Mordor Black Uruk-Hai – Lord of the Rings: SBG (Squad: March ’18)

Mordor Black Uruk-Hai - Lord of the Rings: SBG

Another group of Uruks. This time, they’re of the Mordor variety. I’ve got a ton of Isengard Uruk-Hai, bu only a small number of Mordor’s Black Uruks. I guess that’s what happens when one type is available in an affordable plastic kit while the other is only available in metal with a very limited number of sculpts (3!) for the first several years.

Mordor Black Uruk-Hai - Lord of the Rings: SBG

I’ve seen some nice work online on these sculpts featuring a lot of browns, but I wanted to keep my own Black Uruks more literal and stick with black-greys, just using brown as a weathering colour and for the spots of fur on a couple of the models. It also lets the weathered, slightly rusted metal of their armour pieces stand out a little more and not look like they’re also made of leather. Their flesh is painted simply, using a bluish shade of grey inspired by the films and also to help distinguish their skin from their wargear. I wanted their eyes to look particularly dark, so just a glint of white reflection on a black base, rather than the usual outline-whites-pupils thing that we do.

Mordor Black Uruk-Hai - Lord of the Rings: SBG

I only gave three of the models shields, which are an option in SBG. In games we’ll either consider them uniformly equipped with or without the shields or play WSIWYG. More important to me was to make the duplicated models a little more unique where possible – not always easy when dealing with multiples of metal sculpts. The Mordor shields of the eye are pressmoulds of the shields from Citadel’s ME-44 Uruk-Hai models from their original Lord of the Rings range from the 1980’s. I painted the eye icons in the usual metallic way, then painted the red quite roughly on them, leaving some metal showing due to paint chips and indifferent paintwork by the Uruk troops.

Mordor Black Uruk-Hai - Lord of the Rings: SBG

Ten in total. One solid unit of Black Uruks for a Mordor force in Lord of the Rings games

Scifi Heresy Girls – Miniature Set: Heresylab Kickstarter

I try to avoid pimping Kickstarters on my blog, but I’ll make a rare exception for this one. I stumbled onto this one about a week or so ago (translation: I can’t remember how I found it) It might have been while browsing the three Kislev teams that are all running at once that the “you might be interested in this” thing they have on KS. Anyway, there’s an endless stream of small producer, self-published small sets of figures campaigns running all the bloody time. There are also a lot of “Sexy ladies of not-40k type campaigns” – again, which I’m almost universally happy to ignore, but this one stood out to me.

Sorry, the render pic is one giant image.

Anyway, what stood out to me on this campaign is the …well, not a total absence of battle bikinis, but the fact that the models have a nice variety to them. There are different body types represented, there are quite a few figures with “that’s clearly armour” covering their décolletage, and a few that through the clever positioning of collars could easily be painted as clothing, armour or bare skin, depending on your personal inclination. I like that. We’re not talking Wargame Exclusive here.

The campaign is also offering pretty good value at present, with the sweet spot being pretty cheap for 14 models, and the fact that you can choose the models you like. Which means you can skip any that you don’t like for whatever reason. I’ll be skipping the flying guns-akimbo Commissar because the post looks stupid to me, but probably picking up the rest. The creator is also offering to allow the purchase of the STL files for personal use, which is an interesting twist on things.

There are also quite a few stretch goal models unlocked, and frankly, I like the idea of being able to easily run things like some female assassins from temples not called Callidus.

Hopefully it’s obvious, but I feel that I should point out that I have no affiliation with the creators, I don’t know them nor have they offered me anything to mention them here. I’m mentioning them here because I like the look of the models, and Heresy Lab seems like they can use any exposure they can get as they’re clearly not as well known as other up-and-comers like Bad Squiddo (who hardly needs me to mention her!) I’m down for a buck at the moment, and will most go in for a Level 10 on payday, probably 2x Level 10 via the PM so I can get 1 each of the models I like with a couple of dupes and a big maybe on the STL files. I don’t actually have a 3d printer, but I’m sure I will one day. I’m going to see how information on shipping, etc pans out before I go all-in, though.

It’s also worth pointing out that the campaign page says it will be delivering in May. That’s clearly some kind of dream as you’ll appreciate if you have any experience with Kickstarter. A safer expectation is to hope that it delivers before Christmas. I’m not even being mean or sarcastic there in the slightest. Just realistic.

Anyway, if these seem interesting, check out the campaign. It concludes in just over 84 hours.