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.