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