A Tale of Two Treebeards

Finecast or Metal? Contrast or regular paint? These are two discussions that crop up constantly within the community and likely will do for some time. It just so happens that two of us from the Drawn Combat team got hold of the same miniature around the same time, but in different materials. I myself managed to get hold of the original metal kit of Treebeard, whereas Dan picked up the (currently sold by GW) Finecast sculpt. At this point we decided we'd have a look at two of the larger debates when it comes to ME:SBG miniatures at the moment, comparing the different materials and different methods of painting available!

Dan: Sadly for me, I drew the short straw and had the Finecast Treebeard to assemble. At first this wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, with surprisingly little flash to clean up. The model even went together fairly well, except for a big gap where the right leg met the body (the foot also has to sit in the base so I couldn't just reposition the leg). It did take a while to twist the leg into alignment using the old hot-water trick, but once it went in it was very snug. The whole model ended up requiring no green stuff at all! Success!

Obviously I was feeling pretty smug at this point, so that's when Karma took a sharp look in my direction in the form of Merry and Pippin. Merry was fine, he just perched on his branch no trouble. Pippin on the other hand was an absolute pain. I couldn't get him to sit flush on the branch for a start, and not only that, but I couldn't physically get him into the gap because his foot was in the way. Sadly for the already diminutive hobbit he had to have most of his lower leg chopped off and his foot reattached at the knee. Both hobbits were also very flash-y, especially under the cloaks. Overall I have had far worse experiences with Finecast but it still wasn't great.

Finally, and I am sure Steve will talk about this too, there is the issue of Treebeard being somewhat lacking in the height department. As he is being added to my Ent army, the height discrepancy was just ridiculous, especially as he will almost always be the leader (as he is a Hero of Legend).

He's so little!

I had to do something about it so after a bit of thought I went with a bunch of spare bases that I chopped up. I went with two layers in the end, and even then he is little, but the base was starting to look more like a plinth than a base so I just went with it.

Still small but the best I can do.

Remember how smug I was about using no green stuff just a paragraph ago? Well here comes Karma again. I ended up having to use a tonne of it to cover the little steps I had made. Overall it worked out fine in the end, though I do wish the model itself was bigger!

Steve: I'm not going to lie, I felt really chuffed when I got hold of the original Treebeard kit. It was a model I wanted so much when I was younger and now being an adult who will happily chuck money at Lord of the Rings models I managed to snag one (unused, I might add) off of one of the trade groups. The first thing you notice about the kit, is the sheer weight of it. Seriously, this is one massive hunk of metal and it will happily break your toe if you drop it. Two big concerns I had going in to the build were the weight for one (keeping everything fixed in place) and the potential level of reshaping to made parts fit snuggly. Flash-wise similar to Dan's was not much of an issue, although as with any metal model there's always a noodle bit of flash you didn't realise was there until you've painted the model!

Onto the first issue: weight. In order to get this model assembled to the point where it wouldn't fall apart with a small tap I was going to have to pin the parts together - mainly the arms and legs. Pinning (for the uninitiated) is a good old technique involving drilling a small hole in each of the parts you want to attach, and inserting a small metal rod (this can easily be part of a paper clip) to add extra support to the joint and to take some of the weight off of the glue. When attaching to the base however, I decided I'd forgo pinning here and instead use a combination of baking powder and superglue. The two when combined make a ridiculously strong bond and helped in securing the whole model to its metal base. 

Pinning in action.

When Dan showed me a comparison of Treebeard to the other Ents, the scale didn't match up so I shamelessly borrowed his idea and gave him a lift off the base to help him with the towering presence he should have. For this I took the base, and added the lid from an old tester pot of paint back from when I decorated my house to give another centimetre of height, then building around the edges with Green Stuff to smooth it all out (admittedly, I did this after I painted most of the model!).

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Dan: I am not really a painter. I don't particularly enjoy it and I am often unwilling to spend money on the 15 different shades of brown that a lot of painting guides suggest. When Contrast Paints were released it was like they were made for me. Paint and Shade mixed into one? Yes please! They have become my go-to paints, and though they aren't suitable for everything they are often 'good enough' which is my M.O. for painting. So with Treebeard I knew he was going to get Contrasted to death. I went with a basecoat of Wyldwood, which ended up being surprisingly difficult. Considering how thin Contrast is it left a load of white spots in the recesses of all the bark. I hate to say it but I think the model might just be a bit too detailed! It was a massive pain as I kept finding white spots every time I picked it up. I eventually got them all but it was still annoying. I finished off with a dry-brush of Mournfang Brown and Baneblade Brown. That'll do pig.

