Rohan Update

It's been a little time since I last updated this, so I figured I do a progress update for the Rohirrim. Whilst not the only thing I've been working on (due to my concurrent Mordor army), progress has been slow. I vastly prefer the building and converting side of things over painting, but I do like to see the finished things assembled and painted. 

(The Army List for the above can be found in this post)

First thing I did were the King's Huntsman and the Outriders. This allowed me to practice my rusty skills a little, and I experimented with injected some extra red into the colour scheme. I knew I wanted the helmet tassels to be red, so it would help to tie to the scheme together to have some more. A red tint to the leathers seemed a good idea. The Huntsman lacks this red, though I may go back and redo the underclothes to be red rather than green to tie him to his unit.

For the cloaks I went back to one of my favourite ways to paint a weathered green, which I got from my first ever copy of White Dwarf (Issue 291). A Tale of Good and Evil documented the simultaneous building of Gondor and Mordor forces by a couple of writers, and the scheme was used for the Rangers of Ithilien. Using the then new Catachan Green paint (now renamed to Castellan Green), with highlight using mixes of Graveyard Earth (Steel Legion Drab) and Bleached Bone (Ushabti Bone). I've used the scheme multiple times for Rangers and Rohirrim, so bringing it back for Rohan's scouts made sense.

Next up was the four Riders. I wanted to clearly separate them colour-wise from the Outriders, to ensure the latter stood out, so here I tried an idea I'd seen on another blog. Instead of painting green, paint grey and stain green. After a big of experimentation, I went for a light grey, stained it with Agrax Earthshade, then with Biel-tan Green. This did tend to be a touch light and a bit too clean for me, so I did end up bringing the Castellan Green back as a drybrush. When I do Riders again, I will likely look at using a darker grey base. as currently I'm using a fairly light Administratum Grey. I do want to test a grey-brown like Steel Legion Drab instead however.

So Theoden and the Royal Guard are all that's left to go. I'll be looking to use a more royal green for the Guard's cloaks, though there should likely be some weathering done using Castellan Green to subtly tie them to other two cloak types. 

To make the Royal Guard a little bit more special, I've also converted two of the horses. For MESBG, there are only two official horse poses for your rank and file troops. They come in two halves that can be swapped, so that's technically four poses, but for an all-Cavalry army as Rohan tends to be, despite the hero horses, you will end up with a tonne of similarly posed horses before long. To help alleviate this, I chopped and swapped the heads of the two basic horses. It required a touch of green-stuff, but it helps diversify the force a little more than simply painting will.

The Future!

So naturally I've already started thinking about future expansions. The easiest addition will be another three Outriders, maxing out the Huntman's Warband. I painted a fourth archer alongside the other three, so grabbing a pack of the official metal models will be the simplest addition.

The astute amongst you will notice I've mentioned Deorwine's shield a few times, as the basis for those held by my Royal Guard, so I will be adding him in too as a third warband. This will almost definitely require more Royal Guard, but I like them a lot as a unit, so that's not a bother.

Finally, I recently picked up this particular Royal Guard model, whose long spear lends itself far too well to holding a banner. Theoden has been riding too long without being heralded, so he'll get that in the expansion to help those charges hit home.

Hopefully won't take too long. Of course, I still need to finish up Mordor too!