Missives from Middle Earth #12 "...their armour is thick and their shields are broad."

My recent dalliance with one of the minions of Sauron got me thinking about a project I’d been contemplating in late 2025; painting up some Uruk Hai scouts. The main barrier to doing so was that I didn’t have any Uruk Hai scout models but some quick calculations and a recce of my local Warhammer store, I decided the best way to remedy this was to exchange a kit I’d bought last year and hadn't done anything with for the Isengard Battlehost box. Not only did this give me the Scouts I was after, it also bagged me some fully armoured Uruk Hai along with the newer Saruman and Grima Wormtongue at a price that's much better value compared to buying the kits separately and ultimately only set me back 14 quid due to the exchange.

A full blown Isengard force isn’t on the cards at the moment, but between the Battlehost and a Demolition Team set I got in last years' HoHoHobby Vices secret Santa, one might lie somewhere in the future. Back in the present though, because it felt a bit daft to have picked up a big box of minis to only paint a couple of them, I cleaned up six of the scout poses I liked the most to paint up as a battle company, that way I could get them on the tabletop for some games if the opportunity presents itself, but also because the ‘small batch’ approach worked well with the Garrison of Ithilien and is holding up for my Galadhrim as well.

Before I got my brushes out and started painting, I spent a wee while looking at some stills from the Middle Earth movies, (particularly Fellowship) alongside the Battlehost box art and some image searches to get an idea of how I wanted my Uruk Hai to look. The garb of Lurtz’s scouts in The Fellowship of the Ring is all pretty dark in colour which looks great on the screen but I didn't feel it would transfer to 28mm tall models very well. In the end I decided that all of my scout’s clothing would in varying shades of brown, they would wear and wield blackened iron wargear and have skin that was a deep ruddy tone – I felt like this blended a degree of ‘realism’ with what would look good in miniature form and having got the six of them painted up, I’m pretty pleased with their finished appearance.

Speaking of Lurtz, despite my dislike of metal minis, I decided to pick him up anyway so I have him to hand if I want to scale the battle company up into something a little more substantial in the future. As I type this post up the Adepticon GW 'reveal show' is promising something for MESBG and while it's incredibly unlikely, I'd love it if there were some new sculpts of Fellowship characters like Lurtz on the way as part of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the cinematic release of the seminal series - we'll see what appears on the internet tomorrow morning I guess! 

In the meantime, as always, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.