Friday night saw me grab an hour to do some varnishing whilst listening to and episode of Heelanhammer, so I’ve now finished the 52 Mordor Orcs I started a couple of weeks ago. These were an exercise in no-frills speed painting, but I think they look OK.

Mordor Orcs (1)
Total time spent on them breaks down as follow:
Stage 1: Building Models: 120 minutes
Stage 2: Adding basing material: 60 minutes
Stage 3: Undercoating, Base painting: 150 minutes
Stage 4: Painting: 300 minutes
Stage 5: Badab Black Wash: 50 minutes
Stage 6: Face Highlights and Devlan Mud wash: 30 minutes
Stage 7: Varnish: 50 minutes
Total time taken: 760 minutes
Which equates to a little under 15 minutes per figure. I could probably cut some time from stage 3 by using a simpler basing scheme, but I want all my War of the Ring armies to match. Plus the bases catch the eye, so time spent making them look good is time well spent.

Mordor Orcs (2)
I think my favourite figures in this batch are the bowmen. They’ve got wonderfully expressive faces.

Mordor Orcs (Bow)
Also varnished at the same time were 6 Warg Riders, these are for my Isengard army, but I suppose they could serve double duty. If the “Dark Lord” commands it then who am I to argue.

Warg Riders
So that’s another 58 figures towards making the “Pledge” for 2009. Sadly I’ve also bought a few figures. A couple of bases worth of the new GW snotlings, a pack a the famous familiars and also their “The Chase” vignette. I simply couldn’t resist them.
The net result of all this is:
Bought: 1291
Painted: 490
Sold: 18
Net result: -783
Heading in the right direction, but still an awful long way to go.