Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

Over the past year and a half, I've played in a few campaigns and one day narrative events ranging from Warhammer Fantasy to Forbidden Psalm and most recently Cauldron. While I have hosted and game mastered many RPGs, I've never run a campaign for a miniature wargame. 

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my studio and organizing my miniatures. During that process, I found my case of all my Lord of the Rings miniatures from college. Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game was one of my first wargames along with Warhammer Fantasy. As an elementary student I was introduced to the world of Tolkien. His name kept popping up with association with CS Lewis as I was reading the Narnia books. Then the movies released! I remember watching Fellowship of the Ring at my neighbor's house and being completely inthralled in the story. From there I beg my Mom to buy me a copy of Fellowship of the Ring, which was way higher then my 6th grade reading level. It took me all of middle school but I finished it. Luckily, I had the aportunity to do a book report on the Hobbit in between reading the first book. In High School, I read the other The Two Towers and Return of the King along with all the other stories of Middle Earth. When I got to college, I finally had the chance to play some wargames that I had seen growing up. A friend wanted to play Middle Earth Strategy Battle game and that provided me the opportunity to start collecting. I picked up a few different factions but mostly collected Rohan. Back then all the Hero characters were metal and cost less then 15 bucks! Those days are long behind us with miniature prices. I remember playing many matches on the floor of my first apartment with my sister, Rohan VS Gondor since neither of us collected evil. 

But after college, I packed up my miniatures for the most part. Sometimes I would break out my Rohan soldiers and paint them a bit when I was feeling low. But with out regular games, I lost steam on painting miniatures all together. After all, I was trying to build my illustration career and also working full time. It didn't leave me a lot of time to play games. But I still kept my miniatures, shuffling them from college, back to my parents then to my first apartment post college. While I worked on an unfinished space orc army and other warbands, my Lord of the Rings model sat in the corner. After clearing out my Middle Earth case recently, I was determined to 1. Finish painting my Rohan army and 2. run a mini campaign for my friends.

The army was not the crazy colors I paint now, it was much more in line with the box art. Originally I was determined to paint my army to fit into the Middle Earth color story. After painting one foot soldier, I was not happy with the result. I felt like I was fighting my natural instinct and went back to my usual painting style. Over the past week, I painted my entire Rohan army, I have still have more minis to go but I am happy to have completed my second army this year.

With the idea of a campaign swirling in my head, I began to jot down ideas of when and where the battles will happen. I decided to start out with Battle Companies to allow players in the campaign time to paint armies. This also will help introduce the rule set to the players and if they don't enjoy the system, it was only a few miniatures and a smaller time commitment compared to an army. Over 4 games of Battle Companies, a narrative will build to a full army battle. This campaign first and foremost will be about the narrative. Each match will be good vs evil, with the winner and loser affecting how the narrative will play out. It will change who a more advantageous position in the next match. I already have plans for creating a campaign packet with the general rules everyone will need to reference along with a lore for why the scenario is is playing out. My hope is that the last match of the game will involve all the players running a small army in a giant battle to capture the grand battles in the Lord of the Rings. 

My plan is to start in January at the first Jersey Girls meet up. We'll sit down and plan our Battle companies and maybe get in a practice match for players new to the system. While I personally remember the general rules, I'm sure there are many changes from the first time I played 15 years ago. Over the next 6 to 8 months, I'll be starting narrative battle reports. Meanwhile, I have lots of terrain to paint along with an army of goblins and small collection of Heroes who may or may not show up to aid the players. With Howard Shore's soundtrack blasting, I'm going to have lots of fun creating for Middle Earth.

First meeting of the Jersey Girls

Last week we had the first meeting of the NJ Grim dark miniatures club, the Jersey Girls. We met at Sanctorium Games in Flemington. (Mike has been working hard to get this store up and running for the holiday season. Make sure to visit in your in the area for any of your gaming needs.) We agreed to meet up at noon and finish when we grow tired. 

