Skeleton Warband

A quick update on some more of the work I have been doing over the last couple of days on the undead warband I am slowly bringing together. I have now managed to complete a grand total of 20 skeleton/undead warrior types from the lead pile. I also have some other undead (4 foot and 4 mounted wights) painted by someone else that I may amend to fit in with my vision. Here's what I have achieved so far in their pre-wash/varnish glory (most have been seen before, so bear with me in my indulgence)...

First up is the command group. A set of three very old Citadel or Ral Partha (not sure which) pre-slotta figures...

Then we have a bunch of (five) undead riders that I completed yesterday. I am not happy with the results of the verdigris; I still need a little more practice to get it right. It sometimes works but mostly it doesn't. I blame my dodgy eyes as I cannot focus on the figures themselves, so have to guess where the brush is going and hope for the best. I then try to amend any mistakes afterwards if I am able...

Finally here is the bulk of the foot troops; a dozen skeleton warriors with an assortment of weapons...

Unfortunately, these miniatures are very fragile, and, ironically, I have already broken one of the arms off whilst putting it away into a protective foam carry case. I will need to repair it, and hope that the gloss varnish coat, when applied, also creates a stronger bind for the arm.

To complete this warband, I am looking at rounding out the numbers to create units for Dragon Rampant. I already know that I want to get a big horde of 30-40 zombies, 6 Otherworld Armoured Skeletons (same as the foot ones above but with armour), some missile armed skeletons, a champion of sorts, and some kind of giant construct. I am not sure on the points/unit values yet, but I will calculate that nearer the time. Then I have to decide who to put them up against. The quickest win will most likely be one of my Lord of the Rings armies - probably Rohan.

Battle Systems - Northern Homestead

Good morning everybody - long time no post. This is due to a number of reasons, mostly good, but primarily because I have been working. After another long time out of work I managed to secure back-to-back contracts. I am still in the second role and it seems to be going well - hopefully at the end of this contract I will be back to where I want to be financially, so I can begin spending a little more time, effort and money on my hobby.

So, what have I been up to hobby-wise over the last few months? Due to my new work roles and various other reasons, I have not been able to see my youngest son often enough to do any actual playing, but we did do lots of sorting out and chatting about gaming. He has managed to put some paint onto some of his Ebay bought miniatures (not finished yet, but when they are I will feature them in a separate post) and also bought some new figures from a local comic and games shop. I bought a few one-off figures from the same comic/game shop (four halflings which are a bit smaller than the GW LotR ones and an Owlbear - one of my fave monsters from D&D), some Ghost Archipelago rule and scenario books, and some card-stock buildings from Battle Systems.

The card buildings are the main-stay of this post. A month or so back, out of the blue, my son sent me a few pictures on my phone and a link to a company called Battle Systems. He suggested that they might be good for our tabletop battles as they were quite cheap (relative to resin and plastic buildings they certainly are). They looked really good in the photos (not promo shots by the company but in-use shots by a gamer), so I thought I would buy a few to see how they turned out for myself.

There was a sale on at the web store (result!), so I was able to afford to buy enough buildings from my gaming budget to hopefully kit-out one of the scenarios in the Rangers of Shadowdeep rulebook. I chose three of the Northern Homesteads as my mainstay, plus a couple of outbuildings, as they could double-up for use as Rohan, D&D, Pathfinder and so on buildings for a quasi-Dark Age/Medieval setting. There are also options to buy snow effect roofs (rooves?) to allow gaming in Frostgrave or other cold-set climates (Winterfell or beyond the wall for Game of Thrones perhaps?).

The order was delivered in double-quick time and sat on my workbench (well, pile in the corner of the room) until two weekends back when my son was over and we decided to build the first homestead. Out of the box you get three sheets of card-stock building pieces (two the same plus another different one) and a small bag of plastic connection pieces.

