The Gathering of the Clouds, Part 3.

I'm back, with another update on my Battle of Five Armies project!

What with the improving weather, much of my spare time lately has been spent tramping the hills and dales around my house- but I've still managed to paint up some new stuff none-the-less...

First off was my Great Eagle- this thing is huge, but since it's a plastic kit it was nice and easy to build. You can actually make two Eagles from the GW boxed set, but for now the other remains on the shelf unpainted. I'm looking forward to seeing it swoop through the ranks of Gundabad very soon!

*The Great Eagle crashes into a mob of Gundabad Orcs, while the Grey Pilgrim  himself looks on.

Speaking of which, I've finally churned through the rest of my Goblins in the form of two Units of Warriors with various hand weapons- once again, these are the Oathmark plastics from Northstar!

*The forces of the Shadow as they stand so far- this little lot should cover all my Goblin requirements for future Middle Earth projects...

Last of all was Gandalf himself- this is a re-paint/re-basing of an old GW model I had lying around, and I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out.

*A closer look at my Great Eagle and good old Gandalf the Grey- probably my favourite Tolkien character!

This week the new plastic Elves for Oathmark went up for order, so I immediately bought a couple of boxes plus the metal character models for my Mirkwood contingent. The only thing I'm not so keen on in the kit are the shields, which look a little too 'Warhammer' for me- so I've ordered some kite shields from Gripping Beast to replace them. These have the benefit of giving that 'Dark Age' feel I'm after; plus they look a little bit like leaves, in keeping with the Elven aesthetic!

In the meantime I have Bolg and his guard plus Thorin's Company (and Bilbo!) assembled and ready for undercoating- after all that is completed I think it will finally be time for some games of Dragon Rampant!

After that? Maybe a quick trip to Sub-Roman Britain via Dux Bellorum before it's back to Middle Earth for the Angmar/Arnor wars...