The making of a weapons stash

Hello again!!

Those eagle-eyed viewers out there, will have noticed an objective marker that featured in the last battle I played and it was used it to represent a weapons stash.

It consists of two spear barrels, a crate, some shields and other weapons strewn across the floor, with the idea to use it as a point where a friendly soldier could exchange their weapons or armour provided they were close enough to it.

The main parts that you would need to construct this weapon stash are:

Crate (Made as shown in LOTR battle games in Middle Earth pack 13)
Barrels x 2 (Made as shown in LOTR battle games in Middle Earth pack 13 and 27)
Plastic weapons objective (Taken from the ruins of middle earth sprue)
60mm base
Sand
Dark brown and Black spray paints
Other GW paint colours as mentioned below


Barrel constrcution

The process for making crates and barrels is taken from LOTR battle games in Middle Earth pack 13 and detailed below.


1. Cut a piece of dowel into inch/2.5cm long sections.

2. Smooth of the top and bottom edges until suitably rounded with sandpaper.

3. Cut grooves at regular intervals around the circumference of the barrel (I did this using a knife), do not cut the grooves too deep they are only to show where the 'slats' of the barrel join each other.

4. Cut out two thin strips of card (Mine were approx. 3mm x 50mm and 1mm thick) and glue to near the top and the bottom of the barrel to represent iron banding.

5. Glue sectioned cocktail sticks to the top of the barrel, these will be painted and used to represent spears.



Crate construction

1. Crates can be made quite simply by gluing square or rectangular sections of balsa wood together into a cuboid shape, trimming with a knife where required any overhang off.

2. Use a pair of scissors or blunt pencil to score lines, to suggest planks, into the balsa wood.

3. Glue strips of thin card, like before near either end of the crate.

The finished barrels and crate with other items
to make the weapons stash.

After these have been constructed, they are glued to the
60mm base with any other suitable items that will fit.

Glue is applied to the surface and sand poured over.

Once the glue has dried the sand and other items to the
base, it is sprayed with a basecoat of black.

Once the basecoated feature is dry it is then sprayed
with a dark brown.

Although mine is a much lighter shade of brown, the aim is to
reduce the amount of hand painting required.

I also took the opportunity to coat other terrain features in brown.

And basecoat some other figures too.

Once this layer has dried, the piece can then be paint in more specific colours for each individual feature.

Progressive highlighting was used outline the top of the
barrels to show were the inside rim is compared to the
outside edge, notice how the inside remains unpainted/
unhighlighted after a Rhinox hide wash is applied.

Barrel/crate wood and spear shafts - Rhinox Hide wash, Rhinox Hide to Mournfang Brown to Steel Legion Drab:

Drybrushing (2:1:0)(1:1:0).

Highlighting between the wooden slats (1:2:0)(0:1:0)(0:2:1)(0:1:1)(0:1:2)(0:0:1).

Base/ground - Steel Legion Drab to Ushabti Bone, Drybrushing (1:0)(2:1), Light drybrushing (1:1)(0:1)


Grey stones - Dawnstone to White Scar (1:0) coat then progressive highlights at (2:1)(1:1)(1:2)






Shields - Khorne red to Evil Sunz Scarlet and Dark angels green to Warpstone Glow (1:0)(1:1)(0:1)

Shield bosses - Two coats of Gehenna's gold

Iron banding and spear/axe heads - Highlights of Dawnstone then of Iron breaker.



Thus painting the features like so makes the entire thing look like:

This has turned out much better than I had anticipated. The brown spray was much lighter than I had expected so most of the browns had to be washed darker initially before, and the iron banding colour choices were a bit of a compromise from not having enough metallic colours and thinking it might look good? 

Also I've chosen not to flock it as it looks good enough anyway. But overall I happy with the result :) .

Until then

Fish

Preparing the defences

Having looked through the scenarios in the Siege of Gondor book, four require 48'' worth of stone wall sections. Now I only have 24'' at best, with the gate section and two towers.

This meant assembling three 6'' section and a tower, to make the bare minimum 47'':

Lots of Card!

