February | 2015 | Azazel's Bitz Box.

Rackham Confrontation Hill Ruins – Temperate – “Front” View

Last year I did one of these Confrontation Hill Ruins in a desert scheme to match my desert mat. Not too much later than that, I started on another of them, going for the “brown dirt and flock” temperate scheme I use on my bases, which will probably see use on my green grass mat. This time I glued sand to the surface of the “dirt” in order to give it the same texture and look as my models. When I took a months-long hiatus from painting last year, it sat unfinished for several months until a few weeks ago. There’s really nothing too exciting here, excepting the fact that I finally finished it, and I’ve decided to show off all of this year’s painted/completed items.

Rackham Confrontation Hill Ruins – Temperate – “Side” view.

The Mouth of Sauron and a Skellyman provide scale, and contrast with the pretty flowers.

A comparison between the Temperate and Desert-painted Rackham Confrontation Ruins.

I did use weathering powders again here, but much more subtly than on the Desert Hill. Obviously the Desert-painted hill looks far nicer on the Desert mat, but the brown dirt should fit in much more nicely on the Grass mat than the Desert Hill. Why didn’t I photograph them on the grass mat? Because I was taking a bunch of other photos at the same time (like last post’s Ogres) and it basically didn’t occur to me at the time. Still, it will work nicely across a large variety of games, so job’s a good’un.

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Heavy Crossbows

Mantic KoW Ogre Crossbows. Leader with Citadel head.

Despite the difference in dates, it’s “only” 14 months since I last updated on these figures. As I’ve noted before, while Mantic’s Ogre models do turn out nice enough, I do not enjoy painting them. My cunning plan was to cockblock myself and not allow myself to paint the “fun” Ogre models until after I finished the second batch of shooters. Since I hadn’t worked on them in 13 months, I think we can safely state that particular plan wasn’t the best. It was one of those 3am epiphany-type things that actually got me to finish these. Getting back into painting again after almost 3 months, wanting to paint Greeks and Romans, and thinking about the mess on the desk resulted in the thought of “just finish the fricking things – they’ll probably only take a couple of hours to finish” replacing the usual “shove them out of the way”. It’s the same thought process that helped get those Skeletons out of the way as well as a several of the other odd figures that I’ve recently shown and will continue to show shortly, and will also have some Elites for my Gondor army finished and off my desk in a couple of days. Or within a week. Or two. Hopefully.

I went with red tabards for these guys, so they’re distinct from the blue of the original two units, though sometimes they’ll potentially be combined into regiments of 6 rather than troops of 3. I’ve kept the tabards a dull red. I feel there’s no need for them to be overly highlighted. I’d been looking at the shields for months thinking about adding some red to them, and I think it’s worked well to add a little more colour and interest to them. As I mentioned a long time ago, I used Citadel Ogre Kingdom heads on the leaders of both units since Mantic has an incredibly limiting six total heads for their ogres – most of which are average or below quality. (Along with only three body types!) The Crossbows are equipped with the “Jar of the Four Winds”, which I’ve represented by cracked amphorae filled with lemon-lime soft drink-coloured …liquid.

Mantic Kings of War Ogre Blunderbuss Troops. Again, the leader has a Citadel Ogre head.

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Blunderbusses

The blunderbuss unit had a bit more reposing, in an attempt to make them a little more interesting (or less uninteresting?) I also gave them bucklers and a shield on the boss to aid in this. It wasn’t until the end of painting them that I finally decided on painting the shields red.

I’d hoped to finish all six of these in a week from getting “motivated”, but in the end it took closer to two weeks to finish the Crossbows and a further month to finish the Blunderbusses, but that’s largely due to the fact that I still found it quite hard to make myself sit down and finish them. I found breaking them up into their sub-units just made it easier again. The trouble being, obviously, that I didn’t really enjoy working on them.

Now they’re done, I’m happy enough with them to use them or look at them, but I’m in no rush to work on more of them. I’m planning on getting back into painting more interesting and fun Ogres – not Mantic ones for awhile! I’ve actually got two more units almost done – each both lacking a single Ogre to finish them.

Here’s some shots of the Ogre Army in progress:

The Ogre Battle Line …so far.

Ogre Battle Line – Left Angle

Ogre Battle Line – Right Angle

Ogre Index:

Jes Goodwin’s Classic Citadel Ogres #1. (Nov 2013)

Bob Olley’s Classic Citadel Ogres. (Nov 2013)

Golfag’s Ogre Mercenaries. (April 2014)

Mantic Ogre Shooters: Units 1 & 2. And Based. (Nov 2013) WIP (Oct 2013)

Mantic Ogre Shooters: Units 3 & 4 (Feb 2015) WIP (Dec 2013)

Mantic Ogre WIP 1 (army concepts/other ogres pre-touchup/rebasing)

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Monthly Archives: February 2015

Confrontation Starter Set Scenery: Hill Ruins. (Temperate Scheme)

Mantic Ogre Shooters – Units 3 and 4: 2013-2015 (a year on)

Ogre Index: