From TeemuL: Amroth of Lorien [Fantasy] (25 points)

For the Fantasy section at the library I chose the old and faithful J.R.R. Tolkien (you might be familiar with recent film flop "Wild Wandering Adventures of Murin and Drar during the time of Lord of the Rings" from the last Challenge). This is again an old metal Mithril Miniature, M208 to be precise from the year 1991. He is called Amroth of Lorien, a former king of Lothlorien and a victim of tragic love story with elf maiden Nimrodel.

I tried to choose simple but elegant colours, fit for a king and chose dark blue and green. The blue cloak was inspired by the high elf cloaks of the Fellowship of the Ring movie.

I am quite happy with the blue cloak, but there are some fine details on the model, that I just couldn't catch before taking photos, so some of the details are "faint"...

Three different shades of blue on the cloak, looks quite good. :)

I had a plan before the Library theme was released and I was certain, that my plan would not survive. So far I have finished 0 models from the plan and 6 outside the plan...

One 28mm model with 20 points from the Fantasy location should give me 25 points. I'm now ready to move on in the Library and guess what - the next minis aren't part of the plan... :D

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I always enjoy seeing your work with these old school LotR minis from Mithril (and they seem to have a figure for every character that Tolkien put pen to paper). I agree, the blue cloak is terrific. Well done! More please. :)

I like that I've messed with your Plan, Teemu. My work here is doing its task. *wipes hands together*

- Curt

From TeemuL: In the superhero lands [Superheroes][Limo] (62 points)

"Superhero movies have much in common with Tolkien's Middle-Earth, both of them are very clearly divided to good and evil. So there is lot to steal.. err... inspire from superhero movies regarding our Murin and Drar project. One of the key things is the arch-rival, I'm quite sure we need something like that to carry our story - at least if we are going the superhero way, let's see. Anyway, that is something for the script writers to worry about, we can focus on action and special effects. But since we are here at the studio, let's take a look at these superheroes here on the left before we take a taxi ride to Westerns..."

For my superhero studio I present pretty much every superhero miniature I have. These three came from a YourModelBox box some time ago and they are from Warlord Games for Strontium Dog, which says nothing to be, but I learnt that it means Judge Dredd. I don't know much about Judge Dredd either, I have seen the Stallone movie, but that's about it.

I painted these with Contrast paints, the guy on the right is most likely a judge and from the good side. The other two probably are not and I have painted them in different colours than judge. I think them as underhive people, but I don't know if such things exist in Mega City One. All the colours choices are mine, I vaguely remember Judge Dredd being in black-yellow-and-red, and those are the colours I chose for the good guy. I hope I don't offend any Judge Dredd fans with this post. :)

And then there is this thing, which I believe is at least related to the superhero worlds, if not a superhero by itself. This is Pting from Doctor Who series. It is from Warlord Games, too, and I got it from their mystery box last autumn. Doctor Who is even a bigger mystery than Judge Dredd, but based on my knowledge from this Challenge, it can be categorized as a superhero world, at least if thinking loosely.

This is plastic, while the Strontium Dogs were metal, and very small. Take a look at the top photo. I learnt from internet, that one of the colours valid for these is red, so I painted him red. And the thing it is carrying, I painted in metal and yellow, because those were the colours I saw on the mini while researching in the net. Very simple paint job. Sorry again, if I offend any Doctor Who fans. :)

Once again I need a limo to take me to a better place. I have something almost done for western, but I can't get there without help. I wonder how I always seem to corner myself this way... This lovely lady is Tughaib of the Spirits, Mithril M166, for supporting the MERP range. Not the goodest person, so I painted her in similar darkish colours as the Strontium Dogs baddies. Nice and characterful mini. And she will provide me a ride the Westerns studio.

From manufacturer: "Tughaib, or "Tughaib of the Spirits" is a handsome woman, born of the harsh highlands of the Misty Mountains. Said to have Elven blood, she was tall, strong and wily. She had a power, born perhaps of that rumoured Elven blood, but also the product of long years of training and learning at the feet of the priest Eribhen who gave her the Ghostbane Staff in heritage.
With the power of the staff, she was able to bend unquiet spirits to her will. There, in the foothills of the Misty Mountains, overlooking the barren crags of the Dunmen, she dreamed of becoming a power, a queen of ghosts.
History does not tell precisely what happened to Tughaib of the spirits, but the wise believe some brave souls slew her, and scattered her army of dark things to the spring winds in the mountains."

And then the points: 4 minis of 28mm category is 20 points.

1 mini (Pting) in 15mm category is 2 points.

2 locations (Superheros and Limo) is 40 points.

