Nazgul - the Nine

Due to some sort of system glitch or perhaps just great timing, I managed to get The Nine really cheaply. It took me some time to get them all put together and undercoated, but finally put in some effort and managed to do one a day last week. They're pretty easy, really, as there's not a lot of colour and most of the detail is black cloth or armour.

Anyway, it's something I've wanted for ages! Some were metal, some were finecast. I really prefer the metal. Scary if you drop them, but the sculpts were really nice.

First some group shots, here they are all on horseback.

And if, for some reason, their horses are dispatched of, they look pretty cool on foot too!

The Betrayer - I painted him in the same colours as my Haradrim, but muted with lots of black wash. I quite like the wicker armour on the horse too. 

The Dark Marshal - A straightforward very dark paint scheme with a hint of gold on some parts of the armour. I've tried to keep the armour pretty muted so it's still dark.

The Dwimmerlaik - Just lots of darkness and a hint of a metal mask. 

Khamul the Easterling - I've made sure that there are hints of golden armour amongst the darkness. The horse I have really low to the ground, charging forward.

The Knight of Umbar - I've added just a hint of dark blue to some of the trappings on the horse.

The Shadow Lord - I used a slightly browner highlight here. I'm not a fan of the on foot version, my son and I think it looks like he's in the middle of a dance party - put your hands in the air!

The Tainted - with a greenish tint and I used some watered down glue to make the dry grass on the base wilted and bent away from him.

The Undying One - Given his wizardliness I added a dark purple scarf. I quite like the on foot pose, I aimed the staff in line with his outstretched hand to make it look like he's casting a spell right at someone in front of him.

The Witch King of Angmar - last and far from least, he's got just a slight hint of purple, a flaming sword and plenty of dark metal. The flaming sword looks much nicer in real life, much redder. The blade snapped (stupid finecast) so I had to reattach it but just added a bit of flame and it's all good.

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!

Nazgul off Fell Beast

Well, I had a day with a sore mouth and little to do so I did some base-coating of more Haradrim warriors and finished off my Nazgul on foot.

I wanted a model that represented a dismounted Nazgul, so I chose one that I think looks as though he has been knocked from his Fell Beast then without hesitation begins striding forward and drawing his sword to enact revenge!

Same painting style as the other, Black, then Dark Grey heavy drybrush, then light grey light drybrush, then a couple of black washes then a really faint drybrush to finish off. Under the hood is painted Chaos Black right at the very end to ensure there is no highlighting in there.

Striding forward...

Drawing sword...

And here's the back, though it's not very exciting!

So there you go, I now have all three warband leaders done and dusted and one warband painted. The second warband I've more than half finished the initial undercoating but I'll be back to just grabbing an hour here and there from now on so it might take a while to get them all done.

Fell Beast Complete!

Well with the hardest part over, there was only probably two hours of work left to finish painting the Fell Beast and here we go...

Firstly you can see I've traced the veins on the wings in Regal Blue. I've also done some brown on the reins, bleached bone on the claws and metal on the metal bits. 

I was pretty worried about the brightness of the blue veins, but I had two things going for me... 1) the lighting in the photo makes it super bright... 2) I was about to wash them in black!

Here you can see the metal on the head and sword a bit better, I've also washed the claws with sepia.

And now the wings are washed more. I traced the veins in black wash, then added another heavy layer of wash around the struts (or whatever they are called). Also washed the metal layers and highlighted the edges.

From above you can see the effect (washed out by my lamp, but imagine it darker and less glary!)

Here it is near my ceiling light. Still a little shiny due to light proximity, but I think the colours are more "natural" to what it actually looks like here.

And here we are, some glue, some holding, some blu-tac and some time later...

And a closer view, sorry about the glare from that lamp, I'll take it over to my brother's house sometime and get a shot with his better lighting on the proper board...

Another angle...

And closer up, from this direction, the glare isn't on the head so much so you can see it a bit better.

And from the top...

And closer...

 Here's a lower angle...

Other side... I really like how dark it stays under the Nazgul's hooded cloak. 

And for perspective, here's a whole host of different minis...

I've spent so much time on the larger ones that the little ones really seem tiny now... almost... miniature!

So there you go, now I'm waiting on my foot Nazgul to be posted (Christmas/New Years not so quick for postage!)

A BIG thanks again to Oz Hammer (http://ozhammer.webs.com/) for providing the prize and here's hoping they think I've done it good justice in the paint job!

Now I've just got 35 Haradrim to paint!

And now that I've seen The Hobbit (and LOVED it) I'm sure I'll get suckered in to buying some of those new dwarves... or maybe eagles... or the wargs... droooooool!

Fell Beast First Wash

Sorry for the dismal pictures. We just don't have great lighting. My desk lamp is great for being able to see what I'm doing, but washes out the photos something shocking!

I finished the highlighting with some bleached bone on the wings...

Here is the top view:

And another angle.

Oh, and the base has had a few more layers done...

This is after a single black wash...

I held it up near my ceiling light to try and get a more natural colour, though probably too close to the bulb really so it's not quite that bright and shiny for real.

Back to the desk lamp for the other angle...

I still want to do one more all over black wash. Then I'll do the veins on the wings and other details like the reins, sword, claws etc. After that another few targeted washes should finish it off!

Fell Beast Highlights

**Thanks for the poll answering, still plenty of time to add your votes.**

I spent some time doing some highlighting, nice and quick and messy stuff.

Here's some grey...

And the base...

Starting the lava process, as you know from previous projects it takes many layers to finally come out looking okay.

This is after three types of grey, Fortress Grey the final highlight. I decided that I didn't like it. Too much the same as my board. I had similar difficulty with the Mumak as you'll recall, but this doesn't even have a decent lot of colours like a howdah etc.

So now I've drybrushed some pale brownish colour on the bottom of it.

And a dark camo green on the scales.

I don't like how it looks at the moment, but the idea is that after the black washes go on it the colours will essentially disappear, but not quite be just the grey colours. A vague hint of green and a slightly lighter underbelly will hopefully remain, but still be really dark and black.

Anyway, that's where I'm up to so far!