Miniature Feature - Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, The Wargs

Lately I've been painting the wargs needed for the Fellowship of the Ring Campaign. All in all, it's 18 wild wargs and a chieftain leading them.

 A hunting pack of wargs

Painting these has taken some time and I've learned a few things along the way.

1) Don't try to paint more than 12 of the same model at the same time. It gets too boring and tedious. Just do a smaller amount of models at the same time. I've found that 6 cavalry models or 12 infantry models is pretty much the perfect amount for me.

2) Always, and I do mean always, remove the plastic grass Games Workshop have a tendency to put on cavalry models to support them. Glueing foliage to every plastic model that has these long strands of plastic "grass" (looks more like they tried to model a windburst or something) just makes the models look too similar.

3) Games Workshop's new black primer sucks. It just runs of metal models and on plastic it tends to fog and turn way too grey which in its turn means I just have to re-primer the models using a brush which makes the spray pointless. I gotta write a rant in the future about it, just got to remind myself of it.

A bit off-topic, but anyhow, there you have my wargs finished!

A warg chieftain feasting on a ranger behind a shrubbery 

(Ni!...)

-Tobias

Miniature Feature - Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, Seven of the Nine

Seven of the Nine ringwraiths is finally finished and I hope you like the result. These models will soon see some action atop the gaming board when we start our Fellowship of the Ring campaign which will be featured here in the near future.

If you want to know how I painted these I described it in the miniature painting log a while ago!

Seven of the Nine prowls the woodlands

In-game I'm not completely sold on the effectiveness on these models. They look cool, act cool but couldn't kill a  starving lemming in close combat. At least they have a problem to take on good heroes (even the hobbits) unless they have some backup.

Together with other soldiers of Sauron however is a completely different story. They are great anti-wizard tools and together with other troops they easily help kill the best of heroes. But on their own they quickly drain their will and poof out of existance. Unless in combat with a bearer of the one ring they tend to run out of will before they kill anything.

It could be just me that havent learned how to play a side consisting of 3-9 ringwraiths and hopefully I will get more use of them using a different tactic later. We will see in the future when we do the Fellowship of the ring campaign.

-Tobias

Terrain Feature: Undergrowth

I've finally gotten around to take pictures of the undergrowth I made in the guide upon a gaming table. Enjoy!

The clutter of difficult terrain

A warg cheiftain has claimed a ranger amongst the undergrowth

I'm happy how these turned out and mixed in with the terrain we already have they look great!

-Tobias

Miniature Painting - The rest of the nazguls

Today I've finished the rest of the seven nazguls I set out to do. I've used the same technique on all which I described when presenting The Dark Marshal. Enjoy!

The Betrayer

 The Knight of Umbar

The Dwimmerlaik

The Undying

As soon as I've finished their bases and varnished them I will take a groupshot of the seven as a miniature feature. Hope you enjoy my work!

-Tobias

Miniature Painting - Lord of the Rings, The Shadowlord

I've actually managed to finish another nazgul using the same technique I used on the Dark Marshall.

Behold! The Shadowlord!

The Shadowlord

-Tobias

Miniature Painting - Lord of the Rings, The Dark Marshal

Today I have just about finished a nazgul for Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. The Dark Marshal to be precise. Im currently spending most of my time building a helms deep terrain feature which will show up on the blog soon.

 The Dark Marshal

(sorry for not cleaning up excessive static grass before taking the picture)

I didn't take pictures during the painting session, mostly because I forgot my camera....

But I started with basecoating the entire model Chaos Black. Then I painted all metal areas Boltgun Metal. After that I painted all the leather straps Scorched Brown and while having the colour out all the gold details with a 50/50 Scorched Brown/Shining Gold mix.

After this I started the cloak which I first re-basecoated in a 20/80 mix of Codex Grey and Chaos Black. Then I made a thick highlight of 40/60 Codex Grey/Chaos Black. Lastly I painted another thin line of highlight onto the edges of the cloak with a 50/50 mix of Codex Grey/Chaos Black. After this step I thouroughly washed the entire mini with Badab Black.

Lastly I highlighted all the edges of the metals with Chainmail and Shining Gold accordingly.

-Tobias

Terrain Building Guides: Making undergrowth, part 3

Now it is time to finish off the pieces of undergrowth. After everything has dried I start with painting the entire piece in a dark brown basecoat with lots of water to get an even layer. The paint I use for this is wall paint bought from a local retailer. Its more or less the same color as Games Workshop's Scorched Brown.

8) Pieces basecoated

After the basecoat I drybrush a brown similar to Games Workshop's Bestial Brown over the whole piece to bring out a lighter color from it.

9) First drybrush

After making sure the first drybrush is completely dry I drybrush Games Workshop's Bleached Bone over all the sand and rocks.

10) Final drybrush of the first layer

Now I pick out all the big rocks and larger bits of sand with Games Workshop's Adeptus Battlegrey. Painting the rocks in a different color than the ground will add some depth to the piece and match most of my own models basings.

11) The rocks painted grey

After the basecoat is dry I drybrush the grey areas heavily with Games Workshop's Codex Grey.

12) The rocks drybrushed

Finally I add a highlight by drybrushing the rocks lightly with Games Workshop's Fortress Grey and this finishes the painting portion of the project.

13) Painting done

Now I add static grass heavily over the whole piece using PVA glue to glue it into place.

 14) Flocked!

And last but not least I add bits of clump foliage, using a hot glue gun, to add more life to the piece and to actually make it look like undergrowth.

15) Finished!

I'm finally done. The pieces will soon be featured in a coming terrain feature article where it will be shown on a gaming table. Thank you for reading and having patience with this project! Hopefully you found this article interesting and informative!

-Tobias