Missives from Middle Earth #3 - "The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last..."

It's been a wee while since the last Works In Progress post, but spurred on by the realisation that the weather is getting colder and the nights are drawing in, I've want to see if I can finish the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game project before the year completely gets away from me.

In the last update, I mentioned that I'd picked up a set of Knights of Minas Tirith so I decided to ease back into things by getting the four I want to use assembled and based. 

I've tried to match up the poses of the riders with their horses so that there are two charging and two riding at a more sedate pace - giving each of the knights a little more individuality. I'm currently swithering over whether to leave the horses and riders separate from one another for painting or to just glue everything together and be done with it. Either way, I'll probably keep the shields separate for now and glue them in place once everything else is painted.

 

While mulling over the options with the Knights, I cracked open the box of Gondor Ruins and after marvelling over just how modular the kit is, assembled them following the enclosed build guide - I can always be a little more adventurous with another set down the line if I want to.

The ruins go together incredibly quickly so at the same time I began researching ideas for painting them up. I was particularly inspired by the tutorials that both Mediocre Hobbies and Warhipster put together when the Battle for Osgiliath set was released last year. Now that I was armed with a plan, I painted the ruins up in fairly short order over a few evenings last week.

Once I'd blocked in a basecoat of Tallarn Sand, I gave the stonework a heavy drybrush of Karak Stone followed by another of Pallid Wych Flesh. I was fairly happy with how it looked, but decided to push the contrast a touch more using a light, downwards drybrush of White Scar to hit the upper edges of the stone blocks.

The smashed timber beams and the reinforced door were painted with Dryad Bark and then drybrushed with Gothor Brown. To make the shattered ends of the beams pop a little more, I gave them a light drybrush of Baneblade Brown and then shaded all the timber with Nuln Oil. 

To give the ruins a touch more "realism" I used some thinned Kroak Green and Athonian Camoshade to add patches of grime and staining to the stone. I also used some Vallejo Oiled Earth and European Dust to strengthen the accumulation of dust and dirt along the lower areas of the walls. 

Finally for this update, I've begun painting Anborn and Mablung, loosely following the boxart scheme from Forge World, although I'll be painting their cloaks to match the Rangers I did a little while ago to tie them all together. Once this pair are painted up, the plan is to get to work on the Knights and then I can wrap things up with Faramir, Madril and Damrod and having painted up a set of the Gondor Ruins now, I'm thinking I'll pop them all on the Osgiliath Ruins bases that they come with as that will help to theme the army a bit more.