Forth, the Three Hunters!

As previously mentioned, having reached Lothlorien in the Quest of the Ringbearer campaign, something had to change.

Whilst in the Golden Wood, the Fellowship of the Ring were given gifts. Most of these (belts, knives, hair, etc.) can be ignored in terms of miniature gaming, but not the cloaks. I would need miniatures with cloaks to not only be accurate, but also to ensure I remembered their rules.

Therefore I went out and purchased The Three Hunters box set to obtain new-fangled plastic sculpts of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, beautifully bedecked in Elven cloaks.

I had considered buying second hand metal miniatures of Aragorn and Gimli (I still have a Legolas knocking around), but the cost of the specific sculpts on eBay was more than the plastic box, even if I didn't get it a discount from Outpost Games.

The problem was that there are several sculpts of Gimli in a cloak, and so the price of him was fine. However, there's only the Breaking of the Fellowship sculpt of Aragorn that fits the bill (plus one from a diorama), and so eBay does it's thing and the price gets silly.

Having said that, the plastic miniatures were released only a couple of years ago and so are extremely nice and packed with detail, as you can see on Aragorn. From the elfstone given by Galadriel, to the bracers that he will wear in honour of (spoiler alert) Boromir, there is so much to see on what is largely a simple model.

All of this detail made painting him a breeze, as detail responds well to washes, contrast and dry brushing, the three pillars of my painting.

I tried to keep the colours used matched to the decisions I made when painting my first Aragorn twenty years ago, which I think I've achieved, but with more subtlety.

I'm still very pleased with my original paint jobs, as at the time they were very much the best things I'd painted and the original Fellowship of the Ring sculpts still hold up.

However, I have to admit that there has been a step up in quality.

Probably my favourite of the three is Gimli. Not only because in this sculpt he looks like he means business (and is a natural sprinter), but also because he actually has all the many axes that his rules allow for, something that even the movie struggled with.

He's significantly chunkier than his metal counterpart, but also contains much more defined detail elements.

Fans of the films may notice that I've deviated a little from the actual costume, using a brighter gold than is present and doing blue on the helmet.

Part of this is due to wanting to add a little bling to this excellent model, but also for some reason I did the helmet blue originally, and I like it.

Of the three miniatures, I like the Legolas sculpt the least. It's not bad but I think the face is a bit off and it looks a bit odd that he's firing a snooker cue at someone.

I'm also less than keen on some aspects of the painting. I made a mistake and got green paint on his chin, and the fix has left him looking a bit red-faced, which doesn't really work with an elf.

Actually, it's the one of the three where a prefer the old metal sculpt, which, to my eyes at least, looks more like Orlando Bloom. I think with an updated paint job, I'd definitely want to use the old model, and as I have a cloaked metal Legolas, I'm tempted to paint him up to see how good a job I can do him.

And so I'm ready for Amon Hen and the breaking of the Fellowship. As I said last time, I'm not bothering with a new model for Boromir because (spoiler alert) he won't need his cloak for long, where's Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli will need theirs through Rohan, the Paths of the Dead, Gondor and (apart from Aragorn) all the way to the Black Gate.

Acquired: -66
Painted: 327
Lead Mountain: 660