Thankful for the Very Big Bird

Gandalf was very thankful for a very big bird, but not a turkey, the great eagle Gwaihir... although I wouldn't put it past Bombur to try to eat him, and luckily I don't think The Shire celebrated Thanksgiving.

I saved my favorite of the recent Mithril Miniatures, Lord of the Rings large minis & scenes for last:

Gandalf & Gwaihir:

I really enjoyed painting this one. 

Mithril has such graceful lines to their sculpts, and this one is just beautiful.

Mithril Miniatures: Sanctuary at the Bombadil Residence

Another of the more rare Mithril Miniatures scenes:

Frodo & Sam introduced to Goldberry by Tom Bombadil in his home.

I went for a classic Tomb Bombadil, for colors (though decided when he labels his own boots 'yellow' that he more than likely means a yellowish leather.. I can't imagine yellow felt being very practical in undomesticated forest even for an anthropomorphic personification spirit), and decided that the colors of the home should reflect Goldberry's preference for water lilies.

Hey! Come derry dol! Hop along, my hearties!
Hobbits! Ponies all! We are fond of parties.
Now let the fun begin! Let us sing together!

Now let the song begin! Let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather,

Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!

O slender as a willow-wand! O clearer than clear water!
O reed by the living pool! Fair River-daughter!
O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!
O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.

Link to the complete Tom Bombadil's Song 

Most Dangerous in Middle Earth: Mithril Miniatures' Sauron & Balrog

Yesterday I showed Denethor and Boromir in funeral boat.

Today, two more large miniatures from Mithril Miniatures:  Sauron and the Balrog.
It'd be hard to find anyone more dangerous than these two in Middle Earth.

The Balrog

Smaller than the GW Balrog of course, but quite a nice sculpt.  

I have a larger Balrog from Mithril I picked up many years ago, made a converted barbed whip, someday I'll have to paint him up!

Sauron

I really like the elegance of this sculpt.  The more often seen GW sculpt is nice too, and replicates Sauron as seen in the movies, meaning: all spiky armored like The Shrike. But Sauron considers himself the nearly-undisputed master of Middle Earth.  What need does he have for armor?  Better to relax in his robe, get comfy on the throne.  

Still a couple more to show.. stay tuned.

Denethor's Despair : Mithril Miniatures Lord of the Rings

I had the pleasure recently of painting some large & some limited Mithril Miniatures, some individuals, some scenes.  I do love the atmosphere that Mithril captures for Lord of the Rings.

These two seem related, so I'll post both in this update:

First: Denethor in the throne room of Gondor.

The grey marble throne he would never sit in... which I think he was fine with until he found out someone else was intending to sit in it soon!

Second: His greatest point of despair, the death of Boromir, his eldest son: 

Nazgul : The Nine (+1) Limited ed. Mithril Miniatures Ringwraiths

I was recently lucky to have the chance to paint a set of limited edition Mithril Miniatures Nazgul for a client.

I really love Mithril Minis.
This was a very fun set: lots of flowing capes, a mark of Mithril, with each Nazgul being very individualistic.

The set had one 'generic Ringwraith' pose, then 9 Nazgul based on the characters created by Iron Crown Enterprises. Tolkien never went into specifics on the Nine, except in the case of Khamul the Easterling, and the Witch King of Angmar, but I.C.E. was granted licence from Tolkien Enterprises to develop the characters for their RPG, which then Mithril got their rights to make the miniatures from them.

And here they are.

Ringwraith

For these I decided it was best to paint from a white primer.  Many people like to start with black primer for everything, especially when the mini has a good deal of black, but I prefer the opposite. I find I can get much nicer smooth shadow tones this way. 

The Witch King of Angmar

Khamul, the Easterling

I love the Mumakil helmet. I gave him a subtle pattern in his hauberk, for his 'exoticeast'

The horselord. I gave him the most color of all of them. 

This one was sculpted with a face.  Odd. So I painted the face as a bronze 'sculpted face' helmet.

He got a touch of brown, being a more 'barbaric' type of heritage.

This one might have been my favorite armor. Fancy, so I gave it a 'heat tarnish' of gold.

The only one without battle armor & sword.  Just robes & Morghul knife, so I went with a touch of deep red, for that 'assassin feel'.

Clearly of Numenorean heritage.

The 'standard ringwraith' iconic look.

The Nine together: 

The Mithril minis scale really well with the GW Lord of the Rings minis, so they'd be great on the battlefield as well as for collecting. I may have to get some for myself someday! 

