The Arkenstone of Thrain

Thorin and his party are still looking for that elusive ArkenStone...It's all he can think about!

Well It's been a while since I found time to Blog, so I thought I would give a little up date as to what I have been doing. I'm still entrenched in the Fantasy side of things and still really enjoying painting again. My Battle of the Five Armies project is still slowly coming along.

 As you can see I have been painting up a few Elves, these are old Grenadier (now Mirilton) figures. I still think they are the best sculpts on the market even though they are getting old now (1992). There are three main troop types, archers, blades and spear men but this is enough I think to portray a highly disciplined army.

 The Elf command base minus a captain. These guys form a kind of colour party surrounding the standard. I based the design of the standard on an image from the internet. It comes from the LOTR film and so was perfect. After a little experiments I painted my army using bronze armour, washed with green. The surcoats were painted with Foundry's 'Night Sky' A, B and C paints. So a blue/grey over green bronze look. This was taken again from the films and a little bit of imagination. The lovely Elven clothes were then covered in mud and dust, well you've got to really, These guys have had a long march to get here.

 Unlike my Orc bases which are miniature war bands really, I wanted to put a little more discipline and organisation into my Elven army.
Again taking inspiration from the films I formed my archer bases into two ranks. This I hope will give them a better look on their large bases and should add a little drama to them too. Although each figure on the base is counted as an archer for game purposes, the front rank is infact two handed blades. The second rank has been positioned so they can fire through the first. Also when the figures come into hand to hand combat, the base should look good with the front rank fighting with weapons.

Another nice touch which was unseen when planning is that on the march, the Elven companies can be clearly made out. On the command to form line, the bases turn to form one continuous unbroken unit. Very Elven I thought.

 I found a great Orcy blade whilst helping out a friend, very Orcy and great for making maggot holes in your enemies.

While I was painting up my Elven host, I dabbled around with this Reaper Bones Orc. The Reaper Bones range has taken my interest and I just wanted to see how they paint up.I wondered how much detail would be lost changing from metal to plastic...
 Well this is just the rust layer for the armour but I found my black spray paint really didn't like the plastic. I have since read that the figures should be washed in soapy warm water to remove any release agent still left on the figures. I plan to paint more in the future as It could be a cheap way to get some great sculpts into the armies.