We’re starting the New Year with some Lord of the Rings models – the Villains of Eriador Figure pack from FFG’s Journeys in Middle-Earth game. Very much the same situation as with the recent Blood Rage Werewolf and Fenrir – I plucked the lucky box from my boardgame shelf while playing some Zombicide and decided that they would be the next “Easy Win” models. I’ve been a little tardy in getting new posts up – a combination of hot weather making the War Room too uncomfortable to play or photograph in and having headed back into the Gym for the first time since Covid forced a long break and then my broken knee extended that break – giving me essentially a bonus 4 months of lockdown! Not that I especially want to go anywhere besides to work and to the Gym/Pool, but hey…
As far Journeys in Middle-Earth goes, I’ve had this game for awhile now, but never even gotten around to opening it until working on these models. There aren’t that many models in the set, so maybe this will be a box I can get done in 2022 so we can play it with a set of fully-painted models.
Maybe.
The trio in this set feature a named Warg with a number of wounds leaping from Tactical Rock as well as an Armoured foe and an Orc. I painted the Armoured model, “Atarin” in much the same way as my Black Numenorians and Castellans of Dol Guldor. I fixed the image links for those posts the other day, and I’ve also now just noticed that I never took a full group shot of them all, apparently – so I’ll have to add that to my “to do” list.
The most involved of the three – but also the nicest sculpt turned out to be the Orc, “Gulgotar”. While I like my Games Workshop Orcs/Orks and am happy with the brighter, stronger green of their skin, I don’t find that it works so well for me on more realistically proportioned models. So for models representing Tolkien’s Orcs, or even D&D Orcs, I prefer more muted and otherwise naturalistic tones. In this case, I went for a greenish ochre tone – thanks to my WWII painting, I had Vallejo’s Middlestone on my painting desk, which worked perfectly as a base. I kept Gulgotar to muted, earthy tones and had a good time on him, trying out some new ways to do things and keeping the overall palette close. Lastly, the Warg, “Colfang”. It’s a pretty simple, slightly cartoony sculpt but it was pretty easy to paint. Since it’s a named model, I decided to go for a black furred scheme, and just picked out the skin around the eye wound and stained the fur around the arrows stuck in its side.
As I noted above, while I was working on these I decided to take a peek at the Core Box contents to see what was in there, and found a trio of Wargs. Since I was working on the named one anywaym these were an easy pick to get plucked and added to the queue. Rather than paint the three identical sculpts identically, I went for brown/grey/black – which I assume should also work when playing the game “get the brown wolf” etc. Also pretty simple sculpts, but they painted up quickly and came up pretty decent – especially for boardgame models!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great start mate, looking good! I’ve never heard of this game – I assumed GW had all the rights to the franchise buttoned up tbh! Good to see some different interpretations (never did like hyena wargs)
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Thanks Alex – I believe it’s the whole “Movie Rights” vs “Book Rights” thing – Fantasy Flight has a ton of LotR stuff produced under licence, they just don’t look like Viggo or Sir Ian!
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Ahh, makes sense (hence ‘proper’ Wargs!)
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Great work mate, and you got through these 6 models in quick order, like the different variations in fur colours, as you say makes it easy to identify them on the board.
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Thanks Dave. I’ve got a few more to show soon enough – just waiting for a break from this heat so I can add the final touches to a couple of others, but I’ve now managed to take some photos for the next couple of updates.
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Super job on all 6 models.
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Thanks Mark! 🙂
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Nice work, I really like the worn look of the black cloak
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Thanks Dave. I feel like many of the LotR models almost demand a bit of dirt and wear of them unlike so many of the AoS/40k models. 🙂
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Very nice- all are good but my fave is the Orc.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! Glad you like him! 🙂
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Very nice! 🙂 I like the wargs and the orc’s skin tone looks really good!
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Thanks John – it’s definately an addition to my orc/monster-skin recipe book!
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Wowow! Now if you painted LOTR all the time instead of tanks, you wouldn’t hear any complaining from me 😉 I didn’t know you had Journeys in Middle Earth but I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised since you’re fan of LOTR like myself.
I really like how you painted all of these minis as well. They have a nice variety of color but still go well together if you know what I mean. Fantasy Flight has some weak sculpts in other games but these have impressed me as being higher quality than your typical board game. I’ve thought about getting this game but am a bit concerned that it brings to life the LOTR setting well enough. That was a weakness of LOTR LCG in my opinion as well. When you get more painted up and have a game or two, I’ll be curious to hear what you think of it!
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Thanks Kuribo – like so many of the things I have, it’s just a matter of time – and often what’s being played as well for motivation. Otherwise I pretty much just paint a mix of things that have been half-painted for ages, the odd thing that has enough inspiration fro me to start AND finish it, and models that meet this or that painting challenge of the time. LotR has been pretty low on that, and I’d even forgotten the project I started a couple of years ago to paint all the models needed for that FotR campaign. Still, getting the Fellowship done first is a major stumbling block there with so many versions of each character…
Once we’re played JiME, I’ll post something up!
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Smashing painting on all six mate, though not the most catchy post title ever to be honest 😁.
Cheers Roger.
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Yeah – I feel like I’ve often got the choice of puns, simple descriptions, or more specificity that describes the thing best in order to help the post be found in a google search. SInce I often google models to see how others have painted them for my own inspiration, I often go for the latter! 🙂
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I really like the paintjob on these. The sculpts are a bit chunky, but why not. The fur on the Wargs turned out great, really pops, as did that greenish ochre Orc skin (all I hear these days when I look at Orcs is ‘MAN-SWINE!’ . May need to play less Shadows of Mordor, but it is such fun to show Orcs who’s boss after they taunt you. I also enjoy that high contrast/deep shadow cloak of the Armoured Foe.
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Thanks! I think the Orc is by far the best of these sculpts. I’ve got a few others out on the desk before I get to the core set’s more generic orcs, but agreed – this guy could well be from Shadows of Mordor/War. (I’ve actually been thinking of giving them another playthrough the last week since I finished this guy!)
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Never gets old to decapitate Orcs or Brand them…
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True, I took a look at it last night for a new playthough on a different platform and spent most of the evening playing….
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