The pieces push out very easily, with no cutting required. The only thing you don't get is a set of assembly instructions. Now, I have made many kits over the years so thought I would be able to construct these easily, but I went about these in completely the wrong way. I tried to put the connectors at the bottom of the walls etc. thinking they would be least visible there. However, after my son looked up an online tutorial and we found out that they should be joined by slots in the middle of the walls, the building went together in seconds. We literally built it in under two minutes. Once constructed, they are very sturdy.

There are three choices for the doors, two singles and a double. We decided on a simple single door for this building. As these kits are multi-purpose; they will fit in with all the other kits for completely customisable building construction, so many of the pieces can be used on other buildings. We will look at the watch towers and mead hall next so the double-doors can be used there (Meduseld anyone?) - they do look impressive.

The entry way - the door is off to one side with a porch to cover the entrance for times of inclement weather. You may also notice some holes in the thatch and flooring. There are pushout pieces to give buildings a more run-down look if required. We decided to go full-out on this building. The good thing is, the little bits that get pushed out can be used for scatter terrain later on too!

The front view - with attendant horse-head posts. Perfect for a Rohan setting.

The rear of the building has a platform upon which your archers can stand to defend their homes from marauding uruk-hai.

The side opposite the entrance shows the horse-head posts in better detail.

And finally an internal shot. With the kit you get internal flooring, beds, bed rolls, weapon racks and weapons; in fact all sorts of paraphernalia to sprinkle around the table top when gaming to add flavour. The weapons are a little over-sized, so I won't use them, but plenty of the other bits will be very useful as scatter.

Next time my son is over we will construct a few more of these buildings, most likely in different formats to make up a small hamlet. We can then fight over it with his Rohan (once re-painted) and orc miniatures before moving onto rangers of Shadowdeep once he has figures for his small warband for that game.

The system also features more medieval style buildings that would suit D&D and Pathfiner more, but they could also double-up as buildings from places like Bree or towns around Gondor and the fiefdoms in Lord of the Rings.

Overall, I am happy with my purchases. I will most likely try to find suitable basing material to put these on so they become even more sturdy and hard-wearing, and it will stop the flooring falling away from the buildings too when they are moved. The rest will hopefully be built in a few weeks' time, so I can photograph them all together to see how a hamlet or small village would look.

SBG Magazine - Issue 8

The New Edition Special - the Middle-earth Strategy Game has arrived. The older Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit versions of the game have been combined, updated and now superceded by this new rules set.

SBG Magazine - Issue 8

 SBG - Issue 8 - Spring 2019

The Dawn of a New Age - A 4 page article regarding Tom's journey within the hobby involving different editions and tournament gaming

The Dr's Corner - The author ponders how the new rules will shake up the tournament circuit (4 pages)

The Art of the Wooden Spoon - Guest piece on how to get the most from all of those defeats (4 pages)

Build me an Army - How to build a competitive tournament army detailing the better heroes to take and what each brings to the table (6 pages)

Battle Report - Fog of War - This 19 page battle report showcases many of the new rules amendments. The game was a standard fog of war style battle in which neither side knew the objectives of the other

Painting Masterclass: Theoden. A 3 page article detailing how to paint the new resin Theoden models that come with the starter box set

 

The new ruleset for Middle-earth Strategy Battle Games was released just a few months prior to this edition of the magazine. It was lovely to see all the attention lavished on Theoden and Gothmog in this issue. There wasn't much in the way of actual articles detailing rules interpretation or gaming tips, but then again the battle report was used to showcase the main amendments.

LotR Rohan Army

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

Managed to get some work done on things over the weekend in between running the kids around and various other stuff on my plate, so this post is being published a little earlier in the day than usual.

Due to being my favourite Lord of eth Rings faction, this was the first army I started prepping and painting several years ago. I managed to complete 24 Riders and 36 Warriors of Rohan back then. I even got to play a few games with some of them down at my local GW when it was still open. These miniatures will form the core of my Rohan army and the figures will be used as parts of any force under any commander - kind of generic troops that can fit in anywhere within the army.

