I wasn’t expecting to paint Lord of the Rings models this weekend, but there we are. I watched a couple of friends play a game of the current ruleset (Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game) a few days back and it got me excited to play some games of my own, and by extension paint some models for the game. I used to play the Lord of the Rings SBG (as it was called back then) a lot during its peak, so this is a fun trip down memory lane for me. I dug up and dusted off the case my Moria dwarves were stored in and found the army as I’d left it, about half painted in a scheme I’d decided back then I no longer liked and abandoned. Armed with a new enthusiasm and a paint scheme that is pretty much just primary colours I’ve started repainting these models.
First up, the vault warden teams. I have 5 teams in the army (a team is a shield dwarf and a spear dwarf).
The paint scheme is simple, I didn’t want to spend too much time on these models so I used a method I use quite a lot for army models: basecoat the models, wash one colour across their entirety, and a single round of highlights.
You can see the models after the base coat stage above. The scale mail and other gold bits were basecoated with Citadel Balthasar Gold, cloth and shields with Vallejo Heavy Blue, chain mail with Vallejo Metal Colour Magnesium, secondary cloth with Vallejo Heavy Red, leather with Vallejo Armor Brown and finally the bases with Vallejo Cold Grey.
After the basecoat was dry, I covered the models in Citadel Agrax Earthshade, taking care to not overload any sections, and leaving the bases a little bit patchy to add some variation.
Once the Agrax Earthshade was dry I moved on to painting the bases. I wanted to try something new here, so I decided to use washes to tint the sand a variety of colours. First I did some underpainting by dry brushing the sand with Vallejo Cold Grey, followed by Vallejo Bone White. Then I applied Citadel Reikland Fleshade, Drakenhof Nightshade, and Athonian Camoshade in patches all over the base, and with a brush loaded with water I smoothed the transitions between the washes. Once dry I added some Woodland Scenics clumping foliage and some green foam to represent heaths.
The goal was to stick to single highlights to keep the process fast, so the mail received a highlight of Vallejo Chainmail Silver, the gold Vallejo Glorious Gold, the leather 50/50 Vallejo Armor Brown and Vallejo Beasty Brown, the red cloth Vallejo Gory Red and the blue cloth Vallejo Magic Blue.
For the shields, a single highlight would have been far too stark, so I first did a 50/50 Vallejo Heavy Blue and Vallejo Magic Blue highlight, followed by pure Magic Blue. I tried to give it a rough texture to make it look pretty beat up. To add to the effect I added scratches with Vallejo Metal Colour White Aluminium.
Overall I’m happy with how these models turned out, I painted them on and off today, so they were relatively quick to paint. If I can keep the momentum going I’d like to keep this rhythm up and paint the rest of the army relatively soon.
Lair of the Lagomorph 
2 thoughts on “Vault Warden Teams”