That is 62 in total, if the minion approves.

Minion Miles: I approve!

From BenitoV: Riding Lady Sarah's Limo to the Books Studios (67 points)

This week, I took a short break from my Dark Ages Saga projects and started exploring some of the Blue Pass Studios sites. You may remember I stopped last at the green pass Casting Couch Studio (which I'd likely revisit before the end of the Challenge) so I needed transport to move to the Blue Pass area.

To hire Sarah's Limo services, my first entry today is another of the long forgotten (and very deeply hidden of the 1980s layers of my lead mountain) model of the Lord of the Rings Mithril range, in this case Galadriel the Elf Queen .... still wrapped in the original blister after all these years (!!).

The scene represents Galadriel operating her famous mirror, which, at least according to the film, informs basically of nothing to the viewer: it could be the past, or the present or the future but also an event that will never take place... or may be yes... who knows... I never really understood what was useful for, frankly speaking.

 

I firstly painted Galadriel's dress all white; but was not happy with the final result (too dull) For that reason, in a second attempt I added some contrasting electric light blue color to what looks like one of those pashminas that my wife likes to wear when the weather is not oo cool in the evenings.

 

OK ... now I'm inside the lino... and where are we driving to? ... To the Books Studio, where we will be filming an epic version of one of the world's most famous sagas: The Lod of the Rings trilogy.

For this purpose, I have rescued from the lead pile, and painted these four world-reknown hobbits (also preserved in the Mithril's original blisters)

 

 

Frodo and Sam can be easily identified (Frodo using a sword and Sam looking like a pack mule) but the other two (Merry and Pippin) .... well I'll let to everyone to decide who's who.

 

All the models in today's submission are Mithril's metal in 28m and I have estimated to be woth 67 points, detailed as follows:

• 1 x 28mm Galadriel = 5 points
• Galadriel's mirror, pitcher and column = 2 points
• Lady Sarah's Limo bonus = 20 points
• 4 x 28mm hobbits @5 points = 20 points
• Bonus Books Studios = 20 points
  

 Also, with a 25 points total scoring (excluding the bonus points) around the common theme of The  Lord of The Rings this submission will also hopefuly accrue 1 point towards the Squirrel Challenge (minions to decide).

Next week I'm planning to walk my way to the Westerns Studio... stay tunned for another Tuesday episode.

Excellent work on these 1980s miniatures, Benito! 

Tamsin

From TeemuL: Bandit [Limo] (25 points)

"I mentioned Fangorn and Huorns earlier, didn't I? Unbeknownst to most, there are some bandits in the Fangorn, too. A bit like that jolly bunch in Sherwood forest. I can't imagine how Murin and Drar would not meet them and get into all kind of troubles and adventures there. This is an adventure film after all. She is one of the bandits, we will be travelling with her while we are moving to the "Blue" zone in the Studios and take some input from the Superheroes movies. Murin and Drar are kind of superheroes, aren't they? They will be, that's my plan. Superheroes is very profitable movie industry, rebooting every ten year or less, at least half a dozen movies for each sprint, couple of spin-off movies and TV shows. It is a gold mine, people just love familiar experiences feeded with supernatural speed to their brain and it will only make them want more!"

I've been rather busy recently, last week I rushed my minis just before the deadline and was left with practically no wip minis on the table. In addition I was away for weekend (traditional boardgames, beer and boys weekend event including sauna) followed by mandatory hang-over and tiredness and all the things I still do outside the hobby universe. So, only one mini this week, but at least I managed to continue posting something every week.

This miniature is a Mithril M194, Female Bandit from Fangorn range. I chose greens and browns and greys and other similar colours suitable for Bandits and Fangorians, a bit of purplish pink to spice her up. All done by Citadel Contrasts.

This should provide me a nice ride to Superheroes studio, I really tried, but according to my map, I can't get there by walking so another 20 point Limo ride is needed...

5 points for the 28mm model and 20 points for yet another limo location.

Minion Miles: Another great submission - I like the shading on the green cloak.

From TeemuL: Pipe-Weed in Middle-Earth [High Adventure][Limo] (77 points)

"Let's get back to the real issue and our movie of Murin and Drar and leave this European movie industry alone, nothing but bare breasts, "artistry" and sad endings really. We have some problems to cast the main characters, it is extremely difficult to find proper dwarfs these days and it would cost millions to digitally modify/create them. Let's focus on the humans and others for a while. Dwarfs live long so it is not totally unbeliavable that Murin and Drar lived during the time of Morwen and Nienor, so we have prepared to make some flashbacks. By the way, the story of Morwen and Niniel is sooo sad, something like from Finnish sagas*, if you ask me, not a proper plot for us, but we can use the characters, of course. It is rather easy to find pretty ladies, much easier than finding dwarfs. We have some old men auditing for a role of Gandalf, you know, he lived long so probably met our long living duo. And these orcs, orcs are everywhere and trolls are always handy in action scenes. It is quite easy to find orcs around the studio, too. Trolls are harder, we need to get some NBA or NFL players for audit. Did I say this is an action /adventure movie, a high adventure movie?"