I didn't previously take a before shot with these, so here is the prepped and/or undercoated picture of the figures so far; taken today. There are a lot of miniatures here...

There are loads of different types of warrior in the Rohan faction ranging from the standard warriors and riders of Rohan, via elites like Royal Guard, Sons of Eorl and Outriders, to the goodly amount of named heroes. Rohan, as an army, offers a fair bit of variety tactically but the troops are fairly standard, building on a theme of a mounted warrior culture, with nothing really "out there" in terms of fluff like warmachines, monsters, wizards or whatever. That said, it is a solid army and looks darned good on the tabletop - who doesn't like to see a full-on massed cavalry charge?

Plastic:
48 Rohan warriors
36 Rohan riders

Metal:
3 Theoden (2xmtd, 1xft)
10 Royal Guard (mtd)
2 Royal Guard banners (mtd)
12 Royal Guard (ft)
Grima Wormtongue
5 Gamling (2xmtd banner, 1xft banner, 2xft)
Hama

3 Theodred (2xmtd, 1xft)
6 Sons of Eorl (mtd)
6 Sons of Eorl (ft*)

5 Eomer (Marshall (ft*&mtd), 2xmtd, 1xft)
4 Outriders (2xft, 2xmtd)

4 Eowyn (3xft, 1xmtd)

2 Erkenbrand (ft & mtd)
3 Grimbold (ft, banner, horn)

6 Captains (4xft, 2xmtd)
3 Banners (2xft, 1xmtd)

Aragorn (mtd)
2 Merry

This gives a total of 163 Eorlingas: the biggest army so far. I wonder how Gondor and Isengard will compare? Looking at what I have here and the plans I originally had for the army, I don't think I will be purchasing any more figures (unless they come with something else). There will have to be a lot of doubling up of what each figure is used for rather than representing each unit I would like to collect as a separate entity.

The vast majority of these miniatures are from Games Workshop, but a few that are marked * are from Unreleased Miniatures - I discussed these in a previous post. Looking at the plastic warrior and rider miniatures now and comparing them to more modern figures, they seem very basic, with lots of big areas where undercuts could not be circumvented except by straight line fill, but at the time they were cutting edge. There is a certain aesthetic and appeal to these miniatures that time hasn't dulled. I like them a lot.

Battle of Pelennor Fields

This is just a quick update post on some new stuff that is due to, or has just, come out recently for the Rohan faction on the Lord of the Rings side of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game.

A friend of mine (RM) has just recently bought the Battle of Pelennor Fields box set. It contains a hard back copy of the main rules manual, a softback supplemental on the Battle of Pelennor Fields, several gaming aids (dice, measuring sticks etc.) and around 84 miniatures (Riders and Warriors of Rohan, Warriors of the Dead, a new plastic Theoden (foot and mounted), the Witch King on a fell beast, a Mordor troll and tons of orcs.

He said that the box represents great value for money as, for once, GW has produced a set that actually has contents at a rate discounted from their normally recommended prices. RM has been using the Riders of Rohan as knights in our Pendragon campaign, and they are working rather well. The plastic Theoden figure is a superb sculpt and well worth picking up on its own.

Also released are a bunch of named heroes to add to the strength of the Rohan faction. Here we can see a plastic Eowyn and Merry kit, a resin Elfhelm set and another resin set for Deorwine, some kind of King's champion.

The Eowyn and Merry set allows for them both, or just Eowyn, to be mounted on her horse. This is a neat touch as I would want to field them separately anyway; I would just need to find a suitable pony for Merry.

Elfhelm is a Marshal of the Riddermark, and an actual character from the books. I was looking for a suitable minature to represent him in my Rohan army to lead a small faction of troops with their own personal emblem on their shields. I am not overly keen on resin miniatures but may take my time looking at these ones just to see how they pan out.

