Pikes, & Pikes & Elves & Hill Trolls (& Pikes!)

so lest you think the craft halls of Karningul have been idle of late, whilst my compatriots are busy churning out batreps and epic game boards, I have been trying to catch up on the backlog of models that have been languishing on the shelf.

First off, I spent a solid week or so getting my mountain of Uruk pikes all spiffed up - all 20+ of them.

as you can see, I toyed with the idea of painted rims. still undecided so I stopped after 5-6 of them

at least 3 feature films and the extended version of FotR were killed during the making of this project. Not to mention another 10-15 hours of silent painting. Please dear god, no. more. pikes.

I made the mistake of getting a group shot - thus leading to the thought of "hmm... that battle line would look far more epic if I could extend it by about 1.5-2x" I promptly took that thought out back and shot it - with prejudice.

Next I pulled out the sundry elves that did not get addressed during my painting and converting flurry before this past March's TMAT tourney. I still have some greenstuffing to do to finish up the last 4-5 shield elves, but the rest of the archers, converted spears and two-handers got painted up. at the very least, it was nice to get a change from the pikes!

it's official. I no longer have a stock high elf warrior in my force. w00t! 

The other thing that is currently in my backlog is the pile of heroes that need to be properly based. I like to add a little extra something to their bases compared to the rank and file. Visually, it helps them stand out from the masses and tactically, it never hurts to be a head taller than your followers when a standfast is needed - albiet at the risk of a few extra stray arrows or an ill-timed immobilize  Typically, I just grab a small pine bark wood chip, cover with super glue to seal it, and voila! Instant rock of epicness! However with dozens of heroes across 4 different armies, I was starting to feel like it was time to branch out a little. One of the bloggers  I follow recently did a series of posts on making bases from apoxy and sculpy so I figured I'd give that a shot. Some rocks, some larger pieces that can later be broken for slate, mostly just some low rises that can be covered with basing grit and still give that 1/8"-ish boost to the figure. For a first attempt, I was rather pleased with the results.

sundry rock-ish shapes, sculpy & bark combos and a larger piece to break/cut up later

Finally, I managed to squeeze in some fun. For our anniversary a couple months ago, my LOTR-nerd wife gave me the most epicly-cool-gift-ever in the form of Buhrdur, Troll Chieftain (yes, I responded in kind with a Tree-of-Gondor t-shirt).  I don't currently have an army that can actually field him, but I have long wished for an excuse to do so (considering the 2-3 cave-trolls-to-hill-troll conversions that are in the pending backlog, you can bet that an Angmar army is probably not too far down the road). First of all, I just love the model - the massive, wicked-looking sword, the spikes and fur adornment. . . it really is just an awesome sculpt. So now that I had some new basing fodder, I just had to paint him up. Some minor converting on the sword and I filed the spikes a bit to make it look more like they were barbarically hacked into shape rather than perfect casts from the forge. Still pending some final highlights, but here is the 80-90% complete view:

kinda hard to make out with this lighting, but I went with a green/brown "hill troll"
paint scheme rather than the typical grey cave troll look. 

As tempting as it was to slap one of Tavros's warg pelts on his back, I decided to go with grey fur rather than brown. Besides, this will help differentiate him from the 2-3 other hill trolls that Tavros's wargs will not be so lucky to escape ;) 

 pebble and rope added to create a warhammer on the reverse of blade, metal plate "welded"on
with plasticard and a few pieces of plastic tubing

and as a bonus feature: between coats of wash, I managed to get an initial base coat on my elven twins. They proved their worth in a recent game against Centaur, so I figured they should get something for their trouble (okay, "proved their worth" might be a bit much considering how many chances to wound they flubbed. Really guys? how hard is it to roll a 4 on three dice?)

Elladan and Elrohir on the new bases

So all told for 3 weeks of effort? about 30 models removed from the backlog of 90ish. Not too shabby.

oh right... then there is the box of orcs I just bought (what? I couldn't believe my eyes when the store still had some of the old 24-troop boxes for 10% off the oooold GW price. You don't pass that up!) and another 15-20ish models in the mail. So make that 130+. One step forward, two steps back. Such is the plight of the miniatures collector. But at least there are no more pikes!

Uruk pikes that is. I still have a half dozen Easterlings to contend with. le sigh.