Wow. Time flies when you are having fun – or traveling/hosting all summer long. Actually, I blame Centaur and Tiberius for getting me hooked into LOTRO. The need to kill one. more. orc. has taken a serious bite out of my hobby time. However, last week my wife and I took a week up in the frozen north where there is no interwebs for our anniversary and I took some hobbying projects with me (yes, I did just say I was playing with little toy soldiers for our anniversary trip – but this is also the same wife who then gave me Buhrdur as an anniversary gift. My woman is epic. ‘nuff said.)
Unfortunately I have no real updates to share for the Easterlings right now (second batch of Dragon Guard is painted though, and there is some minor greenstuffing done on an Eowyn-to-Easterling captain conversion!), but I did reach back into the dusty closet to give some TLC to the forgotten army in my collection: The Fighting Uruk-Hai. (Tiberius, I’m sensing a theme here).
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| "I'm just a glorified extra, I don't even have a name!" |
Unlike Tiberius’s force, I have invested in a larger quantity of specialists (3-4 berserkers, a few blisters of xbows, banners, etc.) in addition to the rank and file - half of which have sat with nothing more than a dose of basing sand and a quick spray of primer for well over a year. Well after a few splurge purchases on ebay, I had fodder for a few interesting conversions and an Uruk strike team.
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| still needs final touches - but who is going to stay and argue with a charging pack of these? |
The first conversion was fairly straight forward once I could find a reasonable auction that didn't involve 15+ shield troops or charge $3 apiece for just a couple small plastic grunts. Just slice off at the wrist and swap out.
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| I really love this captain pose - it is so much more dynamic than the old shield captain model |
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| added a few notches in the shield - this guy has been on many strawhead raiding parties |
The second conversion was a bit more complicated. What started as a "lets just trim the helmet crest a little to make him look a little different... " quickly turned to "whoops, now it's lopsided, just a little more... now it's the other side that's off." Then it was "shoot. lets just cut the whole thing off... now he just looks like a berserker with armor"
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| final result: vertical crest crafted from superglue-covered cardboard, and a turn of the wrist to point the sword forward |
Next, crafting a 2-handed sword for our mighty hero (since the new profiles allow those for a fighting uruk captain). Again, superglue and cardboard and a lot of slow trimming, with a flattened piece from the original crest for the guard.
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| who needs plasticard when you have cereal box cardboard and superglue? |
I don't have a final assembly picture yet because I need to buy/beg/borrow some different glue. The joint didn't hold up with superglue. Merely turning the model upside down and tapping on the bottom to remove the excess basing sand was enough to send this carefully honed blade flying. Too bad Uruks don't get throwing weapons...
Hopefully it won't be 5 months before my next update. I have waaaaay too many projects to get through. Until then, aim true and fight fair
...ish.
Looking good - really like that second captain you have in the works. It is sad that the Uruk-Hai tend to be the forgotten armies (based on the Good armies fought on this blog), but it's always nice to see some conversion work being done on them.
ReplyDeleteLegit conversions, Bro. I have a mercury-based glue that works better than superglue, if you want to borrow it. I've used it for basing for my LOTR miniatures, and use it for virtually every part of my Fantasy and 40k miniatures, since every part needs assembly.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of forgotten armies, I am proud to announce that my Uruks will be competing in the TMAT tournament, so I look forward to a heavy hitting army with 3 casters, :)