In what now seems an age ago, a few of the guys here at DC headquarters decided to get involved in a community project ran by Dewi over at Guardians of Wiltshire. The brief? To create a battle company. Simple enough, no? It did however come with a twist. Every participant - around twenty of us from various blogs, Youtube channels and podcasts (there will be a list at the end along with links) would be assigned a company at random. Not only that, but each of us also submitted two colours that had to form the basis of a colour scheme for whomever it was randomly assigned to. Some were absolutely devilish with the colours they suggested, some you wouldn't expect in Middle-Earth for sure!
With the project in mind, Steve, Dan Slob, Dan Stu, Colm and Dave all took up the Battle Company Community Challenge - prepare yourselves for images galore!
Steve: During the video call where all the armies and colours were drawn up my name came up first and boy was I in for....okay there's no sugar coating this or way of making it sound more interesting. I got Minas Tirith and my 'colours' were grey and black. Not the most inspiring and I won't lie - I was quite underwhelmed to begin with. However, I got thinking about how to make this into something fun and also push my painting ability more. How about the entire project is just in greyscale? Thus, Minas Tirith Noir was born.
Within the challenge we were allowed to 'promote' our starting battle company within the list, so I decided to opt for what models would look best as part of a diorama. Changing up the initial list of two Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields, two with spears and shields and two with bows I instead went with three Citadel Guard, one Ranger of Gondor, keeping one warrior with a shield and one with a bow.
The setting would be in Minas Tirith, with a dastardly murder having just occurred - the miniatures investigating/guarding the crime scene. The display would be the biggest job to work on (a full image reel of the production can be found on Instagram @stevethorleyphotography) and would showcase a small corner of the white city. This was accomplished with a mix of foamboard, plasticard, milliput and modelling paste all then sealed with a mix of watered down ModPodge and black acrylic paint. Once undercoated, it was time to spray the OSL to get a sense of where I'd need to paint the various lights and shadows.
After the initial spray it was time work into the setting and models with brushes to smooth it all out. It's worth noting that there's three separate light sources (two braziers and one hand held torch) so there's a fair amount to consider! Working entirely in greyscale did make the process a lot easier however, without having to worry about the colour of fire. I decided to go a fair bit brighter than what normal torchlight would show however, otherwise there would be hardly any detail, nor would you be able to tell what was going on. On that note however, let's crack on with the photos of the finished product!
Dan Slob: For my Battle Company I was assigned Mordor and for my colours I got green and purple. So basically just a standard Mordor scheme. I was a bit sad about this as I was looking forward to doing something a bit funky, so instead I decided to jazz them up a bit by converting the models quite heavily. I started with the 4 Osgilliath Veteran models and chopped them up a bit. I mostly changed the heads (using 3D printed ones) and swapped out the weapons. I also chipped and scratched up the armour a fair bit to make them seem like they had scavenged it after a battle. I did the same thing with a Minas Tirith Banner bearer to make a two handed weapon Orc. The final 4 were made from normal Orcs, but I tried to swap out as many arms/legs as possible for ones from Warriors of Minas Tirith. Finally I added some modelling chain and a trophy rack on the back of the archer and I was done.
Painting-wise, I decided to go fairly traditional with green skin and purple robes. I'm not the best painter but I think I did a decent job. Finally for bases I used some nice Generation Shift ones to match the display board I made for them.
Speaking of the display board, that was probably the most fun part of the project! I used a square of foam board as the base and used the old-school LOTR ruins as well as some tree stumps from Green Stuff World. I then covered it with modelling compound and New Zealand Plains Base Ready (both from Geek Gaming Scenics) as well as a metric tonne of foliage from various places. I'm particularly happy with the creepers over the ruins which are from Diorama Presepe. Here is the finished product:
Dave: For my company I drew Fiefdoms, an army I've been tempted by for a long time! I was assigned a fairly traditional pair of colours for them, Purple and White, a stone's from from their traditional scheme of Blue and White. Whilst I thought about going outside the box and trying my hand at some pearlescent white armour, after a few test models I realised that was something I wasn't happy with how it was looking so I decided to go with a more classic approach.
