Golden King of Abrakhan and Entourage

The Golden King and Entourage project is now complete (actually it's been complete for a bit, but I haven't posted it until now!)

The King is supported by his two "robust" guards and accompanied by seven "tough chicks" as my wife and son like to call them. Given there's no female representation I had to source these from a range of companies and adjust their bases etc. to try and get them relatively sized correctly. They're not perfect, but I think they came up well enough and the colours blend them in with the rest of the Harad army.

So here are the first three. I've kept the same dark skin colour and used some putty to make turbans and head scarves for them all.

A mix of female barbarians and warriors from a variety of companies.

And from the back...

The tough chicks generally have the same oversized weapons that the Games Workshop Abrakhan Guard models have, they've always been almost silly and cartoony reminding me of an old Looney Tunes cartoon (these are the guys carrying the King).

On some of the head scarves I did a little bit of freehand in gold. I used scarabs as the motif as they're what are on the King's banner above his head.

At some stage I'll do another whole army photo with the Haradrim, but the spare time I have at the moment (hint - almost none thanks to having to do home schooling thanks to COVID-19) is on getting the Elven battle company ready for reinforcements!

Golden King of Abrakhan

Another great eBay find before the world shut down due to COVID-19!
I've ordered lots of single miniatures on eBay, though many of them have not showed up, I'm sure there are transport difficulties in lots of places at the moment.
One that did show up was the Golden King of Abrakhan for my Harad army.
I'm also making him a "tough girl" harem using miniatures from other ranges (because there are almost no female LotR models.

So far I've got two, I carved off their hair and added some turbans.

I figured the Abrakhan Guard are ridiculously cartoony with their huge swords and huger guts so why not make my own Abrakhan Guard that are similarly silly.

So here you can see the King himself, flanked by two of his Harem (I haven't done any others yet) and some Watchers of Karna so you can see the same colour scheme I've used across the board for my Harad.

I tried to paint the flat sides and back as though they were wooden vertical planks. The lava base was fun, I put a stepping stone in the middle so that the poor guy at the back at least has something to try and step to! That amused me a lot =) The light is a bit bright on these photos!

So there you go, not a big deal, but a nice little project that I have spent a few minutes on here and there and a couple of weeks later it's done! 

Serpent Rider - Haradrim on Raptor

Random post!

I've been doing a lot of scenery and miniature painting, but with time being so tight I haven't (obviously) been posting.

One conversion I just did was on a box of Haradrim Raiders that I got (I know, I know) last Christmas - still, better late than never!

You may recall the blue dragon I painted to match my Harad colour scheme? Well, I figured that the leader of that band of Haradrim would similarly need to have something reptilian to set him apart from the others. I toyed with banners, helmets and the like but when I was cleaning up an old box of miniatures I found some sort of elf sorceress or something riding a raptor that I'd obviously got from eBay or something just because it looked cool.

Well, a hack and slash later and my Serpent Rider is more like a Raptor Rider!

Here's the front view.

And he's leading 6 more raiders through the dangerous lava fields.

I also painted up a trio of Watchers of Karna. 

I've just purchased another 6 riders and another 3 watchers so that I'll be all set for some fun battle company action when they're painted up!

Battle Company Battle Report - Hold the Line 2

Well, after playing Hold the Line with the Harad trying to cross the board, this time we swapped and it was the dwarves turn to try and get across.

The dwarves split into three squads to force the Haradrim to split their forces!

Brynmor led the shielded dwarves up one flank, the archers stayed in the middle to try and snipe horses and Rocky, Boggle, Etako and Freya headed off near the beach.

The Fang shoots and hits Etako, fortunately his fate saves the wound! Rocky is not so fortunate and The Pincer shoots him down.

Freya then takes out The Hawk in melee, dwarven sword and axe out performing the charging horseman and his warspear.

Archie manages to shoot down The Fox!

Turn 3, the Haradrim get priority and the Haradrim spur their horses to attack the dwarves. Freya wins the fight against The Falcon and scores a wound, but fate saves it for the lieutenant of The Falcon's Honour. Etako parries to win his fight and kills The Fang!

In Turn 4, the Haradrim get priority again! They attempt a charge against the shielded dwarves. Diva takes out The Serpent with help from Brynmor while Hilda Trollslayer with backup from Kara's spear wound The Talon twice, fate saves one wound but the other gets through.

Freya uses a throwing axe to take out Sunstone. 

Rhoda the elf takes out The Falcon's horse! He falls flat on his face! For the most part all of the shooting (including the throwing axes) has been pretty poor! Every round I would hit but then roll a 1 or 2 for the wound!

In turn 5 the parties all reposition, all shooting misses and there are no combats. As you can see, the Harad have not fared well. Their usual tactics do not involve taking on dwarves in 1-1 combat, but the scenario this time works well in favour of the dwarves.

In round 6 the dwarves finally get priority, mostly they charge forward towards the other end of the board. The Talon charges in and knocks down Mighty Monty spearing the dwarf and taking him out of the match.

The Pincer shoots Boggle (shooting into combat, hitting the dwarf in the back, rerolling thanks to poison and wounding him - though it is saved by fate). Taking similar risks, The Wolf shoots as well, but the arrow flashes past the dwarf and wounds The Falcon!

