Wednesday 7 December 2022

Painting and Hobby: My Start in Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Part 1

 


Over the last few months I have been getting back into the swing of painting again.

It all started from trying to find a project to get me started and well after my annual Lord of The Rings marathon it gave me an idea to get on and paint some LOTR miniatures that have been on the to do list and thought this would make a great project.

Looking at my collection I had 23 Men of Minas Tirith and 24 Mordor Orcs which I think came from the original Return of the King set as well as a Cave Troll and a few other characters too.

With my eagerness to get stuck into the project which coincided with a trip to Selwig (you can see my trip here) where I piked up Theoden, Gandalf The White, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Lertz, Eowyn and Faramir.

So after not painting for 6 months I decided to do a batch paint and started with the Men of Minas Tirith.


I realised I was missing a Minas Tirith model from the set Return of The King set but started to paint anyway.  Then I got a message in my inbox saying Games Workshop were giving away a free Men Minas Tirith model if you went into a store. 

The hobby gods helped me out here as I popped down to my local and got my miniature to make the 24.

I got back to work painting all 24 miniatures which I did I did find it tough going. 

I don't know if it was a good idea to batch paint my for my first painting project in a while or it was just the miniatures being 20 years old are harder to paint.

Anyway after a while I managed to get them all done. To be honest I'm not 100% happy but they are ready for the tabletop.







Next I decided to try a hero model and painted the new plastic Theoden model and the experience painting this compared to the Men of Minas Tirith was night and day.

The mounted version Theoden was mostly painted when I bought it from Selwig but need finishing off and I had to match the colours to the version on foot as the was just undercoated black.










This was a pleasure to paint and I managed to match the colours well. It has nice details and painted fairly quickly and I was really happy with the results.

Next I worked on another model I picked up from Sewlg which was the old Faramir metal model which was mostly panted but I went over a few bits and made some touch ups.



In between painting I  looked on You Tube for inspiration and watched a video on painting Mordor Orcs using just contrast paints and some metallics.

As I have not used just contrast paints on models I though I would give it a go.

After just undercoating the minis white I started to get to work and first it felt like these were just looking a bit of a mess but as I trusted the process and carried on and they started to really come together.






They turned out pretty good and a contrast (no pun intended) to the previous Minas Tirith models I painted.

Now I felt I was on a roll and decided to work on the Cave Troll.



I magnetised the hand so I can either equip it with ether the hammer or spear.

It did not take long to get this together and tried to blend some skin tones on the front which is a work in progress but is tabletop ready.

During this project I was looking at paint guides, board builds such as the epic ones on Zorpazorbs You Tube channel and of course this lead me to looking at how to get into the game.

There are new battle host boxes which have 4 differnt factions that are a gateway to start the game but looking at them I have most of the models that make these up which is good to know so I can start playing the game.

Also I saw the the New Osgiliath box with the updated rule book but it was out of stock so I though well surly I can just get the rule book. Nope that was out of stock too.

Even most of the miniature appeared out of stock and just at the time when I had a £10 GW voucher from Warhammer plus subscription which I wanted to use.

 I did have my eye on the Sauron model as well but guess what that was out of stock too!

If you want to know I used the voucher to get some more paints.

Anyway I saw on Ebay that the old Pelennor Fields box set which came out a few years ago was on sale and the rule book that comes in the box is still valid even without the new FAQs.

One day I saw a copy of Pelennor Fields on sale for a good price and yep I got it.


So it arrived and as I was still in the middle of painting  I made a self imposed rule that I wont open it until I finish the rest of heroes first.

Why have I done this? Well I realised that I work better when I have a goal and it also makes it less over whelming when you have piles of plastic in front of you when you are in the middle of project.

So thats the plan foe now so I need to get on and finish the rest of the heroes.

Stay tuned..

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