I survived another annual team-building day at work and a holiday party this week and still managed to make some real inroads on my current projects. It is a long story but basically I unexpectedly have to use up paid time off work so I found myself with extra time to hobby and relax which was much needed. I will have the same next week so I hope to get one more strong update in for 2020.
The first thing I’d like to discuss this week is my Goblin Town Terrain progress.
This picture is with all of the platform pieces painted and as you can see, I’m not too far off from being able to play one of the “real” Goblin Town scenarios in the An Unexpected Journey Rulebook (pictured below). This layout is the easier to assemble of the two and the other one requires less of the skinny walkways and many of the wider ones so it wouldn’t surprise me if I need two more boxes of Goblin Town terrain to play that one. I don’t have as many two-story pieces for this board as I would like but I may not worry about that too much as this has already taken way more time and money than I thought. I do look forward to playing however and I think the board, as simple as it is, is looking quite impressive and I’m very satisfied with it so far.
At this point, I need to finish up all of the annoying post pieces left in the box which I will chip away at in the coming weeks. I find both painting and varnishing those pieces to be really tedious so I can’t focus on it for too long. I’ll probably take a little break and then come back to this project when I’ll be ready to power through some more terrain. One annoyance that I think is worth sharing with this terrain is keeping your paint job protected is difficult. A lot of the pieces I painted in my first two sets have spots on the skulls where the paint has worn off which is annoying. I’ve tried to store these things pretty carefully but it would appear that it is inevitable. I don’t think touching them up will be too difficult but still not something I look forward to.
I’ve also cranked out a couple more Ruffians. I had a bit more joy painting the latest two (which are in the middle in the pictures above) as the sculpts were a bit better and more fun to paint. You really give your brown colors a workout when painting these guys but I think they are already looking pretty nice as a squad which I am pleased to see. Only two more needed for my first Scouring of the Shire scenario! I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the next scenario I write a battle report for as it seems easier and more fun than painting more Goblin Town terrain in the short term.
Speaking of painting, I saw a post in a Middle Earth SBG FB group that got me thinking. I’ve long thought and felt like I’m one of the better kept secrets in the Middle Earth SBG community. I do have this site and an Instagram account but I feel like very few people know me and my work as strange as that is to say. I love working on this site and I get a few hundred views a month (which is amazing considering how niche of a hobby this is) but I wonder if I can give more to the community and get a little more attention to stroke my ego too 🙂 One thing I know that can get a lot of attention on Youtube is to share painting guides and MESBG is very much lacking in that area. I feel fairly confident in my painting abilities and can probably help newer people to the hobby learn a thing or two so I may dabble in writing up painting guides for things I’m working on and see if that helps raise the profile of this site a bit and me as well. Those take a lot of work to do so the juice will have be worth the squeeze but it might be some new content you see on the site in 2020!
Kuribo's Painting 
Great work on the Goblin Town terrain and the Ruffians. Very much looking forward to your upcoming battle report (either Scouring of the Shire or Hobbit)!
I understand what you mean about getting limited views. I think YouTube is a lot more popular than blogs. I think video painting guides for MESBG would be a great addition to YouTube, a lot of what I’ve seen there is quite old or only covers the most recently released models.
I’ve also thought about making video battle reports for YouTube. It seems you get a lot more views there and I also enjoy watching other peoples battle reports while painting or working on terrain. So far I have decided against it because it is a lot of extra work – filming, editing. Also it would bother me that the first part of the LotR campaign wouldn’t be in video format and I don’t want to start anew just for being able to film them. But I do plan to start filming battle reports eventually.
I’ve had some busy months but a bit more spare time is on the horizon. I think I can play the next two scenarios in the campaign this month, before the start of 2020. 🙂
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Hey Gero, glad to see you’re doing well and I’m very excited for your next reports! The fact that I won’t have to wait long is excellent news 🙂
You are spot-on about Youtube being the best place for painting tutorials and battle reports. I have thought about doing Youtube content in the past myself but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have no interest in learning how to do video editing and that alone keeps me from seriously considering making video content. I enjoy taking pictures and writing so it makes sense to focus on those things when I can. I also think the best photos I take wouldn’t really translate to video that well and the detail of the paint jobs or terrain might be lost in the process. I completely agree that your campaign would work best as a video if you filmed the entire thing and posted it too which it is too late for (at least on this go around!).
If I do some painting guides, it would be just words and pictures here on the site but our conversation is making me think twice about that and whether that is truly how most people would want to consume a painting guide. I’ll give this some more thought and we’ll see what I decide 🙂 Thanks for sharing your thoughts as always!
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Oh I actually really like written painting guides on blogs! When I started painting miniatures (as in: when I started to do it a bit more seriously) video painting tutorials were really helpful for me. So I think for newcomers in the hobby the video format is really helpful. But written painting guides can be just as good with good photos and clear descriptions. Those are actually what I prefer these days, much easier to scroll through a webpage than to scroll through a YouTube video.
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In that case, I will consider it! I find that written ones are easier too because you don’t have to stop and rewind the video over and over again if you miss a step or need to see it again. If I do write up a guide, I hope you’ll take a look and give me some feedback as I think you have a good eye for these kinds of things 🙂
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Glad to see your gang of Ruffians growing! Feel your pain on your goblin town terrain, it gets tedious after awhile drybrushing, varnishing, touch up etc., but the final result is worth it.
If you want to have your views grow, you might consider joining Reddit and post some pictures there with a link to your blog.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiddleEarthMiniatures/
Team-building- gack!
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Glad to hear that the terrain is worth it. I have to admit seeing all of the terrain on the table was a nice feeling as well.
I had no idea that Reddit had an active MESBG community. I will have to give that a shot. Thanks for the suggestion!
Team building really is the worst. It is quite possibly my least favorite day of the year! 🙂
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‘Juice worth the squeeze’ is probably the best phrase I’ve read all day.
MESBG is more like a niche within a niche within a niche when it comes to discussing the game and scenarios but painting guides are a little more generally accessible bc everyone interested in painting is just there for the technique and the actual miniature being painted is kinda irrelevant.
In any case nice going with the ruffians and I’m really excited about the goblin town board because the whole set up is going to be fantastic. 😀
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Haha, glad you liked it 🙂 That is very true about how a painting guide is more universal. I could talk about how to paint certain things on a mini to make the tutorials easier for me to write and quicker to produce. I’m still trying to figure out the logistics of doing a painting guide so we’ll see if I’m able to pull them off and if they’re worth the time they’re going to take to write.
Thanks for your kind words on my hobby progress and I share your excitement as well. I’ll be itching to get some games in during the first quarter of 2020 as I finish one or more of these projects!
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The table is looking really good, and I have a couple sets of the terrain (unpainted and unassembled, natch!), but if I ever needed more, it’ll be time to break out the icy pole sticks/popsicle sticks/tongue depressors! 😉
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Thanks and ha! That is the economic way for sure. If I had known it was going to cost $200 plus to put the table together, I probably wouldn’t have undertaken the project to be honest. It really takes a lot of time, money, and energy to build a table for a couple of scenarios as it turns out.
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