CONQUERORS OF OSGILIATH
The Idea
After signing up for the Kauzenburg convention of 2007 I knew that I finally had to finish an army. Of course it should be nicely themed und not be a pseudo Pelennor-themed army. So I started looking through my collection of miniatures to look what would be possible to realize.
I came across a few metal orcs, lots of plastic orcs, 9 Uruk-hai of Mordor, Shagrat, a conversion sprue and Gothmog. Gothmog - I always liked this guy in the films. So he should be part of my army. But where does Gothmog enter the scene in the movies? In the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Damn. Where else? In Osgiliath! Very nice! So an idea came to my mind. It should be an Osgiliath-army as the idea of ruins and rubbish on the bases seemed nice to me!
The Planning
At the beginning I planned the army Gothmog on foot, an Orc captain, an Uruk-hai captain and lots and lots of Orcs and Uruk-hai. I always liked the Orc with the skull on his helmet, so he should be my Orc captain. In the film he carries a two-handed scythe, the conversion sprue had also only the two-handed version. That's why I left the Orc captain out as the rule book didn't allow Orc captains with two-handed weapons.
While painting so many Orcs I got bored of painting only ugly Orcs in rags. So I decided to strengthen the army by adding a batallion of Easterlings. I also wanted to make Gothmog more effective, so I gave him a shield and a Warg.
I also couldn't imagine the Easterlings marching under an Orcish banner, so they got their own one.
When the convention came nearer and I still had a lot of miniatures to paint, I remembered the Orc captain. I decided to go away from the film inspiration with the two-handed weapon. I never liked the conversion of BGiME which used a plastic orc to create "Skully". So I tried to realize my own version. The scythe was shortened to fit as a one-handed weapon. This one and the hand I added to a Morannon Orc. So I completed the Orc Captain and with it my first army!
Army Setup
Heroes:
Gothmog with warg and shield
Mordor Uruk-hai captain with shield
Easterling captain with Easterling halberd
Orc captain with shield
Warriors:
Easterling standard bearer
Orc standard bearer
3 Mordor uruks with twohanded weapons
5 Mordor uruks with shield
1 Mordor uruk
6 Easterlings with spear and shield
4 Easterlings with shield
3 Orc trackers
7 Orcs with bows
3 Orcs with spear and shield
2 Orcs with spear
1 Orc with twohanded weapon
11 Orcs with shield
Totally: 700 points, 52 models, 9 might
Tactics
The uruks and easterlings shall do most of the work, the orcs serve as canon fodder.
Gothmog must be protected from arrows so that he doesn't lose his warg. He should be placed near the enemy heroes in order to use his special rule in the best way.
One banner should be near the uruks to use their force. The other one should be at the easterlings where it fits thematically best.
The conversions
I used the 3 tracker poses and the 2 plastic orc archer poses without conversion. One archer began his life as a warrior of Minas Tirith and became an orc by a head swap. The other archers were created by wildly mixing bits from the orcs, the warg riders and the warriors of Minas Tirith.
Same was done with the orc warriors: A mixture of bits from sprues of goblins, warg riders, orcs and warriors of Minas Tirith created very individual creatures.
The easterlings are not converted, only the spears are glued in different angles.
It's not easy to convert the uruk-hai so I restricted myself on sawing and bending the arms and filling the gaps with Green Stuff. Different shields contributed to the individualisation.
The conversion of the orc captain was already described before.
Painting
All in all the army is quite non-uniform but through the dominating red color scheme I created a kind of unification. The skin of the orcs was painted in different shades of greens, browns and skin colors. The uruk-hai were painted in dark grey. Unfortunately the Shadow Grey makes them look blue-skinned.
The easterlings were painted in a red-grey color scheme with golden armor. The captain was made unique by painting his scarf and sash in green.
Different free hands depicting the red eye of Sauron shall make the miniatures a bit more unique.
The bases
Before undercoating the miniatures I added a kind of pavement with GS to each base, some bases also include some debris. To make Gothmog's base outstanding I added the head of a broken statue to it.
After the GS-work was done, I added sand to the free areas and then undercoated everything.
After drybrushing the bases with Codex Grey followed by Fortress Grey they were decorated with a little bit of static grass to strengthen the image of a ruined city.
At last the border was painted with Fortress Grey.
Conclusion
I'm very satisfied with my first army. It looks good and fights bravely. And it's a correct themed army! Especially the two banners, first only added because of stylistic reasons, annoyed lots of opponents.
Your SkYlaX
