a Load of Old Toby

Winchester Cathedral Following on from my research into medieval stone textures and Southampton city walls, I decided to take another little day trip on a clear spring day earlier this year, this time up to Winchester Cathedral. If you’re building tabletop terrain or painting gothic ruins, there’s no better place nearby to study massive ribbed vaults, ancient masonry, and centuries of architectural weathering up close! The Great West Front – massive gothic arches and flying buttresses. While a massive cathedral might feel a bit grander than a standard fantasy tavern or castle wall, the sheer variety of stone textures here is a goldmine for model making. You can see everything from rough-hewn Norman masonry in the transepts to fine, intricate Perpendicular Gothic stonework along the nave. The soaring vaulted ceiling of the main Nave. The Interior & Vaulting Stepping inside, the first thing that hits you is the scale of the vaulting. For anyone looking to paint stone or build 28mm ca...

Mid-Year Check-in: The State of the Blog & A Huge Thank You! Welcome back to A Load of Old Toby! Between working through the 10mm Mordor Host, wrapping up the 12-part Empire series, and painting up Dwarven Kingdom, I took a look under the hood at the blog's back end stats today. I was genuinely blown away by how much this little corner of the internet has grown, so I wanted to share a quick update and say a proper thank you. Some Gretchen that I painted a while ago. 📊 A Quick Look at the Numbers & Growth 9.4k+ Total Views: We've officially crossed 9,430 total views and fact approaching 10k! Looking at the trajectory, the blog went from averaging around 200–300 views a month early last year to breaking 1,000+ views a month recently. I just wanted to say thank you to you all, its truly mind blowing. 126 Comments: A special thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave feedback, share painting tips, or just chat about Middle-earth and Old World lore with me. It ma...

A Load of Old Toby - Musing on Miniatures, and Middle-earth. The Shadow Lengthens From Dol Guldur to Minas Morgul: Mobilising the Host of Mordor Minas Morgul Full Legion The Grand Host Assembles Welcome back to  A Load of Old Toby ! Over the last three posts, we’ve looked at individual units, paint schemes and methods, the organisation of the Host, and now the result from cutting of the growing pile of plastic, resin, or lead that was on my workbench. But a dark lord doesn’t conquer Middle-earth one warband at a time, he unleashes a tide. Today, I am incredibly excited to showcase the entire hosts layout, fully assembled and organised for war. Gorgoroth Legion With the iconic clash at the  Battle of the Pelennor Fields  serving as the thematic anchor for this project, I wanted my forces to feel less like a uniform monolith and more like the vast, terrifying coalition of evil described by Tolkien. To achieve this, I just threw paint at everything to be honest. However bec...

A Load of Old Toby - Musing on Miniatures, Middle-earth, and the Machinery of Mordor Ash, Iron, and Rust: The Uniforms of Gorgoroth Painting the Dark Lord’s War Machine The Witch King of Angmar Now that we’ve stripped away the clean, 19th-century European military terms and mapped out the true industrial ladder of the Dark Lord’s forces last week, from the lowliest Scud sniffing out a trail to a world-ending Legion breaking down gates, it’s time to talk about the physical reality on the hobby desk. My version of Azog  If Mordor is a bureaucratic machine, then its uniform is the grease, rust, and ash of Gorgoroth. When painting a massive host, whether be it the miniatures from Copplestone Miniatures or a sprawling tide of Wargames Atlantic heavy infantry, you need a palette that feels cohesive but allows the internal, tribal chaos of the lower rungs to peek through. Blog For my money, nothing beats the Vallejo Model Colour range for getting that matte, sun-baked, industrial fil...

A Load of Old Toby - Musing on Miniatures, Middle-earth, and the Machinery of Mordor The Black Speech of Bureaucracy: Reconstructing the True Scales of the Orc Host There is a persistent habit in modern fantasy wargaming to treat the Orc as a purely chaotic creature, a wild marauder who stumbles into battle with little more than a rusty cleaver and a bad attitude. But if we actually look closer at the texts left to us by 'the Professor', a far more chilling reality emerges. Under the shadow of the Dark Tower, the Orc host was not a rabid mob but it was, or is indeed is for those of us who believe the time of the Orc is still to come, an industrial machine. It was uniform. It was counted, registered, and divided by a hierarchy that was as rigid as it was cruel. Orc 'Boss' - Copplestone Miniatures Indeed it would have been almost impossible to keep order within the chaos without some form of loose structure. So I have been working on discarding the clean, modern terminolo...

So it begins! Lord of the Rings - 10mm The Horde Awakens: From Glades of Green to the Ash of Mordor A new week, a new project.  The borders of the Empire are secure and the Wood Elves have retreated to their glades. For now, both of these recent projects grace my display cabinet with pride, looking far too pristine and noble. It was clearly time to ruin that peaceful aesthetic with something a bit more… grubby. First Orc Unit - John Hodgson backdrop  I first crossed paths with the Wargames Atlantic "Classic Fantasy" range last year. There is something about the old-school aesthetic of their Orcs that I love, and I couldn't get them out of my head, they reflect the style of Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith. It started innocently enough: "I’ll just get one sprue," I told myself. "Just a few test models to see how they feel." Archer Unit added next Fast forward to today: The Shadow has lengthened and I have officially spiralled . That single sprue has mutated int...