Blowing one's own horn

I decided to take part of my day off to do a tiddly bitmore on the beast of Gorgoroth. As I find chains the most annoyng thing to paint, I did them first, to remove the risk of frustratingly spoiling a carefully painted skin.

 

As the colour scheme for my force of Cirith Ungol is an eerie blue (Shock-horror! L.o.t.R. forces of eveil using a cold colour? Surely not!), I wanted to subtly include some blue on the beast, other than just the pieces of cloth. So I got out what will, I think, be a much used pot of Asurmen Blue wash which I liberaly applied to the first coat of grey, before doing two highlight coats. It's a very basic way of doing things, but I can no longer afford to spend quite so long paintingminis, so I opted for quick but effective solution. The infantry will simply be dipped.

 

 

Joe the Barbarian, who might actually manage to finish a model before 2013!

A beastly comeback

What ho! Having at last decided to give my self a kick up the backside and get back into the hobby, I knew that only something worthy of an announcement would suffice. What better task to undertake than to put together the Best of Gorgorth which the Frog, Shas'El'Hek'Tryk, gifted me for my birthday ("Because it's my birthday, and I wants it.") some 8 months ago.

 

We all know the inherent problems of Finecast, so I'll spare you the details. Let's just say that it didn't slot together very well. Happily, a quick answer was at hand. As any good English solution to a problem, it involved tea. It turns out that, when plunged in freshly boiled water, Finecast becomes perfectly malleable, without actually melting away any of the details. After that, all that was needed was a bit of liquid Green Stuff and Milliput to plug the last gaps.

 

Joe the Barbarian, the hardest part now is to keep on finding the time to do it. But all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given.

Shopping for a troll-ey

More news from the front. Having converted and uindercoated a group of orcs, the "Shiny! Shiny! syndrome" (SSS) kicked in again and I found myself buying a Mordor troll... in an actual Games Workshop store... Yup. It's getting serious.

A quick side-note to point out that, while converting said Troll, I got SSS again and bidded for a load of LotR characters on fleaBay. But it was worth it!

Anyhoo! Back to the troll. I wanted to go for something slightly different, a nice centre-piece (mehopes) for my army. A Mordor troll? Who can forget Aragorn being crushing under foot by a troll in front of the Black Gate? I decided to adapt that to fit in my other LotR force; Rohan. So a poor Rohirrim got knocked off his horse and is struggling to keep the troll's foot from crushing him, while his dead horse lies beside him.

These are very W.i.P. shots, just to show the general idea. The fallen rider is not sculpted yet -cloak, armour, arms, hands and beard need doing- nor is the troll finished. The foot, neck, helmet, and scales are not yet finished, and the loin cloth needs doing. And, of course, all those mould joints need seeing to.

Any thoughts?

Joe the "Rosbif" Barbarian

Mordor bangs for your Bucks!

Before I post part 2 of the LotR Ouestfolde campaign, here are the first 4 finished Mordor Uruk-Hai. I'm rather pleased with the result, especially as I managed to get them painted pretty quickly... O.K., they had ben sitting on my shelf for ages, but the painting itself was quick.

Joe the Barbarian

Don't bite off Mordor you can chew.

A couple of W.i.P. Mordor orc captains. I couldn't resist getting them, given how awesome the models look and that I had plenty of money-back on my Maelstrom Games account. I've continued to paint just über-basic highlights, followed by the beautifully contradictory "brush-on-dipping". The aim is really to get a quick Mordor force up and running (preferably in the direction of the enemy) at battletop standard. Mordor is ideal for this as orcs look filthy and are essentially brown, with various items of brown clothing, with dirty armour. These guys just need a coat of matt varnish and the odd detail here and there, namely on the shields.

Of course, I've gone for Cirith Ungol, but these chaps had the Eye of Sauron on their shields. Out came the industrial scale round file, followed by a spot of Green Stuff and that was that poblem sorted. 've decided to go with a blue colour scheme, which is somewhat unorthodox for evil forces in the L.o.t.R. game, but I felt like a change. After all, the films used a great deal of blue and green lighting to portray Mordor as a cold, dead place.

The force as it currently stands.

5 more spears on their way

So that's 186 points almost done... just 314 to go.

Joe the Barbarian, eager to bring night onto the world of men.

Cirith Ungol Uruks... no pun, alas!

Here we are then; the first converted Uruks for Cirith Ungol. A few minor touches still required, but they've got the overall look I was going for.

What won't be so easy is converting the ones which hold Isengard shields against their bodies.

I shalln't waste words when pictures can do the talking.

Joe the Barbarian, the pace on the road to war is quickening!

