Wash

My painting this week has been… lacklustre, to say the least. With the nights drawing in, I generally don’t get home in daylight hours, and my painting setup is largely reliant on natural light. What I have managed to get done this weekend has largely been on the Lord of the Rings warband I showed unprimed last week. I’ve gone with a fairly low effort approach, as I might end up churning out a lot of these boys – I will save the more in depth work for small warbands. I therefore started with simple basecoats for the whole model.

There is much to admire about the sculpts, but they are not without their problems. The way the space between the torso and spear has been filled is somewhat annoying; my solution has been to paint it in with black to help the eye skip over it. Once the basecoats are on, the armour is given a coat of basilicanum grey, and then I use raw umber oil paint to do all the shading exactly as shown in my Space Wolves painting guide.

It’s not perfect, but it avoids the pale, thin look that you can sometimes get with quick schemes. The oils work nicely with the crude features of the face, and orcs were never supposed to look pretty. For the bases I have returned to sand, which was always my default before GW released their texture paints. I have been pleased with the results. The model was finished with some static grass.

The other figure I have been working on is the warband’s leader, Anuzar, a Black Numenorian marshal based on the Mouth of Sauron. He is technically finished, but I couldn’t get any decent photos, and I’m also not convinced I’m happy with elements of the paintjob, so have a WIP shot for now.

Other than that, the weekend has largely been spent basecoating. 4 more swordmasters are in the works to defend the mage posted last week, and I have completed the basecoats on another 5 Morannon orcs.

Not much to look at now, but they will be a quick job for next weekend. I have some bits and bobs coming from Zealot miniatures, with the aim of doing some more stuff to populate Krognak’s magical fantasy realm. The aim is to make a battered, crooked knight with a retinue of grubby militiamen, proper low fantasy stuff. We’ll see how that turns out.

Krognak

I had planned to spend the first half of this week assembling and cleaning the remaining Frostgrave minis in preparation for a massive painting session in the latter half. The weather had other plans, however, and currently there is some kind of biblical flood happening outside. Disheartened but not defeated I have painted the previously primed “Redcaps” for the warband. The idea behind these fanatical cultists is that they are drawn to the arcane treasures found in the ruins of Azarkarnul. Their headgear identifies them as members of the cult but also mimics the crystalline growths found amongst the ruins. They are so eager to enter the ruins that they will accompany wizards for free (rules-wise they will represent thugs and thieves).

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With priming out of the question, I have used my hobby time to begin the construction of a simple diorama idea that I’ve been toying around with for some time. I’m using it as an opportunity to paint some Agincourt Men-at-Arms that I’d picked up from Perry Miniatures. Assembly was relatively painless save for some large gaps between the arms and torsos that needed to be filled. I imagine that some arm and torso combinations work better than others so I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve assembled more of them. The diorama depicts a wizard and his bodyguards as they fight to the last to defend their city from the beasts of winter. I have another idea for a duel diorama depicting a wizard fighting a beast but I’ll tackle that once I’ve got a bit more experience under my belt.

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I also knocked together another Frostgrave objective marker using the leftover milliput from the gap filling. It’s going to be painted in the same way as the crystals on the diorama base. What is the implication here? Is magic to blame for the unnatural winter? Where do wizards get those pointy hats from? All of these questions will be answered in a later post once the minis are painted. I have also found a doggo to accompany the warband. The model comes from Otherworld Miniatures and is on par with the rest of their fantasy range. His talents include finding bones and providing combat bonuses.

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Wash has also suggested that we play some LotR skirmish games when we are next able to meet up so I’ve dusted off my box of Warriors of Minas Tirith and ordered some generic heroes to lead them in a 400 point game. I’m not madly in love with the sculpts (the faces in particular are a bit rough) so I’m going to take a less focused approach to painting and instead aim to hammer out these boys as quickly as possible. They’ll make a decent enough diversion from the more focused painting required for the Frostgrave warband.

Finally, I’m also planning to start a historical army. Period-wise, I’m thinking of the Hundred Years’ War or the Wars of the Roses. Whilst I owe a substantial amount of the inspiration for the backstory of my DnD setting to the former warring period, the release of Never Mind the Billhooks has tempted me to dip my toes into the latter. Let me know if you have any system recommendations for either period in the comments.

That’s all for this week. Tune in next time for more progress! Unless this rain never ends. In which case tune in anyway for our first underwater post!