Middle Earth Nature Walk: Rangers & Woses

I recently completed a bit of Mithril Miniatures for a client's extensive Mithril collection.

I do love Mithril Miniatures. They have such smooth elegant lines and realistic, not excessive, detail.

I once had a Wood Elf army for Warhammer that was about 2/3 Mithril minis.
Never should have sold those.

So this set was Rangers & Woses: two different approaches to living in the wild.

The challenge here was to match the colors & styles of the previous painter, who had painted a lot of these, so that the new additions would match.

It can be a very interesting process to duplicate someone else's style, it gets you analyzing and thinking about the process more than proceeding on your own.
And matching colors, finding the right blends to match is fun.
For a few years in university I worked as a picture framer, where you deal a lot with color theory, but never more than when someone brought in a scratched frame and you'd mix paints and inks to cover the damage.
Trying to match a color is one of the best ways to really understand the make up of the color.

So, to the Mithril:

Woses

The example one didn't have a spear, so I got to paint the wood staves in my favorite method. 

The leader's decorative paint was inspired by Magwa. Couldn't resist. 

Apparently, they do a lot of walking! 

Rangers

I do love how Mithril Miniatures handles cloaks! 

I like how these two interact...

Woman, "Why, that's no way to hold a child!

Man, "huh..what?"

Woman, "dear Iluvatar, but that is an ugly child..."

Rider Rivals in the Westfold: LotR: LPL Round 5 Results

Another Sunday starts another round of the Lead Painter's League and completes the previous round.

Round 5 was a Special Bonus Theme round, with 'Lord of the Rings' as the theme, and bonus for having 2 new teams if fighting against each other.  I was very close to deciding to paint the characters from The War of the Ring board game, but in the end I thought it'd be better to have some progress on some armies I've wanted to have done for years and years.

So I had to go with riders of rohan, and their opponents of course uruk-hai, and what better orcs than warg riders, for a true 'arms race'? I hate the orc riders on the plastic wargs though, so I converted new riders from uruk-hai scouts, part of an all-scout army I built for the strategy battle game: no pikes, no crossbows, none of that stuff, just a fast recon & strike force.

My favorite human culture from Middle Earth has always been Rohan.  From the first time I read the series I was drawn to Rohan.  I'm not a horse fanatic, I like them as I do most animals, but something about Rohan's  outlook and underdog determination I admire.  They don't come from a position of ancient power and privilege like their allies the Gondorians, they are a rising force with strong roots in their 'barbaric' heritage.  It reminds me of the speech Cora makes to her father and would-be husband about the colonists in 'Last of the Mohicans', the bit about 'they do not need a by your leave they hack it out of the wilderness with their own two hands'. Hell yeah. Don't mess with Rohan. ;)

I won the round, which put me up against Tomsche, you can visit his blog here. It was a fun match up since he had nearly the same entry I did, but in 15mm. Great minds think alike!

I'm afraid I won't be winning my next round however.  I think it's a close match up, but I am far outclassed in setting. Not only are the minis painted nicely but the terrain composition is very cool.  I have to find some better scenic settings for my entries! This next round I have entered some Cavemen.  I'm quite happy with the minis, and love the sculpts.  I painted a group of 7, to be used for a Paleo-man party for a Paleolithic Pulp skirmish game I've been writing.  It will have a lot of different homind factions, as well as some others down the line.  I'm pretty excited about it, and figured this was a good chance to start painting the factions.
You can visit my inevitable first loss here. ;)

By the way, Happy Easter, be careful of the Bunny...

Easterling Command Conversions for Lord of the Rings

I've always liked the idea of having a Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game Easterling army.
The models are nice, the helmet is very cool, and they seem to be a force that could have a very tight theme and still be a tough contender.  They have only average shooting, but have good armor, access to spears and very tough cavalry.  They don't have the variety of a list like Gondor, or the range of characters Gondor has, but they can position themselves as a good counter to Gondor. There are a couple interesting newer lesser characters and command types, and there is always the Nazgul Khamul to fall back on.

