LotR Isengard Army

Lord of the Rings Isengard Army (Prepped and/or Undercoated)

This is the first of the main evil armies (Moria is only a small army in comparison, so doesn't really count) to be photographed after being as completed as much as can be with the tools and time available.

I decided to incorporate all of my non-Mordor specific orcs into this army to give it a big boost. Unfortunately, I didn't spot that the bolt thrower has an Eye of Sauron motif on the front of it until I was putting the miniatures away again. Oh well, perhaps I will either not use it or just ignore the fact it is on there. Anyway, here is a pre-prep photo of the army; mostly pure Isengard...

And here is the same army prepped and mainly undercoated with the orc additions...

Plastic:
12 Warg riders
51 orcs
23 fighting Uruk Hai
8 Uruk Hai engineers with 2 bombs and 4 ladders
2 berserkers
24 Uruk Hai scouts

Metal:
4 Isengard heroes (Saruman ft&mtd, Sharkey, Grima)
4 Warg rider heroes
14 Dunlending warriors (incl: ft&mtd Thrydan Wolfsbane)
4 orc command
3 Uruk Hai command
3 Uruk Hai crossbows
7 berserkers
3 Uruk Hai scouts
3 Uruk Hai heroes
5 orc crew and 1 ballista

This gives a total of 170 Isengard troops, 6 pieces of siege equipment and 1 piece of artillery, making it a marginally larger army than the Rohan faction but smaller than Gondor.

This army is now more than a match for Rohan, so will make for some interesting match ups later. Although Rohan have the mobility, Isengard has a solid core of well-armoured, hard-hitting troops.

I will most likely pick up a few more Rohan elites (Royal Guard and Outriders) and heroes (the new plastic Theoden, Eowyn and resin Elfhelm and Deorwine) when I have got further along the painting path with these, so will probably also pick up a few extra Uruk-Hai or whatever (maybe a siege ballista?) to round out this particular army.

Scouring of the Shire mk II

As I am unable to progress with any figures prep today (and most likely not tomorrow either) I thought I would add in a couple of supplemental blog entries about the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.

Whilst surfing the good ol' internet last night I came across a few new releases from Games Workshop for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. This is probably old news to most, but I am going to post up as an aide-de-memoir, so I know what I am missing from my GW LotR hobby. It is also a coincidence that I only posted up a few of my Bree/Shire related miniatures the other day and this is what is due out in the next GW release.

Since the game's relaunch last year, GW and Forgeworld have been good to their word and are fully behind supporting it as a mainstream game. As a result, several rulebooks have already been released (of which I have only the initial Battle Companies one). I would like to grab the Lord of the Rings related ones when I am able but don't have much interest in The Hobbit stuff except for completeness sake.

• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual
• Armies of The Hobbit
• Armies of The Lord of the Rings
• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game : Battle Companies (release 1)
• Gondor at War

Very soon now, we should be getting the following plus a hole heap of miniatures to accompany the rulebooks...

• Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game : Battle Companies (release 2)
• Scouring of the Shire (release 2 - this topic was covered in the game's previous incarnation)

I am not sure about the second coming of Battle Companies so soon on the tail of the original version, but I have heard rumours that the original sold out on no less than six print runs! I think that was seen as a sign by GW that this was a horse worth backing. On my current budgetary restraints, I will pass on the latest version until I can justify getting it after all the other goodies I would like to grab. I am also not sure on the other rule books just yet.

Also to be released at the same time as these new rules manuals are a whole bunch of new hobbits and ruffians as well as the original metal sets which I have already toyed with getting, so this may add to the pressure on me to cave-in to those demands.

There will also be a new hobbit hole and the re-release of some other old miniatures that the hobbits can fight against, like Golfimbul. Added to a few wild wargs and some orcs and we have a game on!

 

Exciting times ahead for players of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game. This all ties in nicely with me prepping and painting my old LotR miniatures collection. Hopefully I will be having a busy summer getting all my old minis ready for some tabletop action.

I should have an update tomorrow about what is happening with my favourite faction: Rohan.

Breelanders

A quick win today; this session's work consists of a few models I bought from EBob before they were discontinued. He also made a certain ranger with a dog (I think) that took my fancy but it was always out of stock when I tried to order it prior to it also being pulled.

Unfortunately the photo is not too clear (it was taken from my phone in the still dull weather) but in the front row can be seen a not Bill Ferny, Barliman Butterbur and the gate-keeper from the films. In the back row is a kind of queen miniature (not sure who she is supposed to be) and what is now called Lady Greensleeves(?); otherwise known as Galadriel? The back row miniatures were still available last time I looked, but the front three were pulled several years ago.

These will make great additions to any adventures that happen to occur in Bree, or for use in a Scouring of the Shire scenario with a handful of ruffians (need to see if these are still available on GW's site when I get some spare cash, or look for third party companies' offerings to use as proxies) and orcs to fight against some hobbits.