Deorwine is, presumably, a GW made up character as I have not heard of him from the books or the film. I am not too sure about him (very chunky shield aside) as we already have Gamling and Hama to represent captains of the Royal Guard. That said, Rohan is low on elite troops and heroes, so maybe he is just the ticket? This gets me to wondering whether GW will be releasing a plastic box set of Royal Guard to go with him? Now there's a thought!

These new additions to the Rohan faction throw a spanner into the works of what I have been working towards collecting so far. Apologies for repeating myself, but I will have to see how I can fit these new miniatures in and to what units I can append them. Theoden, Eowyn and Merry can all fit in wherever as they will be associated, generally, with the royal household. Elfhelm and Deorwine will prove to be a little more difficult as they will need to command a unit of troops each. As mentioned above, Deorwine could be used to head up the Royal Guard (keeps that simple) and Elfhelm can take a foot and mounted unit with some of my personally made sets of shields for identification on the battle field. Luckily, the Elfhelm set has no shield that I can see, so that will work out just fine.

Erkenbrand's Redshields

After much deliberation over last weekend, I decided what to do with the resin shields I had made; one set will be for Erkenbrand's Redshields, another for Grimbold's Helmingas and the final set for Elfhelm's cadre. I don't think I currently have enough figures in the plastic and lead pile to make up all three of these units though, so one set of the shields, for Elfhelm's eored, will remain in the plastic pile for a while longer.

I had enough Warriors of Rohan figures for Grimbold (see yesterday's post on Grimbold's Helmingas) and for the mounted contingent for Erkenbrand's Redshields but I am not sure about where to get those I want to use for Elfhelm. Perhaps I can just use other figures that Eomer, Theodred and Theoden use in their units for now until I can afford to buy a couple more boxes of Rohan stuff? But, if I do re-use the standard eored miniatures for Theoden etc. they won't be differentiated by a unit encompassing shield design when used as part of Elfhelm's unit. I will see when I finally get them all out onto the workbench at the final prep phase.

Anyway, enough chatter, onto Erkenbrand's mob. As I have now run out of Rohan miniatures to use for the elite squads, Erkenbrand's unit will only be represented by a mounted contingent at the moment. I have tried to do a little bit of conversion work by swapping a few weapon hands around and giving the unit a set of my custom made shields so they all match and there is some coherence in the unit.

You can see the two minor conversions in the second column of riders from the left - I swapped the axe and spear hands around. They all have the resin shields I had specifically designed for the purpose of designating individual units.

I think that is all of my Lord of the Rings miniatures de-sprued/unboxed and based in readiness for undercoating. So now I just need to wait for the weather to improve a little before hitting the garden for a few sessions with the spray cans. I have some old cans in my paints box, so I hope they will still do the trick.

It will be at this stage that I will create some spreadsheets to list what I have so far and their associated points values. I will also take the opportunity to perhaps begin working on some Saga and Dragon Rampant armies just to see how things measure up.

If I can get a good few sessions with the spraycans in the garden, then I am hoping the next phase will only take a week or two to complete. After the undercoating and statistics taking I will get onto ordering the units into some semblance of a painting queue and get stuck into them with the brushes. I have a few already painted (maybe 10% of them), so may look at finishing some of those units first if there are any gaps. Plastic figures will be block painted and "dipped" but I may have a go at proper shading/washing with elites and heroes. I will have to see how my eyes hold up to the task ahead as they are still deteriorating quite rapidly.

Grimbold's Helmingas

This unit of Rohan foot soldiers have been treated to a set of the shields I had made by a professional sculptor. I was going to go for a converted all hand-weapon and/or spear armed unit (this may still happen as I still have a few boxes of Rohan figures to prep in my plastic pile) but to get through this phase of the LotR preparation project I just added shields to those that have the lugs for them. I will be using the riders mentioned from my plastic pile above and the remaining foot figures for Erkenbrand's Redshields along with another of the shield sets from the sculptor.

