Journey to Middle-Earth

Resurrecting a five year old project! Working on my Rohan force, and why not start from the Riders.

The Tainted must be of my favourite models from the Middle-Earth range, making it a no-brainer choice for a hero in my evil force.

I wanted to do something special for the basing. The Middle-Earth cavalry models with the large round bases are ideal for this. I’m using a washer for the low profile and weight, but it matches  the original bases exactly in diameter (not that I actually care that much).

The dead tree is made by twisting gardening wire, covered with strips of masking tape and putty. The roots and the tips of the branches were done with greenstuff.

The colouring of the model itself is inspired by the one from the Games Workshop team. The ghostly green just looks so cool to me, I didn’t want to deviate from it. I painted it on by airbrushing with couple of tones, then highlighting with a brush.

With the dead tree being there, I got an idea for the mood of the model. I wanted to create an impression of the Righwraith exuding darkness, kind of like reverse object-source lightning (object-source darkness??).

I primed the entire model black, and then pre-shaded only the edges of the base and the opposite side of the tree. Then airbrushes couple of shades of brown for the base and the tree.

For the base, I added some long grass, with the Rightwraith side shaded darker and some dead leaves. Finally the moss on the tree trunk is done with short grass tufts and green pigment powder.

Here’s few more photos of Morannon Orcs I painted, including the Lloyd views I forgot from the previous update.

Along with the Morannon Orcs, I painted up a Mordor troll. After taking the photos, I noticed the wash-spot at the top of the shield and it bothers me to no end. Must go and blend that in…

Kicking off my Mordor army project with some Morannon Orcs.

Like for many others, for me the 2018 release of the Middle-Earth strategy battle game was one of the best hobby news all year. I’ve been a Tolkien fan since a child and the original Lord of the Rings miniatures game was a big favourite when it came out nearly 20 years ago. Being a complete sucker for Perry sculpts, I (gladly) never got rid of any of my LotR minies, and over the years kept returning to them, painting the occasional character, and even growing my collection here and there. With the game now being given a new life, and also picking up some steam at our local club, its a perfect time to return and paint some armies.

What I look to accomplish with this project:

– Paint few armies I never had in the original incarnation of the game: Mordor and Rohan. (Gotta love the Pelennor fields box ?)

– Finish painting my collection of characters.

– Revisit some of my old paint jobs from 15-20 years ago. I have a big collection of Dwarfs and Uruk-hai, and some Minas Tirith. Paint jobs aren’t too horrible, but man I have come a long way with basing from back then! I’ll most likely rebase the models and tidy up some shading and highlighting, repaint the occasional face.

– Try not to buy many new minies, but fail miserably.

– Get some games in!