Missives from Middle Earth #1 - "Towards danger; but not too rashly, nor too straight"

Regular readers of the blog will know that I am seldom able to maintain concentration upon a single project for very long as I'm something of a hobby butterfly. It's for this reason that I decided a few years ago that rather than set rigid and difficult to achieve hobby goals to try and complete each year, I would simply aim to paint more miniatures and play more games and happily, this has allowed me to relax and enjoy hobby time much more than I did in the past. That said, one of the things I specifically did want to try and do this year was to take part in Armies on Parade as it's not something I've done before.  

Army painting isn't something I find comes easily and where I have managed to thrash out a painted army in the in the past, I've never been fully happy with the finished results and this, in combination with a few other factors including timing of the event and lack of confidence in my capabilities this has meant that I've not participated in years gone by. 

Listening to The Painting Phase podcast a few weeks ago, I was struck by a part of one of their discussions about army painting where they zeroed in on the question of what constitutes an army? Every gaming system has different answers to this question, coming from playing Age of Darkness games in the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, an army is generally regarded as 3000 points of miniatures. 40k and Age of Sigmar have three tiers of point levels ranging from a smaller army being 500 or 750 points respectively, an a larger one being somewhere around 2000 points. On the podcast however, Peachy put it to Geoff and Pat that an army is whatever you want it to be. This might seem somewhat self-evident, but it dawned on me that I'd been falling into a bit of trap around what an army is and I'd been holding myself back as a result.

So with that in mind, I decided to try and push forward with one of the army ideas I'd been playing with over the last few months: a small Minas Tirith force for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. I've alluded to this army on the blog before but here's what I currently have (loosely) planned.

Faramir, Captain of Gondor

leading a warband of 7 Warriors of Minas Tirith and 3 Knights of Minas Tirith

Madril, Captain of Ithilien

leading a warband of 3 Rangers of Gondor

Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien

I may also add Anborn and Mablung because the miniatures from Forge World just look so good. I've no idea if this army would be competitive, but frankly, that isn't the point here - this feels like an army that is evocative of part of the story of Middle Earth, includes a selection of units, could potentially be used for gaming but more importantly will look cohesive and can be painted to a good standard. Not only that, but ultimately these criteria are manageable and achievable (can you tell that SMART targets have been topics of discussion for me recently?).

 

So, where am I with all of this in practical terms at the moment? Well, I spent a few days last week painting up the three Rangers that Madril will lead:

Although the Rangers are already very distinct from the Warriors of Minas Tirith, I wanted to lean into their individuality compared to the more regimented appearance of their more heavily armoured comrades by painting each of the elements of their clothing slightly differently. To help tie them together though, their cloak were all painted in the same forest green which will be used on Faramir, Madril and Damrod as well. 

Along with the Rangers, I now have six Warriors of Minas Tirith painted up as well. Armed with a mix of weapons, they were initially painted up as a Battle Company (Middle Earth's narrative skirmish equivalent to Kill Team, Warcry and Necromunda) to expand upon the model I painted up for the Miniature of the Month Masterclass last September. 

From here, I've a couple of options for next steps as I've four more warriors assembled, based and ready for priming:

while Faramir, Madril and Damrod are still awaiting assembly while I settle on whether to use the scenic basing elements for them or not. I'm currently leaning towards using them as it would play into the idea I have in mind of using some of the Osgiliath ruins terrain to create a small display board for the force, but I'll see how things go.

With the Rangers painted however, I also feel a bit more comfortable about picking up the Knights as well and I'm conscious that there's unlikely to be a better time to grab them and Anborn and Mablung but I also want to keep in mind that my main overarching aim with painting is simply to paint more miniatures so I can relax and enjoy exploring wherever the path of this project leads rather than feeling I have to do anything in particular because ultimately, this army, like every army of miniatures should, can be whatever I want it to be.