As you'll have seen in my last blog post, I finally managed to finish off my Knights of Dale, and so completed my Army of Dale project. And it only took 6 months of hobby procrastination…
So, with Dale done, I had to choose my next hobby project, and thanks to my extensive backlog, I had a fair few to choose from – Erebor, Mirkwood, Moria, Isengard, Far Harad, I have quite a few half-finished or un-started armies. Unable to choose myself, I decided to leave it up to the GBHL members to decide, and the project with the most votes turned out to be my Army of Thror!
My Army of Thror consists of all the heroes, plus four warbands of dwarves – one warband of Grim Hammers, and three warbands of Warriors of Erebor. Fortunately, the Dwarves of Erebor are a lot quicker to paint than Men of Dale – after a quick metallic basecoat, a wash, a drybrush and then picking out the fine details, I was able to get through the full warband of my Grim Hammers in just a single day!
I decided to space out the heroes in the army as a reward for painting all the dwarves – so each time I painted a warband, I'd paint a hero. With the Grim Hammers done, I pulled Young Dwalin out of the pile and painted him up – he's a lovely model with some nice details (I'm a big fan of his mohawk – it really helps him stand out on the table), and I was able to paint him up in just a couple of hours.
So, that’s 13 dwarves in just under two days, but I wasn’t done there - because they’re a lot more simple to paint, I added a warband of Warriors and a Captain to the painted list, meaning that after taking nearly 6 months to paint half a dozen models, I’d painted 26 dwarves in less than a week! I should add this doesn’t mean I didn't make any efforts on the painting - it’s more the fact you have a lot less details to paint on dwarves than the Men of Dale!
My other challenge was the fact I will have three warbands of identical models, so I needed to make them look different. A simple step was to make their beards different colours, but I also changed the colour of their cloth, so they'd really look different. It would also help me separate them into their prospective warbands. I started out painting one set with dark brown cloth, before doing the second warband in grey – the two schemes contrast each other nicely, helping make my army look like individuals, but also retaining an overall scheme.
With three warbands done, my attention turned to some of the heroes – I had a tournament coming up (Of Dice and Men, held in North Yorkshire), and so decided to take the dwarves there for their first outing on the tabletop. I quickly worked out my army list, and found I only needed to paint three more models to have a 700 point army completely finished – Thror, Thrain and Young Thorin.
I painted Young Thorin first, using the dark blue palette which helps him stand out amongst the rest of the dwarves, but painting his armour and weapons the same way as the rest of the army. I was really pleased with the final results – he was ready to lead the dwarves into battle – Du Bekar!
Next up was his father, Thrain. Both he and Thror are intimidating models to paint, simply because of the detail on the models, and the fact they have a completely different style and colour scheme to the rest of the army. However, once I started painting him, I found him surprisingly straightforward to paint, although I will admit he very quickly became a lesson on just how many different shades of red you can use on a single model. The end result, however, I was very pleased with.
Last but not least, to finish off the army, was Thror. He was another model that appeared intimidating at first, as he has so many different textures – plate armour, chainmail, fur, cloth, hair – painting it all would not be easy. I focussed on the armour first, trying for a burnished gold look. I used a bronze base, followed by highlights of progressively brighter golds; to finish off the armour, I added a green glaze, which helped tone the colours down slightly. The next step was painting the rest of the model, taking care not to go over any of the gold, which meant being careful with the other colours, and applying the occasional touch-up. As with Thrain, Thror proved less challenging that originally believed, and the King Under the Mountain was ready to lead the Dwarves of Erebor into battle! I just hope I don’t run into Azog…
Next up for me was preparing for another tournament, this time Lord of the Imps – a really fun GBHL event run in Lincoln by Harry Parkhill of Entmoot fame – a challenging event, as you have two different leaders on each day. As for a theme, I took a look at some of the models I had in the backlog, and settled on some more dwarves – this time for the Kingdom of Khazad-Dum!
I had a decent collection of Khazad-Dum dwarves already, led by Durin and Mardin, but I needed a few more numbers as the tournament was an 805 pointer (it was the fifth year of the event if you’re wondering why it was 805 points). Fortunately, I was able to find a warband's worth of dwarves in the pile of unpainted models, so they quickly got a paintjob. The other dwarves in the list had silver metallic armour, so I went for a predominantly gold look for the second warband's armour. They came out looking great – the biggest challenge was making sure I painted the beards different colours so the dwarves all looked different!
Next up, I needed a leader to replace Durin for Day Two. Rummaging in the backlog, I found the old Dain Ironfoot model (released way back before the Hobbit films came out), and as I was running Durin as my leader on Day One of Lord of the Imps, I decided to theme my army around the fall of Khazad-Dum, so I painted Dain in the Khazad-Dum colours, planning to use him as Nain, son of Durin, who assumes the kingship of Khazad-Dum after Durin is slain by the Balrog. The colour scheme worked really well on the model, and soon "Nain" was ready to join his father in battle!
So, with all those models done, my paint count for the year is now up to 165! It's starting to feel like I'm actually making progress, and I have a few projects planned that should help me add to those numbers l pretty quickly!
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