Middle-Earth Kitbashing: Aragorn with Pony

 

I'm back after my break with my latest work for Middle-Earth SBG. What inspired this Aragorn model is a list I'm currently building for a Doubles Tournament at the start of next year, which I'm taking part in with friend of the Blog OT (you can hear from OT each week on our podcast, The Hobby Breakfast Show). We're theming our army around the flight of the Hobbits and Strider from The Nine- 400 points each, with my Fellowship Army having the Hobbits, Strider, Bill the Pony and Arwen (OT will be bringing Elrond and some Rivendell Knights).

As part of this list, I wanted to give Aragorn a little more bite than his foot-version, and with Anduril yet to be re-forged, a horse was the only option. I decided that it would be more in keeping to have Aragorn leading a pony for this list though- and so I went on the hunt for a 3D printed pony in the right scale. Fortunately, I found one easily, sculpted by 'The Printing Goes Ever On' and printed for me by the Etsy seller 'ForgemasterMinis.'

The initial stage was to actually build the miniature. I opted for the plastic Aragorn for two reasons: firstly as it matched my foot version, and secondly as it would be the easiest to work with. Aragorn started in a pose with his sword raised, so this required quite a bit of reworking. His right arm could remain largely as is- removing the shoulder, and then having it reach out to the reins of the horse. The other arm was slightly trickier. I ended up having to remove the entire of the original arm, except for the hand and forearm. These I pinned to the sword so Aragorn could hold it in it's scabbard. I actually used a staple to pin the hand to the sword as the pieces were so small. I then glued this hand and sword to the belt, before drilling into the forearm, and using a 90 degree angle of staple to go up to the shoulder. This would then give a base for the arm to be rebuilt around.

The reconstruction then started- using some Milliput (my preferred modelling putty- I find Greeenstuff too hard for my liking). The rebuilding of the right arm's shoulder was straightforward, but the left arm's proved more challenging- trying to get the thickness of the arm to be consistent, and to form an elbow joint that didn't seem too awkward. In the end I got it to a point I was happy with, and left it to set overnight.

Your modelling work always looks better after a grey spraycoat.

It was then down to painting. I tried to match Aragorn as closely as to how I remembered painting his foot version earlier this year. For the Pony, I wanted to give it a 'dappled' look to it's coat. This was partly to try and hide the 3D printed rings as best as I could, and to ensure it looked visually distinctive from Bill the Pony. I started with Black, drybrushing up to lighter shades of grey, and then used the drybrush with a stabbing motion to put the off-white Celestra Grey onto the model.

Once the model was done, I varnished using Munitorum Varnish to keep consistency with the rest of the Fellowship that I varnished as a test. I got a slightly frosted finish, so then used a little sunflower oil on a Q-tip to remove the frosting- and ended up with this.

I'm really pleased with the end result- this is definitely one of the more challenging kitbashes that I have done, and it turned out well. Let's hope that it will give Aragorn some much needed punch in combat by getting some charges in during our matches!

Arwen and Bill the Pony will be popping up on the blog at some point over the next couple of months- both models I'm looking forward to painting!