Lair of the Lagomorph

I’ve been working on this board for a little while, mostly while stages on the dwarves themselves were drying. The idea was to make a display board to take to tournaments, that also doubled as a place to put the models at home. This meant it had to fit in my display cabinet, the ubiquitous Ikea glass cabinet, which has shelves roughly 30cm x 30cm. This is quite small for a display board, but this is a pretty elite army so the model count is relatively low, so I wasn’t too worried about managing to fit all the models.

I wanted to re-create the famous Durin’s Door, probably one of the more recognisable Lord of the Rings visuals, but not all lit up as it is mostly seen in the movies, but the simple engraving it appears at at the start of the scene. I also wanted to match the bases of my army, which have greys tinted with greens, brown-reds, and blues.

Here’s the board empty of models. I kept the painting fairly simple, this needs to be a backdrop to the army after all, not overpower them. Just as I did for the bases, I started from a grey base all over, and tinted it with washes. This time they weren’t the GW washes I used on the model bases, but very diluted mixes of inks, water, matt varnish, and detergent to help everything flow into the cracks. Rather than use a brush, I tried running these at a very low pressure through my airbrush, applying them pretty liberally.

I then misted the trees with some Vallejo Khaki, to differentiate them from the rocks a bit, and added the same bits of foam as on the models bases to add a bit of vegetation.

Here’s the army on the board.

Here is the army at a slightly higher angle so the models can be seen better.

The construction was relatively straightforward, I used cork tiles to make the floor sections, layering them to add some height. The rock wall was made from XPS foam, which is quite easy to carve. The rocky pillars were cut with a hot wire cutter, and all of the surface was textured with a ball of aluminium foil.

The door itself was carved into the rock by tracing a printout of the door with a pen. By pushing hard enough and using a ball point I was able to leave an impression of the door into the foam without tearing the paper.

I then added some trees made of roots from bushes that were cut down in my garden, simply attached by pinning them into the cork, with super glue (CA glue) to keep them fixed. A rough mix of sane was then applied to the cork surface. I used filler to smooth the edges of the foam and fill a few gaps in the construction.

Here’s the board and army in the display cabinet!

After a painting filled week, I’ve capped off the 800 points of Kingdom of Moria. This last batch has all of the warrior models, and the characters. The characters were already painted, so I can’t really count them, but I did rebase them and touch up a few areas to help them fit into the army some more.

These were painted in the same manner as described in the two previous posts (Vault Warden Teams, More Moria Dwarves), the only new material is the yellow banner, which was painted with Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown, and highlighted with the same colour after the overall Agrax Earthshade wash. The characters were painted so many years ago I can’t remember what was done there I’m afraid!

Overall pretty happy with that outcome for a week’s work. The tournament I painted these for is not till April, which means I actually have time to play practice games for once! I’m also working on a display board for this army, sized to fit in my display cabinets. That will be the subject of the next post, and I’m saving full army shots for when that is done.

I’ve kept up the momentum for my Middle-Earth SBG army, and have painted up two more batches of models over the last couple of days: some Iron Guard, and 3 ballistas.

These were all painted following the steps I described in the Vault Warden Teams article, with the exception of a few new items those models the teams did not have.

• Hair: The hair was painted one of three colours, each time in a simple base coat/wash/highlight pattern
  • Blond: Mig Zinc Yellow/Citadel Agrax Earthshade/Mig Zinc Yellow
  • Red: Vallejo Parasite Brown/Citadel Agrax Earthshade/Vallejo Parasite Brown
  • Black: Army Painter Black/Citadel Agrax Earthshade/50-50 Army Painter Black and Vallejo Cold Grey
• Skin: The skin was painted with a base coat of Vallejo Beige Red, washed with Citadel Contrast Guilliman Flesh, and highlighted with Vallejo Elf Skintone
• Wood: The wood on the ballistas was basecoated with Vallejo Leather Brown Primer (my undercoat for all these models), washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade, and highlighted in two stages with first Vallejo Khaki and then 50-50 Vallejo Khaki and Vallejo Bonewhite, with both sets of highlights done in lines in the direction of the wood grain.

I’ve now committed to playing in an 800 point Middle-Earth SBG tournament here in Perth in April, so I now have a goal for these models. I have an 800 point list planned out, and am over half-way to painting it with what I’ve done so far. Hopefully I can finish it this week and work on a display board for them.

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.