Mordorian Mischief
Having completed all the Mordor stuff on my painting desk including the Fell beast that has been there for over 12 months I thought I would knock together a quick blog before they go to their new forever home... However before you delve too deeply and come up disappointed please be warned that there is literally no tactical or gaming advice here. Just pictures and the occasional painting note,
Sauron - The big bad himself and a surprisingly trick mini to paint as there is no colour to break up the darkness so its all about shading the blacks into grey without becoming actually grey and taking advantage of the metal surfaces for contrast. Non metallic metal would be cool but when i painted this i wasnt yet confident in its use so went with tmm instead.
Without the guy on the floor there is a slight oddness to the pose as if he has just spotted something interesting but not threatening in front of him like a squirrel maybe or a coin.
Witch King on Fell Beast - great model and perfect for the airbrush. Again its grey but i added the bands of light and dark to give it a more interesting variety. Similarly the dorsal spikes were lightened upwards and edge highlighted for contrast. Wing veins painted in a lighter version of the same colour of grey as i just added white to the remnants in the airbrush cup. The grey itself was German grey from Vallejo lightened up with desert yellow and deck tan which warmed it up a bi in stages.
The WK himself was painted as per Sauron as there isn't much to go at and tbh he becomes secondary here. As an assembly tip when cutting the reins from the sprue there are tiny semi circular tabs at the 'body' end which you don't want to cut off thinking they are sprue.....
Also you can build the second rider and fit him to a horse to get a mounted Ringwraith. I had a spare horse from a Warlord games mounted Samurai and the horse decorations were a great match. You can see him at left in top picture.
Ringwraiths, still going with the black theme.....
Metal Shaman i picked up from Ebay absolutely caked in paint to the point where it was basically unrecognisable so into the dettol it went. And was then forgotten about for several months.However once it came out the paint literally fell off and it was back to bare metal.
Gothmog, Orc General. My favourite bit in the whole trilogy is when Gothmog watches with enormous sang froid as the huge rock hurtles towards him and misses by just feet. Here he rides his Warg a tad too dynamically.
My Ebay purchase was missing the sword so i knocked up one from a metal pike by hitting it with a hammer until it was flat then drilling out his hand.
Gothmog with a unit of Morannon Orcs which also contains Shagrat and Gorbag though I cant remember which is which.
Multi purpose Armoured Troll who does double duty in both Mordor and Isengard armies. In the Isengard he is part of the Isengard Panzer Division with crossbow artillery support and Warg Riders for speed. Here he has less support as i do'nt have any black riders nor the war machine so he is basically fire and forget and hope to take down his points value!
Morannon Orcs with two basic skin tones, dark brown or browny green. I did half with each colour for variety. There is a lot of armour here which was painted normally then glazed with browns to tone down as i imagine maintenance schedules and cleaning are minimal in the armies of Mordor.
Morannon Orcs with pointy sticks
Morannon Orcs with hand weapons
There were a whole slew of units I never obtained for Mordor that I would have liked to have painted, the War catapult, Black guard, Morghul Knights and even the lowly Mordor Orcs being the main ones. However these are now on their way to a new owner in Mordor (London) along with the rest of the collection to finance my new 3d printer more of which in future blogs.