LOTR - Legions of The Dark Tower Army Update 03/02 Update!

[Belgian]

Have been painting some more orcs for my growing Legions of The Dark Tower project with the end goal of fielding a large 500-1000 miniature strong Lord of The Rings orc army (as in Silmarillion, Fall of Gondolin, Lord of The Rings movies) so quite a generic evil army with loads of orcs, trolls and other evil creatures. Currently building up the numbers using the GW miniatures.

I have decided to field the orcs in battalions of 24 miniatures each and have 13 battalions painted and finished of those 4 are shown below. Will try to get some more pictures of the other ones later on as some of those are already in their homemade movement trays with included trolls. I intend to use these in a large Battle of The Last Alliance game so the next project will be the good forces involved in that battle (will take some time though). For the paintjob I went for a quick and dirty basecoat and wash approach which looks suitable for the forces of evil. Will also keep a count here to follow up the progress

April 2020 - 9 Orc Battalions
May 2020 - 4 Orc Battalions

Total 2020 - 13 Orc Battalions

April 2021 - 9 Orc Battalions

Total 2021 - 9 Orc Battalions

May 2022 - 8 Orc Battalions
July 2022 - 7 Orc Battalions
September 2022 - 1 Orc Battalions
October 2022 - 3 Orc Battalions

Total 2022 - 19 Orc Battalions

Repainting thousand bases later ...

June 2023 - 1 Orc Battalions
July 2023 - 1 Orc Battalions

Total 2023 - 2 Orc Battalions

Grand Total - 43 Orc Battalions (= 1032 Individual Orc Warriors)

Special thanks to the following people for donating their miniatures!

- Peat from Canada (Mordor, Elves, Gondor, Uruk-Hai)
- Peter from the UK (Moria)

[Tim Haslam]

That’s a big beautiful project!

[AKULA]

Lovely consistent paint jobs

I admire the scale and ambition of your project

 

[James Morris]

That is quite the project!  I look forward to seeing more.  Will you be using movement trays for this lot?

[Grumpy Gnome]

Ambitious.... I love it! Great start so far. Looking forward to seeing it continue.

[Argonor]

Thanks for reminding me of that pile of unpainted plastic (and some metal) LotR Orcs I own...   

Because of Oathmark I have recently been rummaging through my stash of LotR minis, and I found that i am shamefully short on painted Orcs (whereas I have quite a few painted Uruk-Hai), somthing I shall have to mend somewhen soonish... I think (I have to bolster my Rohan army, first, really need to get a score or so horsemen mustered).

It is projects like this that gives me hope, I shall some day also see a sizeable army of Mordor under my command, so keep 'em coming! 

[Belgian]

Thanks everybody, this has been a project I have been working on for quite a while and always wanted to field a large army of these miniatures. Looking forward in seeing your progress Argonor! Also just joined the Middle Earth Gaming facebook group to lurk and the work there is just inspiring.

Some pictures of the homemade movement trays and two finished orc battalions as mentionned in my earlier post. Think the trolls are 1/72 Dark Alliance ones with some modifications such as Ral Partha weapons (from their minotaur) and other minor conversions. These are very cheap and scaled quite well to fit in as lesser trolls, also have a dozen of the GW trolls but those will be single based as they are larger. Always looking for cool ideas for further expansion so if you know some great alternative miniatures and especially cheap ones, let me know!

[Grumpy Gnome]

Wow! You continue to impress. I like the Dark Alliance trolls and the Wargames Factory/Warlord Games Orcs you have done. My wife and I have a similar project to yours. A good alternative for Trolls, especially the big Olog-Hai chieftain at the Black Gate is the Special Edition Eaglemoss Version. Bi but not too big. Very heavy though, drop it on your table and something will get crushed! All of the various Eaglemoss trolls can usually be found at decent prices on eBay.

I quite like the Oathmark Goblins for Tolkien Orcs, if you have not tried them yet and want any more Orc diversity. And I picked up some Dark Alliance Orcs to see if they will make decent Snaga/Goblins but have not gotten around to painting them yet. For less expense and more diversity, we use the Army of the Dead, Last Alliance Numenoreans and GW Fantasy Dark Elves for Black Numenoreans.

In fact there are all kinds of conversion and alternative model ideas for Middle Earth on our blog. Some Orcs for example...

https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2020/04/22/more-orcs/

[Tauntaun Scout]

Those look great. Just paint 300 more and you'll have enough!

Just kidding. There's no such thing as "enough" gaming miniatures.

[Belgian]

Thanks for the kind comments!

@Tauntaun Scout - Not sure where I will end 

@Rick W. - Thanks for the link, I already visited your blog a couple of times when searching online, love the conversions!

Without further delay some more pictures of the already finished battalions in movement trays 

[Belgian]

Has been a while but have been busy painting and preparing some more battalions (think around 10 units)

Some of these are near completion while others are still being prepared and converted.

Although I'm going for quantity, I spend far to much time on conversions as those are great fun in plastic.

[Brandlin]

loving the horde feel of this project - big beautiful battalions are always appreciatd in the Brandlin household.

I would look to get some battalion movement trays cut with 24 randomly spaced locations for the figures. the only thing letting your overall look down at the moment is that they look too regimented in rank and file for orcs...

:-)

[LouieN]

a great force

[Red Orc]

This really is pretty awesome. I've been getting my own LotR minis out and giving some a lick of paint - you're certainly giving the rest of us something to aim at!

[Abbner Home]

Your mix of the GW LotR and Wargame Factory orc parts is excellent.