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

Happy Birthday Doctor Who

So, it has been a long time since I blogged, but we’re back and with the first game played using the new Doctor Who models from Warlord Games.

Terry's awesome modular terain

Now, Warlord are developing a game which has all the fun of a skirmish style battle game, as well as a narrative based scenario game. This latter option I’m the most looking forward to. However, to celebrate Doctor Who’s 53^rd birthday, my friend Terry and I played a game using the Terminator rules system also from Warlord. A few tweeks here and there, such as no using Time Agents. Mainly because when you have the Doctor, who needs Captain Jack. And we rechristened the special rule ‘Asta la Vista’ to ‘Allonz Zee’ or Gerinamio. Take you pick.

I’m a big fan of the terminator rules, it’s a fun, innovative system, similar to the LOTR SBG that I love. There are a few issues such as lack of choice in forces (endo’s or resistance) and it’s very hard to kill Terminators. But Terry made some adaptations and I arrived with a Doctor (12^th Doctor armed with sonic shades and a guitar) and Clara to find out what lay before me

Scenario:

UNIT ready to burst in.

As I began the game, all I knew was that somewhere in the enemy base was Clara. She had been kidnapped, and hidden somewhere inside the early 21^st century base. The Doctor has enlisted the help of Unit and as the game begins I know not who the enemy is, or where Clara has been located.

The Game.

This is my timey-wimey detector.
It goes ding when there's stuff.

I arrived in, and kicking of the action, the Doctor ran in with the Unit troops, shouting for Clara and brandishing his shades around. Distracted by a large glowing machine, he turned away from the Unit Troops and began to investigate. Alerted by the presence of alien technology (the shades) an Alarm rang out and their an ominous rumble as somewhere deep below lifts began to arrive. More Unit troops led by Captain Benton, codename Greyhound five, ran in from all angles, ready to fight the aliens and win back Clara at any cost.

EXTERMINATE

The lift’s open and two Daleks filed out. Terry, had not told me what enemy I was going to be facing, and so it was a pleasant surprise when they rumbled out. The air was filled with the sounds of Exterminate, Exterminate. Daleks are very singular in their attitudes to others. More Unit troops poured in and started raining bullet after bullet into the Daleks, but to little luck. One dalek was quickly destroyed, obviously one unit trooper had brought some dalekanium or Teflon bullets to stop them. However, his destroyed remains was quickly shunted out of the way.

Due to a combination of my bad dice rolling and Daleks been very hard to kill, see my point about terminators, the Unit troops found themselves quickly being massacred, whilst the Dr went out on his own, shouting for Clara, and coldly ignoring the plight of the Unit Troops. Perhaps he’s not a good man after all. The highlight of the mid part of the battle was one Dalek being wounded enough for a Unit trooper to try and kill him in using the Gerinomo rule (see above). Only to find that he had brought a butter knife instead of his dalek killing knife. Silly error.

Sonic Shades

Clara, there you are

As the Doctor got to the chest that contained his lost companion, the last unit trooper died, and the Daleks turned on their ultimate foe, the oncoming storm. One dalek, tried to block the Doctor’s escape plan. One very 1960’s combat phase later the Dalek was sent rolling backwards for Clara to make her escape. Winning Iniative Terry tried to kill the Doctor, in a hail of lazer fire to miss. One quick exit left, and the Doctor and Clara were safe.

Terry and I had a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. Even if I couldn’t kill Daleks. I’m looking forward to Warlord releasing their plastic daleks, cybermen and Unit troops soon. Come on guys,

ACW - Day Four

Sadly, a picture less update today, as my phone and mac are not talking to each other. Or, the computer is not talking to the blog site. Who knows, I hate computers.

So, despite the lack of updates, Day two went very well. With 12 models being painted. Day three, was just as productive, with a further 8 models painted. Day Four, we scraped through with the bare minimum. 4 models being painted.

This leaves me with, after four days of painting, 28 models painted. Progress is going to be slow over the next few days. I should hit my target for tomorrow. However, with the start of a Saga campaign, where I'll be looting and pillaging with my Rohan come Saxon warband. Day six will be a right off. Hopefully, Days 7 and 8 will allow me to catch up. Three bases over two days should be doable.

I'll see you on Friday, where hopefully, there will be photos.

See you soon.

ACW - Day one

So, the challenge is now into its second day, and day one went well. Despite an impromptu pub trip, the first four models, the first base, got painted. In fact, I even got time to start the second base and got the various shades of grey done on them.

Here's a photo of the first four. Let's see what day two brings.

From this.... 

To this.

July, the month of painting

So, at the half -way mark, I'm looking good to hit the year's painting mark. I'm aiming to have 732 painted models, or two for every day, by the end of the year. Having been unemployed for two and a half months has helped this total, and I'm 4.64% ahead of where I should be and I've now painted 400 models.

Which meant, that as June came to a close, I've had to do some basing, quite a lot of basing actually, as this photo shows.

Though you may not be able to see them, there is a good mix of models in there, from the Napoleonic 79th Cameron Highlanders to Iron Man, to High Elf Archers. Having hit 400 models, it's time to turn my attention to that American War. In previous posts I've talked about playing games and the rather large amount of models I've purchased this year, roughly 100, plus the 36 I already had, well it's time to get painting.

So, with a hundred plus models, one commander and 4 cannons to go. I feel a challenge needed. For the month of July, I'm aiming to paint at least one base of models a day. A base for me means four models. So by the end of July, I could have a 100 plus models painted.

 As I'm painting Confederates, which are a mixture of Grey, brown, grey, butterscotch, and more grey, this should be  an easily achievable target. In the past, I've painted a Scottish force for the English Civil war, and so I have a lot of grey paint. 

In the photo above you can see a box with five units, undercoated, waiting to be painted. There are five units worth built, and I have parts for another three, if not four, waiting to be built. 

So stay tuned, I hope to post updates daily, but we shall see. See you tomorrow.