Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Knight of Umbar

Not a whole lot to talk about with this post.  Here is my second named ringwraith, The Knight of Umbar.



It was an interesting model to paint, mainly because of the slight greenish tint in his armor.  I gave him more of a heroic pose, as if leaping over the rock.  I thought it looked cooler than the rather static pose you tend to see.  It'll be fun to see how well he does on the battlefield.  2 down, 1 to go...

Saturday, February 14, 2015

The Dwimmerlaik

So things are heating up in preparation for Adepticon 2015.  Sadly, there is no standard 750 LOTR tournament this year.  I can't help but be a little disappointed by this.  However, there will be a 750 point, 20 model limit, march to mount doom madness elimination style tournament.  I didn't play in the one that was ran during 2013, so it should be fun.

That being said, I've been tinkering with my list since December.  Originally, I was going to rock Buhrdur and 8 cave trolls figuring it'd be a cool theme.  Also a horde of cave trolls with 3 wounds a pop surrounding big heroes..... yeah, your going to eat up all your might and you might kill 2 if your lucky, but you'll eventually roll shitty and the hammers will come down.  Unfortunately, I don't have any cave trolls painted up, and after looking over how much work I'd have to do, I figured it'd be easier to do higher point cost heroes with a lower model count.

And with that, I decided to do a pure Mordor list.  This gives me the motivation to paint up some named Ringwraiths.  So up first, The Dwimmerlaik......



I scowered the interwebs looking for pictures of other people's models of this guy.  Slim pickins' for sure, and the pictures I did see I wasn't too thrilled with the paintjobs.  Either they went with a more bluish tint (completely forgoing the bottom white parts) or did the dirty drybrush method in which the model looked too bright.  I really didn't see anyone try to emulate GW's example, and that's basically what I wanted to follow.  I'm not the most skilled in painting black, so I spent a fair bit of time going back and forth with my greys.  Also, blending pure white to black is a pain in the ass to do.  Hopefully if you stumbled upon my site looking for examples on how to paint this guy, you found it useful (as far as pictures go).  I think he turned out pretty good.  I still need more practice with blacks, but I have 2 other ringwraiths coming in the near future.  Check back for more later....

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The Elusive Shade

A little story first.....

Last year at Adepticon I was looking around at this one area that sells loose and OOP miniatures, as well as bargin bin stuff, painted stuff, and various other products.  It's one of my favorite areas to browse thru when I go to adepticon.  So, I was slumming thru the "LOTR Bin" on the first day of the Convension, most of the miniatures in the bin being in little plastic bags with a "$2" or "$1" price written on the bag with a black marker.  They also have a few loose blister packs swimming in the bin as well.  As I was browsing, I grabbed one of the blister packs to look at, and what do I behold??

The Shade.....  the elusive shade that went OOP with the first or second batch of LOTR products from GW that were discontinued.  I had been looking for this model for over a year and all I could find were ebay auctions with an $80+ price tag on it.  Sorry, but $80 dollars for one miniature is a bit crazy to pay for any one model that isn't riding a dragon or is a huge monster.  Alas, I had the elusive shade in my hands with a price tag of $8.  I quickly snatched it, paid for it, and shoved it in my bag.

Time passed, and I had never painted it for some reason.  I had put it together, primed it, and left it in my bin until this past weekend.  So here He/She/It is....







So I'll admit, it's not my best work, but I think it looks pretty cool and I got to play with blending techniques.  All in all, should be a fun model to throw behind my lines to lower the enemies fight value.  I might in the future attempt my own Shade conversion with a mix of Warhammer and LOTR products.  We'll see though as I have mountains of pewter before me that need to be put to the brush.  Enjoy!