From NoelW: The Red and the Black: Sander’s Sand Dunes: (550 points)

We climb these sandy sand dunes and gaze to the beyond.

Well, there’s the sea again. Hello, sea. Long time no sea.

Yes, we’re all getting a little sea-sick – sick of seeing the sea, that is, when we’re aiming to be at the top of that mountain that seems to recede even further every time we make a decision. Like my hairline. Or life. (Life! don't talk to me about life!)

From the top of these dunes, it’s hard to tell which sea we’re seeing. There’s certainly a sea of something milling around. Is it the Red Sea?

Or is it the Black Sea?

It’s neither, of course. We’ve found two more armies. What a surprise! Were you surprised? I was surprised.

Here they are battling away directly in our path, blocking the beach and any prospect of boat-based rescue or even a little sandcastular architecturing. If we try crossing that strand we’ll be trampled to death like ants under a pirouetting pachyderm. What we need is the unexpected arrival of interventionist aerial transport…

And lo! from above there descends upon us a melodious voice, lyrical as the sound of a karaoke angel: “Would you like to fly in my beautiful balloon? Way up in the sky, in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon?”*

Would we? Would we ever! All this sand is way too much for us delicate warriors - let's away out of here! Where are you heading, Lady Sarah? 

Rousell's Sandhill.

Oh. Great.

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None of my planning for the Challenge involved any Lord of the Rings figures at all. However, I ambushed myself in a previous post by submitting some Minas Tirith Gondorians and so now I'm committed to working through as much of my backlog of LOTR figures as I can during this challenge. Like an idiot! (No thanks, I've already got one).

I'd been working hard on more Gondorians, but Sanders’ requirement for “red” was a good reason to work on the Easterlings, too. So here are both. This creates a long post, photo-heavy, so I've tried to keep the text down, and only included one photo per topic for most of them.

The main aim here was to get figures painted suitable for the tabletop - so artistic creativity is not much in evidence. The only figures I've given particular attention to are the Gondorian Citadel Guards and the two Easterling command figures.

Even so, the red and gold combination for the Easterlings is rather effective, I think. Essentially I undercoated them white, used Blood Angel red Contrast paint for all the cloth, painted the armour and shields black, varnished the lot, drybrushed the black with gold, gave all the gold a flesh wash (which makes it more bronze-like and dulls the shine) then highlighted some of the red with Foundry British Red Coat Light, and the “bronze” with touches of gold. A little more colour for weapons and quivers, and that was about it. Although a simple approach, I like the results, especially in the mass.

The archers:

Sword and shield:

Spear and shield:

And command:

The Gondorians more or less follow the GW colour scheme: black, white, silver; though I’ve kept the decoration of the specialist units relatively simple. The bulk of the troopers, hand weapon and spear:

Archers

Command figures and three crew to man a trebuchet (yet to be painted)

Citadel Guards

Guards of the Fountain Court

All in all, that's a tidy 104 figures. Almost certainly, that's going to be my biggest post of this Challenge.

*(A popular music reference to tease anyone who can remember the 60s.)

Scoring: I’m not sure if the two flags are scorable, as they’re integral to the figures. Otherwise: 104 x 28mm figs = 520; Sander’s Sand Dunes: 30 pts: Total 550 pts

I feel a little sick. This is a monster entry and some really nice work on these guys. Couple of point for flags as well Top effort that man, now please stop and take up chess