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.

Dwarves of Khazad Dum

The faction I decided to work on today was the Dwarves. As can be seen from the picture below, there were quite a few figures that needed to be made up in readiness for undercoating.

There were actually a few extra figures in addition to those featured in the photograph above as I did a bit of eBaying after the photo was taken, to round out the army - Balin needs a lot of warriors to reclaim Moria!

Although I have a Durin and a Dain miniature, I may use them as just ordinary dwarf lords/captains (Ori and Oin?) to go with the more generic dwarf lords in the collection. The reason being, from my (probably very shaky) recollection, is that Durin had died when his people delved too deeply and released the balrog (Durin's Bane) and Dain was busy rebuilding Erebor after the untimely deaths of Thorin's line (Thorin, Fili and Kili) at the Battle of the Five Armies.

Dwarf Lords...

I have quite a few dwarf lords and leaders, perhaps too many to be represented on the tabletop at the same time? As you can see from the top photo, I have some dwarf command, Gimli, Floi Stonehand (?) and a very old Citadel pre-slotta called Thorgrimm (according to the imprint on his base). I have to admit I don't really like that King's Champion and attendant shield/banner bearers, but had bought it at the time to round out the collection. The miniatures were not slotta based which makes me wonder if they were just some old minis GW had lying around not doing anything and some bright spark suggested they be utilised (and therefore make money) as LotR minis.

The second photo shows a few Iron Guard and four dwarf kings. I actually like these miniatures for all their plainness. The less is more approach really worked on these for me and they can be used for any other named dwarf I want them to be if necessary.

Dwarf Warriors...

Whilst I was building the army I discovered that I didn't have that many actual Dwarf Warriors. I have lots of elites and so forth but only a couple of sprues of Rangers and a few metal miniatures. I think a couple of sprues of plastic warriors may be required to round out the force when I can get access to some funds.

The first photo shows off two sprues worth of Dwarf Rangers. Unfortunately, one of the twin axe wielding warriors is sans an axe in his right hand - he was also almost sans hand too, but a nifty bit of work with the plastic glue put that right (I hope). I will have to try to find a similarly shaped axe from my bits box and see if he can be salvaged.

The lower photo shows off the original metal Dwarf Warriors blister sets. I have two each of the ones armed with axes and with bows as well as the Murin and Drar set which I will utilise as their named captains.

Dwarf Elites...

I guess the Iron Guard minis above in the Lords section should have featured in this section but I took the photos before worrying about how I was going to lay out the blog post. I have plenty of Khazad Guard but noticed there was a subtle difference in the posing of two of them with their axes raised over their heads (last two warriors on the right, back row in lower picture). I will have to see if I can eBay those last two poses again so I have two full sets of Khazad Guards.

As can also be seen from the lower picture, I have a Dain and Balin miniature to lead each troop with a spare Balin to be painted or converted slightly to maybe make Ori or Oin? The Thorgrimm mini could double as either one of those two as well.

In addition to the standard troops, I also have Durin and Mardin as well as a ballista with crew. I don't have any Vault Warden teams - shall I get one or two? Not sure yet but will wait and see how the points totals for this army turn out once I have also got a couple of boxes of plastic warriors and how my funds are holding up.

Again, this army is rather large, especially if/when it gets the additional plastic dwarf warriors, so I will try to see if there is a Dragon Rampant and saga army list for them on the web somewhere. If not, I guess I could always create my own when the muse takes me (probably whilst painting I will begin to procrastinate and end up designing armies for several rules sets).

I have decided to add an additional tally to the blog where I will list probable and possible additions to my LotR armies. These numbers will be nowhere near what I originally had envisioned for each faction, but will now just cover the basics required to round out my armies.

Haradrim Raiding party

On Friday I managed to grab three hours and put them to good use. I took all of my Haradrim miniatures and began working on them. Some have already been prepped and are ready for their undercoats - details can be seen in the picture below that I took a couple of years ago when I still had high hopes for my Middle Earth armies.

