Thursday 19 August 2021

"To Mordor we will take you."

So far in the Quest of the Ringbearer, the 'Black Riders' have been on foot, stumbling about randomly using the sentry rules.

This all changes when the campaign reaches Bree. Not only do the Ringwraiths gain self-determination, they also get their horses back.


This, fairly obviously, required me to buy and paint enough mounted Nazgul for the scenario. That meant getting three more to add to the Witch King I painted a few weeks ago.

Fortunately for me and my bank account, not only do the Black Riders come in packs of three, Outpost also had them in stock (20% off, plus no postage as I live local) and I had accrued enough 'Outpoints' with them to get a further discount.


Assembling them took more effort than I was expecting. There were many more areas of flash to clean than on the Witch King, and some chunky gaps to fill (I had to break out the greenstuff, which I'm usually much to lazy for).

I suspect that the age of the moulds had an impact on this, and that the mould for the Witch King (which was on 'made to order') has just seen less use.


Painting was as dramatically exciting as it was last time. Contrast Black, light drybrush grey, brown reins, silver armour and weapons, black wash, light drybrush of robes again.

The only point of interest here was that I took some internet advice and picked up a cheap makeup brush (the one I got was a concealer brush) for drybrushing. It definitely was more effective and less scratchy in the effect it achieved, so if you've not already done so, you should get one.


When it came to basing, I decided that my old method (sand, paint brown, glue static grass in patches) was a bit lacklustre. So I decided to add some of the 'scrubland baseready' and tufts I'd bought from Geek Gaming for my Blood Angels into the gaps between the patches of grass.

I liked the effect enough to go back and do the same to my entire LotR collection in a couple of hours last night, although I only added tufts to the cavalry and some key characters.


So there are my four Ringwraiths ready to pursue the hobbits and Strider through Bree.

My only slight peeve is that the black on the three newer models has come out ever so slightly different to the Witch King, who has a slightly bluer hue. 


I suspect that this might be because I was much more liberal with the contrast black the first time around, doing two coats because the first one didn't work.

I used another drybrush to try to tie it back to the new ones, but there's still a slight difference. Fortunately, it's on the only real character model in the group, but it's still annoying.

Three more models painted, but I also picked up four more on a sprue, which I will discuss in future post about the other models I'm painting for the Bree scenario.

Acquired: 123
Painted: 150

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