Pelennor, an update

I'm done, finally....

So my life has been crazy for the last few weeks, however, I have been able to finish my Fell Beast mounted Ringwraith off. Here he is in his painted goodness:) 

So one down, and only another 5 to go. Oh well, on we go, or the battle for Pelennor Fields will never go. I’m actually a bit on a painting break as I need to get some basing done, which is never my favourite task, but once it’s done, it’s done and the models do look better because of it. 

There has been some movement forwards on the battle for Pelennor Fields project. We’ve been talking about unit sizes. We’ve agreed quite easily that infantry, as a whole will be sixteen strong and will be shown as two ranks of 8 models. This is because we’ve got a lot of War of the Rings trays (two ranks of 4) and our historical gaming has seen us use units of sixteen models quite a lot. 

There is one exception to this, which is the units of normal Orcs and Goblins. For this, we are going to go with units of 32 models. This is because Tolkien’s describes Orcs as cowardly types who fight better in bigger units. So units of 32 models seem to fit this. We’ve also had experience of this, again from the historical games, where units of Celts come in at 32, a nice warband. 

However, I’ve decided for Uruk Hai, Morannon Orcs and the Lovely Black Guard of Barad Dur (Which are pretty much Uruk Hai) I feel, that as there bred for war, or to be better than an Orc, that these can be used in units of 16, to differentiate between the class. 

They don't match, and can't be right
way up when you take a photo

I’m going to pause at this point, to talk about weaponry. GW, in the Middle Earth SBG, have given the option for individual warrior(s) to be equipped with individual weapons. So you can have two orcs with bows, four with hand weapon and shields, two with two-handed axes, and four with spears, as an example (which is also what you get on an individual sprue of plastic orcs) 

As I want a smooth game, without a lot of consulting about what each unit is equipped with, I’ve condensed infantry into two types. Bow armed, and everything else. This should make it nice and easy. Yes, for the visual look, I’ll add the spear-armed models, to be behind the hand weapon armed models, but it’ll have no impact on the game. 

However, cavalry units have been a bit more problematic. My original thinking was to go with units of six models, however, when they get into combat, as you can see from the photo to the left, it shows that the unit is wider than the infantry models. Which is a bit annoying.

Matching, and the next thing on my painting table.

So after some discussion, it was proposed to go cavalry units of eight models. Four wide, and two deep. This is great as the units match up with each, and gives us the chance to get more models on the board without the hassle of trying to match up units. 

In other news, I’m now the owner of the Battle for Pelennor Fields box sets, and frankly, it’s an awesome set, and I can’t wait to build, paint and play with the models inside. I’m not going to do a full review, as others have done it, and anyway I’m not great at reviewing. 

I’ve also picked up the Armies of the LOTR which is the book that contains all of the profiles for models that appear in the LOTR. There is another planned for models from the Hobbit shortly. In this book is a number of scenarios that play out some of the key battles, including Pelennor fields, which has given me some ideas for the scenario.

See you soon.

Dragons of a Middlehammer age.

So, my life has taken a little bit of a left turn in the last few weeks or so, but despite the hardships, I’ve been able to paint 35 models in four days. It’s the nice thing about Bolt Action, and historical wargaming in general, is that the models don’t have a lot of additional extras sculpted on, except maybe ECW musketeers, and so you can paint them up real quick. It’s also helped the painting figures for the year.

Please, paint me....

Anyway, as I paint my Fell Beast mounted ringwraith, and yes work is proceeding on that, I’ve pulled down this chappy. It’s the old Wood Elf Lord mounted on Dragon model. It was first released in 1995/ 1996 and it was the first Games Workshop model I ever saw, back in 1996, and it was the model that drew me into the Games Workshop, and later the wider wargaming, scene. 

I finally bought a copy of the model in September 2011, and he came prebuilt, which is great, as I don’t enjoy pinning models, and has sat like that ever since. I’ve always loved the GW dragons from my youth. I already own the original Prince Imirk on Dragon, again released in the 90’s and I’ve added a few more since then. Mainly, the Plastic High Elf Dragon and the Lord of the Rings Dragon and Smaug.