I got to meet a number of new people who I've only chatted with through Discord. It was nice to be able to put a face to a name. To get started, we all showed off what he brought, from miniatures to terrain to what game we are excited to share with the group.

Our first game was a round of Cauldron. The new players were added to the round as invaders of our part of the swamp. I squared off with Tom to protect my territory of Bloodless Ruin. Beep and her battalion of Trolls, Goblins and Orcs were way to overpowered for it to be a fair fight. Tom was a great opponent and had many cleaver maneuvers to evade big rock. After the match completed, we tallied our XP and treasures. Through Tom's invasion of my territory, he found many of Beep's long lost treasures buried deep in the bogs. 

Tom's orc and Beep could not manage to hit each other for many rounds

Jake and Dellon face off

Tom's orcs

After we all finished our games, we split off to either play a one shot RPG or Kitbash. I decided to kitbash with Tom and Jake (IG). We chatted about our projects we are working on and shared bits we had brought. We sifted through my huge bits box to find the perfect pieces and offered interesting bits as we searched. I managed to finish my army general and another troll for my Dragon Rampant army.

After kitbashing, Jake and I teamed up to play a game of Lobster Pot 28. How I never heard of this game, I have zero idea. It has so many of my favorite things! Witch hunts, cosmic horror, and narrative story telling, sign me up! Jake brought his custom board which he built in the base of an old record player. It was the coolest way to transport a board I've seen. He also had his warband kitbashed with some of the coolest mutations including a dog with a tentacle tail. It took a few rounds to nail down the rules but we managed to stop the cultists from completing their ritual. Didn't mean we didn't lose some of the warband during the fight. 

Jake's awesome board for Lobster Pot

Meanwhile, Dellon and Tom played a game of Dragon Rampant. It was a battle of Chaos Dwarves VS Orcs, Goblins and a dreaded Hill Giant. So many goblin green bases faced offed. I didn't get a chance to catch the game, but it looked like it was a lot of fun! 

While we hung out, we ate alot of pizza and drank coffee to keep us going. We all enjoyed checking out the shop and picking up some treasures to add to our collections. I gladly picked up the Wargames Atlantic Goblin kit to make even more little guys for my Dragon Rampant army.

After our fill of pizza, we closed the night out with a huge game of Missile Toads. Chaos quickly ensued as toads farted, slapped and shot each other in the butt. At one point, a toad tank exploded causing a chain reaction of explosions. It was one of the biggest games of Missile Toads to date and provided a great amount of information for me to make some further changes to the rules and abilities in the game. The game ended in a tie between Jake and Alejandro. 

After 9+ hours of gaming, it was time to call it. Look forward to the next meeting where I will be starting to run a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game narrative campaign. I have a million ideas of what I want to do. It's exciting to return to my first wargame and brain dump all my Tolkien knowledge.

If you are in NJ and want to join us for the next hang out, reach out!

Kitbashing a Titan Toad

With the rules written for the Titan Toad variant of Missile Toads, it was time to start bashing the first Titan. To get started, I cast up a copy of Trent from Miscast’s Garbo toad. I made this mold in late spring and had casted a few at this point, but not one for myself.  Lately, I have been casting Miniatures in Smooth on liquid plastic and it has really improved my casts. I highly recommend this material if you’re starting out with molding and casting with no equipment.

The main inspiration for my Titan Toad is Howl’s Moving Castle from the studio Ghibli film. I was looking to create a ramshackle random structure on the back of the toad that was lived in and rusted but also a tank.

The Foundation was built with some resign casts from Ramshackle Games. A while back I bought a tank kit and now I have an excuse to use the extra parts. Additionally, I added some random plastic bits that I assume are from Games Workshop. I also added this cheap pastic gas tank from a dollar store toy. Make sure to give it a good sanding to ensure parts will glue to it and paint won't flake off. 

