A Tale of 3 Middle-Earth Wargamers- Part 0: Introduction

 



Welcome to a little project that is going to be on the blog over the next 5 months. A couple of friends and I are going to be trying the classic wargaming challenge- the Tale of (how ever many) Wargamers. Over the next few months, we will each be taking an army from the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, and adding new Heroes and Warriors, piece-by-piece, to build up to a 700 point army. In addition to this, we've each decided to go for an army which is something new to us- choosing a Good force where we normally lean towards Evil, and vice versa. In this post- we're each going to quickly run over what army we've chosen, what we're hoping to do with it, and how we think we'll find the challenge. To kick off, lets have a look at what I (Onod) will be working on in the upcoming months:


Isengard- Onod

Onod: I'm notoriously bad at picking what force I want to do. Call it indecision, call it fussiness- but I usually have several ideas of what I want to do when I start a new project, all of which have their pros and cons to me, and this was no different! I already own my absolute favourite Middle Earth army (the Ents), and apart from a box of Harad warriors bought many years ago (and never painted...) I've never collected an Evil army. That is about to change!

For my list, I decided to make a somewhat unusual Isengard list- based around the Battle (or maybe Siege?) of Orthanc, giving my Ents their Evil counterpart at last. Saruman is going to, of course, be the leader of the army- leading with him a host of Orc warriors to defend the machinery and fortress from any wandering trees. With so much relying on quite a flimsy wizard, I'm going to be throwing in a few tricks to the list to keep things interesting, and make sure that Saruman isn't the only threat in a 700 point list!

Painting wise- I haven't quite decided how I'm going to paint the orcs- but I will be making sure to practice my White Hand icons for all those orcs. Saruman should be an interesting challenge- I haven't painted a model with so much white (or off-white) before, so I'll be practicing it both Saruman's foot and mounted sculpts.




Mordor- Old Toby

Old Toby: Having never done an evil army before I wanted to hit all the evil stereotypes. Expendable Orc chumps, a Nazgul and a load of Terror to back it up. Having decided to build my army around the Witch King, the goal was to fit in as many Terror causing models as possible, without losing the ability to actually kill stuff. Largely centred around the Witch King, with Morgul Crown, horse and 3M, 17W, 3F he’s a huge investment in terms of points for this list, but I'm hoping he can pay off. To pair with him some Black Numenoreans, and their mounted counterparts, the Morgul Knights; lots of terror to give me some control of the fights. To actually kill stuff we have Shagrat and some Morannon Orcs, some big strength and defence here to form a nice block in the middle. Finally, it’s Kardush and some more Morannon, not the biggest warband but it does come with 3 expendable Mordor Orcs to feed the ball of furious fire that is Kardush (Ed- got to feel sorry for those Orcs). Definite plans for Turn 1 channelled fury shenanigans here, then Flameburst until the Witch King gets peckish too. No idea how it’ll play out but there’ll be some cool models and some whacky interactions so can’t go too far wrong.




Rohan- Mayor Whitfoot

The Mayor: Aragorn: "Wargs! We are under attack!"

Swords drawn; Théoden leads the charging Rohirrim against the wolves of Isengard to protect the people of Rohan on their way to Helms Deep. Since fast moving models are something I’ve not had much opportunity to use (outside of the occasional spattering of cavalry), I’ve decided to build an all-mounted Rohan / Fellowship alliance force based on the Warg attack, despite them being only 'Alliance of Convenience.' Why does this not have a Legendary Legion, Jay Claire? I began with the heroes I wanted (Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Théoden) and equipped them as seen in the movies – elven cloaks and horses for all! No heavy armour or shield for poor Théoden though… lets see how long he lasts. (Ed: Probably not that long with Saruman and the Witch King lurking around...) I then gave Théoden's warband a Rider with banner and as many Riders / mounted Royal Guard I could muster. With only 16 models, I’ll be relying on my heroes to pack a punch on the frontline. Providing Legolas can deliver his dwarf sized payload into combat, I’ll be happy. Forth Eorlingas!


Next Month

For our first month of the Challenge, we'll be starting off with the core of our armies. Each of us has to paint and base the leader of our army, and either 8 infantry models or 4 cavalry models. We'll be back next month to see how we've got on!

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