A small scout force...

I was thinking to myself only yesterday, "Why haven't I uploaded any pictures of my miniatures yet?"

Well the first answer that comes to mind is, compared to a lot of other people's I see, mine pale in comparison. I think I've got the hang of a few basics, layering, drybrushing, washing etc and I'm able to paint my miniatures up to table top standard. I'm happy with this, and I'm happy with how fast I've made that improvement from getting paint in the wrong place, or getting the right consistency of paint onto certain parts. It's very daunting for a new painter like myself.

That being said, I find the wargaming community (most of it, anyway) to be encouraging, kind and great at constructive feedback without leaving the painter/modeller leaving feeling downtrodden.
So with that in mind, I'm going to start posting what I've painted. If nothing else, I can look back on it as I improve and see just how much far I may have come.


For the past few months on and off, I've been painting my uruk-hai scouts. After speaking to a friend who's played for years, back in December last year, I decided that Isengard was a good force for me to go for. At the time my reasoning was that I really enjoy uruk-hai, especially mixed with orcs and wild men. They'd be easy to paint, and they're beginner friendly, with a higher than average fight, strength and courage for the forces of evil.

So that's theme, painting and playing ticked on the check list, and the only deviation I made along those three points was opting to choose scouts over fighting uruk-hai. They're both a bit more difficult to paint, and slightly more squishy in game than their armoured counterparts, with less defence. I can say without a doubt I made the right choice though, as the scouts have some nice sculpts, and the fight at Amon Hen is one of my favourite scenes in the trilogy...

These are no mere orcs!

Apologies for the picture quality. I'm still trying to figure out the focussing on our new camera...

Find the halfling!

I can definitely improve, and one day I would like to be able to consistently paint eyes and facial details etc, but have left them blank and let a wash shadow those details instead for now as I lack the skill to do much else.

The Uruk Scouts themselves aren't too difficult to paint. I started off with a prime of Abaddon Black, before heavily drybrushing the boots, swords, shields and anything else metal with Leadbelcher. I then very lightly drybrushed parts of the metal with Runefang Steel to highlight various parts that would be reflecting from the sun or other sources of natural light.

Sitting at defence 5 with a shield,

the scout can still be rather

tanky to those strength 3 armies

I then painted the leather straps with Doombull brown, and the skin Mournfang Brown. Some of the lower belt portions I painted Zandri Dust, like the one pictured above without shield or helm. This is to differentiate any "marauders" I use, an upgraded variant if taken in Mauhur's warband...
any bows or quivers were painted in Rhinox Hide, a nice darker brown to stand out from the leather armour.

One of my "marauders" as evidenced by

the different coloured belt section

of his armour...

Zoomed out version of the above.

Finally, I gave the models a wash. So far, I've given most of them the Nuln Oil treatment, but the odd few get Agrax Earthshade, to represent the more dirty, worn leather of the uruks fleeing to Orthanc, with Merry and Pippin (I plan on sourcing these models to add to that particular collection).

Not where you want to be if you're a hobbit.

I do of course need to add white hands, and I'm still practicing this. Of the 10 attempts I've done so far, I've been happy with the last three that I've attempted to paint on shields!

Finally, I based them (which I'm new at, and found quite difficult to be frank! painting the smaller stones to look like dirt, I had trouble with.) in the usual manner, a bit of bird sand, the smaller coarse type and the larger type to represent the larger stones, suitable paint scheme and a bit of static grass mixed with a bit of static hay to represent the many small villages of Rohan.

Overall, whilst pretty basic True I still have a long way to go, and a lot I can improve on, but I think I've done a fairly good job, at least to a tabletop standard that I can enjoy playing with them, and ultimately that's what matters isn't it? whether we like what we've painted. If we're satisfied with them personally, and enjoy their look and playing with them, then it's a win in my books!

So whilst this is only a small section of my scout force, I do have Lurtz, Ugluk, Saruman, Grima and a fair few other scouts to paint up. I even have around 10-15 of them already painted, ready to be based. I'll post an update on them as and when I get them finished.

However, whilst the scouts are out shouting about halflings to be found, a few Moria goblins have sneaked into my painting queue, namely for Battle Companies... so plenty to be done.