Magnetic Warg Riders!

I'll post in the future on how I painted these wargs, but I just wanted to show a nice trick I used to make these miniatures convertible to either wargs or warg riders.

First I made each of the wargs as strait wargs with full manes.

On each warg I then super glued a very small 20mm wide by 10mm deep rare earth magnet.

Doing this was a total pain in the backside. So in future I'll use a 30mm wide by 10mm  round magnet. Not the 20mm magnets. That will give more surface area to manipulate the magnet.

I then glued another magnet to the base of the warg riders. Again, this was a total pain as the magnet kept flipping in the drop of superglue or attempting to stay stuck to the tweezers I was using.

As such, I ended up with rider magnets not fitting to warg magnets. Despite this I did end up with proper magnet poles for each warg and rider (i.e. + and - poles). Odd riders could still sit on the same polarity side up magnets (i.e. + to +) as they would attach to the side of the magnet on the warg where the opposite pole was. But this made for an off center seated arrangement for the rider. Fortunatelly there was one warg for each rider to attach too. But using the 20mm magnets was a real pain. So be warned.

And that's how they finally turned out! So a nice trick if you want to use your wargs as both warg and warg rider.

Isengard - War of the Ring in 1/72 scale

Its been a busy time and almost a month since my last post.

Isengard in 1/72 scale

 

So "what have I been up to you lazy slob", I hear you ask?

Well, my beautiful wife and I decided to swap some rooms around and I found myself moving my "Man Cave" to a new room. So been a busy time packing everything and transferring it all to a new room. Good news is that I am getting a custom 6x4m table built for my new Man Cave! So got to be happy about that!

I have been able to do some limited painting during the move as well and I have finally finished a few companies for my 1/72 scale War of the Ring project. So here are a few pictures of the beginnings of my Isengard army. Most of these mini's are from Dark Alliance.

Uruk-hai Phalanx

 

Core infantry units at 1/72 scale fit nicely with two mini's to a stand. They also give the appearance of a more closely packed troops, which looks great on the battle field. 

Uruk General

The Uruk Captain / General figure comes with the Berserkers and looks great.

Uruk-hai Berserkers

The Berserkers are also really nice minis. Being a specialist unit, I have mounted them one figure to a base (like I will the missile troops). Given that they are swinging large two-handed swords, having them spaced out one to a base suits them. Several of the models come complete with arrows imbedded in them and in dying, or dead poses. It was an easy thing to cut the arrows off them and stand the model upright. These dead'ens fit right in with the other more alive Berserkers. The arrows were put to good use on the General model as you will see below.

Brutus, the Isengard Troll

The Isengard Troll (named Brutus) towers over the other models and is a Games Workshop figure. Even with the scale difference (1/72 vs. 28mm) the troll looks to be the right height and capable of felling an entire company with one swing of its sword.

Isengard Phalanx

For the Isengard flag, I found a suitable image via Google Images and scaled it to make a flag for one of the pikes held by the Uruk-hai. This base then easily identifies the Command Company for any Formation of Uruk Phalanx.

Brutus up close and personal

Brutus running away. A bit of pumice and driftwood adorning his base

El Capitan highlighted with the flash

You can see the arrows cut from the Berserkers attached to the base of the General to add extra character.

The General again

Berserker company

The Berserkers just need the white hand painted on their bodies to be finished off. Something I forgot to do before taking these photos.

Final shot of the General

Still lots more to do, but this is a long project.

I'm currently working on a new 10mm army and furiously painting away whilst the desire carries me onward. I'll show off some of them in a future post, but no spoilers for now.

So there you go! Haven't fallen of the face of the Earth. Just been a tad busy.

Till next time...

The Wolves of Isengard

"Send forth your Warg riders." - Saruman.... One brigades worth of them, in fact!

Finished the Warg Riders that I mentioned the other day. As I said in that post, I have had these sitting around for several months now waiting to be painted.

In the end it was much easier than I thought it would be. The key to painting them was to first of all basecoat them in Chaos Black and then wet-brush them in Bestial Brown. This gave them the dirty look universal to all Orcs in Middle-earth. It was then a matter of painting the warg mains in Snakebite Leather, then use a heavy drybrush with a dark grey for the face, followed by a light drybrush with a light grey again for the face.

For the riders, I used Boltgun Metal heavy drybrush for the armour, and then picked out special features, such as the arrow fletching or fur clothing, in a suitable colour. The skin of most of the orcs I left in the brown colour, but some of the orc flesh was painted in Rakarth Flesh, some others in Administratum Grey and some others still in a light green. I washed the entire model in a brown wash to blend the colour transitions and to give the extra dirk look. The brown wash also gives a tinge of rust to the armour and weapons, just the way orcs liken them.

