Saturday 31 August 2013

My stash and new side project, a Fellbeast!!

I decided to go through my unpainted mini collection to just see how much stuff I own. The amount of unpainted metal and plastic was suprising. I recommend to you all who buy stuff "just in case for storage" to do the same.

Here is the metal ones:



I also found several boxes full of miscellaneous plastic minis:




I think that I dont have to buy any Lotr minis for quite a while. Except just in case for storage ofcourse.

From this pile of possibilities one thing immediately got my attention, Witchking on fellbeast!! I remembet that I bought this to make a monster army but eventually ended up making a spider/warg army. This mini is one of the most intriguing piece from the "old", pre-War of the Ring, catalogue. It really has enourmous amount of character and serves Jacksons movies well. It's really a shame that this has been laying in some box unpainted for so long.

I first checked that I had all the pieces. I buy most of my stuff used and I have a bad habit not to check right away that I got what I ordered.




Because the mini is so tall I decided to reinforce the base with pins and also add more weight to prevent unwanted crash to the ground in the heat of battle.





These steps made the beast much more steadfast.


At this point I just had to put the wings in place temporarely and compare it with Arsgotn, the king of Gondor. The beast really is A Beast!!

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Custom Catapult

After Cirion and Madril I scoured throught my unpainted collection and stumbled upon a broken Lotr Mordor war Catapult! I remember that I got it free when I bought a big set of used miniatures. It was in several pieces and seemed to lost a wheel. This opened my eyes for some conversion opportunities!



I forgot to take pictures during the project but here is where I ended up:


Because there was no wheel I decided that orcs figured to use some fallen enemies to balance the machine.


During this "repair-stage" the orcs found out that few were still alive and tied these unlucky victims to the catapult to get some cover from the enemy bow fire. I used thin wire and some cartboard to make arrows on to the humanshields.



The catapult also needed somekind of launching mechanism so build one from selfmade rope, balsa, balsa bits and some modellers chain. I´m quite happy with the result.



Last step was to add one warg rider on top of the boulder. It seems that wargs can´t get this orc fast enought to the batllefield so he uses different method.



Thats all for now but something is lurking in the mist of future because I got a BIG package today from the mail!!