Middle-Earth awaits....

My order arrived today. Can't wait to dive in. I'm gonna make an effort to find others in the area to game with.

Unfortunately, just buying the box set doesn't make it magically paint itself. I've been trying that for 25 years. Damn.

Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

Games Workshop is updating the Strategy Battle Game. The new version is getting renamed to Middle-Earth, Strategy Battle Game. There will be a new rules manual, a new starter box set and new figures. It can be pre-ordered now, and I think shipping next week. This is a major commitment from GW for SBG which has been on life support for years.

The Starter box set comes with 84 models and 2 brand new sculpts, Theoden foot and mounted. The rest of the box contains, Army of the Dead and Rohan vs a Troll, Nazgul and Orcs. You also get the full hard backed rules manual. Not some skimpy mini version. 

There will be 2 books covering the armies. One for the LOTR era models. and One for the Hobbit era models. The LOTR book will be available on launch day, and the Hobbit one will be out later this year. There is a PDF to tide you over till the Hobbit army book.

Even though I have most of the figures in the box set, I have already sent in my pre-order for the set and the army book. Can't wait.

Xin

Strategy Battle Game, Redemption

A few months ago, Games Workshop announced a new commitment to continuing support for the Strategy Battle Game(SBG) rule set. New figures, new rules, new terrain, and best of all, re-release of out of production models.

If you are a collector of these figures you know the OOP ones go for crazy money on eBay. I think I paid $30 for the mounted Gandalf above. Well the good news is now that figure has been re-released! As well as a lot of other figures.

Of course they renamed the rules as the new movies came out, but still the same rules. The lastest book they are releasing is to cover the 2nd and 3rd movies of the Hobbit triolgy.

New Dwarves released from GW's sister company, Forgeworld. They are spectacular if not a little pricey. I will eventually get a box or two.

There has been pictures of a Laketown building since the 2nd movie, but it was never released. Today it just went up on GW's site for preorder.You can get a single building or a 3 pack. I ordered the 3 pack.

Once I get them painted up I will post photos and some game reports. Can't wait!

Xin

Battle of Five Armies, Battle Report

Last week my friend Lou was coming over to play LOTR Strategy Battle Game. We didn't have a plan other than we would play SBG. I had the day off so I was puttering around my basement working on too many projects at once. I was toying with the idea of doing a BOFA scenario. Just sort of a representative battle using figures I had. We would be constrained by time so we would have to keep it simple. About 30 minutes before Lou arrived, I decided to do it.

I have tons of pink insulation lying around so I cut some up and laid out the 2 spurs of the mountain. I added a 2nd level of foam for the gate. then taped it down to the table. I have some battle mats that we use at conventions, draped that across the table and we were almost good to go.

For the entrance to Erebor I had this gate I made years ago to play a D&D. So I pulled that out and it looked great. Next we added a latex River Running, and scratter terrain, rocks and bushes and things. I also added the Dwarven Statues that came with the Special Edition DvD/Blu-Ray Desolation of Smaug disk set.

Lou mentions that we needed a backdrop for the mountain, and maybe I had a sheet lying around. I told him to take 2 sheets of foam insulation and quickly paint them grey while I whipped up the army lists. What he did in 20 minutes was astounding. He painted mountains!

The army lists were pretty simple:
12 Galadhrim spears and shields with Tharnduil
12 Galadrhrim archers with Capt
12 Wood Elf archers with Legolas
12 Laketown Militia(Rohan) with Capt
12 Laketown archers(Rohan) with Bard(Rohan profile)
12 Dwarf Warriors with Dain
12 Dwarf Warrios with Capt
vs
12 Gundabad Orcs with Bolg(proxy Mordor Orcs)
12 Orc Archers with Capt
12 Orc Archers with Capt
12 Warg Riders with Capt
12 Warg Riders with Capt
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield
12 Orc Warriors with spear and shield

That's roughly the list. Not exactly street legal, but it was just us 2, and what figures I had available. The other thing we did was lower the Defence by 1 across the board. So fights with resolve faster.

Deployed, Elves on the left, Dwarves on the right, Men in the center.

That's a lot of bows.

 Evil advances.

I want to block off the ford, so I come off the hill. Lou the Orc player was going to ignore the Elves but my move to the ford made him come across. Archers showering anything in range with arrows. Not many hits early on.

This was Lou's one mistake. At the ford he tried to slip around my spears. And I got to charge him. This seemly small mistake would lead to lots of casualties. As we fought over the ford.

On the far right, Wargs slam into my dwarves, but being dwarves they hang tough.

Here I caught him trying to sneak past me.

I actually didn't do very well in the fights, but it stopped him and drew in more orcs. All the while I was killing off orcs with arrows.

 My line of Laketown Militia came off the hill to charge the wargs as they were going for my Militia archers. Anyone not in combat got hailed with arrows. A good number of Orcs got "unmounted"

The fight continues to rage on the hill and in the valley. Bolg and his body guard moving up in formation.

So what happened at the ford? Thranduil happened. I was tightly packed, and got charged by orcs everywhere. Almost surrounded. So Thranduil drops Natures Wrath. I could not have planned it better. I knocked over about a dozen models. Then my spearmen went on a killing spree.

 At this point it was late and the Orc general had enough. We both had casualties, but far worse were the orcs.

Last shot of the battle. My charge off the hill and about a billion arrows stopped any Wargs from getting to my Militia archers. The line of Dwarves held on the mountain spur so the orcs could not break into my lines.

Conclusions, it was a fun battle even if a little one sided. It was an equal points battle, so maybe if we do it again, we give the Evil a few hundred more points. Honestly I think we had more fun setting up, and the back drop the Lou painted in 20 minutes was stunning. For work of about an hour, I think the table looked great.

