10mm Easterlings

I have long harbored the desire to refight the great battles of Middle Earth with 10mm Warmaster armies.  Aside from the problem of needing a large number of regiments for most of the battles, another problem is finding suitable figures to represent the forces present, in particular the Easterlings from Rhûn, which are needed for the battle of the Pelennor Fields.   I had hoped that Copplestone would eventually get around to making these, but the line appears to be abandoned.

Yesterday I commented on Javier at War's comparison picture of Copplestone warg riders [they are large], and lamented that there are no forthcoming figures from Copplestone to represent the other followers of Sauron.  A fellow commenter pointed me to Tajimal miniatures which happens to make a suitable Rhûn Easterling stand in, with a look that is compatible with the movies, without being too ridiculous.

Here are a couple of regiments painted up [by Tajimal]:

£7.5 per unit

So that is pretty exciting, although getting enough regiments to represent the "several thousand" men from Rhûn present at the battle, will not be cheap.

Laughing Ferret - Give away

Laughing Ferret, of Laughing Ferret Lab, is having a 200,000th hit give-away.  Merely commenting on the blog gives you an entry, and plugging the contest gives you another.  There are some very nice prizes, including a sprue of Mordor orcs, dice, and some old codexs [codices?].

200k hits is pretty great, and the blog is interesting, even if you do not play Bloodbowl...  I seem to recall first reading the blog a while back with an article about Lord of the Ring dwarf ranger conversions, and started following there after.

Middle Earth terrain mat

I have long wanted to have a proper games table, fully done up with modular terrain tiles, undulating surfaces, hills, forests, etc. Such a table could be used for many games, and would look lovely during play, which is really the goal. However, lack of time, money, and space have conspired together to prevent this from occurring.

A terrain mat, on the other hand, gives many of the benefits of a bespoke terrain table, and has the advantage of being much cheaper and easier to store (as one simply rolls it up). While it does not have movable components like a modular table, nor does it do integrated hills quite as well, it does have the ability to have items places under it to create terrain contours, which can be good for rolling terrain. There are many manufacturers of terrain mats, ranging from painted felt, as exemplified by Hotz mats, to latex, as exemplified by Zuzzy. Both types are somewhat pricey, however, you certainly get a quality product in the end (and with Hotz you can get a double sided mat for $20-$80 more depending on type and size).

Yes, this please (for 10mm)

Another option is to make your own mat, which of course trades a certain amount of for some (potential) savings in terms of cost.  Several times I have seen picture of people using canvas mats covered with acrylic caulk and flock, and they look quite nice, and remain flexible. As an added bonus, you can mount the canvas over rubber foam tiles (like for the floor) and then pin mount trees or other terrain to the board for a more realistic look.

more of a 3d look for larger scales

Here are some tutorials to make them:

Classic for 10mm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76935015@N03/sets/72157629346115756

Using rolls of canvas
http://tobispaintpot.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-horizon-tutorial-for-flexible.html

Using more of a three dimentional aspect:
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=31358.0

Artist canvas
http://finiatures.blogspot.com/2011/09/making-terrain-mat.html

Desert
http://1000footgeneral.blogspot.com/2012/11/desert-wasteland-wargame-terrain-cloth.html

In researching for this, I was reading about the Battle of Five Armies (Bo5A being the game I am most likely to get going on this terrain), and while looking at maps of the battlefield, I have decided that it is similar enough to the layout for the Battle of the Hornburg to make the mat work for both with some small adjustment.  This should also be usable as a generic Dirtside or FoW table as well, as grass and dirt are fairly scale agnostic (and some large scale scatter terrain, trees, or fur fields will help as well for 15mm games).

So, at some time in the (hopefully near) future I will build one of these mats, and it will be glorious.  The only trick will be getting a game on it...

Smaug's Hoard

Forbes writer Michael Noer calculates the value of Smaug's treasure.  As you are aware from your close reading of the Hobbit, Smaug ruined the dwarven kingdom, and took all the treasure and made a huge pile of it.  Which he then slept on.  Mr. Noer calculates this at a value of $8.6 billion, including the Arkenstone.  This number of course leaves out the matter of the value of mithril items [Bilbo's coat alone worth as much as the Shire], and the value of any gems and such like mixed in with the gold and silver, but it is still an astounding total.

