A Breech and Some Rocks

Here ends my posting of Lord of the Rings models, with two different subjects. We have a breeched fortress wall, and some, ahem, scatter terrain.

Wanting to do siege games my friends and I bought the old Games Workshop "mighty fortress" kit, injection moulded in styrene. The whole thing was constructed but only painted up in a basic way, so I didn't think it was particularly worth photographing. However, you you used to be able to buy separate wall and tower sections, so I went to some trouble to model a breeched wall section, as seen here. The painting isn't really up to the standard of the modelling, because it wouldn't have matched the rest of the structure. I built the broken wall as masonry outer faces with a rubble filling, the way massive walls are commonly constructed.

The defenders here, in the interests of a nice colour contrast, are Southrons, which I did in the way Tolkien describes them: kind of "Saracens", dressed in red and gold. They are from the old Vendel range for the era of Muslim rule in Spain, but I converted them a bit before painting.  

I made a lot of "scatter" pieces suitable for this and other skirmish games. It seemed a very suitable place for the Rangers of Ithilien to be sneaking around. Here we see their leader Faramir, nicely painted by my friend Garry Broom. 

The rocks are made out of real rocks, which I scrounged from the garden section of a local DIY store as "samples". They look quite good and were easy to do, but they weigh a ton! My LOTR terrain tray is quite a job to maul around...

And here stands Gandalf the White, as I think you will all know. I painted this figure exactly as the film and GW model showed him, because in this case it seemed to meet the expectation of him that we get from the book. I did put some effort in here to paint the folds of his clothing and the slightly different colours and textures of each not-quite-white garment. I must admit I was pretty pleased with how he came out.

Ruins of Middle Earth

This overgrown ruin been painted and dressed up by me, but it's basically a "ruined monastery" by the German firm Ziterdes. Their buildings are produced in "hard foam", ie expanded polyurethane, like the Hudson and Allen products. That's a specialised, expensive process to set up, but results in an ideal wargames model: strong , light and well-detailed. I have got a lot of trees based on pins these days, and they would look good in and around this ruin, but I wanted to show it clearly in this post.

I suppose this model could work for some historical skirmish games, but to me it is perfect for the Lord Of The Rings landscape, which features the ruins of ages past, some built thousands of years before the main stories. 

One more LOTR post to come and then we will be back to real historical subjects.

The Mausoleum of an Ancient King

Here's the second batch of Lord of the Rings-themed modelling. Neither the building nor the statue-lined road were modelled directly on anything from the film or book, but I wanted to make something with the atmosphere of the story, as a scene around which a skirmish could take place.

The other inspiration, for the Mausoleum at least, was spotting a whole series of items in my local Hobbycraft shop, which I couldn't help seeing as the basis for something LOTR-ey. So the main structure is a papier mache box, the dome a polystyrene ball, the curly ornaments were jewellery "findings" and the scrollwork from stickers used for greeting cards. 

The statues were cast in plaster, which gives something ideal for distressing to show age and damage. Roadway from Wills cobblestone sheets. Bushes done in my usual way, out of rubberised horsehair and granulated cork.

The Seeing Seat of Amon Hen

Well, I'm back, to quote Sam Gamgee's understated words at the very end of the Lord Of The Rings book. I first read that book at a precocious age, and about every ten years since. People know the story and the world Tolkien created more from the films nowadays of course. For fans of the book, Peter Jackson's blockbuster was a mixed bag: some locations and scenes exactly how you imagined them and others sadly very much not. At any rate it was nearer the mark than his subsequent The Hobbit.

The film and the Games Workshop figures (superbly sculpted by the Perry twins), got me and my pals skirmish gaming in the early 2000's and of course there had to be some terrain. I made a number of assorted pieces and here is  the first of them, the Seeing Seat of Amon Hen, scene of a dramatic confrontation and indeed scene of some dramatic skirmish games we have had.

A shot that came out better than it had any right to do, with a convincing effect of light and darkness. The pillars were made out of slices of ballpoint pen. The paving is Wills sheet, the steps from a set I made and cast years before. 

Here the Uruk- Hai have found their prey. The main part and support for the platform were cannibalised from elements of the old Games Workshop "Mighty Fortress" plastic kit. 

In the remaining shots the orcs swarm to the attack. There's not much more to say about the making of this structure. The top platform was carefully carved out of a big piece of 2mm thick styrene sheet. The eagles were made the same way. I decided I wasn't going to try and sculpt them as full 3D representations. It gives the impression anyway. Just recently by the way, Forge World have produced a very nice resin model of Amon Hen. It's £145, but not bad value at that, certainly by Games Workshop's standards.

Ah yes, the sky. The slow boat carrying the printed sky backdrop I ordered from China about two months ago finally docked, and the thing has been spray-mounted onto card for my scenic backdrop. It's got a nice fluffiness to the clouds, though the sky is just a teeny bit on the turquoise side for my liking. But mustn't grumble; to be honest it's surreal that you can have anything made and transported from the other side of the world for about £7 including postage. 

The figures were painted by Garry Broom and myself. I converted the Uruks more or less, to give variety and because I wanted them to have the "crooked swords" Tolkien refers to rather than the daft, dysfunctional choppers of Peter Jackson's thinking.

There is more Lord of the Rings scenery to come over the next week or two. By the way I haven't been entirely slacking over the last three weeks when there's been no posts. I have had my rules-writing head on, focussing very hard on producing a set for mass battles of the Franco-Prussian War 1870-71. Most of the hard part is done, and they certainly work, but a binder full of writing wouldn't make much of a picture to show you.