*The Story of Kullervo

This is the full set of my Mordor Orcs, the one on the right was painted last year

Morwen and Nienor is a nice dual sculpt or how would you call it? Morwen is wife of Húrin and mother of Túrin and Nienor (also known as Niniel). These fine ladies will give me a comfortable taxi drive from World Cinema to High Adventure.

Gandalf the Grey fits the High Adventure in so many ways. He had many adventures of his own and he started couple of adventures of others, all being quite high in quality and also going over the mountains and flying with eagles, lots of high stuff. And then the pipe-weed, whose effects might make someone feel high.

To accompany Gandalf I have a couple of Orcs and a Troll, almost mandatory for any adventure. All of these are metal minis from Mithril and painted mostly with GW's traditional paints, usually a basecoat, wash and drybrush. Nothing too fancy, but not too simple either. The troll is Mithril M295, Mordor Black Troll. The archer is Mithril M311B Mordor Orc Archer, and previously painted is M311A. The standard bearer is Mithril M310, Mordor Orc Standard Bearer and the one with the shield and mace is Mithril M313A, Armoured Orc. I might have M313B somewhere, too. These came some years ago in a mixed bag, so I might have it or not.

They are very dark. I first made the decision to give them very dark skin, Rhinox Hide, and also paint the wooden parts black, like the bows etc. And most of the leather, too. They have some armour here and there, which I painted quite dark using Iron Warriors and highlighted with Leadbelcher. To make them something else than dark blobs, I decided to use Ushabti Bone to various ropes, rags and similar stuff to break the dark areas. There is a soft drybrush with brown on skin and some grey on blacks.

Gandalf is my favourite, it was a bit difficult to get different greys there, but I guess I managed. There is a soft blue wash on his clothes and cloak and light grey and off-white drybrushing. Beard is grey, drybrushed to white. The hat is light blue, drybrushed with greys. Somehow I managed to make transitions quite smooth, I hope I could do that more often. The one visible eye turned out ok, too. Gandalf is Mithril M228, Gandalf the Wizard.

Morwen and Nienor are quite simple. I guess I'm not alone, who gets confused with dresses and all accesorizies and things like that. What's wrong with chainmail bikini? Anyone, I tried to make them look classic and classy, single colour should do that. Some washes and drybrushes, little bit attention to faces, since they are so visible. The blue dress is basically a basecoat and wash while the orange one is basecoat and drybrush - the latter is very faint in the photos. Morwen and Nienor, Mithril M216.

Mithril minis come with their own bases. I glued them on MDF bases (various sizes) from Warbases and then used some Vallejo Earth Texture to hide the metal base.

3 Orcs, 1 Wizard and 2 Ladies in 28mm for 30 points.

1 Troll, 40mm, for 7 points.

Limousine and High Advanture for 40 points.

The Map

Karwansaray had a Christmas Day sale and I pressed the button to buy couple of rules I have been thinking about for some time. I had some issues with the package tracking, but eventually these arrived on Monday. It seems I might get into some historical skirmishes in the future...

It's a bit of role reversal here as Teemu is my regular minion and it's nice to give some kudos back.  Nice collection of LoTR stuff teems and I'm enjoying your tour of the Studios.  I really like Gandalf and the ladies are lovely too.  The Orcs and Toll are neither nice nor lovely, nor are they meant to be.

From BenitoV: Dark Age Warband... and back to the 80's (67 points)

Two new set of entries this week. Firstly, a new unit of warriors suitable for almost any Saga warband of the Dark Age period. 

This project started as an Anglo-Danish warband for a campaign we played just before Christmas; but frankly speaking, these models can fit nicely in any other warband of the same period, Vikings, Saxon, whatever.

The models are from the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors range, in this case just straight from the box, no conversions. The same models were used last week for my Late Roman army levies unit. The shields are transfers from Little Big Men Studio.

For my second entry, I walked my way to the past and visited the 80's studio, using for this purpose a model I found in the deepest layer of my lead pile.

