Walls and Fences

 A while back, I bemoaned that Games Workshop no longer made such truly generic terrain pieces as the Walls and Fences set.  Well, someone must have been listening, as the Walls and Fences are back in the webstore, so to encourage GW, I ordered a set.

Figure added for scale.  The W&F set includes four signposts. One of these has the names Schwarzhelm and Bogenwald sculpted on. I scraped the words off of one of the posts so it can be changed as needed for a future game.  One of the benefits of plastic is how easy it is to trim off bits as needed.

There are slightly different quantities of wall and fence - approx. 43" of stone walls and 47" of wooden fence.

With more than 15 years between painting the two sets, there was no chance that the paint job would be identical.  But as you can see the differences are pretty minor.  Models of course are identical.

Remember when GW made affordable, useful gaming stuff?

 I managed to catch up with an old friend on my recent road trip to Alberta, who kindly returned to me a whole pile of wargaming stuff that I'd left at his house many years ago.  The haul included these gems that Games Workshop made many years ago, but which have long since disappeared from their store.   

The treasures include these walls and fences:

About 12 feet of fences and walls here, in 8" and 4" sections.  Rob also returned these great plastic hills:

I just wanna bang on the drum all day!

 Here is another impulse purchase.  I picked up this Games Workshop 'armoured troll' on a whim, not really having a place for it in any of my current forces.  There are multiple different options for assembling the figure, with armour or without, with a selection of Mordor or Isengard helmets, and with a variety of weapons, including a choice of a great big troll sword, spear, club or axe. So naturally, I built him as a drummer.  

Flies and Spiders

On Friday, Arthur and I hosted a Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, the Flies and Spiders scenario from chapter 8 of the Hobbit.  The scenario provided by GW is inspired by the Peter Jackson film, where a group of elves from the Woodland Realm led by Legolas and Tauriel come along to rescue the dwarves.  We decided we weren't interested in any of that nonsense, so for our game, we simply had the dwarves resist wave after wave of Mirkwood spiders.  Victory for the dwarves simply depended on surviving 12 turns.  Any dead spiders were replaced at the start of the next turn.

Photos were from my phone - they are what they are!

Here is the initial set up.  Dwarves are in a clearing in the woods, shown by the brown felt.

13 dwarves and one hobbit!  For the scenario, we divided Thorin's company between four players.  We tried to keep them in family groups as much as possible.  Arthur took Thorin and his nephews Fili and Kili.  Kevin had Bifur, Bofur and Bombur.  We had two other players, Lorenzo and his mate, who took Ori, Dori and Nori, Oin and Gloin, Balin and Dwalin, and Bilbo.

Here are the spiders, played by me.  I only used 10 of the big ones, the smaller ones were just there for show.

Here is how the game started.  As this was a new game for most of the participants, I kept it simple to start with, and simply had the spiders attack from all sides at once.  As the dwarves were generally much better fighters than the spiders, this gave the players a chance to figure out the rules mechanics before taking any real damage.

Most models had two wounds, so we made good use of my red cross wound markers to track damage.

In addition to their venomous bite attack, the spiders could also shoot webs.  We used the 'victims' from the spider set to mark any dwarf that got webbed.  Any dwarf that was trapped in a web could free himself by rolling a 6 at the end of the turn.  We made a house rule mid-game that another figure could cut a victim free of webs by spending one full turn next to the trapped figure, and take no other action that turn.

After spending most of the game in a repetitive fight-die-fight again mode, as each spider ended up fighting 2 or more dwarves and getting crunched each time, I switched things up for the last couple of turns.  The spiders took advantage of being much faster than the dwarves to gang up on Thorin, Fili and Kili.  They managed to kill Fili, then piled on and killed Thorin as well.  So at the end, the dwarves won the game as they outlasted the spiders, but at the cost of their leader, Thorin.  Will they rally around Kili as the last survivor of the line of Thrain?

Or maybe seek the help of the Elvenking, and see if his elves have the skill, or even the desire, to resuscitate Thorin.

Thorin's Company

Here is Thorin's Company, based on Peter Jackson's interpretation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit.  The book doesn't provide detailed descriptions of each individual dwarf, so the Weta team developed their own versions.  Each dwarf was given a distinct look and character, much more than simply different coloured hoods.

I'm a bit unsatisfied with the photos, I'll redo them and hopefully get better results.

Here is Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews Fili and Kili (apologies to the Tolkien purists, but I won't be mucking about with the correct accents on dwarf names). 

Brothers Dwalin and Balin

Bifur, Bofu and Bombur.  The Weta team determined that these were non-noble dwarfs, to set them apart from about half of the other dwarves, who were of Durin's line.  Bombur is one of the few dwarves to be given any distinguishing characteristics; unfortunately that characteristic is that he is the 'fat one'.  

Oin and Gloin.  Gloin's chief characteristic is that he is the father of Gimli, and as a result, he also seems to be most 'dwarf-like' of the dwarves.

Ori, Dori and Nori, another group of non-noble dwarves.

And of course, Bilbo and Gandalf.

Dwalin son of Fundin

Just a quick post today, here is Dwalin son of Fundin  as portrayed by Graham McTavish in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, from the Games Workshop Thorin Oakenshield and Company set.

Knights of Minas Tirith

 Taking a break from twentieth century conflicts, I quickly did up these Lord of the Rings Knights of Minas Tirith.  I toyed with the ideas of changing up the heraldry, maybe to represent the knights of Dol Amroth, or at least to paint them something other than plain black and white. As you can see, though, I just did them to match the movie version.

Nazgul on Fell Beast

 Hi, all!  For the past few months, Real Life (TM) has taken over, so hobby has been pushed to the back burner.  I recently made an impulse purchase of an actual Games Workshop plastic model, and decided it was time to get my painting mojo back on!

This figure is a Lord of the Rings' Nazgûl on a Fell Beast, flying possibly in search of the One Ring, or maybe ready to mix things up with the forces of the West at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields or in front of the Morannon.  Paint job is very basic: black base coat, then a few progressively lighter shades of grey, and a black ink wash for the fell beast, and similar but darker process for the Ringwraith.

GW made a curious choice to include this sculpted base.  It's quite nice to have a sculpted base, don't get me wrong, much more interesting than a plain one.  However, (NERD ALERT) the selection of the weapons scattered on the base don't fit with the figure!  The rocks are fine, but there is an Elvish sword and shield from the Battle of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age of Middle-earth, but the ringwraiths didn't show up on fell beasts until the end of the Third Age!  Obviously, this doesn't bother me too much, or else I would have changed it.

The model is plastic, went together in a jiffy.  There was an option to build it as the Witch King with his fancy helmet and burning sword, but I preferred to build one of the anonymous ringrwaiths instead.  I chose not to glue down the fell beast onto the clear plastic post, so it can be tilted if I wish into a sort of diving configuration.

Hopefully I'll make time here and there to slap some paint onto more figures in the upcoming months!