel, TSR, Grenadier and Ral Partha figures. Here are my Dwarf and Elf armies made for Battlesystem use. These were fairly new, circa 90's I think. I couldn't find pictures of the older minis. Those were still taken using 35mm film and I wasn't conscientious enough to take care of the ne...

I am flabbergasted, stupefied, thunderstruck, dumbstruck, awestruck, amazed, astonished, astounded, stunned, and soooo excited! TheOneRing.net features the worldwide exclusive reveal of Thorin Oakenshield holding Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver as well as Thorin and company! Head on up to TheOneRing.net and get the lowdown on these doughty dwarves of Middle-Earth! They also have some feedback for each and every member of the quest as they appear on Bilbo’s doorstep. Baruk Khazad! Khazad Ai-menu!

Ken Stott as Balin and Graham McTavish as Dwalin. Here follows the accompanying description of these Dwarves:     Dwarf Lords in their own right, Balin and Dwalin are close relatives of Thorin. Beyond this, these brothers are two of his most loyal and trusted friends.     An old warrior, Balin has lived through hard times and fought many battles, yet he harbors doubts about the wisdom of the Quest to retake the Lonely Mountain.     Dwalin has no such forebodings – his belief in Thorin’s leadership is unshakeable. A powerful and bruising fighter, with a natural tendency to distrust anyone who is not a Dwarf, particularly anyone who might be an Elf, Dwalin is not someone to cross lightly. Picture and copy came from here: http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2011/07/15/46126-first-look-at-balin-and-dwalin/

Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu! "Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!" Presenting The Hobbit film's Nori, Ori, Dori,Gloin & Oin!  

Here's another 1/72 project nearing completion. Aside from my warmaster Polybians, I've decided to build another army for DBA use. The figures are from HäT Industrie and were painted in around 3 evenings. A few  more stands are needed to fill in the army though. Here's what my maniple looks like. The hastati and the principes are mixed in the first stand while the last stand represents a mix of the principes again and of the triari. DBA's basing and stand number prevents me from modelling a three-line maniple although this formation seems good enough. For the next two hundred years (until the Marian reforms of 107 BC) the Roman army was organized into three lines: the hastati, the principes, and the triarii. These were divided by experience and fighting ability, with the youngest soldiers in the hastati making the first engagement. Where resistance was strong this rank would dissolve back through the Roman line and allow the more experienced soldiers in the pri...