 

Saruman and a glittering ball, not for the NY Studio 54 but for Middle Earth's Isengard. The Palantir was the predecessor of the mobile phone, alas heavier and with less mobility from what I saw in The Two Towers film.  The scene represents Saruman in the act of conjuring Sauron and I'm quite happy with the painting work of the eye in the Palantir (in this case, very much inspired in the Peter Jackson's films).

 

 

The model belongs to the older Middle Earth/Mithril range of models (produced when Peter Jackson was a very young man) and I found it at home packed in the original blister, after close to 40 years since buying it. I collected the whole Fellowship of the Ring at that time to be used with the LoTR RPG game; unfortunately the project never took off, as my gaming group's interests shifted to Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

I estimate 67 points for this entry, including  a couple of points (?) for the Palantir:

8 x 28mm warband models @5 points = 40 points

1 x 28mm Saruman @ 5 points  + 2 points for the Palantir = 7

Bonus 1980s Studio = 20 points

Subtotal = 67 points  

Nice generic dark age warriors and that's a great old school Saruman! With four Green zone studios under your belt, will you now be moving into the Blue zone? Straight to Superheroes or will you hop along the yellow-brick road or take a limo ride?

Tamsin

From TeemuL: Middle-Earth extras [Limo] (55 points)

"As we all know, adventure movies don't really have a plot, or a beginning or an end, no theme, just lots of action and adventure to keep the audience busy and emotional. 'Wild Wandering Adventures of Murin and Drar during the time of Lord of the Rings' is exactly that, but of course there needs to be some kind of  a script and we have several! At least drafts. There will be flashbacks, so here we have an old dwarf king, there's Mardin with his huge spear and some more warriors for action scenes. There is also an Barrow-wight Lord, we know (and dwarfs know), that there are several treasures buried in Barrow-Downs and dwarfs love treasures. They have no problem with going underground, but they might be a bit scared of ghosts, but Murin and Drar will gather their courage and visit those treasure chambers. And yes, Easterling Shamaness for a sub-plot scene, let's see if she stays in the final production or not."

Five more dwarfs, but these are metal ones from Games Workshop, not plastic. I guess the regular warriors are from the initial release, when they had a very limited plastic support. As is noted in this same Challenge, for some reason they are wearing chainmails (2 out of 3 anyway), but none of the plastics are. Well, they were nice to paint anyway.

Then there is one Dwarf King, one of those to receive a ring from Sauron, I guess. There are four different sculpts and I painted three of them two Challenges ago, but now I have the full set painted. Kings don't wear the the green and blue like the regular warriors, they use much more colours. Actually there is no green on this king.

And then we have Mardin, bodyguard of Durin I, with a huge spear. Black eye patch marks him as a veteran. He wears green and blue. All dwarfs are Contrast jobs excluding the metallics. The chainmails are Black Templar Contrast and then light drybrush of Leadbelcher.

I guess that counts as a real skull, not just a bony face?

Barrow-wight Lord (Mithril M256) follows the paint scheme of GW Barrow-wights which I painted in 2016. Here he is flanked by two of those previously painted minis. He has less armour, so is not necessarily that interesting. The recipe for painting is similar to Dead of Dunharrow, paint in grey and blue wash. But these have green highlight. When I originally painted the GW wights, I thought that they looked better without the green, so painted the Dunharrow ghosts without the green. Now I'm not that sure. I like how these look. And these have real weapons, not ghost weapons, so much more colourful than ghosts. He is on 32mm mdf base and of course there are no specific rules for him in MESBG, but I can use him as a regular wight - as long as my opponent approves the bigger base. :)

Last but not least, Easterling Shamaness (Mithril M322), who doesn't look like anything like the Easterlings in the movies. Actually I made a small mistake, I thought she was a different model and painted in dirty and dark colours, but I guess that works for a shamaness. They don't usually wear bright uniforms. And no rules for her, of course. May be she could be used as a war priest...

I do hope that this Shamaness grants me a ride to World Cinema.

In total 7 28mm minis for 35 points and 1 Limo for 20 points, 55 in total. And then my first skull for Skull Duel.

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Haha! I'm loving reading the production woes of 'Murin & Drar'. I really hope it all comes together and it makes it to the big screen, or at least to a streaming service.  :) While the GW dwarves are great (that spear is immense), my favourites are still these wonderful models from Mithril miniatures. The Barrow-wight Lord is excellent, and with your paint scheme, fits in nicely with the GW offerings. The Easterling Shamaness is very characterful as well, though I'm somewhat puzzled with her blue oven mitt right hand. She reminds me of Julia Child tentatively reaching out to a hot soufflé.  :P

Grand work, Teemu! Bring us more of these, please.

- Curt