It’s been quite some time since I’ve painted a Lord of the Rings model from the Citadel SBG ranges – so here’s one that I decided to assemble alongside the Minotaur Lord recently for the the Monster March painting challenge, and then finally got to painting for Monster MAYhem instead.
This is the metal version of the model, though I also have one in Finecast. As such, the thing didn’t lend itself very nicely to any form of conversion or modification, weighs a ton and was a real awkward bitch of a thing to paint. I may do something slightly more interesting with the Finecast one down the line, but that’ll be a different post for the future.
Painting was actually pretty quick and somewhat easy – going from assembled and sprayed to completed over three or four days – though very little enjoyment or fun was involved. Lots of drybrushing, washing (including thinned Contrasts) and a bit of normal brushwork. I might give a bit mroe effort to the finecast one down the line, but this one’s just not a particularly amazing model. Technically, the sculpting is fine – not flashy nor especially well detailed, though the armour is nice – but the awkward pose and weight of the model meant it was something I just wanted to get done and the fuck away from the painting desk.
One good thing about all of this was that despite the model not being any fun to paint, the speed I managed to get the troll completed in means I don’t have a particular resentment to it either – and so once it’s on the shelf (and possibly one day, an actual wargame table) I’ll be just fine with it. Not every model can be a favourite, and even some of the big impressive ones aren’t going to be fun to paint, but even so they can be completely decent on the tabletop.
This is my final model for this year’s Monster MAYhem, though I’ll no doubt be finishing off the stragglers for another few months at least. There’ll be just another post with something else before the round-up this week(end) and then I’ll have my May painting round-up alongside my Monster MAYhem round-up.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Aye, metal models can be nice to work with but 9 times out of 10 big monsters like this guy were an absolute nightmare. Whenever I hear someone uncritically singing the praises of metal I think of models like this and turn into a cliched war-vet. “You weren’t there man! It was hell!”. Anyway, well done for battering through this one, you’ve done a cracking job with him.
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Oh yeah for sure. I’ve got lots of big multipart metal bastards but sometime in the 1990’s I just stopped assembling the pricks, though I still bought quiiiite a few more of them. Perhaps I should make assembling and painting more of these Mid-Sized Metal Monsters a bit of a thing this year….
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He looks great mate, and look on the bright side – you got a good forearm workout thrown in for free! 😂
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Haha cheers Alex. I should weigh some of these old metals and see what they do actually come up as!
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What did you do on the flesh? I dig the style.
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Thanks Joe. It was first spray primed black, then zenithal spray beasty brown, then pale flesh, then washed with thinned guilliman (I think) flesh (def wasn’t fyreslayer flesh), then lightly drybrushed with Bonewhite, then in certain spots (the inner/softer parts) with Dwarf Flesh and then a final thinned wash of Guilliman flesh again over the drybrished bits.
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It is a bit of an awkward pose but it kinda works well like that. Great job Az
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Yeah for sure. I guess it might be to balance the physical model out! Thanks! 🙂
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Azazel, your stuff is so great and you’re so prolific I can’t keep up. Excellent work on this and everything you’ve done for Monster May(hem) this year. You’re an inspiration! Also, Carrion Crow is a huge Ghostbusters fan, so I pointed him this way. Thanks so much for participating!
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Thanks mate – I appreciate the kind words – and a big thanks to you for running it – it’s a great bit of motivation to get a bunch of models painted that ordinarily take forever to get done or would even miss out on getting painted entirely!
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Very nicely done! 🙂 I really like him! I tend to be fairly impartial when it comes to the base material that figures are produced in (you can get good and bad figures in any material in my experience) but I can relate to it being challenging working on a large metal item!
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Oh for sure, and I’m old-school enough that I enjoy working on standard metal models a lot more than resin and often plastic (except on vehicles!) Multipart metal starts to get painful, though – and then large multipart metal starts getting pretty unpopular around here!
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Very nice- I really like how you did the dark armour.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete. The secret is Vallejo Smokey Ink!
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I really like this model and its large physical presence – I have it in metal too, although I have to admit I didn’t enjoy the painting part as much as I expected, having to roll the heavy model around to ensure coverage!
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Thanks Dave – yeah, it wasn’t fun to paint but at least I managed to get it done quickly. I think it’s one of those models that could easily have sat here for years half-painted…
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I think this is a classic sculpt and it is pretty easy to get it painted and on the tabletop if you’re so inclined. Your troll looks great and hopefully will see some use in the near future! I feel your pain on metal “monster” size sculpts though. I had to learn pinning in my first foray with the hobby when metal minis were still pretty common because stuff like the Ogres were impossible to assemble without doing so. I don’t miss those days!
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I’ve certainly been sitting on it for a long time, but it took painting challenges to get it painted. I haven’t played SBG in any form for a long, long time now and one day I’d like to get back to painting stuff for the Fellowship campaign to play through that. I guess if we get to doing that and enjoy it there’s also the various SBG warbands sub-games that I own a million books for…
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Yes and I’m pretty sure you’ve tried to convince me to dip my toe into the battle companies in the past so its only fair that you do the same one day! 😉
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I’ve got all the models I’ll ever need, I’ve even got a lot of them painted for several factions – it’s just a matter of convincing someone to play! You moving to Melbourne anytime soon?
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Excellent work, as always! The larger metal minis were always a pain (the old fell beasts particularly scared me back in the day), but I do prefer their awkwardness to ‘fine’cast 😄
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Thanks Steve! I’ve got a couple of those Fell Beasts to get up and running one day, but after doing these couple of multipart metals recently I kinda feel like I should prioritise chipping away at these Ogre-+-ish-sized metal monsters over the next few months. Having said that, I’ve got another of this Ogre in Finecast as well, which will (eventually) be converted in some manner – something Finecast is at least a lot friendlier for than white metal!
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Oh totally, Finecast is much more enjoyable to convert than metal minis. Funny how the metal models put me off collecting some LOTR units back then, but I actually really dig them these days. They are still pretty annoying to get together (cave troll, I’m looking at you!)
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I do like my metal models. The multiuparts, notsomuch. I’ve got one of the cave trolls long painted and assembled, and the one with the hammer overhead in a 2-handed pose still in an unassembled pile. It might take next year’s version of these monster challenges to motivate me to get that one assembled and painted, though!
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Stunning looking Troll mate.
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Cheers Dave! 🙂
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