My Lord of the Rings armies.

By Onyx.

I have over 400 painted Lord of the Rings miniatures and it’s about time I put some photos of them on this blog.

Dwarves.

These Dwarves are my favourite looking LotR army so far. I have many more out in the workshop to paint and one day, I’ll get them all finished and added here.

Fallen Realms.

We painted this army in quite a rush (my wife helped me a lot with this army) as I’d left myself only 4 weeks to get them done before a War of the Ring tournament (photos below). I (we) managed to win best painted at the event and finally finished 2nd overall. It was a great weekend and I certainly learnt a lot whilst playing 6x 2500pt games over the 2 days.

Easterling army.

Easterling Commanders. I use this Captain model as a proxy for Amdur.

I’ve converted these Wargames Factory Celt Chariots to use in my Fallen Realms army. I put Easterlings in them to keep the theme of the army (although they still use the Khandish Charioteer stats). Most of the horses tails have been replaced with 40K Chaos Space Marine helmet plumes and there are various other additions/details to keep them in theme. These units proved very effective during the tournament.

Easterling Kataphrakt

I’ve used these Korean Crossbowmen from 1st Corps as proxies for my Corsair Arbalesters. The pavisse shields are made from plasic tube. By placing the Shadowlord in the formation to stop them being shot at from long range and then putting the Betrayer in there aswell to allow re-rolls on all missed shots, this formation was quite a handful for my opponents.

Here’s a couple of photos from the recent War of the Ring tournament.

Sauron.

This was a fairly easy model to paint and the finish is reasonably close to the movie version.

Nazgul.

I put a bit of colour into them so that it would be easier to identify who’s who during a game.

Riders of Rohan.

Elves.

I’ll put a quick guide up here for how I painted the High Elves armour.

Image property of New Line Cinemas.

INSPIRATION
The above picture shows the Gold/Green qualities I have tried to capture for this guide.
A few people have asked how I did this, so an article seemed the best way to share. I make no claim to being the world’s greatest painter, but these simple techniques give an effective and realistic finish.

Woodland Scenics Green Undercoat
Woodland Scenics Black pigment
GW Shining Gold
GW White
GW Flesh
GW Silver
A homemade grey using GW paints
Tamiya Flat Brown
Spray Flat Black

Step 1. The Usual prep

Clean off the usual casting remains.

Assemble the mini’s using superglue (remember to bend the base ‘tabs’ a bit to get a nice tight fit into the base). I also used a small piece of putty to reinforce the shield/arm join.

A quick spray with black and we’re off.

Step 2. Let’s start painting.

I have always started painting the most recessed parts on a model. That means the face on this mini. Just a simple 2 coats of Flesh and we’re done.

The next ‘lowest’ item is the chainmail, under the armour. A simple coating of silver is all thats needed. I painted the spear at the same time for convenience.

Using the W.S. Black, I gave the chainmail a wash to add definition and ‘dull’ the armour a bit. I also gave the spear shaft a ‘black wash’ to differentiate it from the spear head.

Step 3. Painting the ‘pretty’ armour.

Give all the ‘gold’ coloured armour a layer of Shining Gold. It doesn’t have to be perfect (as you can see!) as we’re not done with it yet.

Next, paint all the robes,gloves and cloak, grey. You can use different shades if you want but the next few steps will change the colour of the grey anyway.

Step 4. Now for the ‘magic’.

Using the W.S. Green Undercoat, give the gold armour and the elven cloak a wash. These pigments are amazing and will fill the recesses and change the entire look of the original coating.

The ‘under robes’ and boots were given a flat brown coat.

The sashes are given a straight coating of white. It will be ‘dulled’ down during the next step.

Using the W.S. Black, give the sashes, gloves, face and the lower robes a wash. This will add contrast to the other grey areas (cloak) and add instant shading for detail.

Carefully add PVA glue to the base (avoid the actual model) and dip it in the flock. There are many ways to do basing and I am not suggesting this is the best way, just the way I do it. There are reasons I do it this way which I won’t go into now.

This is the basic system of painting I use to do my ‘grunt’ High Elf soldiers. A little more time is taken with highlighting, etc, on my Heroes and Captains but the armour concept is still the same.

Mordor Troll

I painted this miniature a couple of years ago. I used Woodland Scenics pigments to get the skin tones and dirty/rusty metal effects.

Isengard

I painted the Uruk’s in this way.

The skin was base coated with Scorched Brown. Next was a slightly diluted layer of Blood Red followed by a wash using Woodland Scenics Black pigment.
The armour was base coated with Boltgun Metal. Next was a wash using Woodland Scenics Black and then a wash with Woodland Scenics Raw Umber. Finally a very light drybrush with Chainmail to highlight the armour details.

Ents

I needed something big to fight trolls in WotR and an Ent seemed the right size!
I got this Tree Giant from Majestic Bear Miniatures, a company with a growing range of minis from the UK (mostly LotR themed).

Glorfindel is there for scale. The Ent is about 110mm tall, on a 60mm base.