Warhost of Cirith Ungol

Like the title says, here's my 600 point army for the week away biggest Lord of Rings SBG tourney in years. Bilbo's Birthday Bash in its third year. I've already rambled on at length about the event and the what's been going on with the game in general, So this time I'll just talk about my Army. This is my second 600 point army I've completed (the other being my Grey Company) This one comes in at 44 models, but with separate Wargs and riders for dismounted cavalry options, its really 60 models. A pair of Warg Riders and the all the dismounts are not pictured as I am still touching up finish the last of the models.



















Its' taken me a good six weeks with my limited hobby time of late to get this army in shape, I did have some models painted but the were quite old and needed touch ups. A lot of freehand shields to do, new characters, etc. The nice thing about Orcs is once you have this much done you have the makings of all the Mordor armies, and even Angmar with limited additions of the main characters or monsters of which I have many done, So say I want to run Angmar or Barad-Dur at Adepticon or something, I only need to paint a couple models. So a nice bonus to wade thru the 30 or so crappy plastic Orcs I had to do. yes, I am not a big fan of the plastic orc models, there some of the weakest in the LotR plastic line, I really like the original metal orcs the GW had out of which there are only 10 poses. I seem to have hard time finding them but would love to get my hands on some to mix them in. If its not super obvious in the photos it is in person, the far superior metals just jump out compared to the plastics. I use both the Mordor Orc and Morannon Orc boxes here, the later using alot of converted weapons.



















Speaking of conversions, this Orc Shaman is one of my favorites, A simple weapon swap can go along way with some these figs, this guy got the resin base, the dead body the spear, made from the original head and the shaft of some historical metal spears. most dramatically he got a new arm, which took a little GS work but is really just an arm off a Mantic Ghoul. which pretty much fit perfectly.




















I went back an forth on the display for some time, I was reusing a castle gate I have and I made a rock cave for Shelob. My large deep display tray I used for years for WFB just looked to big, so made a smaller tray. The top section (deck) is magnetized so I can pop it out and switch it if I want to use a different army. Anyway my original set up now looked two busy with the two pieces on the smaller tray., asking my wife her excellent atheistic opinion, she said "why dont you use that thing over there"..pointing to my "not weather top" I made earlier in the year. I said, right , "and" I made it modular, so I can only use part of it, perfect! and there you go. Not as themed at the gates of Cirith Ungol and Shelob's Cave, but trust me this looks alot better.




I've been making those signs/ placards you seen the first shot for years now, so that wasnt a big deal, I got the display work done pretty quickly, (consider I am using a finished piece here, the "not weathertop" model was a quite a challenge which you can read about here.)

I plan on having everything done for my last ditch practice game early Tuesday right before we hit round 2 of our Hail Caesar Campaign. I am woefully behind in my Ancients painting as the rest of the guys are way past me, but now that this is done, I can start digging into that. I've got a pretty large LotR collection at this point, its probably one of the only lines, I pretty much 'collect" as well as game with. ( I think I've referenced my "active" versus "passive" collections before) Anyway look forward to big write on Bilbo's with lots of pictures, I am going to try to make a real effort this year to get alot of good pics as people are coming in from all over, and there will be some awesome armies there, AND I should mention the painting contest.

I didnt have time to get 3 entries as one category is exclusively Cavalry models, and I just didnt have time to a new model done to where it needs to be....so I am just entering my Nazgul on Fell Beast and "something else" in the 25mm base category, not sure what yet..I have about a 1/2 dozen good options. Oh and Happy Halloween!