Middle-Earth: Orc Kit-bashing

The newly revamped Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game has caused a flurry of activity down BIG, with people dusting off armies, or in one case unearthing more troops than Sauron had at the Black Gate!!

I have a pile of plastic, largely still on the sprues, collected over the years so decided time has come to stick some of it together and slap some paint on. Of course I like to tinker and disappointed with the limited one piece poses for the GW Mordor Orcs, decided to see if I could do some kit-bashing by combining them with the Oathmark Goblins which are a pretty good size fit.

The guys have started with Battle Companies, so for Mordor this meant I only need three with shield, two with spear, two with two-handed weapon and two with bows to start, but I was having such fun I chopping them up and gluing them up, that I made up a few more.

Orc Captain with axe & shield and Orc Standard Bearer...

Orcs with sword and shield...

Orcs with spear and shield...

Orcs with two-handed weapons...

Orcs with bows...

Uruk-hai with hand weapons

Tolkien Retail Therapy

It may be the painkillers talking (!) but the Trolls I painted the other week have rekindled my desire to do something Tolkien inspired. To this end I have engaged in a little retail therapy and picked up a box of forty Gripping Beast Arab Spearman to paint up as Haradrim...

I am erring towards using WHFB2 for some games, I never was that keen on the look of the "Strategy Game" basing and I have piles of Moria goblins sat around that should make a large horde army doable, if I can work out a quick way to paint them...

Lord of the Rings: Olog-Hai II

I had planned to use today's lunch hour to crack on with the Dwarf bear riders (and have made a bit more progress), but the postie delivered another Eaglemoss pre-painted troll picked up on eBay for a couple of quid.

This one if the Battle Troll, I'm not so keen on this model but with a bit of work on the mace, some weathering, highlights (mainly on the leather) and some washes I'm happy with the end result. Here he is with yesterday's Armoured Troll...

Painting Target: 99/1000

Lord of the Rings: Olog-Hai I

I progressed the Dwarves during my lunch hour today, the metal work is now all done and all non-metal bits re-undercoated.

I also managed to base this pre-painted Eaglemoss Armoured Troll (part of a range of chess pieces I believe) and add a little detail, mainly through drybrushing the armour, flesh and loin cloth to add some more depth and some rust to the sword and plate. Nice model that fits in well enough with the GW models, the 28mm Saxon gives some idea of size.

Painting Target: 98/1000

The Hobbit - One Outta Three Ain't Bad!

Meat Loaf may have sung "Two Outta Three Ain't Bad", sadly Peter Jackson didn't manage that. I went to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and was hopeful given the fact that the second movie was better than the first, surely Jackson couldn't cock up a huge battle?

To be fair there are some really good bits, Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Richard Armitage as Thorin are excellent and it is a shame that they don't get more screen time, especially Freeman who the film is supposed to be about!

What spoilt it for me was Legolas, not his unnecessary inclusion, but the way the CGI version of the character scoots around the battle scenes in absurd ridiculous ways that reminded me of Spiderman without the webshooter! I physically cringed on two occasions!

It was this (and the irritating Alfred character from Laketown) that made me click what Jackson had done wrong. Tolkien wrote his stories as historical events in a mythical land and whilst they are fantasy, they don't have characters acting like super-heroes doing comic book things. Looking at how HBO have filmed Game of Thrones, despite the fantastic elements such as the dragons and white walkers, they treat it like a historical drama.

Jackson has elements of this, the survivors from Laketown scene is potentially powerful drama but he ruins it with cheap comedy moments. The fall of Thorin to dragon-gold sickness is excellently portrayed by Armitage, but there is not enough of this. The fighting in Dale and the heroic choice of the Laketown women to die with the men is ruined by the Monty Python act by Alfred...

Some people will like it, like the jokes, like Legolas catching rides with bats and running up crumbling masonry but I didn't. Tolkien should best be treated as drama and not popcorn action mixed with sub-Python comedy...

The Battle of the Five Armies Trailer

The main trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has been released. Not too much that I cringed at, we'll find out in a little over a month how good it is...

From Tangiers to Harad - Forthcoming Plastic Excitement!

I'm cursing the fact I won't be at Salute this year now - look what Gripping Beast are releasing at the show...

Yes, plastic Arab spearmen and archers, 40 warriors per box... I can see uses for Donnybrook, LoTR and who knows, maybe even Deus Vult! :-)

Gandalf the Black!

I meant to finish off my Dahomey Legionnaires today but fell asleep in from of the TV(!) so a complete lack of progress hobby wise. However I did come across this wonderful picture by Benjamin Collison, and it got me thinking...

I was wondering about alt-historying The Lord of the Rings, maybe having Gandlaf the Black with Gondor in his thrall up against the free peoples? Possibly a three way bad guy fight between Gandalf, Sauraman and Sauron? What if Frodo had kept and used the ring? Could be fun and all you'd need to do is paint a Gandalf black.

The Lord Of The Rings (1940)

You can't beat a good film on Boxing Day, so here for your entertainment is a often overlooked black and white classic from 1940; The Lord Of The Rings starring Humphrey Bogart as Frodo, Sydney Greenstreet as Gandalf and Marlene Dietrich as Galadriel.

Hyborian Age Cimmerians

Got a bit distracted today at the painting table and painted up this unit of 10mm barbarians from Kallistra!

I've always enjoyed Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and decided a while back that 10mm and Warmaster would be the way to go to collect some Hyborian armies, a few packs of barbarians later and typically no further progress was made! :-(

This first Cimmerian unit has been sat on a shelf, based and undercoated, for a good couple of years now and for some reason today I decided to just advance them a little bit before returning to the projects in hand which were drying...

For 10mm I give miniatures a black undercoat before a heavy drybrush of a base colour (in this case brown) before picking out detail. This means if I miss something it has some paint on it and will still stand out from the undercoat. In between checking the cricket scores I kept coming back to this unit to add a little bit more until I finished them!

For good measure I finished off this unit of Battle of the Five Armies GW plastic Goblins which had been sitting around painted and merely waiting for a drybrush on the base and some flock. Took all of two minutes and now they're done!

There are other projects that need finishing more urgently so I am relegating 10mm to an "as and when" project, painting up a unit at a time, in between other projects for a bit of light relief. so eventually there will be a useable number done and ready for a bit of Howard or Tolkien Warmaster action on the games table...

Postscript: "as and when" eh? Just ordered some more barbarians off Kallistra and their new Vikings look very nice as well, dang...