Spotlight: Eliot’s Morannon Orcs

Eliot has been dabbling in the Middle Earth SBG universe and has started a Mordor army – check out his orcs below!

When it comes to geek franchises, I have a natural affinity to naughtyness and tend to side with the big baddies. For Star Wars it’s Vader. In DC it’s the Joker. In 40K it’s… well it’s everyone. In Lord of the Rings, for me it’s always been about the Witch King.

I was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings miniature range when I was young, and I had been looking for an excuse to paint up some tasty models. So when I saw the Pellenor Fields box-set announced with some of my favourite models of all time included – the Fell Beast and the Mordor Troll – it was a no brainer purchase.

I started this journey with a whole bunch of Morannon Orcs – I ended up with 40 in total! I wanted my Mordor force to be super elite, and these black gate bad boys are tough.

One thing about the Morannon kit is that there are only actually 12 poses… So I grabbed my green stuff and clippers and converted the heck out of these orcs. I ended up making sure each model was unique, re-enforcing this through painting. I did 4 different skin tones in this kit, really wanting to show the variety in orcs who are here to defend the Black Gate.

I also saw these chaps as an opportunity to try some free hand painting on shields. I trawled through the Return of the King footage looking for glimpses of the orcs, and then just went ham with the Orc Skulls.

My favourite model in this unit is actually a metal banner bearer from the magazine that I picked up super cheap online. I had loads of fun painting the banner.

Now so far I have actually only painted 20 of these dudes, so I have 20 more ready, but I’m breaking it up with some troll painting. Hopefully I will have some more LOTR minis to show in the near future!

Stay tuned for some more army and Model spotlights in the near future!