Grimbold's Helmingas Warband - 1st Painting Session

I have finally got started on the first of my Rohan warbands. I admit that I have lost a little steam because the tournament I was looking forward to playing in has been cancelled. The organizer had to move to Grand Junction for a job. So I'm through the faces, hair, helms and a start on the armor. So here are the first results (not very impressive, I might go back and rework a few things).

LoTR Rohan; Carrot on a Stick

Sometimes I just need something to really keep me moving on a project. Right now I have two things to keep me working on these Normans. The first is the competition entry for ReaperCon, which must be finished by the time I leave for the convention in mid-May. The second is the converted Rohan miniatures that I finished up. They have all been primed up with white and I'm pleased that I was able to blend in the head swaps pretty seamlessly. A number of the heads are definitely a little big, but most have blended in okay, in several cases I think the new head is much better than the old. I have come to realize that a couple of these poses have heads that really are just a bit on the small side. So any way here is the carrot:

LoTR Rohan; Mounted Royal Guard Update

I received a very early birthday present last week. I wasn't expecting these and really I did not buy them. In the box was a bunch of the Rohan miniatures that I needed for my army in September. Amongst these were five very precious Mounted Rohan Royal Guard. Considering the difficulty I have had even finding some anywhere online (yes I know I could buy them direct from GW) this is quite a haul. It was a very good box and I'm very thankful for it arriving.

LoTR Rohan Helmingas Warband - The Hair Pics

I got in a little more time on the Rohan the last few days. Mostly in between trying to write papers for work and school. I wasn't satisfied with a couple of the original head swaps that I did so I removed three, did a little filing raided a few more sprues and now I'm quite happy with the look. I think once they are painted up you won't be able to really tell the difference. I had to resculpt hair in order to get a seamless look from the new head to the old body. Instead of green stuff I decided to try out some Apoxie Sculpt that I have had laying around for a while now. Amazing stuff much easier to mix up and work with than green stuff. I'm not sure if it will have the same strength in the end but for my purposes strength is not a requirement. So here are some pictures of the hair on the eight miniatures that received head swaps:

And now some group shots before the primer goes on. I'll have to set these aside for a bit while I work on a commission job I accepted today. I have always wanted to paint a batch of Normans but didn't really want to own any. With LEG getting into the SAGA miniatures game I have my chance now. So a 6pt force of Normans is waiting to get prepped for painting. And now on to the Helmingas Warband (hopefully I will be able to find Grimbold soon, he too is currently out of production):

Can you tell what my favorite soda is from these pictures?

LoTR Rohan Helmingas Warband - 1st Look

If you have been reading this blog then you already know that I can be all over the map with my projects. I like to be able to go back and forth between periods just to break things up. My armies get done slower but it keeps my interest up.

I spent some time working on one of the three warbands for my Rohan army for the September tournament. Since I'm unlikely to actually win the tournament through strength of arms I'm going for the painting win. This is an official GW tournament and as such there is straight forward checklist of items that a judge is looking for when he is judging the paint work on the armies. Conversions, even minor conversions, add huge points to your painting score, but there must be conversions on something like 90% of your army to get the check. With that in mind I'm working on doing at least some minor conversion work on every miniature that will make up the army.

First up is Grimbold's warband made up of 12 Rohan Warriors. These are all plastics from the basic Rohan Warrior box. I'm trying to go very wysiwyg with these guys, so no throwing spears or bows, just shields and hand weapons and since the Helmingas prefer the axe to the sword I have swapped out weapons on half the miniatures. I sacrificed weapons and other interesting bits from a couple of sprues of Hirdmen from Gripping Beast and Bondi from Wargames Factory. I'm not sure I'm happy with all of the head swaps that I made. In particular the heads from the Gripping Beast sprues just seem to be to big, the ones from the Wargames Factory sprues look a bit closer to being the right size. Its a little difficult to use these heads to begin with since the GW LoTR figures are much closer to true 25mm miniatures and the Gripping Beast and Wargames Factory are definitely 28mm miniatures. They may look fine after I get them painted up but if I'm going to make any changes I need to do that now since I will need to resculpt the hair before painting them. Head swaps are usually the hardest thing to do but they really are a piece of cake with plastic miniatures. The same is true with weapons swaps and in this case I swapped out the whole hand, that was much easier than cutting weapons in two and grafting them on to existing hands. Everything else is just the addition of belt knives and pouches. Very minor stuff and very easy to do with plastic miniatures.

I have also run into a problem trying to acquire some of the miniatures for this force. A lot of the models particularly the mounted versions of the Rohan Royal Guard are out of production. My guess is that they will soon be available in Finecast resin. I don't want to wait that long or spend that much money on them either. I spent some time looking at images from the movie and determined that there isn't that much difference between the Royal Guard and any other Rohan warrior. The biggest difference is the helmet. Only the Royal Guard have a crest on the helmet with some horsehair flowing off of it. Two of the plastic Riders of Rohan have this style helmet (with the cheek guards). They will take more work but I'm going to use these two riders as the stock models for converting all ten of the mounted Royal Guard that I will need for Eomer's warband. I will probably do a little extra work on the horses to make them stand out a bit more as well as the horse in the Royal Guard blister is the same horse in the Riders of Rohan box.

Let me know what you think about the heads. Its definitely not to late to change things out and they are only plastic and I have another box to work with if something doesn't work. At this point the work is going smoothly and I'm on schedule to complete the painting in time for September.

In Search Of: GW LoTR Rohan Royal Guard

Well, two days in and I'm likely to fail Anne's challenge of not buying any more minis till 1/4 of what I currently have is completed. But there is a good reason, honest. You see I'm in desperate need of minis for my proposed Rohan army which has to be ready by September. I have kept the numbers low, 35 total miniatures, but to do that I opted for a good portion of Rohan Royal Guard miniatures, well because they are expensive and don't come with bows! Even more expensive when you actually have to buy them. I dug through my stuff and came up with 1 pack of 3 on foot which means I need 6 more on foot and 9 on horseback. So if anybody out there has some of these guys they are willing to give up I'm interested in talking. I'm quite certain that I can come up with something to trade for them if necessary or out right buy them. I'm not going with the throwing spear option with these guys so if you have them assembled and have long since tossed the sword arm then I can't use them. I prefer unpainted because if they are painted then I'm going to strip them back down to bare metal and plastic. Quiet frankly with this list I'm not going to win the tournament or even come close so I'm going to have to go after having the best painted army.