Then like I always seem to do, I got into the grove of kitbashing and didn't document a huge amount of steps. But I will do my best to explain it. After building the base of the structure, I started to add to the sides of the toad. I was playing with the silhouette alot during this stage. The tank and toad needed to mesh together with one not out weighing the other. Luckily I had plenty of random sci-fi weapons to bulk out the build. The barrel of the large cannon is a pen with a cheap toys built on top to fill out the shape and add detail. Also added barrels for eyes since it felt silly to me and the toad had an extra eye anyway so it has no problem seeing.

After a few hours of kitbashing, it was done! Not only because I had a self imposed deadline to make sure it was ready for play testing or anything... But the rule set worked and it will end up in the final zine! 

28 Mag international women’s Day issue

This year I had the privilege of illustrating the cover for 28 Mag’s International Women’s Day Issue. I feel fortunate to be trusted to illustrate for a pillar in the 28 community and be trusted to craft an image to represent all the women artists. While I had many ideas of what to illustrate, I ended up illustrating this goblin witch. The final illustration is a combination of ink and pencil on Bristol board. Ink was selected for this project as I am constantly inspired by old gaming art in manuals from the 70s-90s. The process was pretty straight forward with an under drawing in pencil, inked with pens of various sizes then cleaned up before adding the graphite to add further dimension. I am very pleased with the final result. 

More illustrations will be on their way as I draw a few new pieces for the Missile Toads Zine.

Make sure to check out all the fantastic artists in this year’s International Women’s Day Issue. Check it out using the link below!

28 Mag 2025 International Women’s Day Issue

Missile Toads

  You might be asking yourself what is Missile Toads, well it’s a game I designed this year after returning from Adepticon.

First Toad Tank Boggart

This whole game originated from a kit bash. I started at the Grim Dark Alley on top of a nearby trashcan. People were leaving bits for others to trade and take. I was sitting with my fellowArt Goblins and I wanted to start a new project.  In that pile of bits, I found a 3-D printed toad. At the time. I didn’t know who made it, but it was printed by my friend Ben. While sitting at a table with my friends, I began adding mechanical parts to it. Quickly adding cannons and other weapons to the top of the model. I happen to be carrying the Toad Tank around when my friend’s kid mentioned it was a Missile Toad. I was like wow this kid is way smarter than me and has better ideas than I do. I decided to design a game specifically around toad tanks.

Franklin The Tanklin

When I got home from a Adepticon, I was exhausted but excited. I knew I wanted to design a game that focused on a large number of players being able to play at once and a low model count. Often at conventions, you never get a chance to play a game with everyone that you want, but what if you could have everyone or almost everyone play in one game. This is what I thought about all the time at work, washing dishes, trying to fall asleep at night, I kept thinking about toad tanks. I explained my concept of a game to my friend Dellon of White Tiger table craft during one of our hobby hangouts. Quickly, we were able to lay down the foundation for the game. My general concept was to add Mario kart elements to a tabletop war game that was easy to play easy to teach and has freedom for kit bashing. After talking with Dellon, that night I wrote down as much of the rules as I could remember and figure out. Within a week I had a game ready to play test.

I am fortunate to have a local game group to test my game out with and we met up at my friend Mike’s house to play. Mike had a great board for us to use which was his previous turnip 28 table. It had the perfect amount of muddiness for a natural toad habitat. My friends kit bashed unique toads that were much different from what I made. Which showed me that the game had enough room for people to have their own creative spin. After a few matches, I saw where some holes were and where to add additional clarifications to the rules. From there a playtesting document and drafted and posted it online.

People begin creating their own toad tanks and let me know their plans to play. I continued to run some play testing including a game at Under The Dice Fest. I was able to share the rules with new people and show others how the game works. I had a great time walking my friends new and old through my game.

Banjo

The next step is for me to finish up some editing, create some drawings, and finish the layout for my zine. My goal is to bring the zine with me next year to Adepticon where the game originated. If you play or make a toad tank, please share with me as I would love to see it. While the base rule games are done, I do plan on making some additional material including the alternative play style called Titan Toad. It still needs to be play tested but that should start soon! 

