Lords of Mordor

    As mentioned in my last post, I was painting the Armies of Mordor for a Pelannor themed game and slowly adding in models that I had no plan of using but that I knew would get into his head. The last big model in that category was a Nazgul on Fellbeast.

   This has been sitting gathering dust on a shelf for far too many years - it was caked in a thick layer, slowly maturing - so I dusted it off, dusted it again and then got painting.

   For a model that I thought would be really quick to paint going in - its just black isn't it? - it turns out the fellbeasts are barely dark grey, let alone black. I went with various layers of beigey-browns to build the wing colours and underside, adding in various browny-greys for other bits to get something that feels alive, while the Ring Wraith is just black highlighted grey.

This model I specifically got a mutual friend to drop a passing comment that the Nazgul on Fellbeast I had posted was only the first I was painting - and that got a panicked message.

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The Armies Of Mordor

   One of my mates messaged me to ask me if I wanted a game, as he only plays Lord of the Rings I knew I was going to have to tidy up/add to one of my collections, however, when he told me the points limit, I knew I had a fair amount of work to do.

   I spent about a week trying to decide what direction to go in - mostly looking at my old Isengard force or my slightly newer but very unfinished Haradrim, but when he told me he was using a list based around the Grief of Eomer, which happens towards the end of Pelannor, I did a hard left into my to do pile and pulled out my sprues of Morannon Orcs.

I painted three warbands (a sprue each) of Morannon Orcs along with a Morannon Orc Captain for each - this would be the vast bulk of my army*.

*Although, I also proxied in a Isengard Troll as a Mordor Troll for some hitting power

It was at this point where I was posting photos on Istagram where he follows me, that I decided to use this as a chance to get more of the backlog painted and start to get inside his head pre game by painting models that I wasn't going to use, but that he might worry over.

The first model was a Mouth of Sauron, partly as it was an easy model to paint and partly as it's rules are quite good.

Then came Gothmog as he really helps Morannon Orcs out and he was only going to sit in the backlog if not.

I didn't stop there but that's enough for one post.

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Mister Frodo! Look! It's an Oliphant!

 No one at home will believe this

Focus Project ; No

   In keeping with my plan of focussing on a set number of projects to get them fully usable before moving on I have painted the following, oh wait.

   Lets try this again, with the new Wayland Games centre reopening and having gone mad and booked some actual games in, I was talking to one of my brothers about what we wanted to play and he suggested Lord of the Rings. Then the more I thought about that option, the more a bad idea came to mind - to finish one of my Mumaks and get it on the table.

   I have a really cheap one I bought from eBay that was always my plan A, but as I have been unable (so far) to repair it, I went with the plan B Mumak, one I bought in case plan A didn't work. I built this on the Friday night in front of the TV (and it is a dreadful kit), sprayed it Sunday between jobs and then aimed to give myself 3 days of painting, which turned into just about one day.

   The end result is a model that probably needs a bit more love to really tidy it up, but I'm tired and calling it done is better than calling it perfect.

   It has to be said, that the first game I played at the new Wayland Games centre in Brentwood, with a stupid model on the table, a beer in one hand and a bowl of cauliflower "wings" in Korean BBQ sauce in the other was just absolutely amazing. I'm starting to feel more positive about 2026. Oh and I have a game on Saturday too?!?

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Grimbold, Marshall of the Mark

   A bit of a just painting stuff that is near my desk for this post. I can't remember if I bought these models as Made to Order or if it was regular purchase, but they are a blister pack I always meant to buy. Then they went into my backlog to mature.

   I'm in that mood at the start of the year where I have multiple projects that I keep deciding are the MOST IMPORTANT EVER, but then by the time where I actually think I can fit some painting in, either my mind has changed or I'm struggling to focus on doing anything, so if I can just paint something, that has to be a win.

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The Army Of The Dead

The way is shut. It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. 

The way is shut.

   An army I bought at the start of 2022 when my brothers and me were really looking at getting back into Lord of the Rings. We were going through the new scenarios and seeing where the gaps were in our collections and the Dead of Dunharrow were one such gap, and more importantly they were an affordable gap.

   Fast forward a couple of years and I'm trying to slowly tidy my man cave up and part of it is building those sprues where I've basically finished an army or a box of something and if I don't build them and put them in the same box as the rest of their collection, it's almost a sure bet that I will just lose or break them. The Army of the Dead fit into this category with most of them build and stored, but one sprue just sitting in a loose pile of other sprues. The aim was just to build and then store them, but with their paint job being fairly simple, it seemed daft not to just get them done.