Grimbold was quite a renowned captain of Rohan, occasionally serving as a Marshal when needs or situation dictated. He rode with Theodred and preserved his almost-dead body from being captured by Saruman's uruk-hai at the First Battle of the Isen. During the Second Battle of the Isen he formed a shield wall to enable others to escape in an orderly manner. I imagine the foot version of Grimbold released by Games Workshop was to represent this situation even though most of the time he would have ridden to war. I guess this is also where I got my idea of a unit of foot under his command.

Grimbold's unit will consist of Grimbold, a banner bearer, a horn blower (from the War of the Ring sets) and a dozen foot Warriors of Rohan. I don't think there is much difference stats wise between these troops and normal Warriors of Rohan (an extra point of Fight maybe? I can't remember. That said, do they even appear in the latest version of the Middle Earth : Strategy Battle Games rules that I do not yet own - I only have The One Ring rulebook and an earlier Return of the King book). They will make for a bit of variety on the tabletop when I paint them slightly differently to the normal Warriors and Riders of Rohan though.

This small unit would make an ideal addition to an army used in any of the other tabletop gaming rulesets I will be looking at playing. I am wondering whether to further differentiate these chaps from the standard Eorlingas with brown capes as opposed to the usual drab green? Likewise, I may do something similar for Erkenbrand's Redshields; other than red shield backgrounds, perhaps red capes or clothing too? I have stuck to film canon with my painting so far, but I want to make each of these armies my own. So, a few minor conversions and slightly differing paint jobs should suffice to differentiate certain elite units and so forth.

Rohan's Elite Warriors 2

Whilst building my armies for Lord of the Rings : Strategy Battle Games a few years ago I came across a company that sold unreleased miniatures from the Games Workshop range. As a trial to see how the company worked and to get some minis that would fill a small gap in my Rohan army I decided to order some of their dismounted horselords and a leader for them on foot. These were presumably released to cover dismounted Sons of Eorl and Eomer.

The figures themselves are not the greatest of sculpts (they may paint up better though) but will fill a gap until (hopefully?) Games Workshop release the same in metal so I can replace them. Each figure consists of three parts; a main body, a shield or left arm and a right arm with hand weapon. The joins are pretty awful and needed a lot of work to file flat so that they could adhere when glued. They will still need a fair amount of putty work to complete, and I may have to go back and pin the arms on if they happen to fall off whilst doing so. To add to the woes of prepping these figures, they also come without bases and there are no slotta tabs to attach them to slotta bases, thus making basing a bitch as they all have tiny feet and thus only small areas to adhere to the bases. I wound up pinning those that are only on one foot so that they remained upright and to give them a stronger fix to their bases.

In hindsight, I should not have bought these miniatures for two reasons: firstly, and most importantly, they are not official figures and as such infringe upon GW/Newline etc. copyrights; and secondly they are not that great as sculpts. They fill a gap but not well enough for me. I don't think I will be buying any more figures from this company.

At the same time, I also managed to complete a Rohan captain figure. I have another one or two of these in my figures boxes already made up, so I have plenty of captain type figures but Springinsfeld mentioned a couple of Ral Partha miniatures in the comments of yesterday's post that I may very well look into - these are not like the Sons of Eorl miniatures trying to fill a gap, but just happen to look like they will fit in with LotR Rohan faction minis.

The difference in quality between these captain miniatures and the unofficial ones featured above is very evident. You may have noiced that the mounted captain is not on his horse. I am wondering what to do about mounting him on a horse, i.e. as he is metal, the standard Rohan horses are prone to break very easily with that extra weight. I put the Gondor metal knights onto Warlord's Pike and Shotte horses, so I may look around to see if there are any other maunfacturers that make horses that would suit Rohan rather than Gondor.

