More refurbished bases

 Here I am again! While working on other stuff, I’ve been squeezing in bits of time to keep unifying the LoTR bases. There’s really no mystery to it, it’s quite a mechanical, methodical bit of work. Almost therapeutic, I’d say. The mandala of miniatures.

Merry people coming from Isengard

I could put some additional work on the minis, I'm aware. However, my aim now is just getting them ready to run some merely presentable games. If the kids really get into playing regularly and feel like taking the next step and getting a bit more serious about it, then we’ll talk. But for now, I’m perfectly happy just having a handful of reasonably painted minis that let us play some simple skirmishes.

This is one of the few exceptions in which I've actually done something on the mini itself. The banner pole broke and I took the opportunity to make it all look a little bit better.

 

Well, it was quite easy to break, to be honest

It originally was a puny attempt to convert a swordsman into a banner bearer. But I made the pole with separate small rods, so it was doomed from its very conception. Ah, the naivety of youth! 25 years ago this looked acceptable to me.

But now I've used a single rod, much better option. About the banner itself, I didn't want to redo it completely, but it obviously needed some work.

Slight touches

It's fun to see how the banner seems to have changed so much having done almost nothing. I had to very delicately unglue it from the pole, outline the shapes with the brush (burnt brown, didn't want to use plain black) and glue it to the new pole. I had a heavy temptation of repainting the cloaks and all the Elves, but in the end I resisted, so this is how they look like:

The arrows are mere pins. Yes, these are delicate to touch

At some moment (can't honestly recall when exactly) I apparently got Haldir and a banner bearer. Most likely got them second handed, as I'm quite a heavy detractor of the whole scene of the Elves from Lórien in Helm's Deep, and I don't see me buying them fresh new. Never got to collect a full Lórien army beyond these two.

Anyway, here they are

I got the Mordor Orcs next. Quite a bunch of different fellas. As they are too many to put them all in just one single pic, I'm showing them in three batches:

Sword and shield

Two handed weapons (plus homemade banner)

Archers

They look acceptable after all these years, even if they could obviously get some updated paintjob. However, looking dirty and gritty seems to be atemporal enough.

I'm finishing with the Men of Gondor, in the main two stages we get to see in the movies. 

The Last Alliance guys

 And the modern ones, also presented in batches for your convenience:

Fortunately no arrows were needed here

Shades? Highlights? What's shades and highlights, precious?

You may notice brave Faramir and even braver Pippin

With this, I’ve pretty much covered all the forces I own for the game. I just have a few character bases left to sort out. Hopefully I’ll have them done before too long.

More coming soon!