For Gondor...

... and the city of Minas Tirith!

Three companies of the Ecthelion Tower Guard!

I have been playing and painting Lord of the Rings for many years now, yet still had not got round to painting up some of the main core human troops; the Gondorian soldiery of the City of Minas Tirith.

A couple of years back now I got myself an airbrush, and one of the things I thought would be good, would be to blast up a load on Gondorians  with some spray silver paint...

Well that worked out OK, and was the easy bit... leaving the metallic paint to dry I then gave them a wash with a slightly thinned dark brown shade wash... that was another easy bit... but then reality kinda dawned... these troops have just about as much black to paint as silver - all their tunics are black as are the harness and other strapping and most of the shield... I began to wonder if I had really saved myself much time???

And as is typical I then stalled a bit with them... and they sat staring at me for about a year as other troops leap frogged past them on the painting table, and they stared, and they stared, and they stared till I could bare it no longer!

So I have been busy working on them over the last month or so, to get them finished off. I also added a couple of banners and a captain.

I was in two minds to try and go for speed and not bother with the eyes in their close fitting helmets.. but again... I just couldn't bring myself to leave them 'blind' so spent the extra time doing the eyes as best as I could...

I have kept the basing sparse so they will hopefully look OK defending Minas Tirith or Osgiliath, or fighting on the Pelennor and elsewhere in Middle-Earth...

The formation is not legal yet as I only have one Captain here and need a couple more heroes to lead two of the three warbands... I do have Denethor painted up who could be a cheap hero to lead one, and also have Faramir in Ranger garb. Boromir currently is half done on the painting table, and he will add some power to these fine toops!

I painted up some rangers a long time ago so they will compliment these troops nicely. I also have a box of mounted knights to add, a box of Warriors of the Dead, Swan knights of Dol Amroth, and I would also like to add a warband each of the various Fiefdom troops...

As you can probably guess these are a solid core base trooper, with fair fighting ability and good Defence, and ranked up with supporting spears and banners, can generally be expected to hold their own.  

More to come soon... at this rate I am going to need to paint up more Mordor troops to balance things out a bit on the home front!