The Hounds of Sauron

Flurry of Teeth and Fur

First of all I'd like to apologize for the quality of the pictures on this post. I'm behind on posting my work so I just used the ones I snapped to share on Facebook and Reddit. They're decent thanks to the ridiculous camera on my phone, but not set up with proper lighting.

For this post I tackled the mountain of Wargs that were on my to-do list. In all I had 18 Wild Wargs (which will eventually also be ridden by orcs), a Warg Chieftain, and 3 of the OOP metal Warg Riders.

I don't have pictures of the warg riders for now, but you aren't missing much, they look like big scary wolves. Since I intend this post to be relatively short I'm just going to post some pictures, a quick run down of color schemes, and then do the community spotlight. Here goes....

Warg Chieftain

This fella was quite a bit of fun, and this model is in contention for my favorite sculpt I've painted so far. The detail is simply amazing, and the texture lends itself well to drybrushing, which gave a pretty stunning outcome. The scheme here is the same as the regular wild wargs, of which I'll post pictures next time I have them all out of their storage tray.

Fur: Heavy Rhinox Hide drybrush over black undercoat, bestial brown or vermin brown drybrush (I varied on the larger group), followed by vomit brown or snakebite leather drybrush. Final drybrush of bleached bone on the withers. Then the skin on the legs and face received a simply drybrush of black mixed with some bone. Teeth were rhinox hide followed by bone. I skipped eyes on these as I figure they'd just have black eyes anyway, being nasty evil hyenas and such. For the chieftain's base I simply gave the dead guy a general paint job of browns and greens (I think he's supposed to be a Rohirrim, but it's unclear.)

UPDATE:
I found a picture of the whole group of wild wargs. I forgot I had posted it to Reddit/Imgur (again, please go check out r/MiddleEarthMiniatures and help that sub grow!) If you notice they are missing the little bit of fur that fills in the hole on their back. That's because these will double as ridden wargs as well and it seeemed a waste of time to fiddle with painting those little plastic bits which I'll probably lose anyways. You can sort of tell there are two variants (not a great picture) of the fur. Either way these look awesome when they're splayed out across the battlefield.

Warg Riders

I actually hated painting these guys. I think its because I wasn't patient enough though because they are actually pretty nice models once you get  up close to them. One problem was the primer I used on these, and some other models, didn't take paint at all! so initial coats were spotty or too thick. Also, its unclear what some of the details are supposed to be so I kinda of just drybrushed everything.... I do like the skin tone, and the wargs look good I suppose. Not even going to bother with the scheme since they're orcs, mostly browns and greys.

Community Spotlight

For this posts's community spotlight I'd like to highlight the YouTube Channel Spillforenginen the Fellowship, the love child of the illustrious Andreas the Norwegian Viking. He has a great collection of videos including hobby vlogs, battle reports, news, and all kinds of awesome stuff. His most recent project he has dubbed the Grand Campaign, and somewhat akin to this blog, he will be playing all the released scenarios in order, stretching from the Last Alliance, all the way through the Journeybooks and beyond! It's a very big endeavor as he's pledged to do one batrep per week! This means it will take him over a year if he stays on schedule. Either way, go check out his videos and like/share/subscribe.

Shoutout

Another online personality, the shoutout for this post goes to DCHL Devin, founder and head of the D.C. Hobbit League. I'm shouting him out because his energy and passion for our Hobbit hobby is infectious and you can tell he really loves what he does. He's also super friendly and approachable. In fact he talked me into going to the NOVA Open Grand Tournament in September (Labor Day Weekend). NOVA is a larger convention but it will also play host to the largest Hobbit (now Middle-Earth) Strategy Battle Game event on the continent (I think). DCHL is organizing the GT as well as a ton of other awesome games and events. There will even be SBG celebs from the GBHL flying in from across the pond, and rumors of the Irish and Canadians sending players! So if you're interested tickets are still available over at http://www.novaopen.com/. Note that you can play in all Hobbit events with the purchase of a Grand Tournament entry, but you only get prizes for the events you've paid for. Total cost for a convention pass plus tournament entry is only $70USD. Not a bad deal for 4 days of awesome SBG gaming!