Fantasy Flight – Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Shadowed Paths – Spiders

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Shadowed Paths - Giant Spiders

A quick post today on some models I was able to quickly paint in a couple of evenings after work earlier this week. The half-dozen giant spiders from Shadowed Paths.

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Shadowed Paths - Giant Spiders

Now these might seem to be rather uncharacteristically painted for giant spiders, let alone ones based on Tolkien’s writings – and very much unlike the ones seen in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, or most any depiction of the Spiders of Mirkwood, but I have good reason for this! Marouda is not at all fond of spiders as mentioned a couple of posts ago, and while I’m not a special fan either, these ones are just the exact correct size to be a really fucking big spider. Well, not like a Huntsman, but a large house spider or White-tail. Well, the wrong shape for a White-tail or Wolf Spider, but at a glance, enough to make you reach for a boot or block of wood. They’re actually close enough in shape for an Australian Garden Wolf Spider. If you’re an arachnophobe, you can skip those links. You’re welcome.

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Shadowed Paths - Giant Spiders

So anyway, the point being that if I want Marouda to be able to play a game involving these villains, then they can’t look at all like something we might see in real life, so I decided to go for a bright, tropical-looking colouration, somewhat inspired by a Redditor called Bellman and with enough yellow in them that they can still work well enough with the Spawn of Ungoliant. I primed black, zenithal spray grey, then white from above – then Contrast Aethermatic Blue all over except for the tops of the legs, the tops of the thorax and abdomen. Dropped a drop of Contrast Medium on top of the Thorax and Abdomen, and then went in with Citadel Technical Tessaract Glow, wet-blending into the Aethermatic blue around the edges. The links in this paragraph just go to models. Though they are of spiders, though not realistically painted ones.

Then coming back later to add some Tessaract Glow to the “knees”, and add some Contrast Kroxigor Scales to the tips of the legs as well as the underside of the body. Pretty great paint pot, as well. (look closely!) Eyes picked out with Contrast Blood Angels Red. For basing it was some AK texture paste, drybrushed with the usual and some tufts added.

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Shadowed Paths - Giant Spiders

So yeah, pretty luminous and not especially unrealistic, but they look pretty good for what they are – and more importantly – Marouda will be able to handle them being on the table, though she won’t be handling them, even with this particular scheme. The Spawn of Ungoliant, Beorn and Beravor provide scale comparison for these creepy crawly giant little bastards…

Fantasy Flight – Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War – War Oliphaunt

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

It’s been a good couple of months now since I’ve gotten a Journeys in ME model painted, so in July I did that thing where you make yourself finish this model or that – I did it a few times actually, and the most recent one of those was this War Oliphaunt.

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

I originally started painting it for one of the Monster Month challenges, but as with most painting month challenges, I bit off a bit more than I could finish. This model had a bit of an issue in terms of “what the hell is *that*? for some of the details, and so it took just knuckling down and slapping paint on the thing to get it done. There’s a fair bit of drybrushing on the Oliphant skin, since I didn’t have any interest in trying to neatly blend something this size – and besides, Elephant (and presumably, Oliphant) skin is dry and rough looking, anyway!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

I was at one point planning to paint an Eye of Sauron on the blanket underneath the Howdah, but as one side of the beast features that whole area compressed between the straps, I decided to leave it be. Similarly, I considered adding Peter Jackson-esque war paint on the skin, but left it off when I realised I could keep this piece pretty generic despite the fact that it’s supposed to be immense in scale – look at the logs supporting the howdah, and the size of the howdah – it’s almost like a person would be smaller than one of those tassels!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

It’s not an amazing model, but it’s a very decent model for a boardgame, and given that context I’m happy with the paint job I gave it in the end. Very much a case of “good enough” and one I was satisfied to round out my July models with!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt, Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

Here you can see the size of the thing when alongside our friend Berkeley. It’s actually a size that could pass for a regular Elephant with something weird happening to it’s ears – so while it’s not exactly War Mammoh sized for games like the Warhams of Kings of War, I could potentially use it for similar in Dragon Rampant or the like. And now that this model is finally painted, I can start on something else for Journeys. Hm… should I start on a rabble of Orcs or another pair of heroic Adventurers?

Next post – July’s Round-Up!