Isengard army pt. 1: Saruman, Lurtz, Uglúk and Uruk-hai

Up next in my ongoing LoTR series is the start of a small Isengard army. So far I’ve stripped and repainted Saruman, Lurtz, Uglúk (all in metal) and 15 plastic Uruk-hai (10x with sword and shield, 5x with crossbows). I have another 12 Uruks to go, as well as 24 Mordor Orcs. And I’m also thinking of adding a Troll... or perhaps two?

The official metal Uruk-hai warriors with crossbows are ludicrously expensive. At the time of writing they are listed on the GW website for €22,50 for a pack of four figures! Several people online have had good results converting pike-wielding Uruk-hai into crossbowmen using the Fireforge weapon sprue. I decided to go the same route and the end result is okay I think. They don’t look quite as good as the metal figures, but they will do.

The painting process was pretty simple:

Saruman

Robes: Bone White 72.034. Then oil wash Quickshade Light Tone. After min. 24 hours highlight with Bone White 72.034 followed by White 70.951.

Skin: Vallejo Basic Skin Tone 70.815 with Quickshade wash.

Hair: White 70.951 with Quickshade wash.

Staff: Black 70.950

Uruk-hai (including Lurtz and Uglúk)

Metal: Black 70.950 heavily drybrushed with Gunmetal Grey 70.863. Then oil wash Quickshade Light Tone. After min. 24 hours highlight with Silver 72.052.

Skin: Roughly half of the figures Dark Fleshtone 72.044, the other half Charred Brown 72.045. The skin tone mixed with White 70.951 for the highlights. Black 70.950 for the shadows.

Leather: Leather Brown 70.871 with Black 70.950 for the shadows and English Uniform 70.921 for the highlights.

Comments

More simple Warhammer 40k terrain: craters and rubble piles

Time for some more simple 40k scenery: craters and rubble piles. Both are pretty easy projects and pretty quick too, if unlike me you plan out your work a little so you don’t need to continuously correct your mistakes along the way! For the craters, I started with two old writeable dvd’s. I first closed off the central holes with mdf miniature bases. I then broke off semi-triangular wedges of cork from a pan coaster and hotglued these to the dvds, forming circles (see the picture below). I then applied wall filler to the craters to hide the mdf circles covering the central holes and to add some texture to the cork. I then glued smaller bits of cork in between the larger wedges and added coffee grounds for texture. After this step I noticed that the cork wedges didn’t look very natural. Tapering them off made them look a lot better (picture below). I then gave everything a coat of black paint: I still thought the craters didn’t look quite right, though. They were a bit too uniform ...

Space Wolves killteam

Time for my second 100 pt. kill team, this time featuring the ever popular sci-fi Vikings known as Space Wolves. It’s a nice little group of three Intercessors and three Reivers. The new Primaris models are massive compared to the old Tactical Space Marines and to make them look even more impressive I based hem on bits of cork painted to look like rocks. The models were primed in Citadel Fenrisian grey. After this, I painted most of the details apart from the faces of the two tough guys that are too cool to wear helmets. I then gave everything a black wash and added (a bit crudely) the odd edge highlight. I then painted the faces following a pretty simple process of applying a base skin colour, washing with brown and then highlighting with a lighter skin tone. Finally, I drybrushed the rocks with dark grey, then light grey and finally very gently with white. As a finishing touch I added two layers of AK Snow Sprinkles for a nice half-melted snow look. I took my...

Gloomhaven characters

Back in the winter of 2020/2021, my wife and I played a lot of Gloomhaven. After several months of playing multiple games a week we put it away for a while, but recently we picked it back up again. Gloomhaven is probably one of the best tabletop games I’ve played. The only downside in my mind is that it can easily take you 15 minutes to set up a scenario, especially if you don’t invest in some aftermarket box inserts to organise the literally thousands of tiles, tokens, cards and standees. But once you’ve set everything up, the game plays really well. Plus, I really like that it is a cooperative game in which the players need to work together to get through a scenario. Anyway, the game comes with 18 plastic ‘heroic’ 28 mm or 32 mm scale miniatures. The monochrome grey plastic really stands out against the beautifully colourful floor tiles, so obviously these had to be painted... The plastic is a bit softer than your average model kit, but a lot harder than the soft plas...

Little Tanks & Tiny People

Search This Blog