Clearing the Backlog, Part 25 – The Road to Throne of Skulls (Part 3)

As you saw in the last blog post, my army for Throne of Skulls, 1,000 points of Atop the Walls, was complete. What I now needed, was a display board…

Having decided some time ago that I wanted to expand my Realms of Men army into Atop the Walls, the only logical display board for the army was the walls of Minas Tirith. An initial idea was to simply have the top of the wall as the base of the board and just arrange the models on it, but that would be too easy for Throne of Skulls [although having worked on my display board, it would have been a far more sensible option…]. Instead, I went with something a bit bigger…

My starting point for the project was, perhaps surprisingly, not the walls themselves. I wanted to try and recreate the scene from the films where Mordor's siege towers assault the walls. Unfortunately, Games Workshop doesn’t make a siege tower model [although it did used to make one for Warhammer Fantasy about 20-odd years ago, but they're very difficult to get hold of], and I don’t really have the skills to craft one. So, I did a quick search on eBay, and in a staggering display of luck, managed to come across a listing selling this beauty:

This tower comes from a range of action figures released alongside the films, and after placing some models on it to test the scale, it was the perfect size to use for the board! Now I just needed to build some walls to match it in terms of scale!

For the walls themselves, I had two choices – either scratch build them, or 3D print them. I'd used 3D prints for my Grand Tournament display board, but decided this time that I wanted to have a go at crafting the walls, especially once I'd worked out how tall they needed to be.

The basic structure of the wall was built from foamboard – this would be my inner layer, and was essentially a big box. I also made sure to make some supports to give it some sturdiness – I would be placing two metal trebuchets on it after all. As to the walls themselves, I used XPS foam sheets, into which I carved a brick pattern – I really do need to give a shout out at this point to ZorpaZorp and his excellent tutorial on How to Carve Realistic Stonework. Essentially, you mark out the lines for the stonework, score them with a craft knife, widen them with a pencil and then add texture to the foam by using scrunched up tin foil - the end result looked fantastic!

With the stonework carved, it was just a case of glueing the XPS foam to the foamboard box, taking care where the bastions were on end of each wall. The crenelations were made by using a hot wire cutter and a special MDF cutting jig I found online – this made things so much easier, and they looked great!

With the wall under construction, I needed a way for my army to reach the top of the wall – stairs! Whilst I could have also carved these from foam, it would have been very fiddly, and would've taken ages. Fortunately, the Gondor Mansion kit comes with a set of stairs – I'd saved two stair pieces from a previous project, and bought two more Mansion kits, so that I could use the stair pieces and then use the rest of the kits for future projects.

I started with a simple set of stairs, made by gluing one set on top of another (with a spare floor tile so that the stairs could actually sit on something), plus two floor tiles to create a landing where the stairs change direction – I then cut some foam sheets to size and glued them around the stairs – my stairway was complete!

Now to the section behind the walls themselves – I didn’t want it to just be empty, so I took one of the Gondor Mansion kits to use as a building. The design I had in mind was one I'd seen crafted a few times, and I wanted to see if I could replicate it using the kits – and I'm very please to say that I could!

I left the back wall off of the building to save parts – the walls would serve as the backdrop. Next, I glued various pieces of scrap foam to the board, before carving it to look like flagstones, using the same technique as I had for the walls – you can see there's a number of gaps in the foam, which I intended to fill with filler and then cover with scenic to look like rubble – the city is under siege after all!

Next came the siege tower, which I needed to look less like a toy and more like an actual siege tower – I used thin strips of balsa wood, glued to the inside of the tower to avoid there being bare surfaces – I then added extra platforms to the tower, making it look more to the scale of the models, and two support struts running up the inside of the tower. I had planned to convert two trolls to be pushing the tower towards the wall, but had to abandon that part of the project as I simply didn’t have time. After a bit of work, the tower was ready for painting!

So, to painting the board itself. For the foam, I first applied a coat of foam primer (i.e. paint that you apply to foam before spraying it so that spray paint doesn’t melt it) – I used a white spray paint, before picking out individual bricks with different colours in order to give the stonework some variety. I then applied a wash of Contrast Apothecary White over the whole thing, before drybrushing everything with Pallid Wych Flesh. Finally, the White City was indeed white!

The mansion kit got the exact same treatment, before it was glued into place. I then added some scatter terrain I'd scavenged from my GT board, and the city itself was ready! I then added sand and flock outside the walls, painted to match my Pelennor Fields basing scheme – the board was almost ready!

As to the siege tower, I used different metallic paints for the various panels, such as brass, bronze and silver, before applying a wash of thinned down Contrast paint, before lightly drybrushing the edges with a dark silver. The wood was painted with the same wash, before being drybrushed with light browns – I then painted the flags at the top of the tower and it was ready!