I have been flipping through my Adventures in Middle Earth 5e rule books again recently so my imagination is working overtime on what scenarios I can run as RPGs and then as tabletop battles. Again, like with the Ushabti, and the Fomorians and Wolfen to come, I will need to stat these up for each of the games I intend to play.


These figures have been mounted on the standard GW 25mm sized slotta bases so that they fit in with all of my other LotR miniatures. Whilst looking at my other slotta tabbed fantasy miniatures, that will be featured over the next few days, I decided that I would put them all on round bases according to their size too. So, from my bases collection I sorted out 30mm lipped bases for my Fomorians, 40mm troll bases for my Ushabti, and 50mm lipped bases for the Wolfen. I had to use these sizes so that the minatures would actually fit. As I am not really a big battle game type person, the square bases have been put to one side for other uses in the future; the round bases suit my preferred skirmish style of gaming. That said, I could always get hold of some sabot bases for these miniatures to sit in to create units if required.

The Fighting Uruk Hai

Following along the same theme as yesterday's post about the Dunlendings, here are a few more of Saruman's hard-hitting forces - the Fighting Uruk Hai. This is a photo of the force before I completed all of the preparation. Some had been done before I got onto this second round of work, so I will only be showing the ones I have worked on today.

The Dunlendings were completed yesterday; the warg riders have already been prepped; for the orcs see below for a few more details. So, that just leaves the Uruk Hai for this part of the Isengard army.

First up are the Uruk Hai Scouts. I forgot that the box set I had contained 24 of the plastic warriors so that brought a smile to my face as I had more than I thought. The blister contained 3 metal Uruk Hai scouts, so along with a few Uruk Hai heroes (2 poses of Lurtz - with bow and cleaver/shield - and one of Ugluk (I think?)) that brings my total to 30 scouts.

As I had already made up loads of the plastic Uruk Hai warriors, it was now down to me to prep their command. For this small part of the force I found that I had a blister of crossbow armed uruks and a command blister that included a captain and banner bearer.

Finally, they needed a charismatic and powerful leader; enter Saruman. I had already prepped Saruman and Grima on foot, so this time it was the turn of Saruman on horseback. I also have a copy of Saruman in his guise as Sharky from when he terrorised the hobbit folk whilst Scouring the Shire.

As can be seen from the photos of many of these multi-part metal miniatures there are lots of areas where a spot of green stuff will come in handy to fill a few gaps. This will be done when I get round to the final preparation and undercoating of each faction before painting.


I have lots of orc miniatures that I was going to originally use as part of a Mordor force alongside my Easterlings and Haradrim, but now I think I will concentrate on them just being Isengard lackeys. So, unless any miniatures are obviously meant to depict Mordor troops, all my orcs etc. will be Isengarders. Obviously they can double up as either, so if I decide to create a Mordor force in the future then the orcs and maybe the warg riders can perform in either role as per their whim. This does leave me with the dilemma of banner and shield sigils - the White Hand or "<" of Saruman/Curunir or should it be the Eye of Mordor?


Whilst looking over my largest evil force I noticed that there would be more than enough figures to make up either Dragon Rampant or Saga forces. Again I will have to check the numbers and whether anyone has already made up what I am looking for on the internet. Obviously there will also be enough here to give Rohan a run for its money either as full on SBG army or at the smaller Battle Companies scale.

Dunlendings

Saruman's armies of Isengard consisted of orcs, uruks, wargs and evil men. I have orcs, uruks and wargs aplenty (more on those in a later post) but not much in the way of evil men. I missed out on grabbing the Wildmen of Dunland minitaures when they were available but I managed to purchase a box set of the Dunlending Warriors metal miniatures, as well as a Command blister and a blister containing the hero Thrydan Wolfsbane (a GW invention I believe?).


The Dunlending Warriors in my collection will be classed as those evil men, and if I can grab a blister or two of Wildmen then this little faction will be complete. There are four variants of the Wildmen, so if I could round out a unit of 12 from three blisters that would be cool. If required, to make up numbers for a Dunland force in future, I may just proxy some 3rd party miniatures like Gripping Beast's Vikings and/or Anglo-Saxons, as these will work out a heck of a lot cheaper.

In total I have 13 foot warriors and one mounted. Looking at the way in which the box set is laid out variants wise, and how the numbers roll after I add in the blister sets, there are either one or two miniatures of each pose by weapon type...

Apologies for the poor photography - my camera phone is not the greatest at taking photos and the light is a bit off at the moment.

1/2 poses Two handed axemen
1/2 poses One handed axemen with shields
1/2 poses Archers
1/2 Bannerman / captains
1/1 foot and mounted Thrydan Wolfsbane

These make for a tidy little strike force that could work well as an elite unit in an Isengard force for the main SBG or as the core of a Battle Companies unit.