From TeemuL: Pipe-Weed in Middle-Earth [High Adventure][Limo] (77 points)

"Let's get back to the real issue and our movie of Murin and Drar and leave this European movie industry alone, nothing but bare breasts, "artistry" and sad endings really. We have some problems to cast the main characters, it is extremely difficult to find proper dwarfs these days and it would cost millions to digitally modify/create them. Let's focus on the humans and others for a while. Dwarfs live long so it is not totally unbeliavable that Murin and Drar lived during the time of Morwen and Nienor, so we have prepared to make some flashbacks. By the way, the story of Morwen and Niniel is sooo sad, something like from Finnish sagas*, if you ask me, not a proper plot for us, but we can use the characters, of course. It is rather easy to find pretty ladies, much easier than finding dwarfs. We have some old men auditing for a role of Gandalf, you know, he lived long so probably met our long living duo. And these orcs, orcs are everywhere and trolls are always handy in action scenes. It is quite easy to find orcs around the studio, too. Trolls are harder, we need to get some NBA or NFL players for audit. Did I say this is an action /adventure movie, a high adventure movie?"

*The Story of Kullervo

This is the full set of my Mordor Orcs, the one on the right was painted last year

Morwen and Nienor is a nice dual sculpt or how would you call it? Morwen is wife of Húrin and mother of Túrin and Nienor (also known as Niniel). These fine ladies will give me a comfortable taxi drive from World Cinema to High Adventure.

Gandalf the Grey fits the High Adventure in so many ways. He had many adventures of his own and he started couple of adventures of others, all being quite high in quality and also going over the mountains and flying with eagles, lots of high stuff. And then the pipe-weed, whose effects might make someone feel high.

To accompany Gandalf I have a couple of Orcs and a Troll, almost mandatory for any adventure. All of these are metal minis from Mithril and painted mostly with GW's traditional paints, usually a basecoat, wash and drybrush. Nothing too fancy, but not too simple either. The troll is Mithril M295, Mordor Black Troll. The archer is Mithril M311B Mordor Orc Archer, and previously painted is M311A. The standard bearer is Mithril M310, Mordor Orc Standard Bearer and the one with the shield and mace is Mithril M313A, Armoured Orc. I might have M313B somewhere, too. These came some years ago in a mixed bag, so I might have it or not.

They are very dark. I first made the decision to give them very dark skin, Rhinox Hide, and also paint the wooden parts black, like the bows etc. And most of the leather, too. They have some armour here and there, which I painted quite dark using Iron Warriors and highlighted with Leadbelcher. To make them something else than dark blobs, I decided to use Ushabti Bone to various ropes, rags and similar stuff to break the dark areas. There is a soft drybrush with brown on skin and some grey on blacks.

Gandalf is my favourite, it was a bit difficult to get different greys there, but I guess I managed. There is a soft blue wash on his clothes and cloak and light grey and off-white drybrushing. Beard is grey, drybrushed to white. The hat is light blue, drybrushed with greys. Somehow I managed to make transitions quite smooth, I hope I could do that more often. The one visible eye turned out ok, too. Gandalf is Mithril M228, Gandalf the Wizard.

Morwen and Nienor are quite simple. I guess I'm not alone, who gets confused with dresses and all accesorizies and things like that. What's wrong with chainmail bikini? Anyone, I tried to make them look classic and classy, single colour should do that. Some washes and drybrushes, little bit attention to faces, since they are so visible. The blue dress is basically a basecoat and wash while the orange one is basecoat and drybrush - the latter is very faint in the photos. Morwen and Nienor, Mithril M216.

Mithril minis come with their own bases. I glued them on MDF bases (various sizes) from Warbases and then used some Vallejo Earth Texture to hide the metal base.

3 Orcs, 1 Wizard and 2 Ladies in 28mm for 30 points.

1 Troll, 40mm, for 7 points.

Limousine and High Advanture for 40 points.

The Map

Karwansaray had a Christmas Day sale and I pressed the button to buy couple of rules I have been thinking about for some time. I had some issues with the package tracking, but eventually these arrived on Monday. It seems I might get into some historical skirmishes in the future...

It's a bit of role reversal here as Teemu is my regular minion and it's nice to give some kudos back.  Nice collection of LoTR stuff teems and I'm enjoying your tour of the Studios.  I really like Gandalf and the ladies are lovely too.  The Orcs and Toll are neither nice nor lovely, nor are they meant to be.