Boggle, arrow in his back, smashes down The Falcon with help from Etako.

In round 7 the priority is returned to the Haradrim (who have had priority 5 times so far). Brynmor calls a heroic move to charge The Talon, who uses two points of might to win the fight but fails to wound the high defence dwarves.

Etako parries and takes out The Sparrow while Boggle kills Black Cloak after both a parry and using his blademaster skill! Freya loses her fight, but is not wounded.

In the final rounds the dwarves mop up the surviving Haradrim. Kara Longspear kills The Talon.

Freya's charging axe throw removes The Tiger from the match while Boggle and Etako take out The Wolf...

Before finally dismissing The Pincer and his double shot poison elf bow of nastiness!

At the end of the match, only two dwarves were removed and all the Haradrim were sent home!

We commented many times about how this match-up was a really hard one for the Harad force. They usually like to use their horses and archers to focus on dwarves, but because I sent a squad in each direction they had to split their forces and to top it all off they kept getting priority, which hampers the cavalry as I can counter charge to swarm them.

In other words, the dwarves FINALLY won a game! In fact, when I told my son that my brother was coming over he said "Oh, is he coming over to beat you again?"

With the bazillion xp the dwarves got, Etako got an extra attack, Brynmor got parry, Boggle got an extra point of strength, Freya the iron guard is now a hero in the making (and easily dwarf of the match) and I've saved up enough influence over the last three games to guarantee that I got another vault warden team to cap off my squad at 15 troops.

Unfortunately after that mission, The Falcon, The Tiger and The Wolf will be sitting out the next game! Potentially worse, The Fang got an arm wound, which means he can't shoot his bow! The Fang upgraded to a Keen Eye and The Pincer is now a Master of Poisons.

Harad Army - now with lighting!

Took the opportunity yesterday to take some happy snaps of my new Harad army!

Here they all are. I've still got two guys waiting to become banner bearers, but apart from them I've got three full warbands now.

One Mumak with a crew of 12 archers. One Hasharin with a warband of 12 spearmen. One Nazgul on Fell Beast with a mixed warband of 6 archers and 6 spearmen.

Here is the Hasharin warband. They're my close-combat band who will advance on enemy held objectives. They'll have a banner eventually so that ideally each combat will get three dice (two spears and a banner re-roll).

The Nazgul warband is more about defence. The wraith himself will fly off on his Fell Beast to attack and kill and maim and what-not. This leaves six archers and six spearmen to guard either all together or in two groups with spears supporting archers who can stand and shoot up until they are attacked. A banner here will also be useful sometimes, but not as often as in the melee warband.

Here's a picture of the Fell Beast on the board with better lighting than my previous pictures. Hopefully the wings show up more like what they really look like here and you can see the subtle veins and the fading along each wing segment. 

Of course, I kinda forgot to take a close-up picture of the Mumak with crew! Oops! 

Anyway, you get the idea, I'm really happy with how they turned out and if I wasn't a little burnt out from batch painting I'd get the banners done soon, but instead I'm already working on my next scenery project =) A hint: Mini Megalithic.

Spears, spears and more spears!

Finally got through the second warband of spearmen today.

I've taken a few pretty poor photos, but you get the idea, I'll take some better pics some other time =)

Here's everybody! Except the Hasharin. Oops, dunno where he went. Maybe he's behind you right now!

This shows you the scale of the pyramid in terms of regular troops and just how tall the winged wraith is (I like the shadow it casts).

And although the bottom is a bit blurry, hopefully some of these guys are in focus for you.

So there you go, just one more warband to go, although I can play what I've got already as a legal army now with:

Nazgul on Fell Beast (by himself).

Hasharin with 12 spearmen.

Mumak with 12 bowmen.

700 points for the basics, anywhere up to almost 900 with lots of Mumak upgrades.

Another 12 guys to go now, 6 spears, 6 bows for another 84 points. Oh, and I've got two "spare" guys left to make into banner bearers. Not sure if I'd pay the points for them, but for the "look" of it all I'm looking forward to making a couple of scorpion banners.

There was something else I was meant to say but I can't for the life of me think of it right now!

Mumak With Crew

Huzzah!

After the washes had all dried it was a time consuming but simple task to re-highlight all of the raised surfaces and voila one Mumak with Crew.

The blues all work well together I think!

From the back...

And the other side, sorry about the lighting on these photos!

Here's a trooper...

And back...

And a more covered one...

And back...

So there you go! Batch painted my first Harad warband, I guess I should start the next one (all spears) soon huh =)

Highlights

Here they are with some highlights on them. Pretty much just some Blood Red on the red bits and up to Regal Blue on the cloaks. Bleached bone on the heads and a few more layers of my watery graveyard earth on the clothing.

And here I've just about finished my pre-wash painting. There is some orange (an ancient pot that has been watered and reconstituted so often that it's horrible to work with) on the red, enchanted blue on the cloaks and vermin brown on the skin. 

Here's a closer look under the harsh light!

Just a little tidying up to do and then it's wash time. After the washes go on it'll be a re-highlight and finished!