As you can see, I had a box of Haradrim Raiders and four blisters of figures to work on. The next three hours saw me get out the clippers, files and plastic/Super glues and get them made up. You may also notice a couple of random miniatures in the photo (on the right). These are a couple of minis I thought might come in handy for a Haradrim force. The one on the left is an ancient Citadel Chaos type warrior and the one on the right was a freebie from a magazine or something of Saladin.

I only took a few photos as I was working on them; pretty much only the plastic Haradrim raiders as I wanted a mini-tutorial for myself on how I put them together. First up is a sprue shot of the riders and their equipment...

Now for the actual horses...

I noticed that there are only two variants for each half of the horse. I put them together for test purposes and noticed the typical goofy kicking out leg pose. I decided I would play it safe and go for two of each of the main pose and then do a swap for the other two so I only ended up with the one goofy pose.

When putting the horses together I decided to do my usual and fill the body cavities with Plasticene. I always do this for cavalry miniatures now as it gives them an extra gramme or two of heft. Not a lot in the scheme of things but it can make a bit of difference on the gaming table as they tend to be just that little tiny bit more stable.

I decided not to do a full army photo as I will save that until I come to paint them, so I can get a before and after shot. Also, I was at a loss as to what to do with the extra bows, quivers and spear arm. For now I have plonked them in my bits box in a separate see through zip-lock bag I had lying around. They may come in handy later on for some conversions.

Now for the procrastination bit. I have decided to be good with this army and only contemplate buying one more box of Haradrim Raiders (when I have the spare money) so I have a round dozen plastic mounted troops. I have plenty of everything else, so unless I am lucky and spot some eBay or trade show bargains of Harad metal miniatures I will leave the force at that.


I have plenty of troops to make a great raiding force; 36 warriors, 8 mounted raiders, a few heroes and a couple of half-trolls. I will have to sit down and work out the points values as I complete the force. I may paint up 2/3 of the foot troops for normal SBG and the other 1/3 as a Battle Companies force, and utilise my two non-GW minis as captains of that force.

As I have quite a few minis in this faction it might also be numerous enough to be used for any future games of Dragon Rampant or Saga I may wish to partake in. When ready, I will trawl the internet to see if anyone has made up any faction specific Dragon Rampant or Saga forces and then calculate a force that can be made up from the miniatures I already have. If I need any further additional miniatures for this particular army at a later date, I can hopefully ask for a box or whatever for Christmas or hopefully have a job by then in order to buy them myself.

Monday will hopefully see me doing the same for another faction. Which faction will I choose? Decisions, decisions :-)

An Update on my Lord of the Rings hobby

This post is as a thank you to Springinsfeld for spurring me on with his suggestion to try to get in half an hour a day of gaming related work, even if it is just planning.

On Monday this week I pulled out all of the boxes, cartons, blisters and bags that contained my Lord of the Rings miniatures and began to put them into army themed piles. I then put them back into those self-same boxes, cartons, blisters and bags again. However, this time they were collected by army (rather than by type of packaging) and this gave me a much better insight into what needed to be done with the miniatures I have in my collection.

Before I went on my gaming hiatus, I had high-faluting' plans for each army that would have involved me paying out many hundreds of pounds to complete them to my requirements. When I looked at them again with my long term unemployed person's eyes I saw them differently. Yes, there are a few gaps I would like to fill, but for now I have many hundreds of miniatures to keep me busy; prepping, gluing, undercoating, painting, basing and finally playing with. I can always add to the armies as I paint them on an ongoing basis as and when I get a few quid spare (or for birthday/Christmas presents). What with Games Workshop's renewed interest and support of the game, most of the minis should still be available in a few years' time.

The pile of boxes has stood in front of my main book shelf in the lounge right in the way of everything. I did this on purpose to spur me into action. I will only put them back whence they came when the miniatures have been taken out of their packaging, cut off their sprues etc., cleaned up and put into proper figure storage boxes (luckilly I have several of these available that I have collected over the years).

This un-boxing and re-boxing took me the best part of three or four hours. It seems like a long time but there was a lot of sorting to do and every time I saw something that made me go "Ooh, I forgot I had them" the procrastinator in me kicked in as I imagined how to build the force further around those particular troops. I had to kick those thoughts into touch and just get on with the job.

