Update time

The Rohan Commanders and the foot and mounted Banner Bearer are completed. Apologies for lack of step-by-step updates; once again I get quite caught up in the painting! Here is a WIP shot from all the basecoats being applied and then a wash to tie everything together:



The majority of the basecoats were actually Contrast Paints; I've picked up another couple since my initial purchase of them so I have quite a range of greens, browns and blacks/greys now, which are quite core colours for a lot of Middle Earth stuff.

During a fit of neatness, I decided to gather all my basecoat colours and line up the highlight for each one before starting to apply the highlights. Made me realise that I actually use quite a few paints!



Finally, here are the finished models:





I'm pretty happy with them, they're slightly above my standard tabletop level that I use for rank and file troops, but I didn't put as much detail into them as I would for named heroes. I love the greens and browns of Rohan though, and the little bit of red added in makes a nice contrast

Next up is the first batch (of very, very many) of Uruk-Hai Warriors. Decided to throw in two Captains as well, because I have twelve painting handles and they're the same colour scheme as the warriors



They've been undercoated with leadbelcher spray, as the metal is the dominant colour on them. Should be a simple paint scheme: Doombull Brown for the skin, Abbadon Black for the hair/cloth/gloves, and then probably Mournfang Brown for the straps. Then a liberal wash of Nuln Oil to darken everything down, followed by a wash of Agrax to give the armour a bit of a brownish tinge. Then the odd white hand painted on! I wanted to keep these guys fairly straightforward as I have so many to paint

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I like the red edge on the banner, I may well "borrow" that for my own Rohan dudes

Good luck with the Uruk Hai horde!

Thanks @Slinky!

I apologise for the slow timing of updates, I've been slightly distracted by The Last of Us Part 2, its very difficult to put the controller down sometimes However, I have finished the first batch of Uruk-Hai

Here are a few progress pictures again; the first one shows the uruks after basecoats. As I wanted to keep the scheme quick and easy to knock out, I simply basecoated the skin with Doombull Brown, the hair and cloth with Abbaddon Black and the leather straps with Mournfang Brown. The leadbelcher spray undercoat has the metallic armour covered.



Next stage, I gave them all a heavy wash with Nuln Oil. This did dull down most of the colours, shading them and tying them together and giving the uruks a dirty kind of look.



However, the Nuln Oil didn't darken down the armour as much as I wanted, so I went back over the armour with Black Templar contrast paint.



I was delighted with this effect, it gave the real dark-black metal look that I wanted for the uruk armour. Just needed to apply some roughly painted white hand markings and basing and the first batch of ten (plus two captains) is finished!



I did highlight the captains, because I like my hero models to stand out a little bit more. Didn't bother highlighting the regular warriors though because the wash gave enough of a shade to the models, and after all there are going to be loads of them all together!

Hope you like the uruks Next up is Elfhelm for the First Battle of the Fords of the Isen scenario, such a detailed model, I'm looking forward to painting it

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Thanks for the idea of the black templar contrast paint. My local game store employee said he has used it on metal before but didn't have an example to show me so I was skeptical. Good to see how it works.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks @Mapper, here's a bit of a better side by side comparison of the black templar contrast paint over leadbelcher:





The model on the left was simply undercoated with leadbelcher metallic spray. The finished result on the right consists of a heavy Nuln Oil wash, followed by a coat of Black Templar contrast paint.

However, when applying the contrast paint I wiped most of the paint off before applying it; I wanted to darken the armour but not shade the recesses much, since that had already kind of been done by the Nuln Oil. Since I'm using the Nuln Oil to shade the whole model, I'm going to use this method for the remainder of my uruks, although if you're just interested in the dark metal effect I imagine a slightly heavier coat of Black Templar straight over the Leadbelcher would achieve a similar effect as I got

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The Contrast paint works really well there, a nice easy way to get a good result - A horde of those guys together is going to look great!

I like that the armour colour is really black. Two decades ago everyone were painting Uruk Hai armour with Tin Bits (now Warplock Bronze) as base colour, which made the armour look much more brown. I prefer the black washes over Boltgun Metal / Leadbelcher.

