Build me an army worthy of Mordor...

Continuing my epic trawl through the haul of second hand Lord of the Rings miniatures, I have returned to my Middle Earth first love. That has been, and always will be, Saruman. Not just because he was played by Sir Christopher Lee - of whose magnificence I have spoken before - but because he is a much more interesting character than Sauron (or at least the Sauron of the Third Age).

In amongst the Haul I found some Uruk Hai Beserkers; perfect for Dragon Rampant bellicose foot and pretty tasty in the Lord of the Rings game itself. So I set to work with the Biostrip:

This is one of the rare occasions where I am actually completely happy with how they turned out. The skin tone is spot on and I managed not to screw up the White Hand markings.

Speaking of which, lurking in a recent purchase was a Lurtz. I stripped then painted him up and was very happy with the face, so I took a picture in case I wrecked it with the White Hand marking:

Thankfully, I didn't.

Lastly, at the car boot sale on Sunday I grabbed 20 men of Gondor for £8; mainly as the eldest likes Knights. And, true to form he asked me to paint him some of them up.

Next up is a Ringwraith and some more character models. I'm also on the look out for a shelob, nazgul on fell beast and balrog if anyone knows of any going cheap.

As always, thanks for looking.

"They have a cave troll..."

Started ploughing through the Middle Earth haul. The first job was to strip - using my favourite thing, Biostrip as detailed here - the layers of paint. As it turns out, the previous owner has applied the paint with a trowel.

I managed to get most of it off the first few figures I decided to start on. However, the Witch-King had a stubborn chunk that I couldn't shift. I think I managed to get it think enough that I can disguise it with paint.

The Cave Troll was a little more complex. The hammer came loose when I was scrubbing it and removing the many, many layers of paint showed that it had been put together in a fairly slapdash fashion leaving lots of gaps:

A little time with the greenstuff leaves us with something a bit more useable.

Just a couple of mold lines and then we're done. Hopefully get some paint on them this weekend - assuming I can get out of the other end of the traditional Start of Year Head Cold. 

Odd Jobs

So this week has largely been a write off between looking after the bairns and catching up on sleep from last year*. I did, however, manage to get some bits and pieces of prep work done.

• I have undercoated some Neville Wars of the Roses serjeants for Lion Rampant, as I am determined to get both forces finished in time for open evening at school in September
• I've also stripped the Human Blood Bowl team so that me and the Good Lady She Who Must Be Obeyed can have a few games
• And while I was on, I stripped what appears to be a Moria Cave Troll I picked up from a car boot sale.

I'm suffering one of those periodic lacks of mojo that hit all of us every now and again. I think, in order to kickstart my painting, I need to move on to pastures new - that means parking the Wild West project. I know there's only four of them left but... yeah. For the moment, they're a sacrifice I'm going to have to make.

Hopefully some pictures of some hot painting action this weekend.

*I'm not joking - on Tuesday I slept from 8am to 3pm. I've never been this tired in my entire life. 

Stripperiffic

This is more or less a product review. Hope it's helpful (I've not been paid for this in any way. If anyone wants to, though, feel free)

Stripping minis has always been a chore. My own personal favourite was always the old nail polish remover but the shift to plastics out paid to that as the acetone free stuff was never as good. 

Since then I've mainly been using brake fluid which, although brilliant, is seriously nasty stuff. Then a read a forum post about this stuff: 

Biostrip 20 is available more or less everywhere online and I got this pot for a tenner. It's like slightly watery PVA and this single pot will do for an awful lot of minis as you will shortly see. 

So, how do you use it? Well, you pretty much just dip the miniature in. For my first test I used the Orc Bloodbowl team and a lovely Saruman which I picked up at a car boot sale slathered in paint. 

So, we dip the minis:

And leave them for an hour. 

Within a few minutes you can already see the pigment starting to come off in some of the colours:

And within half an hour the paint itself is starting to crackle and blister:

After an hour a quick rinse and scrub with a toothbrush shows that this stuff is dynamite:

Only a couple of very thick dollops in deep recesses remain, such as on the Black Orc:

But these can be scraped off with a fingernail. The stuff is non toxic and doesn't smell of anything much, so I had no worries scraping away at it. Overall, the team looks more or less like new. 

The only problem I ran into was with Sir Christopher Lee; it turns out there was another coat of paint under the first - and this one appears to be enamels. 

Another dip and another hour and most of the second layer disappears.

So, the bottom line: this is exactly the product I've been waiting for. It makes stripping paint a minor job rather than a major chore, something you can set away while you're painting something else. 

As you're simply dipping the miniatures in fairly thick liquid, this one pot would easily be enough to conveniently strip a normally painted warhammer/40k/saga/lion rampant sized force with a fair bit left over. And for a tenner, that's hard to beat.