Reinforcements Have Arrived

My Army of the Dead needed some faster units so I've added a small detachment of cavalry to assist them - 6 Riders of the Dead now all painted up and ready for battle.

Note to self: repaint the base rims!

Morannon Orcs

 I painted up the 36 Morannon Orcs from the Pelennor Boxset with the aim of working on my accuracy and speed painting skills - originally I was aiming to spend about 5 minutes per model but I missed that target and spent about 12 minutes each for a total of  just over 7 hours. That's still considerably faster than anything else I've painted to date so I'm pretty pleased with my experiment. I could have saved about an hour by priming with Silver Spray but didn't have any.

I went with a fairly simple scheme and painted the entire army was one large batch, applying each colour to every model in turn. I've always painted in small batches before (maybe 6-8 models) so doing 36 in one go was rather different, but I actually really liked it as I could see the progress being made and everything got finished at the same time.

Broadly, the timings per model worked out at as follows:

• 2 mins to base silver, wash & drybrush
• 2 mins to base red & wash
• 2 mins to base grey, wash & highlight
• 2 mins to base faces, wash & highlight
• 1 min to paint, wash & highlight hair & fur
• 2 mins to paint & highlight straps (fiddly!)
• 1 min to paint & highlight wood areas

The Paint Scheme for future reference was as follows:

• Prime with Abaddon Black Spray

Armour

• Basecoat with Ironbreaker
• Wash with Reikland Fleshshade

Red Cloth

• Basecoat with Memphiston Red (2 coats needed)
• Wash with Druchi Violet

Grey Cloth

• Basecoat with Skavenblight Dinge
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Stormvermin Fur

Skin - Variant 1

• Basecoat with Baneblade Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Baneblade Brown

Skin - Variant 2

• Basecoat with Doombull Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Skrag Brown

Skin - Variant 3

• Basecoat with Catellan Green
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Hightlight with Elysian Green

Hair

• Basecoat with Eshin Grey
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Dawnstone

Fur

• Basecoat with Mournfang Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade

Wood

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Steel Legion Drab

Straps

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Gorthor Brown

Basing

• Apply coat of Stirland Mud
• Drybrush Tyrant Skull
• Add Tufts (Warpainter Scrub Grass small / standard tufts)
• Paint Base Rims Steel Legion Drab

2018 - October Update

This month I painted more models that I have in the last 2 years (not a great feat admittedly!). I'm amazed how much the re-launch of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game has rekindled my interest in my hobby and it's been wonderful to have something to relax with in the evenings after work.

On the painting side I finished  the 20 Army of the Dead from the Pelennor Fields Boxset, plus the 10 I had lurking in storage, and the King of the Dead.

Even better, I spent a few evenings knocking together a display board for them and entered the Armies on Parade competition at GW Winchester. I quite rightly failed to place with my rather last-minute entry but I was so pleased to have produced something tangible (and at least one fine person decided to give me one of their votes so I even got a shiny pin for my cabinet!)

I also put together some scatter terrain so that I we can fight over something more interesting than piles of rocks

Total achievements:

Painted: 31 Models: 30 Army of the Dead + 1 King of the Dead

Bought: 14 Models:  6 Knights of Dol Amroth, 4 Morannon Orc Commanders, Betrayer Ft & Mounted and  Suladan Ft & Mounted (and a sneaky set of measures)