Meanwhile, in Mordor

Hello friends!

My new (since June) post-retirement church job has kept me happily busy, along with finding safe day-trips to do with Joy during a stay-at-home summer.   I was able to use part of the last few months to finish this lot of orcs for my Lord of the Rings collection.  What a horrible lot!

This batch includes a GW orc captain from the lad pile, as well as eight Thistle and Rose (formerly Vendel) orcs, painted in Mordor livery.  I love that they are well wearing the same baggy trousers and puttees, it gives them a bit of a regular army look, the 3/92nd North Mordor Foot, maybe.  If you want to see Thisle and Rose figures well painted, visit Rabbit Man’s blog.

“Roiht, you ‘orrible lot, what do you do when you sees an Elf Lord?  You stick him, see!  No, don’t bleeding tickle him, STICK HIM!"

This ‘orrible lot also includes a box of Oathmark goblins that I purchased May 2019.   I built some as archers:

Spear chaps without shields.  Sorry the photos are rather dark.

Shields and hand weapons.  Tried for a general red and black theme to the shields, with some Mordor Eye livery, some more tribal.

Shields and shabby sticks.

Regimental photo before marching off to Gondor.

In general I found the Oathmark plastic figures to be easy to assemble, with a pleasing variety of weapons and gear.  While the Oathmark universe, from what I’ve seen of the rule books, is standalone fantasy, the figures fit well with my existing LOTR collection and have a Tolkienesque feel to them.  I haven’t done the math to see if they are cheaper than GW plastics, but they add a variety of poses to the Perry orc sculpts, so I may order a few more boxes over time, though the old Vendel figures, happily back in production through Thistle and Rose, are appealing..  I currently have a box of Oathmark wolf riders half-assembled to tackle next.

Blessings to your brushes!  

MP+ 

 

 

Orcs, Mostly

Hello friends:

I hope this finds you well and happily busy, as I’ve been lately.  Busy and productive enough to break out my light box to capture some finished work.

Today it’s mostly beastly orcs to swell the armies of Mordor.   Here is the command pack of some Vendel orcs.  My friend James and I went in on a joint purchase of some Vendel figures when they were still in business.   I love their chunkiness, the fact that they’re lead and not the spin-cast resin that GW now uses, and that they have their own identify, independent of figures based on the Jackson LOTR films, though I have more than enough of those minis as well.

Command group.   The fellow on the left looks mean enough to be a senior NCO, probably what passes for an RSM in an orcish host.  Sadly all the weapons the Vendel figures had were spears, for the most part, so I gave him a pointy mace thing from the Oathmark Goblin box to go with his eye of Sauron shield device. The fellow in the centre looked like he needed a banner, so I gave him one from the Little Big Men Saxon/Viking set, cut and mounted on aluminum foil and embellished with a skull from the same Oathmark pack.

 

Another Vendel figure from the same set, with another Little Big Man flag.  I made a total hash of this flag, and had to work desperately to save it.   I figured the dragon looked suitably orcish, though perhaps too fine a design for crude orc hands.

Seeing as I was doing orcs, I thought I would also do a test-paint of these figures from a box of Oathmark goblins purchased recently.  They look a little stunted and hunched over, compared to the confident upright Vendel poses, but they do look suitably menacing.  I’m reasonably pleased with them but I don’t like the shiny final look of the Army Painter Strong Tone washes that I bought recently.

A quite nasty bunch to add some character to my orc hosts.

I have a raft of figures that I started and then abandoned when Kay entered the final stage of her illness some years ago, and I now have the energy to start finishing them.  Here is a Gripping Beast Alfred the Great lead figure, painted to be a Lord of Rohan.  The LBM shield transfer is quite appropriate for that purpose.

 

 Finally, from the same raft of figures, four Sash and Sabre ACW casualty figures, to mark units in trouble or perhaps just for Matthew Brady to paint.  Thinking out loud here, I wonder if anyone makes a Civil War era photographer miniature?   

Thanks for looking.   Blessings to your brushes!

MP

Sometimes You Paint, Sometimes You Build, Sometimes You Salvage, Sometimes You Re-base

I love starting new projects, and always have too many on the go, but sometimes it’s good to revisit some older figures that just need some love.  This weekend, while Joy was in the states visiting her daughter and granddaughter, I had the place to myself and found that what I got done wasn’t at all what I had thought I would do.

Here are some GW LOTR plastic orcs that a friend gave me - he found a bag of about 30 figures, very roughly painted, jumbled in a zip-lock bag.   I had my doubts about remediating the paintwork, but I pulled out a handful and decided to see what I could do with them.   I’d say I repainted about half of each figure and tried to give them scary-face shields, though I think my surrogate granddaughter could have done scarier faces.

I also gave them my usual bad-guy base treatment - scrubby, mostly barren ground, evocative of Mordor, Dead Marshes, etc.

I liked how these fellows turned out - they fit nicely into my growing evil LOTR models.  I will probably salvage handful in the near future.

Also underway is a significant basing project for my Isengard collection.   About ten years ago, when my son was a teen and living with me, we played a LOT of the original GW LOTR Strategy Battle Game.   To get some figures on the table quickly I cut a lot of corners, such as leaving the bases still in their original black undercoat and nothing more.  Currently I have about 30 of these figures in the basing shop, and a few of them marched out ready for action this weekend, including this Uruk-Hai captain.

These 6 Uruk-Hai crossbowmen were only 60% painted, and required a fair bit of brushwork to get them ready.   Repainted and with some proper basing, they look ok.   I would like to get a full unit of 12, but they were pricey buggers ten years ago back when GW sold LOTR metal models in blisters of 3.  Perhaps I can find some more on Ebay or the like.  In Dragon Rampant terms, I would rate these as heavy missiles.

Between the stray basing material and my cat deciding that the light box makes a good place for a nap, these pictures are rather messy.

I did also finish painting some new figures and got them based.  These are 8 orc arches from Vendel miniatures.   My friend James and I are very fond of the Vendel fantasy range, and there are some great examples on his blog.  They’re fairly simple figures but they have a pleasing, old-school look and feel to them with tons of facial expression.

The Vendel moulds got sold recently so all this range is sadly OOP at the moment.  When I was at Hot Lead this March, I was talking to an American fellow who knew the chap who bought the moulds, so I have hopes that they will be back in production soon. 

I only have 8 of these archers, so I decided when I was ordering some bits from North Star recently, that I would splash out on a box of their Oathmark goblins, to see if I could build this unit up a bit.

Each sprue comes with five torsos that can be built out in several ways.  I decided to build four of them as archers.   They have a hunched, furtive look, making them look sneaky and fierce, but they look suitably Mordor-ish.   It took me about ten minutes to assemble five figures, with a minimum of hacking and cutting.

Side by side comparison with the Vendel figures.   I think they’ll work together.

‘So a mixed bag of thoroughly bad hats, with a variety of worthwhile ways to use spare time - painting, salvaging, basing, cutting and gluing.   I’m pleased with the results, though I had better get some reinforcements for Rohan and Gondor into the field soon.   And speaking of the field … I should use these figures in a game - what a crazy thought!   

Blessings to your brushes!

MP+