I am building up some forces for a campaign set in early Third Age Arnor in The Lord of the Rings. At this time, Arnor as a realm still exists (although it is failing), but is beset by the Evil forces of Angmar. In my head this is reminiscent of post-Roman Britain, with the forces of Arnor a pale shadow of the former might of the kingdom, fighting valiantly but ultimately in vain to halt the encroaching darkness of Angmar.
I have lots of Orcs for the foot soldiers of Angmar, but was looking for something to represent the more unusual, spectral elements of the Witch King's army. GW does produce 'Spectres' - undead soldiers reanimated in the service of the Lord of the Nazgul. However, there are only three available poses, and at £11 for three figures, not particularly great value. However, my favourite 3d sculptor - Medbury Miniatures - came to the rescue with a very timely release: Ghostly Gauls.
MM has so far released a good variety of figures armed with axes, spears, pikes and swords. There are also archers, cavalry and a command set with a kingly leader, horn blower and a couple of standard bearers; plenty for skirmishing in Arnor!
One nice feature is spears come as a separate piece with a hand 'cast' on, making assembly less fiddly. It is also very easy to snip off the spear, drill out the hand and put in a more robust wire spear if preferred. The shot below shows the lovely detail on the miniatures.
These will form the undead warband of a long-dead king. I imagine them having been buried in their armour, alongside their favoured weapons. As such I went for a subdued colour palette, that hinted at their ethereal status but that was less 'ghostly' than the Army of the Dead in the LOTR movies. Armour was dulled with age (a heavy wash of Agraax Earthshade over all metal betails like chainmail, helmets, torcs and shield bosses). Flesh was GW Contrast Aethermantic Blue over a white basecoat, and hair was a GW Contrast Apothecary White wash over the white basecoat. This contrasted nicely with the duller armour and clothes and helped the figures pop a little.
Here are the first three, all armed with axes and shields. Much of the fine detail is obscured by the shields but you can how good that detail is on the figure on the left. As always, the background is from John Hodgson's backdrop book.
This shot shows the cloaks, basically just various GW Contrast paints over a white basecoat.
Medbury have also released some 'Rangers', similar in style to GW's Rangers of Middle Earth. So far there are 2 sets of archers and 1 set armed with spears, as well as a set of 4 Ranger Characters; it is this latter set that I have printed out and painted.
I absolutely love these figures! They ooze character, and although they are relatively 'simple' sculpts, they are perfect for leaders in a warband. I have painted these in earthy, wilderness tones - lots of greens and browns basically. GW Contrast Snakebite Leather, Wyldwood and Gore Grunta Fur over an Army Painter Skeleton Bone basecoat are perfect for worn leather belts, clothing, boots and quivers. However for the cloaks I wasn't happy with how the Contrast paint looked and so reverted to normal acrylic paints, in this case AK Medium Green, highlighted up with AK Medium Green mixed with increasing amounts of AK Green Grey. Once again, al the figures are pictured in front of John Hodgson backdrops.
First up we have a hornblower, summoning his Rangers for the charge! I painted the fletching on his arrows red as apparently this is a common practice to help archers see where their arrows hit and so adjust their aim. His cloak highlights are a bit stark compared to the others - I might go back and tone these down, but I doubt it!
Next is a commander signalling to his Rangers, either to hold fast or move up (stealthily of course!). On all of these figures I tried to push my technique for painting faces - normally I just paint the skin and wash it with Reikland Fleshshade from GW. With these I followed the tips for painting faces by Richard Lloyd in his
guide on the Bloody Miniatures website. Although meant for painting English Civil War miniatures, there is plenty of good advice for painting 28mm figures. Anyway, I am quite pleased with how this figure turned out and his face certainly stands out! I envisaged him as an older veteran of the wars against Angmar, so painted his hair whitish-gray, which helps him stand out nicely.
This next character I see as the overall leader, and so I painted him slightly differently to help him stand out on the battlefield. I basically swapped around some of the colours - green for his tunic, a darker brown for his cloak (GW Contrast Wyldwood) and Snakebite Leather for his boots - so that he would look different but still coherent with the rest of the characters. I really like this pose - a guardian watching in the wilds of Arnor.
Finally, we have my favourite character in the set - very reminiscent of a certain fantasy movie character! Now although a figure smoking a pipe is going to look pretty incongruous in most (all!) combat situations, the sculpt is just so characterful. It really captures the look of a wizened, weather-beaten Ranger, his worn tunic patched, taking a moment's respite yet still maintaining a watchful presence. I particularly like how the backdrop in this photo adds to the atmosphere, as a shaft of light breaks through the clouds over the moors and hills of Arnor.
And here are a couple of group shots. You can see here that although the leader's clothing is painted differently to the others, keeping to the same colour palette keeps the group looking unified.
All of the Rangers are based using the Gamer's Grass Highland tufts set - perfect for the wilds of Arnor.
