Hey all
Seven Stones is always a big one in the calendar for James and I, and each year, our aim is to secure a nomination for best army.
I feel that the best way to lay this out is to go through the multiple moving pieces in sections, as this was all overlapping and happening at the same time. I believe that James is doing his own blogpost for his half of the force.
The Theme
After some brainstorming, the theme that we settled on was the Battle of Azanulbizar. But to give it the Seven Stones treatment and make it unique, we were going to go by the book version.
This would mean that there would be no Thror, as he is already dead by this point, having wandered into Moria then being captured and executed by Azog. This was the catalyst for the War of Orcs and Dwarves, a conflict that lasts many years and kills a huge amount of the Northern orc population, culminating in the Battle of Azanulbizar.
Thrain leads this war and in this battle he is pushed from the slopes of the mountain back into the woods below. His son, Thorin's brother, Frerin, is killed in those woods and it is here that Thorin's shield is shattered and he wields an oak branch in its place, earning his moniker. Thrain is also wounded in this fighting, and in the films at least, loses his eye.
Around this time, the Army of the Iron Hills arrives late to reinforce their allies, led by Nain, father to Dain Ironfoot. They end up fighting outside of the East Gate to Moria and Nain faces Azog. In this fight, Azog manages to strike Nain in the neck, breaking it and slaying him. He then realises that his orcs are broken and fleeing back into Moria and rushes to join them. When a young dwarf, Dain, catches up to him and strikes his head off with his red axe.
The dwarves win the battle and intend to push into Moria itself, when Dain glimpses the Balrog through the gates and fear stops him from doing so.
The Army
James came up with the army list, and I'm sure will outline it fully in his own post.
But our army lists looked like this.
James
Thrain, King Under the Mountain (Leader)
Warriors of Erebor w/ Shield x6
Nain (Iron Hills Dwarf King)
Iron Hills Spearmen (Erebor Warriors) w/ Spear and Shield x11
Me
Young Thorin Oakenshield
Warriors of Erebor w/ Shield x5
Warriors of Erebor w/ Spear/Shield x7
Young Dain Ironfoot (Grim Hammer Captain)
Iron Hills Mattocks (Grim Hammers) x7
Dwarves: 40
Building the Army
I already had a fair bit of my army built, as I had Thorin and Erebor dwarves from previous tournaments.
So my army building would be focused around the Iron Hills relief force.
The Iron Hills Mattocks
For the Iron Hills, since they'd be using the Erebor dwarves profiles, we decided to convert them from existing Erebor models. Three big reasons for this, firstly, they look great. Second, they would help with making the army blend together nicely. And finally, it would help our opponents follow what each model is representing in gaming terms and thus avoid misunderstandings.
So, while at the GT, I picked up a box of Grim Hammers. My intention for these was to largely leave them untouched but painted more in an Iron Hills style. I would, however, be making one prominent change to the models. I would be taking the head of their mattocks away, or their whole weapon/army away in some cases. And, in its place, I'd put the green stuff head (moulded via blue stuff) of an Iron Hills mattock to the shaft. In two of them, I'd swap the hand and weapon, and in one, the whole arm. These were spare mattocks from goat riders that had sat in my bits box for years. The one who had a whole arm transplanted, I trimmed the rim of his shoulder down as it stood out too much from the rest of the Erebor warriors.
They were a relatively simple swap and looked nice and distinctive once done.
For their paintjob, we made them a brighter metal, with Ironbreaker highlights, to help them stand out from the Erebor troops. We painted their clothes in Khorne Red with a slight highlight of Khorne Red/Mephiston Red. And the sashes were grey then painted in a Pallid Wych Flesh (with small amount of Administratum Grey). All washed in Nuln oil and rehighlighted a touch. For their bases, I did a base layer of Mechanicus Standard Grey, with a drybrush of Dawnstone, then a light one of Administratum Grey, washed with Nuln Oil, and followed by a light dusting of Karak Stone.
Dain
Dain was going to be a little trickier, and I wanted to make him stand out. So I had a look through the dwarf models of the range and tried to choose a pose that suited him. I found the original Bofur from Thorin's company had a nice 'planted' base, as if digging his heels in and getting ready to fight. So I found one on Ebay and grabbed him.
Next I dug into my bits box, knowing I had several old bits of dwarves lying around. Amongst them, I found a 3D printed Fili model, who happened to look quite a lot like how I would imagine a very young Dain to have.
I took the head off and had to cut around the jawline because of how it fit into the Fili's armour. This wasn't the end of the world, as I wanted to give him some facial hair, which would cover up any bad green stuff work I did. i put a pin into the body and then sat the head on top.
