Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XIII Submission #9 - Defenders of the Riddermark

 This submission is a force of Rohan warriors and commanders consisting of a box of 24 plastic Warriors of Rohan, three metal Rohan Royal Guard on foot, Merriadoc Esquire of Rohan from the 'Heroes of the West' boxed set, King Théoden in full armour, a dismounted Captain and Banner from the Rohan Mounted Commander set, four resin figures from the Rohan Commanders set, and a converted Gamling figure, all from the Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings line of miniatures.

 

Defenders of the Riddermark in front of Helm's Deep

 

All these figures were cleaned up, assembled where necessary, mounted on their bases, and some sand was glued on with PVA. They were then primed black with an airbrush since it is too cold to go outside to use a rattle can. As with the Dwarves I did earlier in the competition, I left the shields off until all the painting was complete. All the figures were painted with primarily Vallejo acrylics, along with a few craft paints. I used a variety of browns (Chocolate Brown, Leather Brown, Beige Brown, Cavalry Brown) and a selection of greens that aren't usually associated with fantasy figures (Camouflage Olive Green, Camouflage Luftwaffe Green, German Feldgrau). Once all the basic colours were applied, the figures got a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone Quickshade. The easiest to paint were the plastic Warriors of Rohan, followed by the various commanders. The hardest were the Royal Guard, Théoden, and Gamling due to the insanely detailed armour that is covered with horse-related iconography. At least the metal figures are more durable that the resin figures. The resin banner got snapped off as I was packing the figures up after taking all the photos. 😝

 

Warriors of Rohan Group 1

Warriors of Rohan Group 2

Resin set of Rohan Commanders

Dismounted Rohan Captain and Banner

Rohan Royal Guard

Gamlling, Theoden, and Merry

  The figure of Gamling with the banner is a conversion of the original miniature released by Games Workshop. The figure has since been re-released with him holding the Rohan Royal Banner in his left hand and his sword in a lower position. I had two minis of the early version, one which I painted up a few years ago. I decided to convert the other one to give him a banner since I have a mounted version of Gamling where he is carrying one. To make it easy on myself, I just replaced his left hand with one fashioned out of fine wire wrapped around a length of florist wire that forms the pole and some epoxy putty to build it up a bit and form the thumb of his hand. The pole itself is anchored to a hole drilled into the base with super glue. The banner is from an image plucked from the internet, tweaked to make it two-sided and printed off on my laser printer. Once the figure was all painted, I applied some PVA glue to half of what would end up on the inside, wrapped it around the florist wire pole and shaped it while the glue was still wet. Here is a comparison of the two versions.

 

original Gamling, and 'new improved' Gamling

Thanks for reading. More to follow.