Last but not least, I needed some orcs to assault the white city, and for that, I picked up a sprue of Morannon orcs. I sprayed them black, then silver, before applying two washes - first black, then brown. This is my go-to recipe for dirty metallics – orcs aren’t going to have shiny armour after all. The cloth was picked out with brown, before being highlighted with a dark red and then a lighter red – I kept the colours fairly muted so that they would stand out against the bright walls. I then picked out the skin with greens, browns and greys, before painting the weapons a light brown – with the orcs glued in place on the tower, the board was finished!

So, here is the finished board, with the army added! I was really pleased with how this board turned out, and as it was mostly constructed from foam, it wasn't overly expensive either! It looked great with the models all set up on the walls – I then paired it with Sam's army and display board, and we were ready for Throne of Skulls!

So, to the event itself – as usual, it was a showcase of incredible hobbying. The standard seems to get higher and higher every year. Sadly, my army wasn't nominated for Favourite Army, which ultimately was my goal, but having seen the incredible armies and their display boards which did get nominated, I can have zero complaints – they really were stunning pieces of work, and all of them deserved their nominations – the event organisers must have one heck of a task trying to come up with their shortlist. 

As to my numbers, the model count for this year has now reached 178 models! I've been really pleased with my progress this year, and I'm hoping that with a bit of a push, I can get to 200 painted for the year. Post Throne of Skulls, things get a little bit more relaxed as I have no upcoming events, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Secret Santa may bring!

I'll be back with one more post this year, which will be my usual end of year round up – until then, hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Aragorn, You Need More Men (Backlog Clearing (Sept-Nov ‘25) Seven Stones Prep

Hey all

It’s the penultimate blog for the year and I’m still waiting for the house move and so still haven’t done much in the way of hobbying. I had the impression that it’d all happen in August/September, but here we are now in November and still waiting. 

Because of this, it dawned on me that I had to get the ball rolling with Throne of Skulls prep. 

But first, I had an event in September, where I was using Khazad Dum, and realised that I needed mirrors to use with the army. I scraped together some loose bits from my box of goodies, 4x 25mm bases and a paperclip. 

I cut a short length of paperclip for each one, then glued it at an angle to the two bases that I’d use. Next, I wrapped the other two bases in kitchen foil and, after painting the floor bases, then glued the newly created mirrors to them, resting against the stands. Not the prettiest work, but they would suffice.

The PS1 graphics 'beaver' was the unexpected theme for BSIME stream that night, so ended up a part of it. I had no access to any supplies so threw him together with excess tin foil.

With that sorted, I was very aware that TOS was quickly approaching, and I had multiple things that I wanted to get done…

Earlier on in the year, James and I had decided to do a joint display board. And he was keen to do the defenders of Minas Tirith, so that left me with two options. Either I make my army an ally; the fiefdoms, maybe the relieving force of Rohan. Oooor, I could besiege him…

While I liked the idea of the Fiefs, and have the models, not many are built, nevermind painted. (Particular gutting was then seeing an awesome new Imrahil released in the year.

My Mordor forces however, had many Morannon Orcs, several of which had already had hand swaps for variety, and were all painted. Which was a big positive while awaiting the move.

So I threw together my list, I wanted to have at least one troll, I also wanted to have Easterlings, and also to have my catapult for ‘releasing the prisoners’ at the beginning of each game. I’d have liked to include Goroth and Zagdush, but they fall into Legacy, which isn’t accepted at Warhammer World anymore.

I had picked up a new Gothmog to lead my forces, and so threw him together one evening at my other half's nan's and then got him painted up a few days later. Doing him in a similar style to my Morannons (dark metal armour, and red clothes) but I differentiated his clothes by changing some to black or brown, as all red just doesn’t look right to me. I was happy with the end result.

 

Next up, I had Amdur, who was already painted, but done about 12yrs ago or so.

 

So I wanted to give him a glow up, with better gold, varying reds and maybe some black on his clothes. I went for this pattern and thought that he now stands out a lot better for a leader of the black dragons. I felt it was a nice display of my progress with paint quality over the years.

With time marching on, I had to make a move and get the display done.

With James doing the walls of Minas Tirith, the edge of the Pelennor Fields and attacking siege tower, I would make more of the fields with the attacking army upon it.

I had several ideas that I simply wouldn’t get around to with the limited time I ended up with including a destroyed siege tower with dead orcs surrounding it. I’d also liked to have tried building Grond, but admit that it could have been beyond my capabilities anyway. Lastly, I wanted to do some objective markers, but decided that this was a luxury that I could, sadly, do without, if needed.

The display wasn’t going to be very difficult, as I was essentially making a field. I had several packs of scenic flowers and moss that I could use to stop it being just a grassy plain. I also remembered that when I did my Mordor Catapult several years ago, I had put wheel tracks in the mud beneath it, so decided to include them onto the display, leading to the catapult. 