The big issue with the Bofur model, is the lack of armour, which wasn't very fitting for a dwarf of great importance mid battle. So I knew that I wanted to have something armour based for a start. Since I had just cut the hands off of two Iron Hills mattock arms, they made sense to use.
The issue was that they were both right arms, so I had to cut one at the elbow and move it around to become a left arm. I attached these and, once fixed on, I then used green stuff to replace the bottom half of his head, and once it set, added a long moustache to hide the mouth I had given him. I used more green stuff to fix the end of his hair. So his head was built. I had to do this afterwards to make sure that I wouldn't obsrtuct the arms. While doing this green stuff, I also turned Bofur's undershirt into a chainmail coat. The jacket would be a surcoat for him.
The last piece to build, was his famous red axe. For this I used the head of an axe from a 2h dwarf warrior 3D print. The problem was that the axe blade itself just wasn't what I pictured for Dain, so i kept the shaft and cut the blades off. I had found an old broken plastic Mines of Moria Gimli throwing axe though.
I made a blue stuff mould of the axe blade, and cloned it. I then cut it from the shaft, turn it upside down, to make it less recognisable, and added the cloned one to the opposite side.
That was the top half of the axe built.
For the rest, I ummed and ahhed about how to make it a natural fit, and eventually settled on using Bofur's right hand and Gimli's left hand (as it was holding the handle at just the right angle to fit. I fixed the hands on (drilling slightly into the handle and hand. Before applying the tiniest bit of paperclip that I have ever used to support the join) and finished by using a small wire to connect the head to the hand.
With him built, it was onto painting him up. He was done very similarly to the warriors, but for two differences. His hair, was done Mournfang Brown, then Skrag Brown and highlighted with Skrag Brown with a touch of Squig Orange to give it that fiery hue. The gold trim was Balthasar Gold with Griffon Gold drybrushed over it and washed in Agrax.
And his axe, that was painted in the same way as the armour, before getting a few layers of Contrast Medium and Flesh Tearers Red, to give the axe its blood red colour. I applied a very small Runefang Steel edge highlight to the blade too.
And that was my army painted! I had a few rebasings to do, but that got done later on. The wooded bases were Dryad Bark, drybrushed with Steel Legion Drab and washed with Agrax Earthshade.
Objective Markers
There was only three objective markers that I would be making of the seven.
The first was going to be Thorin's shattered shield. So I blue stuff mould an Erebor shield twice. One was to be cut up as the shattered shield, the other was to be blutacked onto Thorin, and removed once he had lost his wound and brought the Oakenshield into play (as per the rules James wrote us).
For the objective itself, I dug out an old base with the rock that an old Durburz had once stood one, before I turned him into a mounted version. I figured that this would work for a forested floor to put the shattered shield upon. I used old flock to make a mossy covering for the rough edge of the rock that Durburz had been removed from.
For the other two markers, I looked through my sprues for inspiration and, quite perfectly, found a pair of dead hunter orcs from the mounted set. I took these two and decided that, to add some variety, one could be based for the woods and the other the mountainside.
The Display Board
James had built the majority of our boards and so I offered to do so this year, mainly because another incoming child may severely hinder my ability to do so for the foreseeable.
It didn't take very long to get an idea of what I wanted to do for our display. My thoughts were to the effect of an open book and seeing the display inside of it.
To achieve this, my thinking was that I would use a photoframe as the book cover and I could use some cardboard, cut from a box, to be my pages. As I planned it, other ideas came up. One example; I'd have to anchor the centre of the pages down, maybe cut them to make them look like an open book. But cutting them would ruin the look. But I could use masking tape to cover that up. I could make the masking tape become a bookmark, so that it doesn't look out of place.
James chipped in that he had heard of people using tin foil to give a leather effect, so recommended trying that on the cover.
I went on trust paint and mapped out a rough plan for the board itself, as shown below. A forested area, adjoining the edge of the Mirrormere and then the mountainside leading up to the Eastgate.
One thing that was irking me, but I wasn't sure how to go about it, was getting the East gate itself as part of the board. As I wanted it to feel titanic and not just shoehorned in. Until a simple solution hit me: if it's a book, the East gate can be a pop up! So I browsed for a good image and found this one. I liked it as there's a faint glow in the gateway, indicating the Balrog. All I did was blow it up and cut out of of the foreground to make it seem far away and flip the image so the gate sat in a more fitting area.
Building it
The first thing that I did was wrap the cardboard from the back of the photo frame in paper, to make it easier to paint later. I then took strips of tin foil and lightly scrunched them up, before unrolling and wrapping the frame in them, to give the leather effect. I then cut out a secondary frame from a thick cardboard box, trying to use the fold in that as the centre of the book. Once this was glued in place, I used the masking tape to make the bookmark across the bottom and top. This would also provide more subtle anchoring and hopefully stop it all falling apart. (The blog has decided that the pic must be in portrait, and won't let me do otherwise, so that's exciting.)