Battle of the Five Armies

Some day, I will get around to painting the figures from my set of Battle of the Five Armies. (I do have the Elvish knights painted, and a regiment of Uruk-hai)

In the meantime, here are two galleries of pictures showing the good and evil sides of the game.

Good

Evil

Lovely stuff (particularly at 10mm!), and worthy of emulation once I get to that stage.

Games Workshop News

As you are probably aware, Games Workshop(GW) produces a game based on the Lord of the Rings (LotR) movies, and later got the licence for pretty much all Third Age related material. The release of the LotR movies, and the resulting boxed games and figures for the game was a HUGE boost to GW's business, and has resulted in the LotR game becoming one of the "core" systems pushed by GW. It has even spawned a mass battle version of the game, which I have not played, but which is supposed to be pretty good.

Now, GW has signed an agreement to make games based on the two new Hobbit movies. This should be good for the company, and seems pretty exciting to me as well. A Hobbit based version of the basic LotR game would be great, more interest in the Battle of Five Armies would be great, and figures would be great too! [maybe they will even re-release the Bo5A metal figures!?] So a pretty exciting, if not unexpected announcement.

Also, the Warhammer Orcs and Goblins are getting a new book soon, and in GW language, that means new models, and specifically, new plastic kits. This seems to mean mostly savage orcs, which interest me not at all, but the Skulkers and huge spider could be interesting.

Unfortunately, there are no new common or forest goblins on foot, which is what I was really looking for. Maybe those will come out in the "second wave".

Middle Earth Musings

As you might have guessed by reading this blog (someone does read this, right?), I flit from one project to another, based on the weather, or what I have read online, or pretty pictures I have seen. I have been in a Middle Earth sort of mood lately, partly due to reading the Lord of the Rings to my wife and offspring at bedtime, and partly due to a cousin naming his new daughter after someone in the Silmarillion. (yes, seriously) Both activities led to reading about the world on Wikipediea, which has a good deal of information from the books and the histories of Middle Earth, published by Christopher Tolkien.

Thinking about Middle Earth always makes me think about the grand battles, and playing them on the tabletop. Battles such as Pelennor Feilds, the Five Armies, Osgiliath, and the Hornburg are huge cinematic struggles, even without there being a movie made. With grand battles, it makes sense to go small scale for figures, and with LotR it makes sense to look at 10mm because of the Battle of Five Armies box, which has a huge number of regiments perfect for use in other battles as well. Once you are talking 10mm, then Warmaster or some variant comes into play as well, which is excellent, since I have three versions of those rules, and like them enough for a game.

The difficulty with doing battles from the Lord of the Rings is of course that most of them are not even matches, there are either huge massive numbers of baddies, or a moral break on the part of the enemy that causes them to flee, or good guys riding up to save the day, or all of those. Several battles are essentially sieges, or battles around the relief of a siege. "Bathtubing" [a most excellent term which comes from naval gamers] the major battles is necessary, and in most cases I think one regiment for 1000 men is probably sufficient. That is a figure ratio around 1:30, which is not too bad, and well suited I think to Warmaster. However, even this leads to around 55 evil regiments at Pelennor Feilds, two of those comprised of mûmikil (as well as Grond and siege equipment). Careful scenario building will be necessary though, to make sure that each battle is not a repeat of the book, and that the "good" side has a chance of achieving objectives. Point based "even" meeting battles might be a way to go, but that is a lot more work than just setting up a scenario based on the books.

Figurewise I am actually pretty well situated for once, since I have the Battle of Five Armies box, and it has eight regiments of Orcs alone, and a total of 16 "evil" regiments. I have a small Rohan force made up of Copplestone "Horse tribe" figures and the good and evil hero packs as well. Of course that leaves only 42 more regiments to go for Pelennor Fields... most of those are Haradrim and Rhûn Easterlings. The humans, both good and evil, will be sourced from historical armies, which should be easy enough. Great Hall Miniatures will be of help here, since they sell both Magister Militum and Old Glory figures, both of which should be excellent for this purpose (and cost effective!)

So anyway, that is the distraction de jure, the reoccurring dream of massive 10mm Middle Earth. I just have to stave off dreams of refighting the War of Wrath, and Balrogs riding on Dragons...