My sense of theme makes me reluctant to add allies to fill tactical gaps, or even what I perceive as not really fit for the list.. such as orcs in an Uruk-hai army... Uruks are supposed to be more disciplined than orcs and willing to fight in the sunlight, yet we're supposed to believe Sauruman has his Uruks drilling to fight in formations of Sword Uruk/ Spear Orc/ Pike Uruk?  What is this? The Oreo formation with the soft squishy Orc in the center? Just begging for a disaster on the field. I refuse to do it. Just to gamey.
But I'm chasing a pet peeve out into the brush... back to the trail:

Easterlings look like a fun & viable theme list, but the metal command characters are both expensive and didn't thrill me much, so like I did with the dwarves, I set about to make my own on the cheap:

First a banner. The obvious choice is to use a spearman, but the box has 8 archers, 8 sword & shield and 4 spear.  This makes spears too few to spare one.  It also has an illegal percentage of bows in the box, which is annoying- I'd have preferred 6 archers & 6 spear- as it is, if you're not adding a lot of cavalry (which I will be) or taking cheap orc filler allies (which I won't be) then you end up with more archers than you can use.
But an archer wasn't going to be much help for a banner...

So I took one of the sword miniatures and cut the sword out, trying to preserve it. The unfortunate thing about the LotR kits is the lack of any extra bits whatsoever. So save everything.

Next I drilled a thin hole through the hand.  Testing with brass rod, I found what I already assumed: the angle was wrong. So I took a jeweler saw and sliced the hand off and glued it back on at an angle that would hold the banner pole perpendicular to the ground.  I didn't want a flag, I wanted some kind of symbol.  Looking through the bits I found the freebee plastic Numidians from Wargames Factory, on it was a banner symbol that suited me just fine.  The pole was too thick, which was perfect: cut it as a stump and carefully drill into it, so when the brass rod is inserted, it looks like a metal casing for the pole.  Here is the result:

Next up is a Captain.  I was planning on just taking a sword mini and change his arm to a raised "follow me into the fray!" pose, but looking at one of the GW pdf supplements, I found an alternate captain type, with 2 swords. That looked fun. The actual model is part of a $25 set that gets you the dual sword character, a battle mage fellow and a banner.  A bit pricey (but not as much as the $12.50 individual characters). I do like the battle mage mini, but I didn't want a flag banner, and the pose of the dual sword character is mediocre at best: it's just too static.  So $25 for a mini I like, one I don't want and one that I'm 'meh' about isn't a solid purchase.  So I decided to make the guy myself:

I took the one sword & shield pose that has separate shield (there is only 1 of this pose) and cut the 'shield bump' attachment off his hand.  Since the angle of the hand was too vertical, I removed his hand, and changed the angle to what suited me.  I then attached the sword which was removed from the other model (see? save everything!) and made a pommel.  Easy-Peasy. 

Here he is:

I much prefer the sense of movement of this mini.  Looks ready to carve up Gondor for Rhun! 

I'll be looking to make a basic Captain as well as an Amdur, who uses an Easterling Falchion.. kind of a bastard sword like the elven blades. More to come. 

Conversions for Dwarf Rangers for Lord of the Rings

Last week I had the chance to play Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle for the first time in... well many years.  When you have to stop and do calculations, it's been a long time. I really enjoyed that game, and still think it's GW's best 28mm wargame. Plus I'm a Tolkien junky, so its hard to go wrong.

Digging out my dwarf rangers I decided they needed a captain and a banner to be a viable little theme force.

A lot of the Lord of the Rings plastics are of questionable quality, but in general I like the rangers, a good deal more than the plastic dwarf warriors, and I always liked the idea of a dwarf patrol.

First up, a Captain. Just adding a shield should suffice, since it'd good gear for a Captain and none of the rangers have shields, so he'd stand out as unique just from that.

I used a shield from a Chaos Marauder, trimming and rounding the spike to make it look more like a Saxon or Viking shield. The fact that it has torn leather makes him look even more 'rangery' and like he's been in some recent scraps in the wilds.

The banner would be more challenging.  First, I didn't like the idea of an actual banner.  This isn't a warhost, it's a patrolling force, to scout ahead or defend the borders.  They aren't likely to be waving a flag around.  

So a hunting horn would serve the same purpose and seem much more appropriate I think. 

1. Take one of the rangers with 2 axes and saw his left arm off.   

2. Trim the axe handle down and smooth it to be the horn mouthpiece

3. Cut the axe head off and cut the axe handle down to a bit smaller than you want the horn length to be, before it starts to curve up.

4. Cut the arm at the elbow at a 45 degree angle. 

5. Drill into the body and sink a paperclip into it to be the basis of the upper arm. 

6. Glue the arm to the paper clip and horn to the mouth

7. Use Green Stuff to sculpt a simple horn

8. Use Green Stuff to sculpt the upper arm: it's very easy.

Still to do: smooth the horn and widen the hole and paint them up!