The March of the Ents: Citadel's 1980's LOTR ME-85 Treebeard- Mighy Ent.

 Continuing with my organising and painting of my Citadel Miniatures LOTR ME (Middle Earth) range, I have painted a few Ents. Now these are the basis of a Midgard 400 point Ent army, so I'll probably have to add a couple more, but here's the first three (so not much a of 'March' really!).  

As stated,these miniatures were part of Citadel's LOTR range from the 1980's. They only released one model which represented Treebeard himself. The model itself comes in three parts, the head, torso, and legs. There was only one sculpt of each of these parts, however this model seems the basis for the later Treeman sculpt for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and for Blood Bowl. 

Painting was very straightforward, with browns and greens, except for Treebeard himself, which according to the Lord of Rings had "The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard" (Page 484, The Two Towers). So I painted Treebeard's beard grey. The other two I painted with slightly different shades of green beards to differentiate them. Any others I'll paint in the future will have different coloured barks and beards. Anyway, these were fun to paint and base, I'm pleased with the verdant look of the bases. 

Enjoy :) 

Three Treemen. 

March of the Ents! 

Treebeard. 
I positioned his arms as per the photograph in the Citadel Catalogue (see below). Personally I think it now looks like he's on a red carpet waving to his fans, but there we are! 

Another Ent. 

The third Ent. 

Ent with aa Orc on 25mm base (which needs finishing!) to give and idea of scale. 

The next update might be on some of my current WIP's, as well as some other things. I have just finished re-basing my 1980's Regiments of Renown as well. 

The Nine: 1980's Citadel LOTR ME 64 Black Riders - Ringwraiths.

 

"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 Nine. 

Moving in column. 

ME63 Lord of the Nazgul.

The first base of Nazgul. 
The two on the edges are the first release, the two in the centre are the second release. 

Side view.

The second base. 

Side view. 

The next blog update might be some Ents.