I deliberately left the orc shields without any insignia on them. This is so the Warg Riders can be used for Isengard, Mordor, Angmar, Moria, Mount Gundabad, etc. The Warg Rider leaders are the only ones to carry any insignia on them and thus identify where these guys come from.

You can see a bit of the diversity in poses amongst the Wargs and Orcs in the two images below.

The play testing stats for these guys is currently as follows:

Type        Attack   Range   Hits   Armour   Unit Size   Pts per Unit       Min/Max   Special
Cavalry     4/1         15         3          6+             3        ? (80 to 100?)        - / 2        Shock Cav. (WMA)

Final picture below shows the Warg Rider leader next to an Isengard Sub-general. You can see how the size of the Warg Riders compare to the size of Isengard Sub-general and see that they fit together well.

So only need to do the bases of these guy's and they are ready to chase down Rohan citizens or thirteen shabby Dwarves and one well dressed Hobbit!

How to make Warg Riders for Middle-earth Warmaster

Here's another idea I had.

There are a number of excellent 10mm wolf riders available for Warmaster around the web. The best in my view are from Copplestone Castings.

However, for battles set in Middle-earth, I wanted some Warg Riders. So I purchased some of Splintered Light's 15mm Dire Hyenas and some of Copplestone Castings 10mm Orcs. The Dire Hyenas make excellent Warg proxies and Copplestone's Orcs are the best Middle-earth Orcs I've seen available. Copplestone makes some really nice 10mm miniatures for Middle-earth proxies.

I carefully cut the Orcs from their bases and each other, as some are connected around their weapons & shields. I then simply placed them onto the Dire Hyenas by carefully spreading their legs apart to fit over the Hyena miniature. Be careful not to break off their legs this way.

Once super-glued in place, I had my Warg Riders!

I have base-coated these guy's in Chaos Black and then with a wet-brush of Bestial Brown all over the warg and orc model. Given that orcs seem to have a fondness for all things dirt, the colour combination means that most of the primary painting is achieved this way fairly quickly.

 

I've varied the orc riders so that some have bows and others hand weapon. In this way, they will not only be able to be used as shock cavalry, but also be able to skirmish. This, I feel, represents the roles Warg Riders played in Middle-earth armies. They were a mixture of scout troops, skirmishers and also heavy cavalry.

I've had these guys ready waiting to be painted for ages now, so its good to finally catch up on some Warmaster units after completing my Star Trek miniatures that needed painting.

Given the size of the Warg (Dire Hyena) miniature, I will be placing them facing the short edge of the base and will have them two to a Stand.

 

I'm about half way through paining them right now so I will post an update on the final product in a future post.

Build me an army, worthy of.....Warmaster

The forces of Isengard are slowly coming together!

Here's a sneak peak...

Isengard under recruitment!

 

In the back row are (from left to right) Copplestone Castings excellent 10mm Half-orc with swords making up the Uruk-hai Warband, Kallistra's H-905 100 Years War Light Troops making up the Wildmen of Dunland, more Copplestone Castings 10mm Half-orc spears making up the Uruk-hai Spearmen, and finally Copplestone Castings 10mm orcs as the Orc Warband (these orcs will eventually make their way to the Angmar Army, hence the Iron Crown banner and shield emblems).

Close-up of the left side

In the middle row of the top picture are another Copplestone Castings mini, this one from the Evil Characters, with a banner taken from the Half-orc swords strip. Next are Splintered Light Miniatures 15mm Orc Heavies painted to make up Olog-hai Trolls (which will later become part of my Mordor Army). At right are a mixture of Copplestone Castings 10mm Half-orc with swords and Half-orc archers. These have been cut off the strip and arranged to make up the Uruk-hai Scouts.

Close up of the right side

And in front in the top picture are Pendraken Miniatures ELM9 European Late Medieval Pikemen making up the heavy armoured Uruk-hai Pikes. I used two of the three types of models supplied, as these looked most like heavily armoured Uruks, after some of the filigree on a few helmets was removed.

So its coming along at a reasonable rate of knots. I have another unit of Uruk-hai Warband painted and ready to be based. I also have a second unit of Wildmen of Dunland and two units of Uruk-hai Crossbows on the production line. All the bases still need to be flocked. No mean feat that!

So stay tuned, more to come...