   The finished collection is the King of the Dead, 2x Heralds and 20 infantry. I followed a recipe I found online but I think there is an argument for a quick white drybrush over the top in the future.

Going purely by the scenario books this is the most infantry I will need for this army - although there is one scenario that needs 6 horsemen, but they will cost me nearly £70, so it's not going to happen . . .

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Éomer, son of Éomund

   I've been meaning to play some Lord of the Rings with my brother since back in December (I think) as he's been slowly painting up an army and wants to get it onto the table.

   I, on the other hand, have been painting up a Rohan force that I would like to get on the table, so while the game would be Good vs Good, it would still be a chance to try stuff out. He wanted to up his hero selection from Faramir to his big brother Boromir, so I needed a hero of similar calibre, step up their future brother in law Éomer, Third Marshal of the Riddermark.

  It's only two figures so there isn't the most to say about it. Its the newer plastic kit from GW and I followed the Warhammer TV painting guide, although a few substitutions were made to tie some colours into the rest of my force - no point using a different dark green base to the rest of my army, and I left off a few highlights that I didn't see the point of in a gaming piece. 

  This was another one of those paint schemes that you get to the point before the wash and think what the hell have I done with this model, then after you have washed it, you feel like a creative genius.

This has got me tempted to do another batch of riders now. . .

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Rohan Answers

   This post is another hard to justify job. I've said before that while I would like to get the last of my Rohan painted so they are off my backlog, I know have more than I can ever reasonably see myself using - although, having a large army in case I ever use them for Lion Rampant or War of the Ring makes selling the remainder feel like a bad idea.

   The models painted here are another whole sprue of plastic Rohan infantry with the only extra being a finecast horn blower which my brother bought in a mixed lot of bits off eBay and sent my way. I'm still not a fan of finecast, but the figure is a useful addition to the force.

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Righting A Wrong

   To date* my most played army has turned out to be my LotR Haradrim. This came as a bit of surprise to me when I realised, as it's an army that I've put next to no pressure on myself to paint, with models just being added as and when I have spare time and as such, none of them have made it onto the blog yet. They are, however, the army I picked, precisely because they were unpainted, for the Battle Companies campaign I've been playing with my brothers.

*with 2 months of gaming left to go

   So far I have painted up a box worth of foot infantry, a box worth of riders, a pair of captains and all the Serpent Guard I am ever likely to buy**.

**have you seen the price of the serpent riders online?

I still need to paint another box of infantry and another box of riders for a game I'd like to play, then I have 2 of the 3 Mumuks I need . . .

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Ride for ruin and the world's ending!

    The figures in this post have ended up being much more of a slog to paint than I had expected, especially considering I've been using other figures from the same army as palette cleansers between batches of figures I have previously classes as hard work.

   What I have here are my first regular captain (mounted and on foot) who I gave a red shield to so that he would stand out in blocks, Gamling (mounted and on foot), 5 mounted Royal Guard and 3 on foot. I think the maximum amount of royal guard I need for the scenarios is 3 or 4, but a spare won't hurt.

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Ride now, ride now, ride!

   My last missing post from Operation Panic Paint, this batch of Riders of Rohan were, again, painted as a palette cleanse between the other batches of figures that I was working through. This is my 5th batch out of 7, and while I'm pretty sure I'll never need more than 4, it won't hurt to get more of these done.

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Ere The Sun Rises!

   Following quick on the tail of the big Goth project is a smaller batch, mostly because I needed to keep my motivation up, of Riders of Rohan. I think I'm right in saying this is the last box worth that I need for my planned game, but as I have 3 more boxes worth to go, it won't be the last you see of regular riders.

   Nothing hugely exciting to say other than I tried a new horse colour recipe. 

   Next I probably should have started on the Royal Guard for this force, but instead I've gone headfirst into finishing off two more fairly big projects . . .

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A Red Day

    After those detours, I thought it was best to go back to my main project of the start of the year again, my Rohan. I'm trying to keep chugging through these so I can get them on the table at my first chance*.

*which does beg the question of when I'm going to start looking at the other side . . .

   This post is about the next three batches of infantry. I'm not going to claim that these have been painted since the last unit I blogged about (Dire Avengers) as I've been using a batch of these as a palette cleanser between other projects. Again, I don't need these done for any of the games I have planned in the short future, but they are so useful to have and the sheer numbers of them in my backlog now (thanks Neil) mean that I do need to get some moving, plus they are quite nice to paint, so I'd like to keep units moving in between other projects. With 4 of the 6 batches done, I should now focus on the units that I need in the shorter term.