I got ahold of a 1’x2’ MDF board and covered one side in polyfiller, to make it a more uneven and natural surface. While it was wet, I also added in the tracks. With all my tools packed…I didn’t have my filler knife (if that’s what it’s called) so had to improvise, using a leftover pumpkin scoop that my son had leftover from Halloween.

With the Polyfiller dried a day later, I then sanded it down to make it smoother and remove the loose pieces off of it. After which, I then sprayed it black all over.

After the spray had dried, I went over the board with a layer of Steel Legion Drab, then drybrushed with Baneblade Brown, and then a lighter drybrush of Karak Stone. This was not my usual mix, but the objective was to blend with James’ board and it looked pretty great to give him credit. I finished off the painting by doing the tracks with Dryad Bark and washing them with Agrax.

After the paint had dried, I stuck down several flowers and mossy bushes and began the most arduous task of adding the flock all over. Three short hours and a locked back later, it was all done!

 

With a smug swagger, at being ready so early, I started packing all my models together, as I would need them for our League Finale prior to TOS. It was as I was doing so, and thinking about how nicely the whole army was coming together with relatively little effort (do to earlier conversions, little extra bits etc) that I put my hands on my Mordor Troll…and while he’s been fine for local events and GBHL tournaments…I felt he wasn’t up to the standard of the rest of the army. Since I had supported his arm (he’s a metal troll) with a loose piece of sprue, looking like a walking stick and having an old paintjob…

I had two choices. Either, fix him up and repaint him. Or I dig into my Battle of the Pelennor box, and find my plastic troll, build him up and paint him, hoping that I don’t get halfway through the process when the move is announced. After some umming and ahhing, I settled on the simplest advice I know: 

‘Fuck it’

I slapped him together on a BSIME stream one evening and got on with painting him up. I find with these bigger models, my best way to make progress, is to focus down one body part at a time. So I get all the base colours down, then focus down one arm, then the other, followed by each leg, then the torso and finish with the head. 

 

 

And despite giving myself that timed challenge paintjob, we still didn’t have a completion date. So let’s make the most of that, and I went digging into my bits box and found several things that I could make use of; a couple of broken orcs, a broken Minas Tirith archer, a paperclip and a couple of pieces of hardened green stuff. 

I had several ideas of what I could do with these. Needing 6 objective markers, I decided to build the following;

1/2: ‘Prisoners’ for Gothmog to ‘release’

3: Rocks for loading the catapult 

4: Orc that’s been shot (arrow embedded in him)

5: Squished orc under stone from a trebutchet 

6: The stone wot Gothmog sidesteps and spit on 

I felt that these would all be nice and thematic and blend into the display nicely.

The first one I started with was 6. I beheaded the Minas Tirith warrior and kept the head to one side. I then used his body to frame the stone, which I then built up the green stuff around, using a paused YouTube video to get a rough idea to aim for.

Second, I took one of the broken orcs and tried lying him down. At a certain angle and with a bit of green stuff beneath the shoulder, it looked like a naturally proned dead guy. I just had to adjust his arm a touch as it would be hovering. So I cut it off and rotated it as well as the hand to put it to a more natural position. With this done, I drilled a small hole in his neck, cut a small piece of paperclip and glued it in. Then finished by putting a small amount of green stuff around the end and roughly shaping it into the feathers. 

Third, I took the other broken orc and split his shield, figuring the weight of a landing stone would break one. This would also allow me to lay it flat on the floor. I then cut the orc in half and laid his legs over the edge of the base. The top half, I sat upright beside it as a frame for the stone, which I then made with green stuff.

Fourth, this was probably the easiest, as I just made several rocks using the limbs I had taken off the broken models and covered them in green stuff. Gluing them into a pile of stones. 

And finally for the last two, I took the head from the Minas Tirith warrior that I decapitated earlier and used it to make seven moulds in blue stuff. Ideally, I’d have five on one and three on another objective, but if one goes wrong, I have flexibility. Naturally, two of them were completely deformed and had to get canned. But I could still get three on each and that, combined with the handful I have on the base of the catapult, would do. I stuck them down in a varying manner across the bases and that was all the objectives built.

A couple of days painting later and the task I had written off was done!

With them all sorted, I could have a cheeky layout of my army across the board. I spread the orcs out in a chaotic manner to fill the board out and kept the easterlings in a tight formation, as you’d expect of them.

And then, on the Saturday morning, we finally got the magical moment when we laid the two armies side by side to complete the look!

And there we have it, despite the issues, I managed to do what I’d vowed to myself and make more effort with this years TOS! The board was sadly not nominated for a best army award, but with the level of competition, there's no reason to be shamed by that. I was just happy to have built one.

Let's hope that I can get some painting done after a move in December!