The Fall of Arnor

For the past few months I've been teaching my dad to play 40k. You don't realise how complicated and rules-bloated that game is until you start trying to teach someone the basics. But, after all this time, we decided to try something a little bit different.

The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game... it just rolls off the tongue.

But, rather than stick to the events we all know and love from the books and movies, I instead decided to broaden my Tolkien horizons and do a bit of delving into the background. From what I can gather from my reading on the matter of Arnor, the story goes something like this...

The lands around Arnor were home to people known as the Middle Men. But when the Numenoreans sailed to Middle-Earth, they claimed Arnor for their own, founding it as its own kingdom along with Gondor, which was founded at the same time. The Numenoreans and Middle Men were integrated into the same society. All was well, for a time.
At the beginning of the Third Age, the One Ring was found by Arnor's then-King, Isildur. But as Isildur was betrayed by the ring, his fate was sealed. He, along with his 3 eldest sons, was killed by Orcs at the battle of Gladden Fields, and the Ring was lost. Isildur's youngest and only surviving son and heir did not claim kingship over Gondor, and so Gondor split from Arnor to create its own kingdom.
Earendur, the 10th king of Arnor, died in 861 of the Third Age, and his 3 sons began to squabble. Arnor fell into civil war, and was divided into 3 realms - Arthedain was claimed by the eldest son, and housed the Capital City of Fornost. The other 2 realms were called Cardolan and Rhudaur.

This is when war came to Arnor. Armies of orcs appeared in the north, and the future of the human Kingdom was in the balance. Cardolan pledged its allegiance to Arthedain, but Rhudaur was always at odds with the other two, perhaps its majority Middle Men population still resenting the Numenoreans for taking their land from them in times long past. This is where my campaign begins...

I started writing up scenarios for the campaign, the first being a time when orcs were first spotted south of the Ettenmoors, the Ettenmoors being in Angmar to the north of Arnor. A Rhudaur scouting party is attacked by orcs, a strange move considering Rhudaur itself has shown allegiance to Angmar in the past, but the orcs are being spurred by a foul bargain that is to be struck.

Of course, a lot of this requires a bit of artistic licence, as indeed I, or anybody for that matter, do not know the full story behind these events.

But, what is a wargaming campaign without models? I haven't touched my Lord of the Rings models for years (aside from a few character models several months back). There was much rummaging in bits boxes and repairing of broken swords and spears and bows to be had, but eventually I drummed up enough models to begin the campaign.
You'll also notice they are completely brown. This is just a rough undercoat/basecoat that I give to all my LotR models to make them appear slightly more earthy and realistic in tone. This was also painted over some previous (poor) paint jobs I'd done on certain models.

Rhudaur

For my army of Rhudaur, I used a bunch of Rohirrim models. I figured these guys had a more rugged and wild look compared to men of Gondor, which I always pictured of a realm such as Rhudaur.
The 3 models at the front will be the army's leaders. The one on horseback is an Eomer model, but I will use him as King of Rhudaur. The models to his left and right are Hama and Gamling, but they will be Rhudaurin captains.
Behind them are various men-at-arms, 5 each of swordsmen, spear-men and bowmen.

Sticking with the Rohirrim theme, I thought it would be interesting to give Rhudaur a cavalry regiment, called Outriders. I imagine that horses, however, would be rarer and of slightly lesser breeds than the horses of Rohan, so Rhudaur Outriders would be few in number.
You may also notice that I removed the horse motifs on the majority of their shields. This is an obvious Rohirrim feature that I wanted to take away from the models.

Angmar

The beginnings of my Angmar force. Thus far, it comprises only orcs. I figured a natural choice for a leader would be an orc shaman. Angmar is ruled by the Witch King, so I wanted to give the army a bit of a magical theme.
There is also a captain on the right, and a standard bearer on the left. Behind them are a rabble of orcs, 5 sword-bearing orcs, 5 with great weapons and 5 with bows.
And behind them...

... are the Warg Riders. Untouched by paint, as you can see. Their bases have long since been procured for use in other projects, so I will need to order some more.

And there you have it. I'm a big Tolkien fan, and have always wanted an opportunity to delve into the LotR SBG, but have never had the chance, so my models were all relegated to various bits boxes. Now, though, I'm throwing myself in head first, and hope all this effort actually goes somewhere epic.

DA GREAT NORWICH NUTTIN'

(Or Da Attempted Norwich Nuttin')

So a few weeks ago I got an invite from some friends to stay with them in Norwich for a few days of wargaming goodness, in between trips exploring the city. In the end we got 2 games in, 1 was amazing, 1 not so amazing, but in all I had a right blast.
And there's no better reason than that to get some modelling and painting finished. In the few weeks leading up to my visit, I got in some solid building and painting, finishing off half-built/painted projects, and even adding some brand new ones. I actually ended up with a finished force, something I don't think I've ever truly had. And it feels good.

Added Speed
Normally I run a full foot-slogger list, but after some Mad Max inspiration and dreams of Gorkamorka (not literal dreams, that would be weird), I ended up forking out for some extra trukks and bikes. I also converted some buggies. But they sat around on my shelf collecting dust. Well, now was the perfect time to finish things off. Ditching 50% of my boyz in favour of more wheelz helped with transportation, both in-game and in real life, which is partly the reason I went for Speed Freeks.

