Soldato
Over the past 3 months or so I took it upon myself to paint all 260 (yes, you read that right) miniatures that come with the board game War of the Ring (basically a licenced Lord of the Rings epic strategy game / card / hidden movement game) and both expansions.
The base game and expansion miniatures are pretty high quality for the price, but not as good as Warhammer models, and they are all REALLY small! The biggest one is perhaps no taller than a 50p coin not including the base plate. The models that come with the base game and expansions are all distinct but to the untrained eye were all just bits of red (Shadow armies) or blue (free peoples) plastic and it was kinda hard to tell them all apart, hence the decision to paint them.
I could have just gone with a basic prime and and maybe just one coated them with distinct colours to distinguish between the different factions (elves, dwarve, Rohan, etc) but decided to go for the full on detailed painting effort instead.
Did a lot of research into examples of other peoples painting efforts on these and built up a library of images for each of the armies to use for inspiration and this helped a lot. I also had to buy some paints and some really fine brushes. I used Army Painter for everything, primes, metallics, speed paints, washes but had to expand the collection somewhat as the only previous painting experience I had was painting the aliens in the Nemesis board game.
I also suffered from the well documented issues online about tacky models once finished - its something to do with the poor quality of plastic they make them with unfortunately and appears to be a bit random as to whether the models are tacky or not. I was careful with all of them, washed them thoroughly before priming, primed them all grey, left them to dry, painted the main colours on then finished with a satin or matt varnish, but still some of them are a little bit tacky. Its not as bad as I'm making out but I won't be storing any of them back in the box anymore as it may damage them.
I'd also say that I don't consider myself an expert painter or very skilful, a lot of the work was micro-dotting, painstaking or required a very steady hand and copious amounts of patience and mental endurance. There are examples online of people doing a better job than me and I definitely made mistakes and there are some that I just aren't that happy with, but I'm content enough not to strip them and start over. I learnt a lot about colours (I agonised and spent hours just thinking about what paint colours / schemes to use) and paint textures, brush handling and some use of dry brushing.
It took hour upon torturous hour to complete, started off with such optimism and ended it weeping, but here are a few photos of the fruits of my labour:
All minis:
Shadow army (Saruman and Sauron):
Free peoples and the fellowship:
The base game and expansion miniatures are pretty high quality for the price, but not as good as Warhammer models, and they are all REALLY small! The biggest one is perhaps no taller than a 50p coin not including the base plate. The models that come with the base game and expansions are all distinct but to the untrained eye were all just bits of red (Shadow armies) or blue (free peoples) plastic and it was kinda hard to tell them all apart, hence the decision to paint them.
I could have just gone with a basic prime and and maybe just one coated them with distinct colours to distinguish between the different factions (elves, dwarve, Rohan, etc) but decided to go for the full on detailed painting effort instead.
Did a lot of research into examples of other peoples painting efforts on these and built up a library of images for each of the armies to use for inspiration and this helped a lot. I also had to buy some paints and some really fine brushes. I used Army Painter for everything, primes, metallics, speed paints, washes but had to expand the collection somewhat as the only previous painting experience I had was painting the aliens in the Nemesis board game.
I also suffered from the well documented issues online about tacky models once finished - its something to do with the poor quality of plastic they make them with unfortunately and appears to be a bit random as to whether the models are tacky or not. I was careful with all of them, washed them thoroughly before priming, primed them all grey, left them to dry, painted the main colours on then finished with a satin or matt varnish, but still some of them are a little bit tacky. Its not as bad as I'm making out but I won't be storing any of them back in the box anymore as it may damage them.
I'd also say that I don't consider myself an expert painter or very skilful, a lot of the work was micro-dotting, painstaking or required a very steady hand and copious amounts of patience and mental endurance. There are examples online of people doing a better job than me and I definitely made mistakes and there are some that I just aren't that happy with, but I'm content enough not to strip them and start over. I learnt a lot about colours (I agonised and spent hours just thinking about what paint colours / schemes to use) and paint textures, brush handling and some use of dry brushing.
It took hour upon torturous hour to complete, started off with such optimism and ended it weeping, but here are a few photos of the fruits of my labour:
All minis:
Shadow army (Saruman and Sauron):
Free peoples and the fellowship:
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