Archers of Rohan (The Sculpting)

Since J.R.R. Tolkien based the Rohirrim on various dark age Germanic tribes, it is not surprising that so far I have had great success using Musketeer Miniatures line of Goth figures as the basis for my own warriors of Rohan. For the cavalry and foot soldiers, I have found I can achieve terrific results with just a paint job; however, when it came to archers, I needed to put in a bit more work. The biggest problem with the Goth archers is their hair. They are all clean shaven and sport bob-style haircuts, neither of which worked for me. So, grabbing a couple to experiment upon, I went at them with the green stuff.

The first order of business was more hair. I increased the length of the hair of both figures, so that it was just beyond shoulder length. I then added beards. After the fact, I think I probably went a bit overboard on the beards, especially on the figure on the right, but I decided to see how it looked after I painted him up. Hair, it turns out, is probably the easiest item I have ever tried to sculpt. It’s very easy to make it look good just by drawing lines through the greenstuff.  It’s much harder to do beards and not have your figures end up looking like wolfmen. Again, I think I did a better job on the figure on the left than the one on the right.

The other issue I had with the Goth figures is that they are all completely unarmoured. While historically that’s probably correct, it didn’t fit with my vision of Tolkien’s fantasy world. I figured at least some of them should be wearing leather, so I attempted to sculpt a leather breast plate on one figure. While I did a decent job laying down the base of this, I don’t think I did so well working in the detail. Next time I try this, I’ll see if I can find an online tutorial first. Still, I’m hoping it will look okay once painted.

Finally, I had a bit of greenstuff left over, so I used it to add a bit of fur trim around the bottom of the tunic of the other archer. This is just for a bit of visual interest as otherwise the figure is pretty plain.

At the time of writing this blog, I’m almost finished painting these guys, so hopefully, I’ll have an update on them soon!