A palate cleansing .

Well there are probably a dozen things I should be painting , but I came across these old plastic Lord Of The Rings Numenorians and on a whim I started painting them up as a change - a sort of palate cleanser and I must admit I rather enjoyed doing them, so I've scrounged out some more from my 'box of shame' and will be painting them up as well . When G W did the LOTRs about 20 years ago I played it a lot so these may get me back into it again . 

The other thing that might have influenced my painting choice is the arrival of my copy of the above book - looks rather scholarly and perhaps more for the Tolkien nut than the casual reader - we will see how far I get with it ?........

 

Lord of the Rings objective markers .

Back to wargaming articles - these objective markers have been half finish for months so when I returned from holiday I thought "I'll get these finished!" . The first one is a dwarf  siting by a campfire , it's an old Gimli casting slightly converted (he was sat on a dead Orc)  and the rocks are yellow foam cut up and coated before painting .

Here we have a beacon , again yellow foam cut to size and the fuel is match sticks cut up and painted .

A camp fire with a store of weapons (left a bit near that fire I think !) . The weapons are some plastic ones that have been collected in my bits box over the years and have finally got used .

Buried treasure tht somebody has been digging up ! - again odds and sods from the bit box . Since I started playing LOTRs again I realised a lot of the scenarios in the rules need objective markers to capture etc so this has spurred me on to get these done - just took longer than I thought .

 

Return to The Lord of the Rings

Several years ago I sold off my Lord of the Rings collection and re-invested the monies in other wargaming projects , however I won the above rules rather cheaply on eBay and inspired I thought I would have another go at it using some of the cheap plastic figures you can get second hand on eBay . (I need to wash my tea mug out as well !)

However the first two models are metal and are King Durin and his bodyguard Mardin armed with his trusty troll spear . It's nice to get back into painting fantasy figures for a change rather than uniformed rank and file , plastic goblins next I think .

The Return To The Lord Of The Rings.

This week we had to go to Preston so that my wife could get her mobile phone repaired - a protracted  sad story worthy of a Icelandic Saga in itself . We had to go to Preston because that's the nearest place were they could fix the phone (sigh!) , to make matters worse she also announce that she would be doing Christmas shopping (sigh!) . Trying to salvage something from this debacle  I decided to go to the museum and then to Waterstones bookshop and then looked in at  Games Workshop , I always approach a GW shop with caution and a little furtiveness (perhaps like visiting a sex shop - so I'm told !!!) and seeing there was no one in the shop actually went in ! . Now normally the assistants try to hard to engage the customer (the average customer only being a quarter of my age) but this time the chap seemed quite refreshingly normal and we had a chat about the forthcoming Hobbit film . The upshot of this was I actually looked around the shop and even bought a couple of packets of plastic figures . (note rather paint scarred table - used before I had a paint table - and was married - when that sort of thing was more acceptable)

So this morning I started gluing them up , having had to buy a new tube of glue - the old one being gummed up beyond redemption . First I did the 'Easterlings' , I've always liked these figures and have about 10 of the original metal figures that came out years ago  , their red and gold colour scheme is a nice change to all those rather grubby Orcs . They went together very easily and I'm looking forward to painting for them .

The next thing was an Ent , this took a bit more putting together - and a bit more bad language - the dog retreated to his bed thinking he was to blame (not this time !) . You can adjust the arms and legs but this proved a bit of a problem as they kept dropping out of their sockets , however I persisted and the finished model is impressive , it comes with a choice of heads and arms and will be interesting to paint up , so next time I take the dog for a walk I'm going to take some photos of trees to try and get the colours right.