Also to mention in passing is that I've got a new role (in the same company that I currently work) that means I'll be out of the house more, which with travelling time and workload will probably mean my painting output will drastically lower from April onwards, so I've got March to try and get my painted figures number as high as possible and project numbers as low as possible. Stay tuned to see if I succeed. . .

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A Sword-Day

    Time to focus on the job at hand again. First up, my mate Neil has noted that I am basing my way through my small pile of Rohan and generously sold me his own backlog of Rohirrim at an amazing price, included in the box were 6 sprues of infantry (72 men) so while my initial list doesn't need any infantry, barring maybe some dismounts, those sort of numbers need thinning early on. My next painting batch has then been pushed back one slot and a sprue's worth of infantry jumped to the front.

   I've painted them identically to how I've been doing the riders, so nothing to add there. I also painted the foot banner that I missed in my last batch as it made sense to add it in here. Annoyingly, this is another one of those cases where the camera makes them look scruffier than they seem in real life.

I'd better get back to building my next batch . . .

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Shield Shall Be Splintered or Mission Creep Pt.1

    I started painting the next batch of Riders Of Rohan and, like I mentioned in the last post, I added the horse from another batch into this one to keep a mix of horse colours going without doubling up on effort for the colours I planned and I also added Dernhelm as I wanted her to match my regular riders as she is hiding amongst them. Before I knew it my batch of 6 riders was now 8 riders and 2 infantry (might as well do the foot versions of Eowyn and Merry at the same time).

   Once I had finished those, I got it into my head that I might as well do the Fellowship version of Merry too so that his hair colour matched, then I got it into my head to do the Fellowship version of Pippin too . . .

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Spear Shall Be Shaken

   The next unit that I should have been painted before I distracted myself so astoundingly well is another unit of Riders Of Rohan. The colour scheme hasn't changed but this batch has grey horses instead of brown*.

*I also did the horse for one of the Royal Guard just to make sure that unit gets a bit of variety too

   As there isn't much to say in this post I thought I would mention something interesting about the rules. As part of this project I thought I would finally update from the blue book and source books that I've been using since the early 2010's (?) to the modern combined Middle Earth Battle Games where you buy a rules manual, your personal LotR or Hobbit flavour army book and any campaign book that is appropriate for your gaming. I've picked up Gondor at War and War in Rohan to go with my Rohan army and sat down to work out how many points I need for certain scenarios, but that's where its got interesting. In the last edition a scenario might specify a hero that has to be included but otherwise it would say pick X points using the following restrictions or from the following army list, this edition lists the exact models down to wargear and includes a lot more compulsory heroes.

   So, the long and the short of this, if I want to continue my plan of using the scenarios in the new book, I need an extra Mumukil (to a grand total of 3!) for the initial planned game and a lot more named heroes for scenarios going forward. I'm holding fire on ordering anything until I've got a plan in place but it looks like I'll be visiting GW at some point in the near future.

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Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!

    As its the start of a new year, it feels like the right point to enthusiastically make plans that won't survive until the January. I've got a few games I'd like to play this year and one of the projects that has been in my head for a few years now is replaying the charge of the Mûmakil at the battle of Pelannor. I bought the first Mûmakil back in 2019 (I think) along with a couple of sprues of Riders of Rohan but did nothing else with it*.

*I was speaking to other LOTR gamers at the time about a group project where players either pick a Mûmakil or a similar pointed Rohan warband and we played a big game, but it went quiet very quickly

   With December 2021 being the 20th anniversary of the release of The Fellowship Of The Ring, my social media feeds have been full of Lord Of The Rings content and it's given me a kick up the arse to get on with the project. I've had a little bit of a buying spree (at the end of the 2021) to make sure I have enough figures for both sides and a few extras for the future, I've written a painting order on my hobby spreadsheet so I know what needs to be done and I've got some colour schemes ready. Its now just a case of getting stuff built and painted in good time. I'd like to be playing this in late February so I'd better get moving.

   First up is the first batch of regular Riders Of Rohan. I've not done anything special with these guys, just tried to keep a similar scheme to how GW have painted theirs. 

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A forest in the making

“Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers. But some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me.” 

- Treebeard

   A couple of weeks ago I painted up an ent on a whim and when I wrote a post about it, I mentioned that the rest had been packed away. Well it turns out I am weak when it comes to sticking to a plan*, so back into my lead mountain I went to dig out the only treeman model I knew I had ready built**.

   The model is from Hasslefree Miniatures, although I can no longer find it on their site. It is a weirdly posed model that is nigh on impossible to get a decent shot of but I really enjoyed painting it. There is something really satisfying about painting ents, I don't know if it is just that drybrushing the texture gives a win so easily but I would recommend it if you have had a bad day.