Old school

I'm not going to paint him in the traditional colours, as seen to the left. I've started a Wood Elf force a few years ago, consisting of Archers, and Glade Riders on the advice of a friend. He could do wonders with the army. I didn't have the same ability to win as he did. 

The colour scheme I've chosen in a winter themed, and so the dragon is going to match that. Possibly a grey white body, and dark grey or pale blue scales. We'll see when we get to the painting stage, which is going to be a while as I've got to rebuild him, again.

So, why am I talking about dragons, well obviously, there cool, but thanks to the Games Workshop Made to Order range, I’ve added four more dragons to my collection. They are Zacharias the Everling, the 2001 version of Prince Imrik, the Sister of Twilight and Malekith on Dragon. 

And this has got me thinking, is it possible to get all of the GW dragons. Now I would love the original Chicken Dragon and the great spined dragon, but they go for a lot on eBay, more than I’m willing to pay for. So I’ve decided to get all of the Dragons released from, or were available when I started playing in 1996.

So the Dragons that were available, thanks to the catalogs on So Legends are.

High Elves

Prince Imrik (got)

Wood Elves Lord on Dragon (got)

Orcs and Goblins

Azhag the Slaughter

Chaos
Egrim Von Horstmann

Undead

Liche on Zombie Dragon

Dark Elves

Rakarth on Dragon

So, I’ve got two out of the 6 models available when I started playing. It’s a good start, 33% of the way there. I’m also going to add in this model, Thaindon, Elf lord of Caledor, if I can get hold of him. He was in the back pages of my 4^th edition High Elf Army book, and so I feel that if I can get him, for a good price, I’ll get him. 

So, what releases since then do I need to get

One of the best models out there

High Elves

Prince Imrik (got)

High Elf Sorcerer on Dragon

Plastic Prince Imrik, though never formerly published, you can make an Imrik out of the plastic kit

Wood Elves 

Sisters of Twilight (got)

Orcs and Goblins

Orc Warlord on Wyvern (got)

Azhag the Slaughter

 Chaos

Galruuch

Undead

Zacharias the Everliving (got)

Terrorgiest

Vampire lord on Dragon 

Dark Elves

Malekith (Got)

Dark Elf Lord on Dragon

Dark Elf Sorceress on Dragon

So, this is another 13 models, of which 5 have already been purchased. 38% models I now own. So that means, I’ve got to purchase 14 more models. 

I’m also going to add in three models that they’ve made for Age of Simar. Archaon, on his demonic mount. Though, not a Dragon as such, it’s an awesome model. The Stormcast Star Drake and the Maw Crusha.

So actually 17 models. 

Oh well, off to the painting table we go.

Siege of Gondor - The vision

Inspired by the forthcoming Battle for Pelennor Fields starter set, I've decided to get a move on with my dream game. Assaulting the walls of Minas Tirith.

So, the plan is simple, recreate the whole of the Siege of Gondor in miniature form. It sounds simple, but when you start to sit down and plan, you realise that there are a quite a few hurdles to cross, such as how many models and what rules to use and perhaps the biggest, what to use as the walls of Mias Tirith, before you can get to the stage of putting the models down and playing.

Coming soon to a tabletop near me.

Thankfully, I work in Project Management, and so I can put my work skills into something a lot more useful. The first thing I need to do is define the vision or goal of the project. 

The goal is simple, play through the Seige of Gondor. I keep repeating this, as this is the goal.

Now that we've got the goal, we need to know what the game will look like and that means turning to the source material, the Return of the King book and movie.

The first thing we learn is that there are two distinct parts to Sauron's assault on Gondor.

First up, we've got Sauron's assault on the city of Osgiliath. Now, this is a lot of fun to wargame, a tabletop filled with winding streets, a large river, and lots of potential for ambush spots.

However, as fun as this, this is not what I want to do. I want to recreate the second phase, the siege of Minas Tirith. As I've alluded to earlier, I've recreated Helms Deep, in a large format and looking back at the photo's it's clear that it's this phase I want to do.

