Too long have I watched stars. Too long have I haunted the steps of the Tampere Observatory. Now it is time again to return to the Campaign, and show you what’s happening behind the scenes. Thank you all for waiting – and for Shapore, we have good news and ill news. The good news first: we will not build the first level of Minas Tirith wall. The ill news… is an ill guest: we will build the entire White City all the way up to the top of the Tower of Ecthelion. We apologize for driving you mad with impatience – it will be quite a long while before we get that far… you’ll be seeing the Meduseld and a bit of the surrounding area of Edoras, the completed Helm’s Deep, Isengard & Orthanc, Zirakzigil, Erebor, and Rammas Echor ere the battle of the Pelennor fields.
To whet your appetite, here are a couple of pics of our plans & some paper mock-ups of the main gate area, plus a material testing with a section of the outer wall.
We are eagerly waiting for the new Weta Workshop Minas Tirith environment with far better details – of course, the model I’m building will be much reduced in scale, and will have far fewer houses. I will attempt a forced perspective, with upper level structures in slightly smaller scale, along with similarly smaller miniatures (1:72 around levels 2-5, 15mm for the top levels) and trebuchets.
We’ve been quietly building an army worthy of Mordor (or two armies, actually) by acquiring more orcs and uruks, mostly from the second hand markets. We might not use all of the models in the game, but rather have both the Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith appear as rather large dioramas in a local hobby show sometimes in the future – and that requires quite a number of figures. Here’s a pic of the “orc drawer” and another of the “uruk drawer” – there will also be conversions of uruks climbing ladders, for example.
Now, back to Amon Hen, which is the next game of the Campaign, and decisive for many future story lines. The Fellowship is still resting in Lothlórien, and when the time comes for them to journey onwards, we will shoot a mood pic of the farewell scene. For that, we need the river Celebrant / Silverlode – meaning it’s finally time to cast water surface on the second river board we have had for quite some time. Its chief use will be later as the other half of River Isen, but the island in the middle of the river is quite suitable for Lothlórien. The following pic is a mock-up of the farewell scene, with Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn, along with a few other Elven nobles (from Thunderbolt Mountain miniatures), and an Elven bridge from Thomarillion. The Mallorn forest pieces you’ve already seen earlier in this thread.
As before, casting the water begins with sealing the ends of the river with clear silicone and several layers of masking tape. Then about a bottle and a half of Woodland Scenics’ Realistic water, using toothpick to help the resin to flow into tight spots - around reeds, for instance.
I left the surface of the water still (or as still as the cured resin appears); it serves better as Silverlode. I will add Woodland Scenics water effects later to make the board appear similar to our other River Isen terrain piece.
I’m really lousy with major conversions, but I’m giving my best shot at getting the Fellowship members to sit in the Elven boats:
I’m also repainting all the Fellowship figures to feature Elven cloaks – I rather like the Formula P3 Thornwood Green, and will base the cloaks using that greenish grey color (though I tested several other similar colors).
I’ve also dressed up the Amon Hen board with Hasslefree Miniatures photo-etched bracken, and added more weathering, courtesy of MIG Humidity and Wet Effects paint set. Here are a couple of shots of the board, ready for playtesting:
As you can see, still a bit of green stuffing to do with boat crews, and there will be another mood pic featuring the Argonath statues – meaning another scenery piece I want to build before we post the battle report. But the board is set, and the pieces are moving (albeit slowly). Stay tuned!
{ PORTAL }
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No way i could recreate this in a thousand years
keep up with this incredible project!
)
I always look forward to your post for inspiration.