Download the rules for Free! 

Painting my Necropolis Warband

 With October, almost over and Halloween almost a week away. It’s time to get back to painting some skeletons.

After all of my skeletons were kept bashed it was time to start painting. At first, I was not sure which direction to go in. I knew I wanted to go with a color palette that I don’t instinctually select. I tend to be drawn to cool colors with a contrast highlight of a warm color. After some thought, I decided to go with a primarily warm color palette. I also decided to take a bit more care in the painting process than I would normally. My usual process consists of stabbing the model with my dry brush, but this time I wanted to paint with intent.

To begin painting, I base coated all the models in black. I find that a black base coat allows me to build up better contrast than using white or a different color. The first layer of colors was a burgundy red. This is the same color I based all of my S in. I do really like this red. The only problem is that semi glossy and I really really don’t like glossy paint.

Next, I did a layer of bright red this helped me figure out where I would ultimately highlight in which areas I would lead the black and deep burgundy to create a nice shadow

Then I did another layer of the bright red this time using a smaller paintbrush and increasing the saturation of the red in select areas.Over the course of many layers, I began to build up multiple layers of this bright red, focusing more on the peaks of important details to slowly build saturation. It was difficult to see if I was actually making any changes to the model or if I was just hyper fixating for no reason. But overtime I could see a difference with the red. After about four layers, there was not much more contrast I could create and I began to introduce two new colors. 

Slowly, orange was added to select high points on the model. The first layer was a mixture of the bright red and orange to create a smoother transition. The orange paint I was using it didn’t have good coverage or saturation. This resulted in multiple layers being needed to slowly build up the contrast and not have paint caked on the model.

After a few layers of orange, I pulled out a bright yellow to do my final highlights. Here I focused on which points in the model I wanted to draw the eye to. Primarily the face, breast plate and crown behind the skull were what I wanted to focus on. Similarly to the orange, the yellow does not have good coverage. I am still on the hunt for the perfect yellow that is saturated and has good coverage. If you have any recommendations, please let me know because I bought so many yellows. With the final highlight completed my War band was done!

While I don’t think I’ll be winning any sort of painting competition anytime soon. I do enjoy painting my models in a fashion that feels like myself. I never felt comfortable painting models like the box art or super neat and clean, but painting my models like I would color an illustration has made me enjoy the painting process a whole lot more. Now it’s time to get in a few games of necropolis and see how my skeleton Knights do. In a future post, I’ll be sharing the lore of this war band and a few of my other ones to show how adding narrative story to your models really increases the enjoyment of model making.

My Hobby Journal

  As an illustrator, I am used to carrying around a sketchbook to record my ideas and concepts while on the go. I use my sketchbook to plan out projects, big and small and really use it as a way to record my ideas at any given moment. While I’ve been getting more into sculpting, kitbashing and playing miniature war games, I wanted to find a way to record all my ideas in one place. I had friends who had notebooks that recorded their war bands or armies or clipboards with all the papers neatly stacked together, but I wanted a way to record all aspects of this craft. This led me to creating my own hobby journal.

To get started to get started. I went to the craft store and found a cheap notebook. I prefer to use cheaper materials as it keeps me from being too precious and self-conscious. this is really supposed to be a place to record ideas and not be a precious art object. On the front. I added some of my friend’s stickers and used my LabelMaker to add my name.

 In the front of the book, I log all the games I’ve played. This helped me see which games I was playing most often and which systems I wasn’t playing very much. A lot of of these games took place at conventions, which had me playing multiple games in a small amount of time. They do try to play games with my friends at least twice a month and I am always constantly working on something.

 I started this journal shortly after returning from a Adepticon. Right after returning home, I began work on my first miniature war game Missile Toads. Here I have the stats for play testing as well as photos of my toad tanks. For the photos throughout my journal, I use two key tools. The first option I use is a toddler camera that prints out the photos on receipt paper. The second option I use is a small thermal printer in case I forget to bring my camera with me.

