Elves on Horses

After a wait of nearly a decade, I have some Rivendell/Eregion Elf cavalry! Until GW put out this box, the only option was to convert by sawing up metal Elves and plastic cavalry (Riders of Rohan worked well) and then using much superglue and putty.

The good news - no mucking about with saws, knives or glue-your-fingers-together liquids. The bad news - you still need putty. GW have taken a step backwards with plastic figure design here. The individual parts are beautifully sculpted and well molded. The horses go together perfectly. It's the riders that are goofy. Someone decided that the riders should be made of four pieces - right arm, right and left body halves and a frontal piece comprising the chest and face.

Sensible, intelligent people might think that the head should either be a separate piece, as is the case in many GW kits, or a single piece attached to one of the body halves, as GW have done occasionally. No, some complete dork decided that the back of the head would be attached to one of the body halves but the front of the head would be attached to the chest piece. Why is this a problem? Because, unlike all the other pieces that form perfect seamless joins, the chest piece does not fit neatly into place - there is a gap all the way around the head which needs to be filled and smoothed. Doh.

Anyway, after a certain amount of disgusted grumbling, the knight captain and his erstwhile followers were ready for painting. I chose to use the same (as best as I could remember it, anyway)  blue and gold colours as the other hundred-odd Rivendell Elves in my collection (did I mention I like Elves?), rather than the new (and to my mind, less impressive) red-brown and steel colours.

I'm not sure why, but I could not summon a lot of enthusiasm for this batch of figures - burned out on big figures, maybe, or maybe because of the above-mentioned fit issues, but I just did enough to make them respectable on the table top.

One last note: the photos are randomly inserted in this post because Blogspot is playing silly buggers. Somehow it just seems appropriate for these Elves.

Oh, they have been blooded and performed stunningly well in battle. :-D

Warriors of Harad

These two bowmen from the semi-arid plains of Harad were test pieces to explore colour themes. The ruins are also a GW product, their "Lord of the Rings Terrain Pack".

The ruins were sprayed with Army Painter's "Skeleton Bone" primer and then stained with Minwax Walnut. They look suitably "ancient sandstone", which will work nicely with the Haradrim army.

The men were primed with Army Painter's "Dragon Red" and then block-painted with assorted Humbrol, Vallejo, Floquil (the bright gold metal) and GW paints, before receiving a thinned wash of Minwax - too thin as it turns out, but then, we live and we learn.

I'm happy with the results - colourful, moderately detailed and quick - so the rest of the army will eventually get a similar paint job. Eventually.