In fact, what drives me to do recreate the attack on Minas Tirith, and why I chose the above photo, is that I love the charges of the Rohan Something, that Peter Jackson captured perfectly in the films. Having got the goal, we need to define what events will happen in the battle.

For me, there are four distinct phases to this battle.

1) The assault on the walls of Minas Tirith

2) Ride of the Rohirrim

3) Charge of the Mumak

4) The arrival of the King.

 By defining these four phases, I have made my first miniature related decision. When we recreated the battle of Helms Deep, we did a blend of the Book and Movie. So, as an example, Haldir's Elves were found upon the walls, helping the weary defenders repel the unwanted attention of the Uruk Hai.

And as much as I like the moment where Aragorn jumps over the ship and charges the Orc horde, backed up by a horde of screaming ghosts, this is not in the book, and so the first decision made is that the Army of the Dead won't be seen upon this battle. Even if I'm getting more models in the new starter set.

So, I've got a vision, I want to play a game, where we have all four phases will happen. The next question is how do we do this practically. Phase one is a siege, which is not easy to recreate in a wargame. Phase 3 contains massive monster charging into the ranks of the horse lords, how will we use them. Well, in the next article, I'll be talking about what rules system we'll be using. However, next up a battle report or two. 

Ooops

So, the plan for today was to paint a Fell Beast that I've already started.

Why am I not painted yet?

I was looking forward to painting him, I've got five Fell Beasts. Two of the original metals, two of the plastics, as seen here to the right, and the original metal Witch King atop a Fell Beast.

The forthcoming Battle for Pellanor fields also has the plastic variant Witch King on Fell Beast, which will give me six. The plastic model has a spare Ringwraith and I plan to use him instead of the Metal Witch King model so that I can have 6.

I just need to paint them. 

Instead, I painted something else.

We're not Ringwraiths.

 Yep, a squad of plastic SS appeared on my desk. These were bought earlier in the year as I've been playing through the Battle of the Bulge with Terry. One of the scenarios needs an SS army, so I purchased the plastic box from Warlord. 

And here we are painted.

You get thirty models in the box, enough to build three ten man squads. This is squad two and you can see all of the 'fun' models. LMG, Assault Rifle, Panzerfaust.

Painting these have been a lot of fun, and I've used a new technique to paint them. A sponge.

The SS had a pea dot camo scene, which as you can see below is a pain to paint.

Chaps with rifles.

So, to do my best pea dot, I painted the jackets in Baneblade Brown and then whipped out a piece of foam. In my case, a bit of foam of a blister pack, it does have use :) The whole area was dotted with Necromantic Black, and the Witches Green, before giving a liberal wash of Agrax Earthshade.

The photos have not come out as well, and I'm working on something better, but I'm happy with the result and can't wait to get them based, that'll be done later, and back out on a table top. Now it's time to paint the Ringwraith.

It's been a while,

So it's been a while, but I had some bad news about a job yesterday, and so I've decided to start blogging again.

So, what did I do to get over this bad news? Painting, of course. With the Battle for Pelennor Fields coming out soon, I've gone back into Lord of the Rings wargaming mode, and so time to paint up some models for my long-held dream to recreate the Seige of Gondor, similar to how my friends and I did Helms Deep.

Knock Knock

It's very much a case of going large or going home.  If I remember correctly, the forces of Isengard contained over a 1000 Uruks, Orcs, and evil men. It was a lot of fun, and if I can find the write-up, I'll post it up here. 

So, what do I paint to get going? Some Warriors of Minas Tirith or perhaps a horde of Orcs to usher the end of the Age of Man in. 

Nope, I painted Isildur. 

Before

After

So, he was a quick paint, mainly metal for the armour, and the purple-red for the tunic. GW had painted their version red, but most of the reference shots and the Weta statue show it to be more purple. 

So, up next, on the painting table is going to be a plastic Fell Beast with Ringwraith that I've started painting. 

See you soon.

David