Lands of the Horselords

I've been using the lockdown to catch up on a few projects. This one was close to my heart - it will come as no surprise to long time readers that I'm deeply in love with Rohan from Lord of the Rings so for Christmas I was lucky enough to get some of the new scenery .

And how lovely it is!

I followed the GW suggestion for paints more or less exactly as I really liked how close it was to screen accurate. It had the added advantage of getting me used to using contrast paints as tints and glazes.

What you can see here is one house and one set of palisades. That's easily enough fencing for a 4x4 table. 

Obviously I will be buying a couple more of the houses. I have a plan for a stable....

Overall, great kits, easy to build and very flexible. Highly recommended for general fantasy use. 

Where now are the horse and the rider?

"For he was a gentle heart and a great king and kept his oaths; and he rose out of the shadows to a last fair morning."

I finally finished painting my new Theoden from the new box set. What a lovely figure to paint - and of one of my favourite characters.

I took my time: inked the armour to get some depth before painting the gold trim. For the flesh, layers of highlights and then a brown filter and pin flesh wash.

For the horse I built the layers up from grey to white and then gave a final glaze of off white to smooth out the transitions. The final touch was to add the Simbelmynë flowers which grew on the graves of the Sons of Eorl - a fitting omen given what he's riding to.

I had a blast painting this and I'm hoping that Santa brings me the new Gandalf.

Into The Fallen Realms

A while ago, I got hold of the Battle Companies supplement for Middle Earth. By raiding the massive stash of old LOTR miniatures I had lying around, I was able to pull togther three interesting Companies to play around with. I've been playing around with them on and off over the last couple of months between other projects and now they're finally finished.

Uthreg's Rievers. 

A force of Angmar orcs, owing loyalty to the Witch King of that dread realm, Uthreg leads his motley band into the lands of Men seeking sport, loot - and meat.

Eodred's Raiders

A young nobleman of Rohan, Eodred the Wild was disowned by his father and exiled by the King. Now, with his remaining retainers, he seeks glory enough to win back his name. 

Abbas the Drake's Rock Serpents

From the burning lands of the East, they answered the call of the Dark Lord. Abbas the Drake promised them fortune and glory in the rich, fertile lands of the soft west and they mean to collect their due. 

And finally a couple of action shots. 

Injuries and a return to Middle Earth

Still not dead! However, a couple of weeks ago in two unrelated incidents on the same day my youngest son broke his thigh and our youngest cat broke his pelvis. As I am sure you can imagine no hobby activity has taken place since between overnight stays in the hospital, vet visits and work.

However, all is not lost: both patients are making good recoveries and both are at home. In hobby terms, my present to myself arrived:

For those of you unaware of Battle Companies, it is a skirmish campaign system for Lord of the Rings, allowing a small company of mooks to improve and grow over a series of battles.

Obviously, it being middle earth related u didn't get a look in for a few days as the Eldest nicked it:

But once I started looking through I realised that the haul of LOTR goodies my wife scored a while ago will allow me to field the following companies:

Isengard (always my favourite)
Mordor
Angmar  (the Witch King is almost as cool as Saruman)
Harad
Gondor

And obviously I have Rohan.

From my point of view this is perfect; a small number of miniatures, all conerted - it fits in with the Inq28 and AOS28 skirmish stuff I've been doing recently and also brings in some Middle Earth. Very excited about this.

So for those people keeping score as we go into 2018 the current projects are:

SWA Imperial Guard
AOS28 Skirmish Nurgle - this has started but got put on hold due to that last fortight , will put up a post when I've got the boss painted but here's a teaser:

Necromunda
Middle Earth Battle Companies1

This seems like enough to keep me ticking over. Of course, Christmas is coming so who knows...

FORTH EOLINGAS!

A long time ago, The Current Lady West bought me some presents. One set, the Morgul Knights, I built some time ago.

The others waited, until now. In need to cheering up, and also in a slight hobby limbo while waiting for the delivery of Necromunda, I cracked out the Riders of Rohan and knocked them together.

Like all the other Perry Middle Earth plastics, they are easy to assemble and very screen accurate. It's simple to get a decent result out of them and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result.