Tuesday saw me looking at the miniatures in a different way. I was to look at each army, see what I had and work out some quick wins to get them prepped. So, I sorted out three or four of them that will get my attention first. These were the smaller forces I have been collecting, so will be quicker to prep and then subsequently paint and get onto the gaming table.

The armies I will be looking at first, in no particular order, will be the Haradrim, Dwarfs, Dunlendings, Isengard Uruk Hai and some eBob Mongols I will use as Easterling mercenaries. The Mongols were easy as I only have 10 footmen and 6 cavalry for my force. These have already been glued up, undercoated and painting is underway (although I will change their colour scheme when I get round to painting them proper). I decided to build an army a day, so these will be the subjects of my next few posts.

Unfortunately, the way real life goes I only got a little bit of time on Friday (couldn't do anything on Wednesday and Thursday) to start on the task ahead, but I used it wisely. I managed to get the Haradrim prepped for proper storage. This will be the subject of my next post.

So, in total I worked on my hobby for about 6 hours this week before I actually got down to doing any actual work on the miniatures. I also spent a good three hours on the Haradrim stuff, so 9 hours in total over the week is pretty good - more than I have done in almost two years! The writing of these blog posts also take a little time, but I won't include these details in my calculations.

A hiatus and a new beginning?

I have been neglecting a lot in my life recently due to many life changing events that have ocurred over the last couple of years. I think I am now getting things back on track slowly but surely but hobby time has suffered a fair bit as a result.

You may recognise the above symbol from one or two of my other blogs - it is meant to represent the crossroads I am at and the possibilty of directions my life can now go in. Hopefully, it will be a positive direction no matter the path I take.

Last year I was quite ill throughout the summer and, added to the fact I am now responsible for the kids after splitting with my wife, I had to cancel many gaming events - mainly my weekly Wednesday D&D 5E night.

I managed a couple of guest appearances for my Gnome Wizard during the autumn half-term and winter school holidays, luckily partaking in the final couple of episodes of the campaign so far - hopefully it will be starting up again this coming summer once the DM has completed some work related stuff. I also managed to find the time for a session to roll up a Pendragon character (sadly not used him to play with yet), and a Ranger for another D&D session only a couple of weeks back.

So, I have managed to keep my hand in a little with the gaming side of things in my life, but mostly it has been in the form of reading forums and blogs just to keep up with news of what is happening in the gaming world (that said, I have only really been doing that since the new year turned anyway) and perusing a few of the rulebooks I bought a year or two back to see how I could utilise them going forwards - I am stoked about the latest Games Workshop Middle Earth : Strategy Battle Game stuff.

I have many thoughts on what I would like to achieve gaming wise over the next year or two but, alas, these ruminations are limited to times when I am contemplating all the other things in my life, so they generally take a bit of a back seat to those more important life decisions. Currently, my hobby time is of the lowest priority - life style events are taking more of a front seat (concerts, theatre and travel will be taking more of my time in the coming months).

The only other sort of gaming related stuff I have been doing is reading my massive backlog of comics. My 2000AD and Judge Dredd collection has now been read from the beginning again, up to and including Prog 2014 (i.e. the end of the calendar year 2013). I have now decided to take a break from them at this point so I could read my Dynamite collection of Red Sonja comics. Once these are read, I will read the year 2014 pile of 2000ADs, then go back to my odds and ends American sized comics, before getting another year's worth of 2000ADs and finally my Dark Horse Conan tales. After that I will complete my 2000AD collection - all-in-all, I think I should be kept busy reading them for at least another full year. The reason I mention above that these are kind of gaming related is that I mine them for scenario ideas in my own gaming worlds, as well as just enjoying them for what they are - darned good reads!

Well, that is just a little update just to let you all know that I am still contemplating gaming even if nothing is really happening at the moment. Hopefully things will improve this year and I will get more painting done from the lead and plastic mountain and I may even get some actual miniature gaming done on the dining room table with my sons.