Russian around Mordor

Having recently croosed swords on the battlefield with 2 of m fellow bloggers, I was soon bent upon taking up work on my 2 companies once more.

My Cirith Ungol force being mainly composed of orcs and Morder Uruk-Hai, I was intent on differentiating the one filthy breed from the other, yet without clashing (pardon the pun) the styles. Another factor to take into account: a gauntelet thrown down by the Frog in the form of a box of plastic Isengard Uruk scouts with a "here, I think you'll be able to do something decent with them".

First on the agenda would be to replace the swords, shields and helmets of the White Hand with something a bit more rabble-like. I therefore set out on a search for nasty-looking weapons and shields. It was at that point that I came accross an army of medieval Russians... and WHAM! Lighting struck!

The orcs of Mordor are often represented with crescent-shaped shields which, as a humble neophyte, I would term as "a bit Turco-Persian"... After all, as anyone who's ever seen 300 will tell you (not the least Ahmadinejad), the Persians were basically represented as orcs.
"Now this is all fine and dandy", I hear you say, "but what's it got to do with Uruks and Russia?" This is where a scandinavian people of the VIIth-IXth centuries, known as the "Volga Vinkingr" or "Rus' " comes, both figuratively and literally, into play.

These ferocious warriors came from the North and occupied the lands around the Volga river, right down to modern day Iraq. Having besieged Constantinople in 860A.D., they then returned to the city in the XIth century to form the Varangian Guard, the elite force of the Byzantine army [Grant, R.G. (2007) Grandes Batailles: Les Plus Grands Combats de l'Antiquité à Nos Jours. Ed: France Loisirs]. So you've got XIth century Russian vikingr fighting along side bythantine troops against Muslim nations.

This may be stretching it a bit, granted, but it was sufficient to persuade me of the style I wanted to adopt for my Uruks; early-medieval Russian weapons, helmets and shields (perfect for fighting opposite my Saxon-style Rohirrim) , draped in plenty of scandinavian fur!

The order was soon put in with Gripping Beast: packs of Russian Medieval Weapons and Saxon bucklers (with nice pointy bosses). I took the opportunity to order a pack of Roman Gladius, too finish my converted mounted Rohan Royal Guards (I still haven't got the hang of scuplting swords from Green Stuff).

Some nice vicious weapons!

Un drawing of my vision of their helmets, conical, with spiky points and possible a bit of fur around the crest.

The type of shield I was looking for...

...and found!

Joe the Barbarian, glad to have found a new barbarian force to field!

Barad-dUrbama

Morannon?? Nah mate, it'll Barad-Dur for me!

"'ere, put this in ya army, do a force with a good mounted unit. I'm not usin' 'em.", says my brother BarbarianJ, showing me 5 wargs riders.
"We'll form an alliance and get quickly to 1000pts of Mordor."

Interesting.

I made a first order: a box of Morannon warriors and 2 captains.

I've always had a soft spot for Skully. He looks a bit of a chinless wonder in his demeanour and physique. No? Clear skin, quite smooth, rather delicate really. A-ny-waaay...

I can tell you all is assembled and ready to paint!



My first thought was to avoid red. It can look a bit kitsch, and I wanted a bit of a change. But after a trial of grey, ooh no! It would not look right with my plans for after.
I wanted quite rusty armour

My main idea was: dirty is more important that dark.

My colour scheme may surprise you.

After using red, beige, grey-brown on 6 figs, I stepped back to check my work. Hmm, not bad. Funny, from the back they don't look like orcs, they look a bit [A BIT!] like bretonnians actually. Hu.


In that case...

Why not try a more original paint scheme that goes with it!





And now with a sepia wash. I chose this because it's the colour of the liquid that runs from the muck piles on farms. You can't get dirtier than that!
I use it over the whole of the model and leave lots of liquid in the dips.





It's subtle, sure. The only thing that shows up like a sore thumb in painting, my friends, is a mistake.

I didn't really know what to do for the shields.

Eye of Sauron and Mount Doom?



FAIL!

Eye of Sauron on a background of Mount Doom? Well, let's say it looked more like a dot in brackets, on a black triangle.
No! It needs to be bolder, brighter, like fascis- wo wo, steady, not quite that far.
But bloody red! Nick something from the Mordor book. Alrighty then.









And a month later, Bob's your uncle. Dusty, dirty and stoned [tough weekend!] stands painted reddy-browny-black.

I tried them out this weekend against Shizzle and Barbara. T'was a very small victory, even being modest about it would be over-doing it! But it confirmed the tenacity of their armour.

Need to paint the wargs now.