Howdy all! Welcome to my WiP thread and "Warband a Week" project. Like everyone else, I've got a huge backlog of miniatures I need to paint, and recently, I decided to make a sort of project out of it. I'll have to apologize for picture quality, I'm currently in a room with only one window (on the far side where my roommate sleeps) and I'm stuck with my iPhone camera.
More or less, my goal is finish a warband's worth of models (13 or so, more or less) every week. This can depend on what type of models I include in the warband (I.E. Trolls, Ents, etc.) Since there are about 13 models in a warband, I can more or less spend a day working on 2 models or so, or separate some steps across an entire warband throughout multiple days.
As for background, I bought my first set of LOTR minis way back in 2006, but was much more interested in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k. At the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I fell back in love with Jackson's imagery and Tolkien's world. I began an earnest collection back in 2012/2013, but only recently have I decided to extrapolate and really flesh out the collection, especially in light of the drastic changes to GW's flagship licenses.
Currently, I've been working on my Mordor army. While technically speaking I'm in my 3rd week, I'd like to count my next warband as my first for the purposes of this thread. Nevertheless, I still have to finish the Captain to lead my warband, which is the Fimbul model.
Starting off though, here's my previous warbands
Warband 1: Orc Warriors w/Captain
I really love this model. One of my favorite out of the LOTR line
And his followers. I try to convert one or two orcs in my units so that the entire unit is not entirely homogenous with copies. Ideally, I try to ensure that one model, converted or otherwise, is unique to a warband.
A close-up of the banner-bearer. It took my quite a while to get an Eye of Sauron shape that I liked. Inspiration came from the Weta Workshop pin made for crew on the set of LOTR. This is another personal favorite model of mine, it oozes character.
Warband 2: Orc Warriors w/Captain
One of the new captains from The Hobbit. At first, I was worried that he was too "uruk-hai" like in stature, and that his helmet would not fit with the mordor orc design, but I'm quite happy with him now.
I personally find it a bit difficult to paint un-uniformed miniatures. To my eye, my efforts do not really look truly "random", and sometimes too much random can result in a too-disjointed look, so I settled for 3 colors which I would apply randomly to the cloth. I need to go back at some point and paint some eyes of Sauron on some shields, but I get the feeling that it will be sooner rather than later.
Finally, we get to Week 3. The Warband in question here is just about done, but I'm still chewing through Fimbul in both his on-foot and mounted self.
The Orc in question. I really like the look of Fimbul, and the look of the Hobbit Wargs in my mind now surpasses the older looking Wargs, being closer to wolves. Fimbul is only a temporary captain of this warband, I was able to locate the Mordor Orc Captain blister with the two variant captains, and when they're done Fimbul can go back to leading a contingent of Warg Riders. I'm looking to finish Fimbul by tomorrow, which I should be able to get some pictures of.
Fimbul's followers were a bit strange to work on. This Warband includes 2 Mordor Trolls, so instead of 12 models I worked on 10. This is more of the "hodge podge" warband in terms of equipment, but I look forward to fielding them nonetheless
The Trolls I finished before the rest of the warband.
The Mordor Troll always captured my imagination. It is, to my mind, the archetypal "big bad military monster" type for evil factions.
The Drummer Troll was a bit harder for me. The "under" skin of the Olog-Hai in the movies is a little more grey and less "flesh" toned, but I liked the look of the GW examples in the Mordor book so much that I decided to go with it.
And that's it for now! I'll hopefully get some more pictures throughout the week as I finish up my Mordor project and move on to my Easterlings!