*It's even in my blog header

*I am trying to stick to

my plan of finishing models

rather than starting new ones.

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Growing forces

'My home is deep in the forest near the roots of the mountains'.

- Treebeard

   It has been a while since I did any ents but as I am having a bit of a sort through and a clear out and I came across a small collection of built and unbuilt treemen from various manufacturers that I bought after the Last March of the Ents game. The unbuilt ones will be wrapped back up and stored for later, but the built ones are too fragile for such a treatment.

   If anyone is on Facebook I would recommend following Warhammer TV, even if you are not interested in their products, their daily how-to painting tutorial is actually really interesting and they recently did one on how to paint wood. So picking up one of the ents at random, I decided to try it out.

   The one that was picked was an Otherworld Miniatures treeman, who bears a starting resemblance to Treebeard himself, and a few hours later I had a finished model that I was actually really pleased with. I am trying to keep all my ents in different shades and different highlights etc, so painting them all at different times is actually a good thing in this case.

Now I have a bit of a hankering to paint a few more.

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The Last March Of The Ents

"My business is with Isengard tonight. With a rock and stone. Rarum-rum! Come my friends. The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents".

      As I promised in my Look at the trees, they're moving! post, here is the battle report of the Last March of the Ents;

      The scenario is Treebeard and 3 ents vs 500 points of Isengard forces. The good side wins if they destroy all 3 of the Isengard mining structures, the evil side wins if they kill all the ents before they destroy all of the structures. If Treebeard is killed all the good side can do is draw. To make it more interesting any evil warriors that get killed have a chance of being recycled on a 4+.

The 4 Ents

        The board was set up and ready to go before my regular LotR opponent (Matt) even got round as the scenario is very specific on how the set up is done. The 3 structures are 12 inches apart on a 2 by 4ft board, with random rocky terrain mixed in to stop it being too flat. The orcs are all set up around the structures, while the ents have to set up along one short edge of the board.

     The first turn of shooting saw some truly amazing shooting by the orc archers, with two wounds being caused on Treebeard himself. With only 3 wounds at his best, this was a potentially game changing turn of shooting, as keeping Treebeard alive was Matt's most important objective.

     After an early thrown rock from Treebeard and then the rest of the ents going into the first structure on-mass, it was quickly one down, two to go.

      At this point I decided the best thing I could do was bundle every orc I had into what ever target I could, easier said than done having to pass a courage test every time I wanted to charge. The ents higher fight value really was their biggest asset, a roll of a 6 was an automatic win, then killing anything but a captain on a 3+ meant that if they won the combat I generally lost at least a couple of orcs to each ent a turn.

      After what seemed like an eternity of drawn out combats the ents started to find they had space appearing around them, they had lost one of their number to achieve this but that was a small price to pay for a bit of breathing room.

     With so few orcs, each courage test to charge become even more important, I really didn't want to feed orcs to an angry ent piece meal, but every ent not in combat was throwing rocks at the second structure and this eventually took it's tole as it collapsed under the barrage.

      Down to a handful of remaining orcs, one structure remaining and 3 ents to kill, the game didn't look good for me. The only plus side was treebeard only had the single wound left, but as he was being kept hidden right at the back of the board, it was a fact I just couldn't capitalise on.

     Using the same tactic I had used to kill a ent earlier on in the game, I put every orc I had into the closest ent and, with some really lucky dice rolls, managed to take its last two wounds, killing it before it could hurt the last structure. It didn't work anywhere near as well when I tried it on the last normal ent, as I lost really valuable orcs.

     In the end the last normal ent won a couple of combats and was able to push through my remaining orcs and onto the last structure, which it took out in one monumental turn of combat. Winning the ents a much deserved win.

     Some interesting stats from the course of the game;
- the ents killed 68 orcs, with 28 of those orcs coming back again,
- 8 wounds were caused to the ents, 3 from shooting, 2 from archers in combat and 3 from two captains. Considering my force was about 40 orcs strong, and only 8 of those were archers this is a hugely disproportionate amount of wounds.

     So yeah, I came so close at the start of the game, almost killing Treebeard, but it all started to go wrong quite quickly. I think next time I am going to do a lot more ebay scouring and get myself a load more normal orcs, and lose all the shields from the ones that have them to save some points for more orcs.
     What made it worse, was this was the first of a hat-trick of wins for Matt that day. All I can say is I hate wizards. . .

Thanks for reading this marathon post. Normal service will resume.