For a variety of reasons, it's been another fair while since my last Missive from Middle Earth, but I'm very pleased to be writing this one as it marks a bit of a milestone.
Before we get into that though, I should say that the delay in writing this post in no way signals a decline in my interest in MESBG, but rather stems from the age old "not enough time to do everything" issue which has just meant that this particular project has taken a bit of a back seat.
That said, with how well Faramir, Madril and Damrod have come out, I hope you'll agree it was worth taking my time with them rather than rushing to just get them done. Speaking of which, here are some close ups of the three of them:
Faramir
Madril
Damrod
When painting the three of them up, I took pretty much the same approach as I did with Anborn, Mablung and the trio of Rangers I did last year, so when they're grouped together they will hopefully balance both looking individual while also being part of a coherent force.
One thing that sets Faramir, Madril and Damrod apart from their fellow Rangers though, is the larger chunks of stone on their bases, which I painted up to match the Gondorian Ruins in my terrain collection to help tie them together. Not only will this make gaming with them and the painted terrain a bit more immersive, but I haven't completely ruled out making a stab at an Armies on Parade entry with this army which will be easier to do with the miniatures and scenery matching up.
Something else I should probably mention about painting up Faramir, Madril and Damrod is the slight deviations I decided to make from the colours on the box art. The most obvious of these is that Damrod's cloak is green which was actually a twofold choice - firstly it meant he would match the other Rangers, but equally importantly I felt he just looked too drab with only brown tones across his clothing. Madril's clothing was switched up a little as well with Death Korps Drab used to add a dark green to the lower half of his long coat. Both of these are definitely minor tweaks in the grand scheme of things, but I felt they were worth making to create more interesting and characterful paint schemes on the models.
I also got the kitbashed Warrior with Banner painted up over the last few months. He was fairly quick to do as there are far fewer colours involved than on the Rangers!
Which brings me nicely on to milestones. Well, milestone: with Faramir and his lieutenants now finished, I've exceeded the goal I set myself back in March last year, ending up with the following:
Faramir’s Warband - 225 Points
Faramir, Captain of Gondor, 4 Knights of Minas Tirith, 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith, 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with spears, 2 Warrior of Minas Tirith with bows
Madril’s Warband - 79 Points
Madril, Captain of Ithilien, 3 Rangers of Gondor
Minor Heroes - 95 points
Anborn, Ranger of Ithilien, Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien, Mablung, Ranger of Ithilien
which comes to a total of 399 points. On top of that wee lot, I also have the Warrior with Banner that I painted up as well, so it's fair to say that I'm pretty chuffed with how this project has gone. But is an army ever really finished? Well, in this case, no. Or more accurately, not quite yet...
When the Wardens of Gondor were released back in 2019, I was blown away by the sculpts, but didn't really have an excuse to pick up the kit at the time as I just wasn't doing anything with MESBG back then. "But", I thought to myself as I was painting up Faramir et al, "with a fledgling army to field them in I've a pretty good one now", so in one of the brief windows that they weren't out of stock over the last couple of months I grabbed a set and I have to say that the sculpts are even better in hand than they look in photos. They also go together incredibly smoothly, only taking around 45 minutes to clean up and assemble once they'd been soaked and scrubbed.
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