LotR Free Peoples and Mordor Armies

Lord of the Rings Free Peoples Army (Prepped and Undercoated)

Third entry in this series of summaries - this is not really an army as such, more a collection of individual heroes and some back up troops. Here is what they looked like pre-prep...

And how things look post-prep...

There is a great variety of characters and troops in this little faction; some of them being from different manufacturers that fit in nicely and add a little colour to the mix. Most of the non-GW figures will be used in Adventures in Middle Earth games as NPCs etc., but I may get around to statting them up for the Strategy Battle Game, Saga or Dragon Rampant as part of certain units.

Anyway, here's what I have so far for this faction...

Plastic:
16 Elf warriors
16 Numenorian warriors

Metal:
Gil-Galad and Elrond
Elendil and Isildur
4 Elf Heroes (Galadriel, Haldir, Glorfindel (GW), Glorfindel (Mithril)
Radagast, Tom Bombadil, Gan-Buri-Gan and King of the Dead
5 eBob NPCs (Barliman Butterbur, Bill Ferny, Gatekeeper, Lady Greensleeves, Queen)
9 Fellowship (Gimli, 2xLegolas, 3xGandalf, 2xStrider, Boromir)
9 Hobbits (Farmer Maggot, 3xdogs, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin)

This gives a total of 69* Free peoples heroes and warriors.

Lord of the Rings Mordor Army (Prepped and Undercoated)

Again, this is not an army by any stretch. I could use the orcs and warg riders from the Isengard army (more on them later) to supplement it but will most likely not worry about Mordor as an entity in itself. I prefer the idea that it is a distant menace and occasionally its more sinister denizens (read: Ringwraiths) venture forth to gather information or infiltrate in order to disrupt. Here's the original picture of the Mordor faction pre-prep...

And the very much cut down set of personalities left over after the orcs are moved to the Isengard faction...

Not much to say on these, so here is the list of what I have got...

Metal:
Gothmog and two Morannon orc capatins
Shagrat and Gorbag
Gollum
3 x Witch King

This gives a total of 10* Servants of Sauron.

*Oops, I missed Shelob from the list, so the Servants of Sauron total is 10 miniatures (not 9) and the Free Peoples gained an additional 2 (Sam with Sting and Frodo wrapped in spider web) taking them to a total of 69 miniatures (not 67).

LotR Khazad Dum Army

Lord of the Rings Khazad Dum Army (Prepped and Undercoated)


Today, I can present to you the second of my Lord of the Rings miniatures armies; the Dwarfs of Khazad Dum. These can be used against the Goblins of Moria featured yesterday, or in fact any other orc type army.

I have quite a few of these and would like to add to them a little in the future to round out the army. Again, this all depends on me securing a new job and then being able to fund the collection. Here is the army pre-prep...

And the army removed from its blisters and boxes, prepped and undercoated ready for painting...

Plastic:
24 Dwarf rangers

Metal:
Murin and Drar
12 Dwarf warriors
Balin and Dain
14 Khazad Guard
4 Dwarf kings
Floi Stonehand
2 Dwarf captains
1 Dwarf banner bearer
Durin and Mardin
3 Iron Guard
King's Champion (3)
1 Dwarf ballista
1 old Citadel Thorgrimm miniature

This gives a total of 73 Dwarfs (plus one ballista)

This army is probably the least complete that I have. I would like to add in some standard plastic Dwarf warriors and beef up a few of the elite units so I can field either 12 or 6 of each. Details can be seen in the list on the right hand side of the page.

LotR Moria Army

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

This is the first in a series of follow up posts to the one I made way back in January 2015. The previous post "My Lord of the Rings Armies (The Boxes)" contains details of what I had back then when hardly any had been prepped in readiness for painting. This series of posts will feature each of those armies of the Lord of the Rings minis in turn that I have recently prepped and/or undercoated. There are a few minis that are still at the prep stage (need some putty work to fill a few gaps), but the vast majority of figures are ready to take a lick of colour.

I will follow a similar format with each of these posts, in that I will feature each army arrayed on the tabletop battle map and give a brief overview of what is in that faction.

First up is the army of Moria that I have collected over the almost twenty years since they were initially released. Here is the original pre-prep photo from a couple of years ago...

And here is a photo of the army post prep...

As can be seen there are two main components to this army; the goblins themselves and their troll support. The trolls still require some prep work with green stuff and then a subsequent undercoat with the spray can. A brief listing of the army is as follows...

Plastic:
36 Goblin warriors

Metal:
Durburz (Goblin King)
2 Goblin captains
1 Goblin Drum
4 Goblin warriors
4 Goblin warriors with bows
4 Goblin prowlers
1 Buhrdur (Hill Troll leader)
3 Cave Trolls

This gives a total of 53 Goblins (plus one drum) and 4 Trolls.

This is one of my smaller armies but it is certainly big enough to give the Fellowship some grief, or a dwarf expeditionary force a run for their money. Once all of the armies have been featured I will begin to stat them up for a variety of games systems and then get onto painting them all, which may be several years in the undertaking!

Glorfindel and the Witch King

I was away for the weekend (Friday thro' Monday), so only just getting back to the gaming stuff. Just a quick update today based on a little bit of work I was able to complete. Whilst working on the non-LotR fantasy miniatures over the last week or so, I came across a couple of blister packs I picked up as freebies at Salute over the years. These were produced by Mithril Miniatures who seem to have some kind of licence for an official range of Lord of the Rings figures based on the books.

I didn't get around to glueing up the orc on warg/giant wolf but I did manage to do something with Glorfindel and the Witch King. I cut them off the integral base things that they were on and pegged them by their feet to the standard 25mm slotta bases I use. You may also have noticed that they have been sprayed in black undercoat. That is because I was able to get out to my local GW store last week and pick up a new can of Chaos Black. Unfortunately, they no longer supply Rhinox Hide which is what I use to undercoat horses, scouts, rangers and so on.

These miniatures are made at a slightly larger scale than the Games Workshop figures, but a quick measure up proved that they would work with the rest of my collection. I only have three other Ringwraiths and two of those are also of the Witch King (plus Khamul, foot and mounted), so when I get around to painting him, I will show a comparison of them side-by-side. I would like to grab a few more generic Ringwraiths, but they will have to wait at the back of a very long queue for now.

Until I get some putty sorted out, my work on these miniatures has ground to a halt for a bit. I think I will photograph each army (whether undercoated/puttied or not) in its entirety and run a few numbers just to get everything catalogued to date. At least I can then begin to work on statting the units/armies to see what I have and in what games systems they can be used.

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.