Mumak & Mumak – a Middle Earth plog

How lovely do these look? So very pleased with the finished result, and so happy with how they have come together.

If GW ever re-release these in transparent plastic, I’ll definitely get more.

Obligatory Quality Street lid picture of the ghosts well underway and prior to taking proper pictures.

The transparent ghosts were done simply with careful drybrushing on the upper parts of the body.

For the solid plastic ghosts, I primed them in Wraithbone spray then gave them washes of teal, green and blue before drybrushing as per the transparent ghosts. The transparent plastics have a lovely finish that of course the others can’t match, but they all look great as a force and do tie together well.

Next, I was ready to start working on the army of the dead. The Pelennor Fields box comes with twenty miniatures for the ghosts, but I was able to get hold of the limited release of miniatures molded in transparent aqua/green plastic. A box of warriors of the dead and also king of the dead with heralds.

The translucent plastic is very brittle so care needed to be taken getting them off the sprues, as too much pressure can easily snap them. In addition, my plastic glue of choice – EMA Plastic Weld melts the plastic to form a bond, which can leave a cloudy finish on transparent plastics. Fortunately, most of these miniatures are one piece plastics.

These look great when assembled, the next challenge will be painting them so that the solid and transparent miniatures look consistent together.

Really pleased with how these look finished. The basing really makes them pop and look so bright and colourful.

Next up is to tackle one of the main hero characters (well, 2 but the same person) – Theoden.

I’m trying to be relatively close to the film representation, but adding my own spin on it – brighter red, probably a bit more gold etc.

I’m also spending more time on his horse, to see if I can actually enjoy painting horses. I know I kinda rushed the Riders of Rohan horses, so putting extra effort in on this main character.

For all of my Mordor and Isengard baddies, I’m going to be giving them these dark gravel bases. The good guys will get grassy or forest bases and the Haradrim and Easterlings will get desert bases. This will make each force look tied in to its environment and help give some extra difference.

Next I turned my attention to the orcs. There’s 36 of these, and they are a genuine horde army so I treated them as such. They all got basecoats of metal, cloth and skin (some green, some brown). My son helped here and was a little messy, but a dark wash will hopefully hide a multitude of sins!

After this, it’ll be some selective highlights, painting in eyes and teeth and then on to basing.

These look so good together. They’re very simply painted but look great as a group, and are in a scheme that I can repeat if we get any more.