Time is a precious commodity for a hobbyist – you either have lots of it, or none at all. A lack of time for hobbying and a backlog of projects can often go hand in hand, as real life gets in the way of finishing off those last few models in your army.
That's part of the reason I'm kicking off this new year of blog posts so late in the year – real life has been somewhat hectic, and so the time for hobbying and indeed writing these blog posts has been very limited. However, the limited hobbying I have done has been a pretty mammoth task, as Sam and I once again paired up and headed to the wonderful GBHL event that is Seven Stones.
This year's army was built up around a theme we felt would be quite interesting to explore, and one that had a lot of potential for options for our army – the Kin-strife.
For a bit of lore background, the Kin-strife was a civil war that hit Gondor in the Third Age, nearly 1,600 years before the events of Lord of the Rings. The ruling king, Eldacar, was driven into exile, and his throne stolen by Castamir, Lord of the Ships and commander of Gondor's navy – we would be theming our army around the force led by Castamir which besieged and burned the city of Osgiliath.
My part of the army would contain Castamir and warriors from Gondor's navy, so my first step was to convert Castamir himself. I used the Arnor captain as a base, swapping out the head for a 3D-printed one, and removing the shield – I also did some minor greenstuff work on the cloak where I had to remove the tassels from the helmet. I also swapped out the shield for a different arm, converting it to hold the severed head of the king's son. A quick paint job later, and my army had a leader!
Next up, I needed some warriors for him to lead. We decided on Black Numenoreans, but themed them to be from the Gondorian city of Pelargir. My first attempt used a spare Arnor banner bearer, again swapping out the head and adding a cloak from the Easterling Kataphract kit. I also managed to find some very nice 3D-printed shields with an alternate design – this way, we could tailor the army to have a Gondorian theme, but at the same time making them look different from the regular Warriors of Minas Tirith
The remainder of the Wardens of Pelargir (as we christened them) were converted from Minas Tirith siege crewmen, adding cloaks and alternate heads to create some unique models. I kept to a similar colour scheme to Warriors of Minas Tirith, adding some cool blues to the black cloth for highlights. The end results turned out great – Castamir's bodyguards were ready for battle!
Next, my attention turned to the Corsairs of Umbar, or as we decided to rebrand them, Gondorian Sailors, given they would be the precursors to the infamous corsairs. But first, they needed a leader, which we decided would be one of Castamir's sons – they are never named by Tolkien in the lore, which fortunately gave us plenty of leeway when coming up with ideas – we settled on using Delgamar's profile as the basis for the first son of Castamir, so I set about converting him. I used the actual Delgamar model, swapping the head for a 3D print, trimming away the sash at his waste, and swapping the weapons round so his sword was in his other hand. I did however save Delgamar's whip, gluing it to his belt. I then painted him up to match the overall blue theme of the army, and Arostamir, firstborn son of Castamir (as we christened him) was ready to lead his men into battle!
Next were the Sailors themselves. I needed something that, whilst not matching the Corsair aesthetic, would look believable as a sailor of Gondor. Fortunately, I came across some Dark Age troops on Ebay, which looked perfect to start with, but they needed some additional detailing to match the early corsair vibe I was going for. So, I press-moulded some boots from some spare corsairs I had lying around, and added them to the models. Simple, but it made them look like a unified force, rather than just rag-tag warriors. I then painted them in a similar style to Arostamir, meaning my half of the army was complete!
Last up was a model that needed no conversion work at all – my Hasharin. I want with a slightly different paint scheme, basing it around the costume I was going to be wearing at the weekend (as you’ll see in the photo!) – I thought it would be quite themey if I matched one of my models. A short while later, and he was done!
The hasharin costume also tied into our theme for the week, as I went round getting players to target certain heroes, with the promise of a certain chocolatey reward!
Getting back to the army, there were still some final touches to do – Sam got hold of some Osgiliath themed bases from Generation Shift, which we both painted in the same style so our army would match, and I still had to do the display board.
