Build Me An Army Worthy of Mordor, My Personal Army in a Weekend [Hobby]

Being a father of 2 and a husband I rarely get a chance to sit down and really solely focus on hobby
without interruption. Often this means that larger projects take exponentially longer for me, even though I set aside time to concentration best I can. I know many have these problems, so who am I to talk. But when the wife and kids went out of town one weekend, something in the boxes of unpainted models was calling to me... a harrowing spirit that could only say one thing....

Build Me an Army of Mordor...

Again I will mention that I am not the best painter out there, I am pretty average. But like allot of you out there I am trying to learn the tricks of the hobby and get better as I go along. So sometimes I like to push myself, like this army in a weekend or the sudden object source lighting that I tried, its all in expanding your knowledge and going outside your comfort zone.

I had about a 3.5 day span they would be gone, then take from that about a day that I thankfully got some Kings Of War games in, and further a few hours to do the honey-do's I was left with. So really about 1.5 days were mine, and depending on how much sleep I wanted on my vacation, I had a handful of hours to really crank out this Orc army I have been dedicated to.

Behind the scenes leading up to Zero-day for painting, I had one Mantic Orc Mega Army Box, fully assembled and primed black, two sets of MOMMiniatures Orc Command team assembled and primed black, a GW LOTR Mordor Troll assembled and primed black, a  MOMMiniatures Troll assembled and primed black, and two GW LOTR Ringwraiths Mounted assembled and primed black. I had already cut out my bases just as I had shown in my previous article on 25 cent multi bases, but nothing yet was decorating them.

Starting Friday after everyone was on their plane and I had time to stop and get beer to wet my brushes for this task (ok fine it was for me), I began to work on my first GreatAx regiment. I am not sure what my expectations were for speed in doing this, but when I finished this regiment and looked up at the clock I was surprised to see it was well into the evening, and I had sunk about 5 hours on this unit. Frantically I moved on to something more lighthearted, my two soon to be Giants, which ironically by both MOMminatures and GW were designated trolls. They just happened to be more in scale with Giants for Kings of War, so they were a nice break to paint after doing a ton of little orcs.

Thankfully  they only took me a fraction of the time of the regiment, and I was soon busting out the Ax horde which I knew would be an even bigger task. That big guy (or guys...) took me about 6 more hours, which kind of shows that the delta between painting a regiment or horde of the same thing was little when you had a process down and were warmed up.

Dry kitty litter dry...

By this time on Friday I was really sweating it because I had intended to have everything painted and based before I moved on to the next units on the next painting day. Being that it was 11 o'clock I got hot throwing kitty litter and shards of slate on my bases before spray painting the hell out of them. And then I was disheartened to figure out that the kitty litter I used for gravel was going to take a good amount of time to dry. So by that time it had been 13 hours since I started painting, and I called it a night to allow bases to dry.

I was able to play some games of Kings of War and Mordhiem that day, and I had every intention of having at least a few units done to have something to show. So waking up early, I began to finish off the bases by applying a few color layers of dry brush and a couple Shadow's Edge Miniatures grass tufts and viola. With a bit of super glue I applied the models to the base and after 14 hours had a GreatAx regiment, two giants, and a Ax horde all finished... phew.

So after some fun getting defeated by dwarves.... again... and then getting a "just barely" victory over Kingdoms of Men, I returned to the painting table Sunday, and deliberated over what my next steps would be.

To get the biggest bang for my buck I warmed up painting the two Mounted GW Ringwraiths I was to use as Krudgers. And at some point along the way I got sidetracked into learning and trying for the first time, Object Source Lighting on one of their swords. So given I was watching a youtube tutorial and painting ever so carefully it took me a lot longer than intended. After a few hours spending on two models, I went in on three regiments of Gore Riders... at once, cause that's less models right?... If you count the mount and rider as one that is...

So again I found myself late into the night before I finished painting all of the models, and then some more time waiting for kitty litter to dry on the bases. After what seemed like the longest day of painting, and about 8 more hours, I had two Krudgers and three Regiments of Gore riders!

At this point I knew the wife and kids were coming home the next day, and I still had those honey do's to take care of, but the hobbyist in me just knew I had it in me to at least top it all off with the Flagger and two Wardrums I had waiting. So about 3 hours of painting and basing and I was finished... my army in a weekend was complete with 25 hours of total painting, it seems crazy looking back at how much time I spent, but I really don't like sitting over a long period of time on one project (having taken like 3 years to do Brotherhood).

So now that I have regaled to you the story of my 25 hours of my own personal army in a weekend, lets show off the unit by unit paint jobs.

GreatAx Regiment 

The big ugly guy in the middle is one of the MOMminiatures command Orcs. I figured he looked nice with the Mantic models as some sort of Warboss. 

Giants 

So I had this Mordor troll sitting around for a LONG time as part of the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game collection I had since I was about 13. He was painted before, but I  Simple Greened all of that off and primed it once more to get his new colors, with his new army.

The MOMminaitures troll is just such an awesome pose that I could not pass up having him in this army. The sweeping motion of his twin clubs screams D6+6 and Crushing Strength (3).

Ax Horde

So the opportunity to multi base a horde is never one to pass up. And since Orcs are very much a horde army I knew that dedicating the Ax as one would not be a problem. Plus I wanted to have a creative way to show off an army standard or hero without having to dedicate a specific model to it. So on the ledge of the small hill that I modeled into the base with pink foam and plaster, I made a 25x25 size indent that lets one of my unused heros sit nicely in the middle of the horde, like they are marching around their inspirational leader to battle. 

"Krudgers" mounted on "Gores"

I write this in quotes because I took an artistic liberty here with my narrative spin. The Orcs have such funny names for things. Who would have thunk such an elegant name as "nazgul" would come from some mouth breathing Orc? No, they say something basic like "Krudger". 

Consequently I wanted these guys to pop, specially my Witch King model which had such an awesome rearing pose. He ended up being my first model that I tried Object Source Lighting on by watching this awesome tutorial from Colour of the Gods. I can't say its the best OSL out there, but for my first go I am pretty stoked about it. 

Gore Rider Regiments

So for the most arduous of the units I painted, the Gores did come out quite nice. The Mantic Mega Army set even came with 2 extra riders. I assume this was to allow you to switch out the Krudger models they give you, but I had two LOTR SBG Wargs sitting around that needed a brave Orc to mount them. Thus two of my regiments get awesome leader models. 

Wardrums

So the MOMminiatures command spru came with some cool drummer orcs that made it pretty easy to call them Wardrummers. They were larger than normal orcs, though they don't fill up the whole 50x50 base, so they get the job done.

Flagger

I really wanted a cool looking banner to represent my whole army for my Flagger. I typically have not been that great at freehanding banners, but with this one some touch of god (maybe Sauron) allowed me to create this pretty awesome montage. 

The Age of Men is Over...

And so that about wraps all of my accomplishments this weekend up. Super excited I have a partially painted army on the table and that I can get some games as Orcs in. I even just found out the wife is gonna let me go up to Jekyll Island GT  in Georgia in the beginning of December. Though this means that I have to get the rest finished before then.... well there is always Thanksgiving break?