In my last Missive from Middle Earth I think I mentioned that I'd been watching an Uruk Hai drummer on a well known auction-based website. Well, after popping a speculative bid on the miniature, I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd won when the auction came to an end.
While awaiting delivery, I turned to thinking about how best to incorporate the drummer into the collection I've been amassing since March of this year. After a quick check of the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book and Tabletop Admiral, I worked out that adding the drummer and another Uruk Hai scout with shield would be the best route, so the next stop was my stash of sprues to work out the least wasteful/destructive method of kitbashing a shield onto one of the models that didn't have one so I could maintain my every model is unique obsession.
In the end, I was able to fairly easily remove the shield from one and transpose it to another while keeping a believable pose, by which time the drummer had arrived, so I cleaned up both models and got them ready to paint.
As with the rest of the army, once the basecoats were blocked in and everything was shaded, it was a fairly quick and very familiar process to paint them up to completion, although they did end up waiting a week or so longer than planned I finished up the tiny planes I've been working on for the Age of Darkness.
When it came to painting the drummer, most of his wargear was painted the same way as all of the other scouts in the force, but for the drum itself, I initially wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I reasoned that the shell might be constructed from the same wood as the bows some of the other scouts were equipped with so painted that up to match them. I figured that the drumhead would be some form of animal skin, so to distinguish it from all of the other leather on the model, I went for a lightly tanned look using a basecoat of Steel Legion Drab which was shaded with Agrax Earth. Once that was dry, I stippled some Steel Legion Drab back in to start highlighting, before moving to Tallarn Sand in the same way. After that, I added some sharp highlights of Karak Stone on the areas under the most tension as well as to the areas where the drumheads would be struck. To finish it off, I applied some sparing pin highlights of Corvus White where the Karak Stone highlights came together.
With this pair of miniatures completed, I think my painting adventures in Isengard may be over for now, but with a 350 point force of Uruk Hai scouts now ready for gaming, I'm hoping I can switch to adventures on the tabletop instead. Speaking of ready for gaming, here's the force arrayed all together:
And here's the disposition of Lurtz's Scouts in terms of equipment and wargear:
I've really enjoyed working on this army, as with the Garrison of Ithilien, it's been something of a labour of love - if such a thing can be said of Uruk Hai - and I'm particularly pleased that I've been able to kitbash the plastics sufficiently as to ensure that I've not repeated models in the army and I've managed to 'survive' painting three metal models to boot! So while, this hobby adventure may be over, I'm fairly certain I'll be venturing back to the realms of Middle Earth before too long. Until next then, as always, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.
Comments
Post a Comment