Next, I dry fitted some pieces of polystyrene onto the paper covered base and once happy used PVA glue to hold them together.
Once that had dried, I got my hot wire cutter and trimmed down the edges to make a more natural shape to the land. Giving a cliff edge along the left and a smoother climb on the middle and right.
This was followed by the Polyfilla. It turned out later that I had missed a few small spots but nevermind.
With that set, I added some small gravel to give the cliffs a more natural look and some around the edge of the Mirrormere, to look like an old landslide had happened there. I then added some sand around them to look more natural.
Painting and terraining
Next up was the painting phase. I began by doing what I perceived to be the easiest bit, the frame. This was simply Mournfang Brown as a base and a drybrush of Doombull Bown, to make the cover look like worn leather. The pages were simply done in Rakarth Flesh and the bookmark was Khorne Red.
I did the wooded area and mountainside the same as the basing mentioned above. The Mirrormere, I did in Incubi Darkness, then drybrushed with a mix of it and Caledon Sky, before a light drybrush of Administratum Grey and covered it in PVA glue after to make it look wet.
Then it was onto adding the terrain. First up I went and glued a load of grassy tufts around. There had ended up being a small crack in the Polyfilla below the cliff, so steering into the skid, I put a few tufts around it to make it into a small pond. I also added some of my old style flock from the 00s, which gives a nice mossy appearance.
Finally, I added all the flock across it. But I also felt that there was a problem, in that the moss was a little too green for the rest of the board, so I put a generous helping of Agrax over it. And that sorted it out. With that the board itself was done!
Trees
You may have noticed that the forest had a distinct lack of trees. This was by design, as I wasn’t entirely sure how well our models would fit around them if I fitted them into the board, especially as we were also putting some Hunter Orcs on too.
So I had opted to fix the trees onto bases, and that would allow me to move them as I saw fit on the day. These were readymade and coloured so I just had to base them.
By putting them on bases and not locking them into the board, it also meant that I can recycle them for scenery in the local group.
Azog
The final touches, beside basing some Hunter Orcs and the Keeper of the Dungeons as he was a nice fit into the look, was getting the big boy himself. Unfortunately, I had converted mine several years prior to have half arsed heavy armour, which hadn’t aged well.
Fortunately, this gave me an excuse to buy a new one, and I had always wanted the old General of the North model (I gather that he is also affectionately known as ‘Dancing Azog’). I found one on EBay that was relatively cheap and just missing his fork arm (which wasn’t a problem, with the plans that I had for him) and grabbed it.
Once he arrived, I found an old destroyed Minas Tirith man, and plundered his corpse for a left arm for my Frankenstinian intentions.
I shaved the glove off the wrist, not being worried about the size of the hand, as Azog is a large orc. And also took away the details around the arm (chainmail and other armour). I glued this arm onto his stump that I had filed down to go flat to flat, and used superglue to smooth over any crack on the join. Our unmutilated Pale Orc was built.
And soon painted.
He was the final part, and that completed the display!
Shoehorning in Scooby Doo
Somewhere around the halfway point of this project, James had suggested a minigame for our opponents, which I’m sure he’ll outline when he does his blog.
But the essence of it was that, because it was unlikely that we’d face an Azog in each game, they’d secretly choose one of their heroes to be him in disguise before we began. And if we unmasked him, we’d found him and win; they get consolatory Freddos. If we fail; they win Freddos. In the end, I believe we caught one Azog, so perhaps have much to learn before we earn a place in the Mystery Machine.
I responded to this with something to the effect of ‘Oh kinda like Scooby Doo’. And that ended up taking hold.
We stapled this onto the army as a side piece and made it become our fancy dress for the event. Complete with hastily built box of Scooby Snacks to keep our Freddos in.
In hindsight, it was a random addition, but people seemed to like it so we were ok with it.
The Trailer
One of the finishing touches, was to make a trailer that I absolutely did not feel that I had time for.
https://youtu.be/huejL_lG3bM?si=7-7FT1vzogmGKvBU
The End Result
In the end, we thought it came out great! I’m nowhere near as talented as others in the community with my display boards, but felt as though I gave a good account of myself, and it all came together nicely with James’ work despite us never meeting in person to plan things.
In the end, we sadly didn't manage to get the nomination, but this is a reflection on the level of the competition rather than us, each year the things people turn up with is increasingly insane and I love to see it!
If I can attend next year, we'll fight once more for our nomination!
