The challenge – to paint up the starting models for a Battle Company according to the Battle Companies book. Simple enough, right? Well, no. This challenge came with a fiendish twist – our Battle Company would be chosen at random, and so would our colour scheme! Each of the participants entered two random colours into the draw – this mixture of colours would then have to be the main colour scheme for our Battle Company – the deadline for painting them would then be the 30th April.
The mastermind behind this challenge (or evil dark lord – jury's still out on that one) is Dewi Evans, the man behind the Guardians of Wiltshire YouTube channel. A few months ago, a group of us got together and the draw was made.
So what did I get? There are 18 different Battle Companies available in the book, from The Shire to Goblin Town, so there were plenty of options to be excited about. My turn came around and Sharkey's Rogues was pulled out of the hat. An interesting prospect for me, as I'd never painted a Ruffian model before. Then came the big moment – the colour scheme I would have to paint my company in!
I got … GREEN AND GOLD!
…Right.
My initial thoughts were "How on earth am I going to paint these guys green and gold?" Ruffian models have hardly any metallic areas on them, with the exception of some weaponry and shackles that they're modelled with to represent their "Put them in chains!" special rule. However, I'm an eternal optimist, so I decided not to curl up into a whimpering ball and get cracking instead.
A "starter" Sharkey's Rogues Battle Company (i.e. the bare minimum number of models you need to start out with) consists of the following:
3 Ruffians
1 Ruffian with Whip
2 Ruffians with bow
3 Wildmen
Again, I'd never painted Wildmen of Dunland before, so this would still be a fun challenge.
The first model I chose to tackle I decided would become the leader of my company. Fortunately, Ruffians and Wildmen have some pretty unique poses, so there would be plenty of individuality in my Battle Company. One of the Ruffians comes with a club, but also has a bow slung across his back – he's also a bit bulkier than the others, so I decided he'd be the perfect leader.
So, how to do my chosen colour scheme? I decided I didn’t want the gold to be too bright, as Ruffians wouldn’t be bright and shiny. I experimented with a few ideas, before settling on a drybrush of Retributor Armour over a basecoat of Rhinox Hide – this gave me a muted gold colour that I thought worked really well. The green was much easier to do – I started with Death Korps Drab, washed it with Agrax Earthshade and then highlighted it with Castellan Green and Loren Forest.
For my leader, I chose gold trousers and overcoat, with green for the tunic, so the colours complimented each other really well. I chose Steel Legion Drab for the underclothing as it contrasted nicely with the green and gold – my leader was coming along nicely!
Wildmen are slightly trickier as they have even less metallics than the Ruffians. However, they do have fur! A quick drybrush later, my first Wildman had gold fur, which paired nicely with the green cloth I gave him!
With the rest of the fine details picked out, I had my first two models! Now they just needed names. For inspiration, I looked back through the names of Breelanders that appear in Fellowship of the Rings, as well as the newer Ruffian heroes that come in the Scouring of the Shire sourcebook. They tend to have "tree" names (Rowan, Briarthorn, Ferny, etc.), so that was my basis – I then christened my leader Griff Oakwood. Dunlendings however tend to have more Nordic names – I ended up choosing the name Thorgun for my first Wildman.
With these two done and my colour scheme settled, I moved onto painting and naming the rest of the company. For the other models, I decided to mix up the colours – for some, I chose to go with gold overshirts and green trousers, which came out really well – the gold stands out but isn’t too bright. I now had three more members for my company – Rob Pickett (Ruffian with whip), Tom Greyfeather (Ruffian with Bow 1) and Bob Hatchett (Ruffian 2)
For the other Ruffians, I did the opposite – green overshirts with gold trousers, which tied the army together nicely whilst maintaining the individualism – my new members were Grag Thatcher and William Broadash
That just left the last two members, which were the remaining Wildmen. And with plenty of time left before the deadline, all it took was a lick of paint and Sighur (sword) and Naghar (spear) were ready to join the company!
And now, here's the full company in all its glory! I decided that they also needed a name, and given they're Sharkey's men, I decided on the Lockhole Gang.
This project went from an intimidating challenge to really fun surprisingly quickly – once I'd got the colours worked out and how best to apply them to the models, painting the company became really enjoyable.
It helps too that the Ruffians and Wildmen are lovely models, covered in fun little details that add to their overall look. My company's looking forward to taking to the tabletop and seeing what they can do!
I hope you've enjoyed reading about the challenge and how I tackled the models and colour scheme I was assigned. A huge thanks to everyone involved for helping out with motivation and inspiration – big thanks also to Dewi for arranging and organising the whole thing.
Please check out the other Battle Companies put together by the other hobbyists who took part in this challenge – links to all of them are set out below, and I think you'll be amazed by what some of the people in this challenge have created! Until next time, happy hobbying!
Dewi Evans - Guardians of Wiltshire - https://youtube.com/c/GuardiansofWiltshire
Steve Crowe - Top Table Gaming - https://www.youtube.com/c/TopTableWargaming
Rob Conroy-Máigheóc - Over the Edge of the Wild - https://edgeofthewildsbg.blogspot.com
Cameron Cochrane - PaintsOnA4Up - https://www.youtube.com/c/PaintsOnA4Up
Dan Slobodian/Steve Thorley/Colm Browne/David Cooper/Dan Stuart - Drawn Combat - https://drawncombat.blogspot.com
Dene Palmer - Dene Paints Things -
https://youtube.com/c/Denepaintsthings
https://www.instagram.com/denepaintsthings/
Damian O'Byrne - Battle Streams in Middle-earth - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDeTFeeH7jOuwXxmU3aT-_Q
Alex Temple - Battle Camper: https://youtu.be/hPDRGl0pMNE
Benjamin Bowles - Benji’s Hobbies - https://youtube.com/c/Benji%E2%80%99sHobbies
Harry Parkhill - Battle Games in Middle-earth Battle Games in Middle Earth - YouTube & Entmoot https://soundcloud.com/entmootpodcast
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