Merry and Pippin, on the other hand, were a joy to paint. Contrast works best for cloth and they are all cloth. I think they turned out really well, especially as they are all Contrast and nothing else. Told you I wasn't a painter!

Steve: Compared to Dan, I find a great amount of joy in painting - it's one of my favourite parts of the hobby. That being said - I'm not amazing, but decided to go with more traditional methods of tackling Treebeard and the Hobbits. He started off primed with Abaddon Black to then be base coated in Rhinox Hide all over (my general go-to dark brown). My aim was to build him up from there in gradual, increasingly light dry-brush coats, with a little Nuln Oil thrown in after the first. this started with Sylvaneth Bark moving on to Terminatus Stone and finally an extremely light coating of Wrack White (all dry paints) on the small highlights I wanted to pick out. This whole process was actually remarkably quick (not as quick as coating the whole model in contrast, mind you) but the sculpt of the bark really lends itself to dry-brushing and every accent shows for it meaning that detail could be achieved for minimal effort. 

I then worked into a bit more detail, adding dabs of Castellan Green to the areas of moss, leaves and patches of the beard (of which I largely left up to a healthy wash coating of Creed Camo), finally highlighting with a small drybrush of Nurgling Green. 

A similar approach was used for Merry and Pippin (base, wash, dry-brush) only with the small addition of contrast for the flesh and hair - I'm still not confident with painting flesh so this makes for a nice alternative with good results.

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Dan: For basing I first covered the mound in Brown Battleground from Army Painter. I also added some spare branches that I had leftover from my other Ents to make it look less like he was just stood on a lump.

To finish the model, and to make him fit with the rest of the army, I decided to give Treebeard some proper foliage. I did this by teasing out poly fiber until it was thin and hooking it over his branches. I then used some spray adhesive and sprinkled over coarse turf so that it stuck to the poly fiber. After two applications of this I sprinkled on some leaves to finish. I also stuck some of the coarse turf to Treebeard himself to look like moss. I repeated the whole process with two of the larger branches on the base. Finally I finished the base itself with a mix of two different colours of coarse turf, static grass and leaves.

I finished with some flowers to break up the green a bit. I wish I had cut the tufts up to be smaller but tearing them off now would cause too much damage.

Steve: To start off with like Treebeard the whole base got a healthy coat of Rhinox Hide as a base. From here I started to attach clumps of Tree Bush from Green Stuff World to both the base and certain parts of Treebeard in order to achieve the beginnings of a mossy look as per Fangorn, with a few grass tufts thrown in to break it up a little bit. The main problem I found with this when applying however is that the colour is very flat - it doesn't show the texture off well enough so this was given a once over with Nurgling Green to add a touch of highlight and make it look a little more natural.

The base is looking a bit too bright for my liking!

Just having the gras tufts wasn't enough to break it up however, so out came the Stirland Mud to add a bit more of an earth tone to the top of the base whilst also removing some of the Tree Bush. Finally I had some more Green Stuff World shrubberies to use, so added a couple of clumps around just help elevate the base and make the model flow a bit better from base to head. This was achieved by drilling a few small holes in the softer Green Stuff part of the base and inserting the stalks of the shrubs. 

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Dan: Overall I am really happy with how Treebeard turned out. As I said above, I am not a painter but I think the foliage distracts from the simplistic paint job. I ended up being glad that he is the Finecast version as the base adds a lot of heft to the model so if he was metal he would be very chunky indeed!

The finished article - Dan

Steve: Given it's my first large miniature I've tackled in a while I'm pretty darn pleased with the outcome. I really do love dry-brushing, and this model was absolutely perfect for picking up the ridges and contours of the bark by doing so. The model is however extremely heavy (especially with my additions to the base) and if it falls over on the table for whatever reason, something other than Treebeard is likely to break. Personally I've found that metal feels a lot better when I dry-brush - the texture just seems to pop out that little bit more when applying. Admittedly, the Finecast version would have been much more easy to assemble, but if you're someone like me who enjoys assembling a kit even with all the extra steps, it's worth it if you can get hold of it.

The finished article - Steve

So what are your thoughts on the big material debate? Are there any parts of either that make you yell out in pain or jubilation? We'd love to hear your thoughts and if you have any questions about the materials/methods we've used just drop us a comment!

Bonus picture with the rest of the Ents. Yes that is Quickbeam who is doing the running-man.