Also, should he be for the general eored or shall I make him part of one of the elite units (Erkenbarnd's Redshields for example?). This unit assignment will work fine for the mounted capatin as his shield is separate but not so easy for the foot captain as his shield is an integral part of the miniature and not easily changed. I will think further on this when I get the entire army out on the work bench again to stat up and begin painting.

Personal Rohan resin shield options

Just a quick post for today. As mentioned in a previous post, I put out a commission for a professional sculptor to make me some shields to use with my elite Rohan units. This is what he came up with (ignore the little spiky bits as they are the resin equivalent of flash or venting on metal minis)...

The shield on the left in the picture above is a stylised double-horse, and the middle and right are similar to ones already produced for the Eorlingas miniatures. The backs of the shields are also textured to look like wood. I can't recall the reasoning behind the designs I wanted made but I will try to rationalise them now.

I think the stylised ones could work well for an elite force as they are quite striking. Erkenbrand's Redshields and Grimbold's Helmingas are both elite units but I feel the warriors in those two units are not quite up to bearing the honour of sporting those shield designs. Maybe they could be a part of Theodred's/Eomer's/Elfhelm's elite cadre? As mentioned previously, Theoden will have Royal Guard and Theodred will have Sons of Eorl as their elite huscarls but what about the other two/three Marshals of the Mark? I think maybe Eomer should also have Sons of Eorl as he is part of the royal household but Elfhelm...? He has a flamboyant name, so maybe a flamboyant looking unit to accompany him? But then what about the Outriders? Where will they fit in? Decisions, decisions.

I will ponder what to do with these over the next day or so and then glue up Erkenbrand's Redshields both on foot and mounted. I will also look into those conversions for Grimbold's Helmingas and see what I can do to mix things up a little with them - as mentioned in a previous post, I only want them armed with hand weapons and shields. This will mean I shall have a few spare archers going - perhaps these can be painted as PCs or NPCs for the Adventures in Middle Earth RPG? At least I will be able to try out different paint schemes on them rather than the standard greens and reds.

A short break

Apologies for not getting around to posting on Friday last week - my eldest son had to be collected from university and the rest of the kids broke up from school/college at different times so I was running around all day doing this and didn't find the time to do anything hobby related.

However, a little bit of general surfing over the weekend turned up this picture. I think it sums up the might of the horse lords of Rohan nicely. I find the picture very inspiring and it makes me want to complete my Eorlingas quite soon so I can get them onto the tabletop and into a narrative scenario.

Picture taken from The One Ring - Oaths of the Riddernark rulebook - Copyright Cubicle 7 Entertainment

I will probably not be posting as regularly over the next week or so whilst the kids are off for their Easter break from school etc. I still have a few miniatures to sort out and get based up, but these figures are all non-standard: Shelob, cave trolls, unofficial Sons of Eorl on foot and a few sprues of Rohan (both Riders and warriors). I am slowly getting through the more difficult models but I am stuck on what to do with the Rohan miniatures.

I have a blister of Erkenbrand (foot and mounted) and also one of the Grimbold command group (Grimbold, banner and horn). I would like to make up a unit for both of these and give them different paint jobs to the Rohirrim I have already painted up to differentiate them from the rank and file Eorlingas. I would also like to start converting some miniatures to make these two units stand out even more.

To aid me in doing this, I asked a professional sculptor to make me some resin shields and moulds a few years back (when I was working and had hobby money to spare). These have languished in a bag until a couple of days ago when I had the unexpected pleasure of finding them again. There are 3 designs, and 20 of each shield (I think) have been cast. I will use these to differentiate Erkenbrand's Redshields and Grimbold's Helmingas, by using one design for each unit, from the standard Rohirrim. I will post pictures of the shields when I get the chance to as soon as I can.

My idea is to have a dozen Redshields, both on foot and mounted, with one design of shield, and a further dozen Helmingas, on foot only, converted to bearing only hand weapons (i.e. no archers). These will take a few days to complete, so I will post on my progress in a few days' time.