Here is the full 1500pts army in all its glory. I estimate I only had about a 3rd of this army complete before I started work, so I had a lot to build and paint. In the 2-3 weeks prior to my trip, I painted no less than 2 trukks, 3 buggies, 5 warbikes, 3 'ard boyz, a weirdboy and my shoota boyz nob from scratch, as well as finishing the painting on everything else, which were all in varying stages of completeness. May not sound like a lot to some, but I'm an extremely slow painter.

Close Ups

Ready for sum stompin'! But not much else...

Gorzag Irontoof - Ah, Gorzag. The doomed Warlord of Da Big Teef. He's got enthusiasm by the bucketload, but all the combat prowess of a wet sponge. He tries, bless him, but always fails to deliver, and always meets a sticky end at some point during the battle (usually as soon as the enemy catch a whiff of his somewhat fragrant presence).

Ready for sum brainburstin'!

Buznik Brainbursta - Weirdboy, and the most recent addition to Waaagh Gorzag. Though he's only been in 2 battles, he's already proven his worth far more than Gorzag ever has. In fact, he's probably overdue a swift choppa to the jaw for getting too big for his nonexistent boots.

Ready for sum nuttin'!

Gorik's Nut'eads - My 'ard Boyz mob, and bodyguard to Gorzag. Most bosses hang round with a Nobz mob to form a really killy unit, but I didn't want to put all my squigs in 1 basket, so he joins the 'ard boyz instead.
The squad is quite cheap, but 'ard enough to make a good dent in something (or someone).

Ready for sum broozin'!

Da Brooza Bruvverz - Its clobberin' time. My Nobz mob are rock 'ard, and never fail to leave a mark... usually. In their 2nd Norwich Nuttin' outing their boss lost a challenge to a pesky Chaos Sorcerer and fled, only to get cut down. 280pts of green beefcake dead in 1 turn to an oomie psyker... Despite Gorzag's run of bad luck, he's never run afoul of something that embarrassing.

Dreg's Speek Freeks - slugga boyz

Da Petrol'eads - slugga boyz

Vroom, vroooom - dakka, dakka, dakka!

Zog's Wild Riderz - Warbikers mob. A useful mob for harrying the foe, or drawing fire from enemy guns. The mob is big enough to take some casualties while still having enough guns, tires and choppy bits to kill, kill, kill!

Vroooooooom - fwoosh-KABOOM!

Da Jalopies - These guys make a perfect wildcard. I've always liked buggies, but never brought them due to their exponentially poor performances, but one new rule to their arsenal bumped them back up to near-must haves: Outflank. Their ability to outflank and pour rokkits into the rear armour of vehicles is very useful.

Dakkadakkadakkadakkadakkadakkadakkadakkadakka!

Dakka's 'ome Guard - They do what they say on the proverbial tin. In all honesty, I took these guys because I ran out of fast stuff. I almost took a dreadnought instead, but thought these guys would be more useful to both bolster my numbers a lot, and also claim objectives that happen to sit in my deployment zone.

NEEEEEEAAAAAOOOOOWW - splat!

Razzik's Stormsterz - Ah, the trusty Stormboyz. They always fail, and yet somehow I still love them. Is there anything cooler than a green-skinned maniacal brawler blasting across the battlefield with a rocket strapped to his back? I think the answer is a resounding "no"!

Project Badlands

I cannot believe it has been over a year since I updated this blog. To be completely honest, I felt a bit hobbied-out. Games Workshop had been doing a massive shake-up of 40k, and frankly it was going in a direction I wasn't fond of. The rules had become a bloated mess of additional rules and random dice rolls for certain things, the rulebooks and codices were being shot out of development like a machine gun, and there were too many new kits being produced to keep up. It felt very overwhelming for me. I just felt burnt-out, but in January I painted up some Lord of the Rings figures and slowly began to rekindle the hobby fire.
Also, around this time my dad asked me to teach him 40k. To say its been slow-going would be an understatement. And to be honest, 40k has become such a rules-behemoth that there's plenty of things I don't even know, due to my lack of games. Putting it bluntly, it feels a bit like a chore to teach someone the game. I know we'll have a very long time before we reach a level where the games are fun, exciting, challenging or tactical.
But I decided to put in some effort at least. And I figured making some terrain would help. There's nothing better than fighting over a true battlefield. I've made a ton of terrain in the past, but its either gone unfinished, or reached a state I wasn't happy with. But with my latest project, I decided to go for something much simpler... desert terrain.
I've sat down and written up a long list of all the things I'd like to make for my terrain collection. Starting with rock piles and plateaus:

I began this project around March. The smaller pieces were created quite easily. They were made simply with random slabs cut out of 1" thick polystyrene. I shaved off most of the right-angle edges to make them look more natural, then coated them in a thin layer of plaster. When dry, I painted them. The top-most picture is of 2 hills I made out of 2" thick styrene, with cork bark glued around the edges to look like cliffs.
I've also made some larger plateaus, like the hills above, which can be used to create whole elevated positions to add some height variety to battles.
I'm currently working on fixing up and repainting some of my older terrain pieces, and also have some brand new and more exciting projects in the pipeline.
In addition, I recently visited some friends for a few days of hobby goodness. That really helped me get into gear when finishing off one of my armies. I'll take some piccies and make a post about that soon.