Fellowship Friday - Meriadoc Brandybuck

The third of the indomitable foursome...

Fellowship Friday - Samwise Gamgee

Sam has always been one of my favorites and I think this model does a great job at capturing the film version of the character...

The Tainted

Without a doubt, The Tainted is my favorite of the 'named' Nazgul models (I also really like all of the original 'Riders in Black' minis - I have them painted around here somewhere so I should get photos of them too...). I love the hunched figure on the horse. I opted to paint the horse dark brown to add a second spot of color to the model. As with the shade from a few posts back, this model was harder to paint that I anticipated. It took lots of layers, several washes, and a few more layers to get the effect I wanted.

It seems to be the opinion of the SBG community that The Tainted is the least effective Nazgul model in the game and often hinders your own side more than that of the enemy! Oh, well... I plan to use him in my Angmar army anyway. I also have The Dwimmerlaik and The Witch-king so between the three of these wraiths I should be able to find a combination I like!

Warriors of Arnor

Here is my first full warband, led by Marko Steelknife.

I am really happy with the way the unit turned out. I know some people were put off my the helmet wreaths, but I like these models far more than the Gondor infantry. I have enough models to build two more 12-model units, but I'm going to mix in some other stuff. I will probably paint one more unit identical to this one and then change the color scheme or add extra details to the third unit and call them the Guard of Fornost or some such thing. I am working on expanding my Rangers of Arnor to twelve (waiting on five reinforcement models I bought on eBay) and plan on painting the Beregond model as their captain.

I'm still working on the February Challenge for The One Ring forum and hope to have the rest of my wargs finished by the end of the week. I have no idea how long I will be able to maintain the level of output I've had on this project so far, but as long as I'm excited about painting I'm going to keep at it!

The Shade of Angmar

One of the cool things about the Angmar army list is the ability to include Shades, Barrow Wights, and Spectres. I plan to paint some of all three of the undead minions of the Witch-king, but kicking off first is an evil Shade...

This is one of my favorite models from the LotR range. It was actually a lot harder to paint than I anticipated. I'm not sure my photos captured all of the tones in the model, but there are purples, blues, grays and white and used more blending than I normally bother with. Any way, it was fun and offered a change of pace from the orcs and wargs.

I really need to get back on my Arnor army because they are growing hopelessly outnumbered rather quickly, but the bad guys are just so much fun! I'm up to 428 points and can quickly be at 500 with the addition of a few Spectres for the Shade to lead. Again, I'm not really painting to a set limit or army list at the moment, but it's still fun to keep track of...

Fellowship Friday - Frodo Baggins

I painted the Fellowship way back when they first came out, but I never really bothered to take good photos of them. Since I've gotten back into the LotR Strategy Battle Game, I thought I'd post them... one per week, every Friday (way to milk it, Harrison).

I'm going to post roughly in the order the characters are introduced, lumping the hobbits in together...

Warg Chieftain - Part Two

Done and Dusted!

Even though I didn't like the older versions of the Warg models, I did like their color scheme so I opted to mimic it for my pack. I am very pleased with how this turned out. It is hard to tell it is a conversion (and that's the goal)! I'm going to start on the pack next and they will be painted in a similar manner, though their manes will be a bit darker to make sure there is no mistaking the big dog. I probably won't post more pics until the mob is finished, but I have other LotR minis on the table as well so some of those should be up in a few days.

Warg Chieftain - Part One

Over at The One Ring I'm taking part in the February Hobby Challenge and I'm going to paint up a Warg Chieftain and four Wild Wargs. However, I HATE the old plastic LotR Wild Wargs - only two poses and I just don't like the style. The old metal models with riders look better, but sadly they were ONLY produced with riders so no joy there. I'm going to build my unit from the Hobbit Fell Wargs. The plastic kit comes with six different poses and separate heads means much more variation. I also like the style of the monsters better.

Now this brought another small dilemma. I wanted to have a Warg Chieftain to lead the pack, but the official GW model is of the 'breed' I'm not fond of. If the original plastic set had the variations of the later I might suffer through because I DO like the Warg Chieftain. This required me to convert a Warg Chieftain from the Fell Warg kit to match the rest of the models. Certainly I could have just painted the model different enough to stand out, but where's the fun in that? Besides the chance to add a unique character model to your army is always worth the effort!

Diving into the kit, I didn't immediately see a simple solution. I wanted to mount the model in a similar pose to the GW version, climbing up onto some rocks. Not only would this be dramatic, but it would raise the leader above the rest of the pack. None of the models really fit the bill so it was time to start tinkering. I cat all of the parts away from the sprue and begin to try different pieces on a base with some loose stones. After a while I came up with the perfect solution.

One of the models springing forward had a separate right paw. I realized by cutting a small notch in the rear leg I could increase the height of the pose. I needed another front paw that looked to bearing weight...

This running model had the perfect limb which I amputated and then carefully carved away the rear paw which was touching the front leg.

It took some further fiddling and sorting through my pile of stones to find the most natural fit, but finally I have ended up with this...

All I needed was a minimal amount of greenstuff and I can see some more work needs to be done with a file, but I think this worked out great and I can't wait to paint it! Finished shots in a couple of days...