 I also like to include my war bands, as well as the war band lore in my journal. The heretics of Saint Agatha was my first Forbidden Psalm war band and I use them during garage con 2024. Some of the photos under the wicker woman lore are photos from the event. I like to take photos during the game because the terrain and opponents miniatures add a lot of narrative. You’ll also see through throughout the book. I use washi tape to help fill in weird gaps and add some color. 

Since I’ve been drawing for most of my life, I do like to include some drawings in my hobby journal when I can. Here I have some banner designs to use for a chaos army or war band. Even though I’m a professional illustrator, banners still freak me out mostly because I lack brush control and mostly just stab my Miniatures with paint.

 Here we have some photos of my friend Mike’s game ballad of blades. I think this was the first play test we did as a group. I took some photos using my toddler camera to see how natural light would work within the limited options. I created an orc character to fight in the duels. Included is a photo of the miniature as well as the stat blocks.

 I also like to use my journal Record events I’ve attended. This year I went to Under The Dice Fest for the first time. I got to see many of friends I met at Adepticon and met lots of cool new people. While Connecticut doesn’t have the best pizza, it does have some of the best people in miniature war gaming.

 Since the Jersey girls were planning a Warhammer fantasy campaign, I decided to dedicate a number of spreads to my Warhammer army. The first page is a collage using photocopies for Warhammer fantasy third edition, as well as some sketched out sigils and a photo of one of my favorite models. Since I didn’t want to worry about carrying around the rulebook, I added all the Skaven stat blocks to my journal. We also rolled some custom characters using the realm of chaos books and the regular rule book. To make sure I didn’t lose any of those scraps of paper I rewrote their stat blocks to include in the book.

 There are a few pages dedicated to color recipes. Mostly because I’ll forget which specific colors I’ve used and which specific brands. This will help me in the future in case I ever need to repaint a model or if I wanna add a new model to a war band or army. There are also pages dedicated to specific projects here. I have my plans for my fourth edition Warhammer 40 K Tyranid army, which I call high fleet Cyclops. My plan is to have all of the monsters have a giant single eye and that will require lots of conversions, kibashing and sculpting.  Don’t get too excited because I plan to build this army very slowly.

 Throughout my journal, I include lore and stories about my Miniatures. Creating stories around my Miniatures is one of my favorite parts of creation. I definitely prefer to play narrative driven games that allow me to express myself in miniature Form. Here we have my entry for festival rumpus that includes the fairy Miniatures. I kit bashed using sticks and other materials. While building the models, I spent a good amount of time thinking about the story. This resulted with writing my own little fairy tale about them. These are some of my favorite Miniatures I created this year.

Here I am chronicling our Warhammer fantasy campaign. I wrote quick notes on what happened in each session so I could write a blog post about it later on. On the other half of the spread, I printed out some of the memorable moments from the game to highlight events in the synopsis.

The Jersey Girls  have been playing a lot of Cauldron, I created a spread of photos from two of our game nights. We played a world championship game where I lost terribly coming in forth and losing half of my war band due to cannons. It was a great time hanging out with my friends and  showcasing our war bands to each other.  There is also a spread for my cauldron war bands stats. Originally the war band was called the trolls of Jimbus, but due to Beep’s clutch gameplay, the group was renamed to include her name.

 

A new addition to my journal, was adding a pocket to the back of the book. I usually write my army list on a separate piece of paper to help reduce clutter on the table. The sheets kept falling out of my notebook, and I cut up an envelope to tape in as a little pocket. Now I have a safe place to store sheets of paper, sticky notes, and tiny zines. On the top and side of the back cover, I have these loops to include a pencil and pen. Otherwise, I would always be looking for a writing utensil, and that can always be rather annoying.

I hope displaying some spreads from my journal will inspire you to create your own. Having this journal has been a great way of recording many aspects of my Miniatures journey much like my sketchbooks. I don’t see myself stopping this log anytime soon.