Category Archives: Lord of the Rings

Space Wolves Fenrisian Wolf Pack.

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I picked up 5 of the new(ish) Space Wolves’ Fenrisian wolves off the eBay several months ago. I like the models, but I’m not fond of GW’s current pricing strategy for Australians. There are ways around it of course, and one of those I employ quite frequently these days is picking up a lot of secondhand figures from eBay. It’s also a good way to get metal models, rather than the overpriced Finecrap they’re peddling, though I’ll occasionally get those via eBay as well if the cast appears to be close enough to perfect. Not that this matters here of course, as we’re dealing with secondhand plastics. These ones were already assembled and sprayed when I got them. A little rough around the edges, so a bit of scraping got them in order, and a coat of Army Painter grey to start off my own basecoat. After some “research” time watching Nat Geo and Animal Planet docos, I’ve also seen how grey, black and white wolves seem to co-habitate the same packs, I went for grey wolves for the first batch with the following ones to be black and (probably) white. It also works to split the five unique body sculpts across 15 models, making each one slightly unique. After checking out some photos of them online I worked out how I was going to break down their colours.

Some blending for both the grey fur and the warmer brown tones on the faces. I was actually quite happy with the subtle blending on the grey fur, as well as the grey on the bodies to the browns on the paws at this point, though my WIP photo here is a bit crappy.

Coated with Pledge One Go/Future Floor Wax, for my first attempts at using ink washes, inspired by Chung/Wargamers Consortium’s video that can be found below.

**NOTE  – THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO. CHECK OUT THE WGC CHANNEL FOR GREAT TIPS AND ADVICE.**

Anyway, here they are – finished!

Space Wolves Fenrisian Wolf Pack Space Wolves Fenrisian Wolf Pack

The Oil Wash was a good learning experience. I wasn’t completely happy with it, and had to do a little bit of re-blending over the top in places, but overall, the wolves came up well, especially as a quick project. I’m still a little bummed at my nice subtle fur blending being wiped out by the oils, and so it’s not a technique I’ll use for everything going forward, by any means. Still, it’s nice to have another technique that I’m comfortable enough to play with, and as I said, on cheapish eBay figures, it’s not the end of the world. I wonder how Oil Washes would behave on Bones models? Perhaps it would melt them? In the end I also opted to give them somewhat natural looking eyes, rather than (stereo) typical “evil red” eyes.

Space Wolves Fenrisian Wolf Pack Space Wolves Fenrisian Wolf Pack

I intend to use these wolves (and the other 10, plus all those older-school ones I still need to paint) across several systems. 40k, LotR SBG/WotR, Kings of War, even (maybe) DeadZone if I ever play it (replacing those awful Mawbeasts). I found these wolves to be pretty good, but not quite as nice as I’d hoped. The poses are great (though one did have an accident when Marouda carelessly snapped it off it’s base at the ankle requiring some pin vice surgery and more overpainting – I was well pleased with that) – so as nice and dynamic as they are, the poses are a bit fragile. The tails not being a separate piece, is a nice change from the older models, so they’re less likely to break than the previous wolves. What I’m not so keen on however is the fur on the side of their torsos and upper legs. Clearly a result of digital sculpting rather than more traditional methods, they’ve overlaid a “leaf” pattern of fur (more visible in my first and third photos) rather than sculpting the whole of the bodies in a more traditional manner, as they have for the manes.

Overall, though. I’m happy with the models and the way they turned out. I don’t think the Black Wolves will need an Oil Wash, so they’re just needing to sneak into the paint queue past the Ogres and Elves. The white ones need a bit more than that however. Once they’re all painted, I’ll do some nice shots of the entire pack. Look forward to that in 2014 sometime! Unless a KoW Ogre army has some kind of counts-as provision for packs of wild wolves… 😉

Hail, Theoden King!

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Citadel Miniatures Lord of the Rings Theoden

This figure was painted late last year, for another charity auction at work. Much the same as the original Savage Orc from the first few posts, in fact. This time, instead of forgetting to take a few nice photos of the finished product, I forgot to take WIP pictures until almost the end of the process, so there was little point in showing them here.

Citadel Miniatures Lord of the Rings Theoden

For this charity figure, I chose Theoden on foot from the Citadel Lord of the Rings range. I chose Theoden for a couple of reasons – those being that he’s a very nice model, has a nice pose, is a somewhat recognisable character, and because I’d ended up with a spare of the figure (which always helps!) This figure is of course, a metal version, and from before they bundled it together with a non-matching sculpt.

Citadel Miniatures Lord of the Rings Theoden

When I started preparing the figure, I found that the truescale nature of it was just going to be far too small for an item in a charity auction. A 25mm round base is fine for gaming, but not quite as exciting for a model purely destined for display. As I don’t have any of those huge and imposing Scibor bases, and didn’t want the base to overwhelm the tiny figure anyway, I went for something a bit larger than the figure, but not big enough to distract.

Citadel Miniatures Lord of the Rings Theoden

I chose a 40mm “slate” base from Back-to-Base-IX and added some static grass clumps and flowers from Army Painter’s range. I know my mate Cash loves the clumps, referring to them as “sea urchins” and while I can somewhat see where he’s coming from, I like them for larger bases as they give a bit more depth than regular static grass (or indeed, a Reaper “broccoli” base).

Citadel Miniatures Lord of the Rings Theoden

I only found these photos on my camera yesterday. I’d actually thought they were already up here on the Blog, but when I did a search for “Theoden”, nada turned up. I suppose I painted the figure around the time I was getting prepared and packed up to move, so after getting the model done it was back to work and packing and such at the time.

Anyway, done now and months ago sold and given to it’s new owner. Painting the figure was quite the enjoyable process, made moreso by the fact that it only took a few days from start to finish and that the money was going to a good cause. I hadn’t painted a truescale model for some time, either, and the detail on Theoden was surprisingly fine after being to used to predominantly working on the much broader detailed Heroic Scaled figures for so long.