So what did I have to paint for my company then? A single Knight of Dol Amroth, 2 Blackroot Vale archers and 3 (we'll get back to this later...) Men-at-arms. Nice and simple! I started on my Knight to begin with. I splashed the purple onto his cloak and shield, and the white was the accent for the shield, helmet and the insides of his cloak.
I was pretty happy how this guy came out and was keen to get started on the rest of them, but I was annoyingly hit by a fairly large degree of hobby burnout and I couldn't bring myself to start on the rest of them. They got pushed back into my painting pile for a few weeks until I could face them again.
After the short period of burnout I began on my Men-at-arms. Their scheme was simple enough. Purple for the gloves and wrapping around their chest, and white for the helmet and swan icons on the armour. It was here where, like an idiot, I completely misread how many MAA I had to paint. For some reason I had it in my head that I only need to paint two, and not three... So the end product is missing a bloke, but I'm sure I'll get around to him again at some point!
Finally for the Blackroot Vale Archers I wanted to have something a bit more eye catching that just the generic archers. After some searching I came across the OOP Blackroot Vale command and they were a perfect fit for the two archers I needed. I kept their main leather armour brown, but gave them purple under their chainmail and purple cloaks (as well as the banner). The white again was on the inside of the cloak and on the little bit around their waist.
I really like how these have all turned out, the Knight is definitely the highlight for me as that was the model I easily put the most time in to!
Dan Stu: For my battle company, I got Survivors of Lake Town, along with the colours Orange and Maroon.
As by far the slowest painter on the DC crew, it was a little unlucky to draw the largest Battle Company - but I really liked the colour pairing! The army - less so, I'm not a huge fan of the models and they've never really been on my short list of things I want to paint. However, the whole point of the challenge is to do something you wouldn't normally consider, so I was happy to give them a bash!
I can't say these are my favourite ever paintjobs, but it was quite fun to throw caution to the wind and power through some painting on a deadline. Normally, I will try to figure out every detail of a paint scheme before I put brush to model, which was not at all the case here, so these were nice models to kick me out of my hobby analysis paralysis. I do like the rusty colours and think they work well enough for Lake Town. If I were to expand the theme to the whole army, I'd vary the colours up between models a lot more. I think a lot of the visual appeal for Lake Town - especially the militia - comes from their hodge podge of colours, so I think a few contrasting blue or green clothed models would pump up the visual interest quite a bit.
This was a fun challenge, and I'll be keen for the next! I think for the next one, I'll try something really outside of the box.
Colm: I was hoping for something a bit weird coming to this challenge to help get the creative juices flowing, but I ended up with the rather classic combo of Dunland in red and gold! I always like to try something new when starting a new project (whether that be a painting technique, or converting models, or whatever) so I racked my brains to think of what I could do, finally ending on two results.
The first was using 3D printed models. I have only ever dabbled very slightly with 3D printed minis and my experience is very limited. I used Ridermercia miniatures sculpted by The Printing Goes Ever On which clearly shared inspiration with GW’s Dunland figures.
The second was to use oil paints to paint an OSL effect with the reds and golds coming from red firelight reflecting off a group of warriors at night. To say this is something I came up with would be a complete lie as I directly copied a tutorial from one of the painting greats, James Wappel. This tutorial in fact: https://youtu.be/64poNwlZIZM. The process is quite tricky and it wasn’t detailed in how the fluorescent oil paints are created, but I had a pop and I’m quite pleased with the results. It is surprisingly quick to create a convincing look and an extremely fun way to paint. I’d recommend having a go if it interests you and similar methods could be used in a variety of scenarios.
The whole community challenge was great and I loved seeing everyone’s stuff come together behind the scenes, especially in the different ways that people interpreted their brief (I found it especially interesting that Steve and I both came to use OSL to achieve our effect!). I’d be quite keen to have a go again.
And with that the fellowship of content creators, was over. This was a great idea set up by Dewi, and certainly inspired some good back and forth between the various content creators. If you have a group of friends or gaming clubs that would like to have a crack at this format, go for it!
Here's a full list of all the content that's come out:
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