Army Showcase: Mordor

The board is set. The pieces are moving...

With 'Gondor at War' coming out, for my first Middle-Earth project of the year I decided to shift focus from my Isengard army to my Mordor one. Before I even got painting there was been quite a bit of stuff to fix and convert first which took a significant amount of time. When I first got into miniatures it was through LOTR, and I bought all kinds of random stuff which ended up being horribly converted, mangled, or lost in my formative hobby years. So as I get back into Middle-Earth I am faced with a very mixed collection of miniatures, many of which need reassembling or parts substituting to bring back them back to usable on the tabletop.

After many hours of work, more green stuff than planned, and some creative solutions to problems, I managed to cobble together an army of Mordor I am quite proud of which will be my go-to force for battles in the next few months while I have a local opponent. Its not the most technically amazing paint scheme, but its one I feel is faithful to the dark and dingy hordes of Mordor.

First up I have the Witch-King. His fell beast was missing wings and a helmet spike, the former I sourced from an old LOTR dragon which was converted into a sea monster for my Dark Elves and won't be needing it's wings again, and I sourced a helmet spike from a spare plastic fell beast's head. The Witch-King himself had a broken flail which I've given him a new chain for, and his helmet had a mangled mouth and missing helmet spike which I've resculpted. I toyed around with a bunch of alternate colour schemes or possible conversions for the Witch-King in order to make mine stand out a bit more but ultimately I settled on the movie look.

The infantry core of the army has only required minor fixes. The Morannon Orcs were previously in my Isengard army but have been returned to Mordor, and the Black Numenorians who were once part of my Harad and Umbar force have also returned to my Mordor army due to how allying works now. I bought a bunch of generic orc warriors off of eBay (covered here in Project Orc), a shaman, and Gothmog in order to bolster the orcish core of my horde.

For whatever reason, a younger version of myself decided to cut off the Mouth of Sauron's (the foot version, thankfully I left the mounted one in tact) head and sword. Needless to say this was somewhat of an inconvenience and I had to do a lot of re-sculpting, the final result though I think you'd only recognise something was wrong on a second or third pass, and only if you're familiar with the base miniature.

This force also includes the nine Ringwraiths who were a very early piece of hobby for me and I think that even today the sculpts are a masterclass in how you can create nine individual dynamic poses from what is essentially the same robed figure. While I don't think they will see much action in battle, I'm really proud to still have these miniatures in my collection.

As I had a few broken Morannon Orc bodies laying around, and some wild wargs, I decided to convert up some warg riders so I had a cavalry unit in this army. They are quite a mix of different parts, and required a fair bot of leg repositioning and green-stuffing, but I think they are more or less ready to go into battle alongside my other orcs.

Monster-wise I have three trolls, one of them a chieftain. The drummer had been used as a giant in Frostgrave for a while so I've had to find out the drums, drumsticks, and a new head for him. To be honest I'm shocked I still had those pieces lying around! I do love the LOTR trolls (I think I own five or six between all my armies) and I look forward to playing some higher-points games where I get to use all of them.

Well that's my first full army project painted up this year and something I can proudly say was actually one of my hobby goals for this year! With the release of new stuff for Flesh-Eater Courts I think I'll be stepping away from Middle-Earth for a bit, but my next LOTR project will be a return to the armies of Isengard. I managed to get a lot of this project done due to the fact I have now fixed my airbrush, and I'm hoping that this tool will help me really get through some projects this year!