It's all about that base

I've taken a few days off to make for a long Easter break and help settle my son into a new home schooling system since COVID-19 has caused our schools to close up! So with all my new green grass and stuff we thought we'd rebase some of my miniatures.

We started with the ents and eagles as the ents in particular always looked a bit sad on grey stone bases!

So now they're on lovely brown and green bases!

There's also a hobbit and an Aragorn for scale, oh, and a cheeky cockatoo!

I put some trees around them, my tallest ones behind them and others to the sides.

And from the back you can see some more of the grasses, shrubs and flowers I added.

Next up were the eagles!

Again, I've left the hobbit and Aragorn (and cockatoo in the picture)

I painted these so long ago, I can imagine I'd do it very differently today, with washes etc.

And from the back you can see more how well the statues have added a nice contrast with the grass I reckon!

And finally, here's the Good Monster army!

The colours are all a bit washed out, but you get the general gist!
Here's the original crew (from an earlier post: old good monster army)

So there you go, plenty of other good guys who I'll rebase in green =) Nice quick work, just a few minutes and some glue. Easy to squeeze in from time to time when I've got a chance.

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! 

Treebeard

My brother got me Treebeard for my birthday, so I painted him up over the last week. Came up really nicely, I'm enjoying having more materials for basing, still very new to it but I like the little splashes of colour.

I think I'll go back and rebase my old ents (now that's entertainment) now so that they match =)

Rangers of Gondor

Random eBay purchase of six rangers that hadn't been well painted. I just re-sprayed them (even though some detail was lost) and repainted them, pretty happy with the results =)

It was one of those weird things where I was reading The Two Towers and just got up to the bit where Frodo, Sam and Gollum meet Faramir and his rangers, so it was perfect timing to paint them. They're described as being wrapped in green cloaks with green masks etc. so they're painted in greens, browns and greys to blend in with the grey rocks and the like.

And now I have 30 primed and ready to go elves for my son's battle company (and friends) so that's probably going to be a big project!

The only difficulty so far has been in getting wood elves with spears. I don't really want to buy a box of 70 of them, but it's really hard to find any on eBay too. So for now he's just going to have to make do with Galadhrim warriors.

Birdie num num

We wanted to get some ravens for the dwarven battle company, but I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Then I was watching my favourite youtube channel (Ontario Strategy Battle Game League OSBGL)and Don mentioned that the razorwing flock would work well for his Dunlending army.

I figured that they would just as well work for individual birds too. My son thought that since we are Australian that the birds should be themed more appropriately. So with a bit of painting and greenstuff we now have a magpie, hawk and cockatoo.

The cockie is for the elves...

The hawk for humans...

And the maggie for the dwarves...

So that was a fun little project for the weekend!

Battle Company Battle Report - Far Harad vs Dwarves

My brother was up our neck of the woods so popped over for a quick Battle Company game. He used my Far Harad troops and I used my new Dwarves. My son rolled dice for me and the first roll was for scenario - Claim the Treasure!

Tricky one as I'm slower, but pretty solid. We each had eight figures so it could really go either way.

We played on the ash wastelands board and set up a river down the middle with two main crossings as well as a whole heap of ruins, rocky outcrops and the like.

On the north side of the board, the Mahud King on War Camel charged right into battle, taking out two of my dwarves and leaving just two archers, though I did manage to remove his camel!

Then at the other river crossing my Vault Warden team and Boggle charged across to clash in the centre of the river! There was a bit of back and forth here and I took out one of his guys.

He then sprinted away from my guys there to bring his whole force to bear on the other crossing. This was a bold move, but unfortunately the dice rolled my way, he managed to roll a two to wound almost every time! In the end my other dwarves caught up and sandwiched him with dwarven shields. If he'd killed just one of my dwarves before the reinforcements arrived he'd probably have won the game, but that's the way the dice roll sometimes!

At the end of the match all of my dwarves made full recoveries, Boggle gained an extra point of fight value, Brynmor gained an extra point of might and two more dwarves with shields joined the company.

With quite a few casualties the injuries rolls were actually pretty lucky, two miss next games and the rest made full recoveries. With the influence saved from last time we got one more camel upgrade and a warrior with shield. 

All done and dusted including finding the guys, setting up the board, playing the game and doing the post-match stuff in under an hour. Battle companies are so great for quick games!

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.