Rohan's Elite Warriors

I think Rohan is my second largest force, after Gondor, number of figures wise. Although, saying that, Isengard (if the orcs and wargs are included) may be pushing for that title too. It will be interesting to do a count up once everything is out of its blister/box and onto the work table.

Anyway, here is the original view of the army from two years ago. I think that there have been a few additions to this faction since then whilst I was trying to round out the army to what I originally wanted. I have now reined that in and will get by with what I have here and perhaps one or two small purchases to complete any unit that is a figure or two short...

Rohan Royal Guard and other Elites...

The majority of the blisters shown in the first photo contained Royal Guard on foot and mounted Sons of Eorl. I also bought some unofficial miniatures to double up as foot versions of the Sons of Eorl - they are not the best sculpts in the world, but we will see how they look when painted up fully.

With the Royal Guard I decided to create them as a unit of spearmen. In the blisters you get three subtly different warrior sculpts and six right arms: three with spears and three with swords. I now have a dozen sword arms for my bits box which may come in handy in the future. I will use these troops as King Theoden's personal retinue, but some may double-up for extra duties to guard Theodred (when he was alive) when out hunting down orcs of the White Hand. I double-checked my mounted Royal Guard numbers and found that I only have 10 standard poses, so I will need to grab a couple more to make a full-sized unit. I do, however, have two Royal Guard with longer spears that are presumably meant as banner bearers - I will use them as such to show off Theoden's might.

This brings us onto some other elite warriors. As shown above, I have half-a-dozen Sons of Eorl. Unfortunately, when I ordered them Games Workshop would just send a random assortment - hence why I got five of one pose and only one of the other - at the time I would have preferred three of each, but this could work in my favour as an unnamed captain type and five troops? I wondered what to use these for and decided that these hardened warriors would be the right-hand men of each of the Marshals of the Riddermark; so, Theodred and Eomer can be accompanied by them, and perhaps Elfhelm and Erkenbrand?

Heroes of the Riddermark...

In addition to the elite warriors there were a couple of hero sculpts that needed prepping. Most have already been made up, but Gamling was still in his blister. I now have a couple of Gamling mounted with Standard minis, a couple of him on foot with sword and now on foot with the Rohan Royal Standard. I will probably try to either paint the duplicates differently or try to convert them to get some more unique poses/characters. I would like to get a mounted Gamling without the flag and also a mounted Hama to at least round out the film heroes.

Looking at my collection and names gathered from the books (from memory I might add, so I have undoubtedly missed some - please let me know if you can think of any more War of the Ring era (and a few years either side) heroes from the books/films) I think I can represent the following characters...

• Theoden (foot and mounted - couple of poses of each)
• Theodred (foot and mounted)
• Eomer (foot and mounted - couple of poses of each)
• Eowyn (foot and mounted - a few foot pose variants)
• Gamling (foot and mounted with standard, and foot with sword only)
• Hama (foot only)
• Erkenbrand (foot and mounted)
• Grimbold (foot only)

Here are some I would like to represent...

• Elfhelm - a marshall of the Riddermark - perhaps a converted spare Eomer mini?
• Dunhere - lord of Harrowdale - some kind of conversion or maybe a third party miniature?
• Guthlaf - Theoden's flag bearer - I already have Gamling for that but as Peter Jackson played fast and loose with the characters (for understandable film continuity reasons) I will have to see what I can do here - convert a Gamling mini or maybe a Royal Guard bannerman?

I have plenty of miniatures in this part of my collection to make up a great set of armies for the three main rules sets (Strategy Battle Game, Dragon Rampant and Saga) I would like to play. Many are actually painted too, so this may happen sooner than anticipated. Carrying on from the above dialogue, I was hoping to portray as many characters from the film and books as possible. Some thinking and rejigging will be required, but I think I can manage with most of the figures I already possess. I will do a final reckoning when this particular faction ends up on the workbench for a points tally and to see if I need to fill any gaps.