For the board itself, I had a very simple concept – the burning city of Osgiliath. Fortunately, I had got my hands on some of the Gondor terrain kits, so I decided to play around with them to see what I could come up with. I started with the tower first – I had the clearest idea about what I wanted for this piece, coming up with a partially ruined tower with part of the dome intact – this involved some cutting away parts of the kit, but I was really pleased with the end result.
Next up, the buildings – again, I had an idea of what I wanted, the challenge would be putting it into practice. I experimented by dry-fitting various parts to get something I was happy with, before gluing the model together. Again, I went for the partially ruined effect, reasoning that this is the early days of the ruining of Osgiliath, so most of the buildings would still be intact. Eventually, I came up with a design I was happy with, so another building was ready!
For the final building, I was slightly hamstrung here as I'd used a lot more parts than planned on the first building. However, I was able to make a pretty decent building out of the various "spare" parts, making extensive use of the various broken pieces, and a bit of ingenuity, to come up with the spare building – given it would sit at the back of the board, I didn’t need to worry too much.
Last, but not least, I needed the Dome of Stars to be part of the board, given it's an integral part of the narrative – the Dome is destroyed, and its Palantir lost in the river. My initial thoughts were to attempt to craft the building, but very fortunately I was able to find a 3D print file online, and it just so happens a friend of mine had a 3D printer. Damaging the dome did take a bit of effort – a combination of a hammer, pliers and cutters, but eventually I'd ripped out all the layers of filament, and my damaged dome was ready!
Now, to the painting! This was pretty straightforward, as I came up with a simple scheme to save me quite a lot of time on the painting, meaning I could focus more time on the little details that help make the board (and the theme too). I sprayed the model with Chaos Black, sprayed it again with Grey Seer, washed it with Agrax Earthshade, and drybrushed it with Karak Stone – the end result was great, replicating the white stonework of Minas Tirith, but also looking old and slightly weathered, as a city that's been under siege should look like.
Lastly, the board itself – I build up the main base with extruded polystyrene, adding some brickwork texture to represent the waterfront (a big shoutout to ZorpaZorp for his excellent tutorial about carving realistic stonework). I added a bridge, a 3D print sourced online, before creating detachable foamboard bases for the terrain pieces, meaning I can still use the pieces on the tabletop. I then used modelling compound to create a roadway running down the centre of the board, before covering everything else in sand and painting it to match our bases (Mechanicus Standard Grey, drybrush Dawnstone, drybrush Astronomican Grey, drybrush Karak Stone). I then added water effect to the river (painted with blue contrast paint), and now I could add the final details. I sourced some crates, barrels and paraphernalia online, and added some Gondorian casualties to represent the loyalists who were left at the mercy of Castamir's followers
I now had the city of Osgiliath, but it needed to look burned and broken – I started by adding various broken bits and pieces of spare parts from the terrain sprues, before covering them in filler – once they were painted to match the terrain pieces, I covered them with Grimdark Rubble from Geek Gaming Scenics, to represent fallen and burnt debris. For the smashed Dome, I build up a pile of rubble using filler and spare pieces I saved from the destruction process, before painting it to match and again covering it with Grimdark rubble:
The final thing I needed was the burning buildings, and for these I used a fairly common technique often found on the battlefields of Warhammer 40k – I used flickering LED tealights, gluing cotton wadding to them with a hot glue gun [NOTE – if you're going to try this, be very, very careful, because (speaking from experience) getting hot glue on your fingers will seriously, seriously hurt!]. I then sprayed them with a light grey, dark grey and then black, giving me the perfect smoke to emit from the buildings – once the LED was switched on, it looked great!
So, how did we do? Well, Sam will tell you in a future blog post how the games went. But as to the actual results of the tournament, well…
That’s right – we only went and won it! I never thought I'd be getting my hands on one of these much coveted Palantirs, and if I'm honest, it still hasn’t really sunk in all these weeks later. But it made all of the effort Sam and I put in absolutely worth it – the only remaining question is if we can do it all again next year!
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