Missives from Middle Earth #4 - 'There flowered a White Tree, and that was for Gondor..'

It's been a wee while since the last Works in Progress, mainly due to a very busy end to 2023 that included my wife's birthday, my 40th birthday, a trip to Edinburgh to see Wicked and of course the usual festivities at Christmas. 

Despite how busy it's been, I've continued chipping away at things although I didn't manage to get everything wrapped up by Hogmanay as I'd hoped, I have managed to finish some more minis. I've also managed to buy a few more as well, but more on that later.

First things first though - finished minis.

Anborn and Mablung were an absolute joy to paint up and fit in perfectly with the Rangers I painted earlier in 2023. 

They have a little more detail compared to the older sculpts, but as they're named characters, I'm OK with their wargear being a bit fancier than their rank and file comrades. 

The quartet of Knights I built over the summer are also finished now as well and I have to say I'm glad I kept the horses and riders separate as it made painting them much easier! Before I started on the horses I spent a little time looking some photos of different horse breeds to get some inspiration for hair colours, ultimately settling on painting two in a chestnut tone and two in a darker almost mahogany tone. 

As a wee aside, while researching 'painting miniature horses' because it's been roughly a decade since I last painted anything equine, I also stumbled across this very handy WarCom article which is well worth checking out if you're embarking on some cavalry based adventures in tabletop wargaming. 

 

Just before Christmas I assembled and based Faramir, Damrod and Madril, who were to be the last three minis of the army. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to build Damrod and Madril without the scenic ruins on their bases. The reason for this was twofold - firstly Anborn and Mablung are on plainer bases so they would sit better alongside each other, and secondly it would make them easier to paint. Faramir was built with the ruined balustrade though as I preferred this option to him vaulting tree stump.

Since I finished building the Knights, I've had an idea bubbling away at the back of my mind to kitbash a Warrior of Minas Tirith with a banner. Banners seem to be quite important in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, so I thought having access to one would be a good idea. It is possible to buy a metal Gondor Command set, but as I've lamented in the past on the blog, I don't really like metal minis. I grabbed an extra Warrior from eBay and with a little trimming to make things fit, I think the pennant has worked quite well.  Naturally, this has prompted more thoughts and I'm currently contemplating whether I can achieve something similar to equip a plastic Warrior with a warhorn.

The beginning of December offered up an opportunity to try out a game of MESBG for the first time in more than a decade as my friend Fraser of The Obsidian Forge  was over in Inverness and he's also been getting into the game. He brought along a Battlehost of Mordor lead by the Witch King of Angmar for me to test my mettle against. We played using the Battlehost Quick Start rules which are available from Warhammer Community so we could try and get a handle on the basics of the system before diving fully into everything that it has to offer. 

Although the men of Gondor fought valiantly to defend the ruins of a deserted hamlet in the north of Ithilien, they were overwhelmed and eventually all cut down by the Witch King and his minions. One particularly amazing moment during the battle occurred when a lowly Warrior of Minas Tirith dug deep into his reserves of courage and managed to successfully charge the Witch King in a bid to defend Mablung. Sadly, he had wildly over-estimated his combat prowess and was slain by Sauron's lieutenant in short order. 

While the game didn't go my way, it did give us a really good run through of how the game works and it's quite easy to see why it's the few rulesets released by GW that has remained relatively unchanged since it's original release and I'm looking forward to giving it another go when I have the chance.

Speaking of which, during December I managed to track down a Gondor Mansion kit, so having snapped that and a set of Ruins up I'm planning to create a ruined mansion to act as a centrepiece for my terrain collection. On a bit of an MESBG rush, I also picked up a few other things as well, including the Witch King (who I think will be cool to paint up), Éomer and a box of Rohirrim (who I think might make for good allies for Faramir and his warriors) and after watching Too Many Minis unboxing and painting vid on Youtube, I also grabbed a set each of the special edition King of the Dead and Warriors of the Dead as well as the Three Hunters so I've plenty of MESBG adventures in my pile of potential now. 

I think that about does it for this update though, so until next time, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.