It's been a couple of months since my last
Missive from Middle Earth, but I've been busily expanding the battle company into an army using the
Lurtz's Scouts list from the
Armies of the Lord of the Rings book. This happened rather more by design than some of my other MESBG projects and I'll get into the why of that a bit more below, but suffice it to say that I'm pretty chuffed to have gone from scratching a hobby itch with a few models to fully fledged army in only a couple of months - it's certainly a lot faster than I've done so before!
So, how did we get here? Well, back in mid-January, GW kicked off a
One Million Miniatures challenge. The idea was that hobbyists across the world would collectively paint up a million miniatures. Being a bit of a sucker for these kind of marketing ploys and being grateful for a change from the
New Year, New Army format I signed up to take part at my local store. Knowing my limitations though, I pledged for 25 miniatures on the basis that I could realistically achieve that in four-ish months between work, family and other hobbies.
Having signed up though, I then found myself struggling to think of what 'should' work on as my old friend old
analysis paralysis kicked in. I painted a few bits and pieces; a Swordmaster of Hoeth from Warhammer: The Old World, some Galadhrim, some Mire Kelpies from Warhammer Quest: Darkwater and some Leman Russ and an Ares Gunship from Legions Imperialis but although I was making progress, I wasn't really feeling
inspired to take any of those projects further
. Then I painted up the Uruk Hai battle company in March and having really enjoyed working on that, and picked up Lurtz from eBay, I hit upon the idea of expanding the battle company out into a small army. I headed over to
Tabletop Admiral to work out what I could do with the models I had and whether or not this would get me to the 25 miniatures I'd pledged for the challenge.
I had six Uruk Hai already (2 with bows, 2 with shields and two with no upgrades) and I had Lurtz. From there, I knew I wanted to try and get a banner into the force as I've heard they're pretty vital in the current edition of MESBG so I added those to the roster first. Once I'd done that, I checked the Uruk Hai scouts sprue to work out which of the minis I could kitbash to hold a banner (more on this later) and what that would leave me with. I ended up with the following list. I've no doubt it's sub-optimal competitively speaking, but as it's most likely to see use in casual gaming, I don't really mind.
With a goal drawn up, I set about cleaning up and basing the minis I needed to paint up. After lots of raking through bits boxes, I finally found a banner I thought would fit the slightly ramshackle but highly industrial aesthetic of the forces of Isengard in the Ulfenwatch from Warhammer Quest: Cursed City. Carefully extracting the banner and banner pole from the skeletal clutches of it's former owner, I drilled through the off hand of the Uruk Hai I'd picked out to carry it and used some Tamiya extra thin cement to hold everything together.
Knowing I was on a time limit and preferring to avoid attempts at freehand when possible, I also tracked down some suitable decals to adorn the banner with the white hand of Saruman from
Angry Space Triangles - if you fancy some yourself they produce them in sheets of 3 and 4mm; 6 and 8mm and
10, 12 and 15mm, with a variety of designs on each - perfect for banners, shields and whatever else you might want your Uruk Hai to lay claim to! I went with a 6 and 8mm sheet which was a bit of an educated guess, but turned out perfect for what I needed.
Once everyone was built and based, I divided them into batches and got cracking with applying paint. I started with the three bared headed scouts to 'get them out of the way'. Handily two of them were archers which meant I was also getting their bows and arrows out of the way as well - not that painting them is particularly arduous, but between their wargear and their hair they were adding two extra colours into the mix and the hair wasn't something I'd already established a painting recipe for so I knew that would add time to the process. Once I'd painted those three, I moved on to the remaining pair with shields and then finally to Lurtz and the banner.
To satisfy my preference for not doubling up on poses (which is a real drawback to making larger forces in MESBG in my opinion), I turned to kitbashing and the second Uruk Hai from the left in the photo above gained a shield from one of the 'spares' on the second sprue in the Battlehost box.
When it came to painting Lurtz, I used all of the same colours and colour placements as I did across his warband - he's just a meaner, bossier Uruk Hai after all. He does however have some very prominent warpaint which I was keen to emulate as it's just so distinctive it wouldn't be Lurtz if he
didn't have it. After searching up some high quality photos of Lawrence Makoare in full makeup and costume from
The Fellowship of the Ring to check the placement of the white hand across his face, I turned to the GW studio miniature to see how they had interpreted it at 28mm scale. Once I was I happy, (or at least as happy as I was going to get with freehanding an inverted white hand on the character I'd spent a few hours painting) I took a deep breath, thinned some Corax White and got started. It actually wasn't as bad as I dreaded it might be, just a case of sketching in the lines of the fingers and thumb before refining, the shape and then adding some sparing highlights.
I had everything finished up a few days before the conclusion of the One Million Miniatures challenge, which was just as well as I had to travel south for a family funeral the weekend it finished. Or at least I thought I had because somehow in all of the excitement of racing to the finish line I'd miscounted! Although I painted the right amount of minis to complete my 25 mini pledge, it was only when I sat down to write this post a couple of weeks ago that I realised I was one short . I hurriedly dug out the one who had donated the shield to the first kitbash mentioned above and replaced his missing arm with the left one of my least favourite sculpt in the set (the bareheaded Uruk Hai with sword). The error was half rectified, but painting the straggler to wait until I'd finished my entry for Olden Demon because the deadline for that was looming rather large. However with that safely completed last weekend, I got stuck into painting the errant Uruk Hai and with him completed as you can see in the photo above, now I have a fully fledged army!
I've really enjoyed delving into another adventure in Middle Earth, and even painting the metal Lurtz wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. Although I'm not in a hurry to paint more minis cast in metal any time soon, I've not completely dismissed the idea of adding a drummer to this collection at some point, but that would leave the army at a rather awkward points total overall. That's for future James to worry about though, for now I'm going to bask in the joy of another completed project for a little longer so it just remains for me to say thanks for reading and happy hobbying.
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