And yes. I did string the bows on the archers. Yes. I am aware that I have a problem.

I have, fairly predictably, bought the new Battle Companies rules from GW  (skirmish warming in Middle Earth? How could I resist?). By my current reckoning I have enough to cobble together Rohan, Isengard, Moria and maybe Gondor companies. 

To Ruin And The Red Dawn!

Note to interested readers: Theoden's armour is an absolute cast iron sod to paint.

I finally got the chance to get the shot of my growing Rohirrim force for Lord of the Rings. The warriors were painted as per the previous post; Theoden King, whilst using a simialr colour palette, required a slightly different approach. In the film, his armour appears black or brown depending on the lighting and digital shot grading; shots of the actual costume show it to be a glossy dark brown.

I undercoated the mini with grey primer as usual and then gave it a black wash to help with the recesses. The main armour was then built up with multiple coats of chestnut ink. Gold detailing was added between layers of ink so they gained a reddish shade. Final highlights and edgings were gold only; the armour was not highlighted as the grey showed through to lighten the raised areas.

As you can see, the whole force hangs together quite well:




There are 16 warriors of Rohan and Theoden here - which as well as being the decent core of a LOTR force also gives me two units for SAGA.

While I had the photography set up, I decided to get a decent shot of the two D&D character minis which are now based up:


I'm looking for a good Cleric miniature to stick a dragon head on to for the next one if anyone has any bright ideas?

A couple of late birthday presents popped up from friends who know my interests: Perry Mounted Men At Arms and a box of Griping Beast Saxon Thegns.

This means that the Pledge currently stands at:

Bought: 189

Painted: 17

YIKES. 

Hibernation

Sorry for the long silence; reports and the joys of a new school term have seriously cut into hobby time. 

The first casualty has been my next vignette. That's going on to the back burner for the moment but I wanted to share the one thing that's been done for it:

The chances of anything coming from Mars are... Well, pretty good, actually. 

The Martian is sculpted and the tripod is designed. This and the four brave chaps will get popped into a drawer to be ressurected as and when. 

I'm trying to clear the decks of my Rohan chaps so here you can see them (and Theoden King - whose armour is a cast-iron, gold-plated sod to paint, incidentally) with their base coats:

And then with the final glaze on the cloaks. 

And why am I clearing the decks, dear reader? Next week I officially enter middle age as the clock rolls over to 40 and - if everything goes according to plan - I should have some new toys to play with. 

See you on the other side, chaps and chapesses. 

Ramblers of Rohan

I can hardly call them Riders, can I?

I took a lot longer painting these test pieces than I normally would with a unit as I spent ages faffing about with colours to try and match the feel of the Rohirrim from the films.



Proper photos will follow later but these chaps are more or less done. I was surprised at the lack of detail on the faces; I wasn't expecting much from a single piece plastic but the spare definition was quite a shock. These will need to be revisited to bring them up to what I regard as tabletop standard.



I am happy with the cloaks; I went with something slightly more vibrant than the greyish-green of the films. This was done by not using any washes but by a couple of layers of glazes. In retrospect the leather is too brown - the redder one I used for the accents will probably end up being the main one I use for the rest of the chaps.

As you can see, I did my test batch as a Unit of 8 - this is for use with SAGA as well as LOTR. But while I mull over how to paint the next lot, it's time to start work on the next vignette to use up some of the British Line Infantry I have left over.

Here's the chaps as they stand:

An Early Christmas Present (from me, to me)

Watching Games Workshop start to wind down their Lord of the Rings range has sent me into a panic buying splurge on eBay to pick up the miniatures I kept promising myself. Added to this is that LOTR is probably my favourite fantasy skirmish rules set as it's one of the most elegant designs I've ever seen and I've never had a game that wasn't fun; I therefore want to lay in enough minis so that I can play it with my kids when they're a bit older. 

So today the postie dropped off a little packet for me: 

Yes, some riders of Rohan. Sans horses. 

Lovely figures - and with the added advantage that they'll double as Anglo-Saxons for general Dark Ages gaming as well. 

Now I just have to paint them...