"The Nine are abroad again. They have crossed the river secretly and are moving westward. They have taken the guise of riders in black"
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, page 274.
One of the things I have been doing recently is sorting through and re-basing my old 1980's Citadel Middle Earth (ME) range of miniatures, released from 1985 until 1987. I have been sorting these into armies based on the multi-figure based Midgard system, and into 400 point armies. I like the Midgard basing as it doesn't require hundreds of miniatures for armies. One of the things which put me off collecting many of the old ME range was the Warhammer need for lots of regiments of 10, 20, or more miniatures, which would have been too time consuming, not to mentions expensive.
Now Citadels old ME range was, in my opinion, very characterful, fun, and not too realistic in the sculpting, being more of a comic book/artistic approach. I shall do a blog update on the range at a later date, but for now I will concentrate on the Black Riders.
The below miniatures, with the exception of the Witch King, are the two variants of the ME 64 Black Riders - Ringwraiths, blister pack. Both packs (and the Witch King) consisted of one mounted, and one dismounted miniature. Whilst the dismounted miniature was the same in both ME 64 packs, the first released mounted miniature was wielding a dagger and riding a solid based horse (1985), whilst the later one was on a slotta based horse with a different rider and armed with a sword (October 1986). I have mixed both types in here.
The Witch King I have based separately. There was only one sculpt of him, again a blister pack of a mounted and dismounted miniature. He was coded ME63 Lord of the Nazgul.
There's not really much you can do with these miniatures if you intend to paint them up as Black Riders, as the black cloaks are largely all of the miniature, and they are described as being mounted on black horses. I did however try out something. I gave all of them a very light white highlight, and then a wash with red ink to give a slightly faint, perhaps Mordor induced, red glow. They were fun to paint, unsurprisingly quick, and I enjoyed basing them with a verdant base to emphases the dark blackness of the riders themselves.
Enjoy:)
The two on the edges are the first release, the two in the centre are the second release.
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