I noticed that Hashut's Blessing also recommends the Black Templar Contrast Paint under the painting products/techniques thread.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Hey everyone, apologies for the delay since my last post! I've started to prep for back to school, and also have struggled to get into a painting rhythm However I do have an update for you guys now Firstly though:



Thanks Slinky, Contrast Paints have definitely simplified a lot of aspects of painting for me, enabling me to get through a lot more models in a much shorter timeframe than before, yet still have them looking good on the tabletop together! It's difficult to imagine painting so many models for the campaign without them



I remember the old tin bitz days well That is the colour scheme I used for my first uruk-hai when I was new to painting, but I do agree with you now, I much prefer the darker metal



Yes I saw that thread too, solid advice! Especially since a fair few models in Middle Earth look well with dark black armour, like the uruks, orcs and black númenóreans, to name a few!

If you flick back up to one of my previous posts, you can see that I started on Elfhelm after I finished the first batch of Uruk-Hai. Unfortunately I struggled to get any consistency of painting with Elfhelm, and ended up painting him very piecemeal in bits and pieces over the course of the last few weeks, but he is now finished!











Difficult fella to photograph because of that spear I'm happy enough with the finished product; he's a complex looking model, as I find all the Rohan heroes with the detailed armour are. However, that does mean I find that I don't need to highlight the armour, as the gold detailing effectively does that for me.

One thing I must point out is the Contrast Paint I used for the horse: Cygor Brown. First time using it on such a large surface area and I am incredibly impressed! I didn't have to touch the horse's coat once I put down just the one layer of Cygor Brown; going over white, it gave that dark brown shade but also the goldy-brown highlights on the muscles. I'll definitely be using that on more horses in the future!

Let me know what you guys think of Elhelm I've got to build Grimbold now and make a start on painting my Isengard Troll

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I've always loved that sculpt, your paint job just makes me love it even more. Great job on Elfhelm!

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

Agree, that's an exemplary paint job.

Thank you both @GreatKhanArtist and @DaveT! Your comments help keep the motivation up

I've moved onto the Isengard troll now. Everything is basecoated except the armour, which I'll tackle today; it's going to be a straightforward enough recipe of leadbelcher base followed by black templar contrast to darken it down, like with the uruks. Then I have to highlight the model and decide where to paint a couple of White Hand markings





You may also notice that Grimbold and his Helmingas Command have been assembled and are hanging out in the background there. They are next on the list after the troll so hopefully I'll get them undercoated today!

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I love the Isengard troll, so mean looking

What base colour did you use for the skin? It looks like the perfect shade to match the GW troll images.

That's some delicious Uruk-hai armour! Thanks for sharing your procedure!

It's been a long time since an update here! Unfortunately I have started a new teaching job, so the last few weeks have been very busy in real life. It's starting to calm down now though so I'm slowly getting back into painting

I have finished the Isengard Troll:





Very happy with how it came out

@Slinky, the troll skin is simply a heavy coat of Darkoath Flesh contrast paint over a white basecoat. I believe I used Wyldwood contrast paint for the brown scales.

I also nearly have Grimbold and his command nearly finished. They are all basecoated and shaded, ready for highlights then basing:



Should have them finished by tomorrow

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Grimbold and his command are finished up now Took a little while longer than anticipated, but happy with how they turned out!



I've also painted up the first batch of Uruk-Hai pikes while watching the FOTR today Quick and easy paint scheme, should look really nice when I've all fifty pikes painted up!



I've got Gamling (mounted, foot and without banner) on the way, stay tuned!

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Fifty pikes? Holy moly!

Grimbold and chums look good.

Looking forward to your next battle report - should be awesome!

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks @Slinky! Yeah I wanted to do a big Helms Deep battle and kind of got carried away buying boxes of Uruk-Hai Hence why I had to come up with a very simple paint scheme for them.



Yeah there's been quite a delay since the last one Real life has gotten in the way - the return to school has been hectic! I'll be on midterm break next week though so I plan on getting a few battle reports done then. I have enough models painted now for the first three scenarios in the main Rohan act

I do have an update for you guys though regarding painting progress: I have finished up Gamling, both with banner and without! As usual, most of the base layers were put down with contrast paints!











Really happy with how he came out, the banner was a bit time consuming but looks decent, I think! nothing extravagant with the freehand, but it does the job

I also got the new Eomer model (finally), and it looks so good! Can't wait to get started on him this week I got two, built one to represent him at Helm's Deep and one to represent him at Pelennor Fields.

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Lovely work with that flag and face of Gamling's. The musculature is great on the horse. Keep it up! Looking forward to the two Eomers, I was thinking of magnetising mine when I get round to grabbing one!