Thanks for reading, Xin

Mordor vs Galadhrim, Battle Report

The title of this post should be "I am the worst general Mordor has ever seen".

Last night 2 friends came over for a game of LOTR. We use the Strategy Battle Game. Not all, but most of my group love the way it plays. I had recently painted up 6 Fell Wargs and The Warg Chieftain so I wanted to give them spin on the table.  So we did Orcs vs Elves at 700 points.

The Elves were 24 Galadhrim, 3 captains, a Storm Caller and maybe 12 or so Wood Elves as we ran out of Galadhrim.

The Orcs were 6 Wild Wargs, Warg Chieftain, 4 Warg riding Orc Captains and a Shaman, leading about 40+ Orcs. All spears and swords, no bows.

Establishing shot. Orcs in foreground, tree huggers on the farside of the table. set up 2 feet apart. The Elf General set up the table. Note the lack of cover.......

Closer shot of the Elf battle line. Wood Elves on the far end of the line. Galadhrim Archers Center, Spear and Sword in the ruins on the hill.

Back of Elf line looking towards the Orcs.

 Orc Left side of line. Front Rank, Shield and Sword, back rank Spears.

Orc right flank. Morannon Orcs in center, then more spear and shield guys. On the far right are my newly untried Wargs.

The terrain was wide open, he had bows, I didn't. My only choice was to go straight at him as quick as I could. I think I spent 3 turns marching under bow fire. Lost 9 or 10 orcs closing the gap.

Getting close now.

 Wargs rounding the hill.

 And we finally clash.

Not many Morannon Orcs left. At this point the combat got pretty hot, so I forgot to take pictures. I took a lot of losses  crossing the field but now I had some good numbers in contact.

I cleared the ruins and broke up his center section. On the far side it was back and forth with the wood elves. I did very well in the melee combats but I could not make up the damage done crossing the field. I broke at 29 dead and he was 3 away from breaking. It was a good fight and we had fun.

I'm not sure what I could have done differently. The ground was too open. I suppose I could have gone up the right side in the woods, but then he would have had all the time in the world to wheel his line to compensate.

The wargs were not the killing machines I had envisioned. Either I needed more or they would be better with riders. They were weak. I would have rather had a troll or something. They did help out flank the Elves in the ruins, but one on one, Elves were much better.

The one thing I think I did right was put all my Captains on Wargs. That made them very useful for smashing into the battle at critical moments. It might have helped if I rememberd the extra attack for charging cav.

Anyway, good fight, lessons learned and fun was had. I also got to put out my Scenic backdrops on the side of the battle table.

Xin

Guardians of the Shire

I just finished painting up Guardians of the Shire box set. It's 6 Dunedain and the elf Gildor Inglorion. Funny thing about these figures, I had been searching for them on ebay for awhile(year+). I almost pulled the trigger on a $95 auction but I held off at the last second, thankfully. While going through my unpainted pile, I found a bag of "rangers" that I had picked up at one of the HMGS flea markets. It was all the figures from the box set. And I think I got them for $10.

Anyway, here are the pics

I think they came out "ok". I didn't go crazy with highlighting and shading. Too be honest, since I am actively trying to reduce the backlog of unpainted, I am just trying to get it painted quickly. I have too much to paint, too much to game and not enough time.

Xin

Guards of the Fountain Court

I've added some new troops to my Gondor line up. GotFC or Guards of the Fountain Court. These are some walking tanks that add some punch to my battle line. I didn't paint these, I got them off ebay in 2 different groups. But I did touch them up to give them a cohesive look and painted the bases to match the rest of my troops. I have more unpainted that I will do at a later date.

Next up to be painted will be some Heavy Metal from Dol Amroth

Beorn in Bear Form

Games Workshop has rules for Beorn and Beorn in Bear Form, but no bear Model yet. The DoS rulebook has a picture of Bear Beorn, and most assume it will be a future release. But for some reason I didn't quite care for it. And if it gets released as Finecast, that is a deal breaker for me.

I didn't think it would be to hard to proxy him so I started looking around on the web for a replacement bear. I found one I liked on Ebay, a D&D pre-painted bear. I was about to click, "Buy it Now" when I remembered I had one! Digging once in again in my boxes of, too much stuff, yielded a mean Cave Bear!

He could be a bit bigger to represent Beorn, but you can't argue with free. So Cave Bear is my Beorn Bear

He was a little small for the 60mm base, so I wanted to "spruce it up" some. Lying on my painting table, I found a Warg that I stole the base from a while ago for some other project. He would make a good victim...er visual effect. I glue him down, more like mashed him down. And textured the base.

Those 24 Orcs will have to wait, Beorn has been bumped to the front of the queue. Inspiration has struck and my muse will not be ignored. Painting the base and Warg

With the base textured and painted, I got to work on the Warg. I spent 30 minutes looking on the web for a good painting guide when the book I needed, Scouring of the Shire, was sitting 10 feet from me. It has a very decent, and most important quick paint guide for Warg's.

Beorn Bear was very easy. Paint black, dry brush light grey to pick up the existing fur texture. Looking around for pics of bears, I noticed most black bears have a tan snout. So I dry brush some Americana Honey Brown(thematic) on his snout, then go back and paint the nose black. Pick out the teeth and claws with GW Bleached Bone and we are good to go.

Dead Wargs need lots of Blood

 I was going for a "throat ripped out" look, but I did not mangle/cut/gouge the throat area enough. So that just means more BLOOD!

For the claw marks, I just used a knife and gouged out the claw marks. The Blood is one of GW's new Technical Paints, Blood for the Blood God. It has a nice deep red color and drys shiny. I'm sure it is not hard to replicate, Red Paint and Gloss Varnish, but I like it.

So that's Bear Beorn, and that means back to the Orcs.

Cheers, Xin