The old and new

The finished ensemble

The size of the wall section is 16cm x 9.5cm x 6 cm , with the front barrier rising 12cm above the ground

Secondly a hasty siege tower was built, not much in comparison to the first one:

Wall-side view

The back slopes downward, cursed Orc engineering!

With that sorted, Sauron can finally unleash his hordes on Gondor...

Until then

Fish

A little surprise

Over the last break I covered a couple of scenarios involving the fellowship in Moria and their escape...

Between then an now, I have happened across some more characters in the Lord of the rings universe.

I wanted a powerful evil character, as they have no proper threats from my current collection, with exception to maybe Gothmog, a cave troll, a weakened version of the Witch-king or the Mumakil, all three can be neturalised by the forces of good.

So I bought Gulavhar, the terror of Arnor:

He needs the glueing of a horn and repainting...

I also forgot to get a foot version of Suladan the Serpent Lord before. So:

And finally, to balance the evil filling my collection Radagast the brown is a support for Gandalf.

Personally my favourite version of him

During the remaining couple of weeks left of a long summer. I plan to play through the six scenarios in the Siege of Gondor sourcebook.

Which covers the attack on Osgiliath the year before the start of the war of the ring, up to the events at the Pyre of Denethor.

Until then

Fish

The Fellowship begins...

But before any battles are started, I wanted to re-do so of the paintwork done five-ish years ago when I go the Breaking of the fellowship set:

Instead of conforming to the film's colours of the characters. They shall take up some of their regional colours from my models. So Boromir will have more red, Gimli blue, Aragorn green. The hobbits some purple and light blue, Legolas purple but Gandalf shall take his own colours. All will have a grey cloak like normal.

Merry - The yellow waistcoat should be less muddy
and have more layers

Gimli - The purple hem and blues need a bit of touching up

Missing throwing axe end

Legolas - His hair is terrible, but I am proud of the tunic
and under-tunic

And this view, missing the end of blade

Sam - I chose a light blue for his jacket,
hopefully to be dissimilar from Pippin's

Aragorn - His under-tunic is green-ish,
but still needs a bit of highlighting

Boromir - His sword needs work

Frodo - I wanted to use purple on one of the hobbits,
he seemed more likely to wear one

Pippin - He has a black shirt, although barely visible or paint-able

All the colours are relatively simple. Here is a basic outline, as the number of colour mixes varies from colour to colour and model to model.

Red: (Blood red, Scab red)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)

Green: Earthy green (Dark angels green, Catachan green)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)
             Merry green (Dark angels green, Snot green)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)

Blues: Light (Ultramarines blue, Ice blue)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1) 
            Dark (Regal blue, Ultramarines blue)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)

Browns: Dark(Scorched brown, Bestial brown)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)
               Light(Bestial brown, Graveyard earth)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)

Greys: Elven cloaks (Chaos Black, Codex grey)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1 - 1:2 - 0:1)
            Gandalf beard(Chaos Black, Codex grey, Skull white)(1:0:0 - 2:1:0 - 1:1:0 - 1:2:0 - 0:2:1 - 0:1:1 - 0:1:2 - 0:0:1)

Metals: Boltgun metal - Black wash - Mithril silver drybrush

Golds: Boltgun metal - Black wash - Shining Gold

Purple: (Liche purple, Skull white)(1:0 - 2:1 - 1:1)

While that was happening I took some time to base a few heroes with sand and flock.

Before

After

The evil models have black rims and the good models have brown ones. Durburz, the shaman and the dwarf captain are usually in the mines or rocky terrain so no flock for them.

Also It is with much regret that I can say I like the new paints, although you have to break the seal which is slightly annoying and mentally calming at the same time. The actual opening system makes opening awkward, but it is still better then the precursor, because there isn't a problem with paint drying on the inside of the lid as with the first pots.
The most annoying thing though is, that the names are getting too easy to remember. My hatred of them and in trying remember them for that, means I have remembered them.......Curses

So I think I've done a lot here, still, this means nicer looking models for battles, of which I'll be doing the four scenario's from the Mines of Moria booklet, which has gone out of production sadly. And there may be time for another one off battle...

Until then

Fish