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.