Wargames Gallery: LotR Scenery: Amon Sul Ruined Watchtower at Weathertop

Following the announcement today that Forge World will be re-releasing their resin ruined watchtower of Amon Sul, I thought I'd share this image of the same LoTR terrain that I snapped a little while ago whilst touring some other GWs.  This one was painted up for a small conflict style tournament and I really like the atmospheric look it has.  Whilst I'd love to own one, the price tag of UKP220 is a little much for my tastes.  But I can see the serious collector or wargames organizer wanting one!

LotR Lego

How have I been missing this?  How cool is this!
Will LEGO take some of GWs profit when The Hobbit comes along?

Colour Scheme for Ghost Knights?

Having assembled a few Ghost Knight terminators for use with a Mordrak Grey Knights army that I'm building, I wanted to start to consider what colour schemes might be appropriate for painting the ghosts with.  I noticed that a number of Ghost Knight images on the web tended to focus on greens and blues as the main hues.  The major inspiration for these colours would appear to come directly from the army of the dead (Lord of the Rings).  The image above shows such a colour scheme.  Although the transparency is not really a viable option (I wish!), the general blue and/or green hue could be something cool to aim to emulate.  I think I'm leaning more toward a pale blue colour than the green hues to be honest (the green makes me think more of a sickly cursed knight than a Mordrak ghost knight to be honest, but opinions welcome!).

The second point is whether to go for an all-ghostly colour scheme.  By that, I mean should the Ghost Knights be a complete ghostly colour everywhere (whether that's green or blue biased), or perhaps should there be some of the original colours showing through in various regions?  One alternative option might be to have only some set portions of the armour in the ghostly colours -- specifically the lettered portions on the shoulder pads (and elsewhere) to give an ethereal "inner glow" approach.  

The weapons are another area that I don't know how to approach.  Should they be "powered" like some other power weapons (e.g. see these terminator's power weapons), or should they be in the same colours as the "ghost" portions of the miniature?  Your thoughts welcome!

[image from Lord of the Rings motion pictures; posted here in accordance with "fair use" guidelines as a reference material]

Ruins of Osgiliath

An exciting pre-order release of the Ruins of Osgiliath is now available from Games Workshop. Although I do not collect Lord of the Rings too much, this is one of the LotR releases that I've been most excited about in a while (at least since the unique ring wraiths and the plastic winged Nazgul).

The ruins of Osgiliath scenery set is not too dissimilar to what can be made from Hirst Arts molds, but it is in plastic form. Much like the Imperial Sector ruin buildings, these can clearly be arranged in a number of ways to create unique scenery pieces for miniatures to run around in, and on. Unlike the 40k counterparts, these are clearly high fantasy ruins. Along with the two statues, this release should make for excellent use on any fantasy table top and would be applicable to 40k games played on a ruined world or a medieval world.

LotR: The Shadow Lord -- A Possible Lesser Daemon Miniature

I entered this miniature in a local painting contest. He did well, but not enough to claim the prize!

The miniature is one of the newer LotR ring-wraiths: The Shadow Lord. Although it wouldn't be allowed in tournament play, I thought that the ring-wraiths would make absolutely splendid generic lesser daemons for a chaos space marine army that has no overall allegiance to the major chaos powers.

The painting was fairly straight forward: following a base coat of regal blue, the miniature was washed heavily (darker toward the lower portions of the cape) and highlighted subtly to lighter tones of blue higher up. A few parts of the cape are picked out in space wolf grey. The silver metallic parts are painted in boltgun metal, washed in black and highlighted in a very thin white line. The bronze colour metals were base coated in shining gold, inked with chestnut and highlighted in bleached bone. The more leather areas were done in bleached bone and washed darker using sepia. Finally, the sword followed a wet blend technique that I first piloted on a bloodletter who was wielding a frost brand.

The base (made from the citadel basing materials box) was painted in a desert colour scheme which does much to complement the colder feeling that the wraith exudes. Overall, I'm very fond of this miniature and pleased with the way he came out.