Warg Riders WIP (Part 2)

   The twenty Warg Riders are still in the box! Untill now, I painted the ground (flat earth), added some rocks, which I made of greenstuff and painted them grey (neutral grey). I divided the wargs into four groups of five and painted each group with different colour. I started also to paint all the wooden equipment, such as shields, spears, arrows, etc, the same colour (cork brown) and finally I repainted the faces with Graveyard Earth as the base colour. I did not really like the previous look of their faces, so I will paint them from the beggining and this time I will paint the eyes as well. Below you can see all the wargs in their box, grey ones in the first row, yellow-brown in the second, red-brown in the third and brown in the back row:

   Another thing that I changed, beside the colours, is the flag of the banner-bearer. That flag was not exactly what I had in mind when I converted one of the archers to a banner-bearer. Back then, I changed his left hand which held the bow with another one which carried a shield. I made the flag of greenstuff, the pole was a pin and the spearhead belonged to a Uruk-hai pikeman. The final result was not so nice. Furthermore, during the games it was not noticable that this was the miniature which carried the banner. He looked as a simple spearmen more than a banner-bearer. But since every problem has a solution, in this case a solution was to remove the greenstuff flag and make a new one. This time I used the usual aluminium foil instead of the greenstuff. I think the result now is far better than the previous. Below you can see the old and the new flag:

The old flag

The new spearhead and the finials

The new flag

The final conversion

The rear side

Primed and ready for painting

   The above spearhead is an old Ral Partha Minotaur's weapon while the flagpole is the same pin. I wanted to make the flag noticable from all over the battlefield. For this reason, the flag had to be painted with bright colours. But orcs can not have such colours! So, the flag had to be a trophy! I will paint the flag with the same colours I used for the SKoDA banner. Now you can understand the reason why I added the finials.   

SKoDA banner-bearer

   That's it for today. Stay tuned for more.

Prince Imrahil's (not so) glorious death!

   The other day we played a LotR Battle, Gondor vs Haradrim. Many good named heroes gathered on the battlefield to face the evil hordes of Harad. The epic duels, powerful clashes and  heroic last stands followed the Gondor force warriors fall. 

   The good force consisted of the flower of Gondor and had among its lines the below heroes with their special rules:

Prince Imrahil, Boromir of Gondor (Horn of Gondor), Duinhir (Lineage of Numenor), Dol Amroth Captain (Dol Amroth for Gondor), Forlong the Fat and Angbor the Fearless.

Swan Knights of Dol Amroth

The whole Gondor force

Knights of Minas Tirith

Men-at-Arms and Axemen of Lossarnach

Rangers

Clansmen of Lamedon

Swan Knights on Foot

  The evil force consisted of the below heroes and their followers:

Mumak Beast Master (Master of Mumak), Sulandan (Poisoned Arrows, Ascedant), King of Harad (Poisoned Arrows), Hasharin (Bane of Kings, Stalk Unseen, Pretenatural Agility) and three Chieftains, a black, a red and a Serpent (Poisoned Arrows).

The Mumak and the whole Harad army

The right flank

Haradrim warriors and raiders

Serpent Guards

Watchers of Karna

Haradrims of the left flank

Haradrims of the rearguard

  The battlefield was a flat plain with a small ruined castle in the middle to split the whole area in two parts. I had the good forces. My plan was simple: attack with the mounted forces on the left, defence with the forces on foot on the right. In theory this was a good plan, but only in theory, because in action it was a failure! I started first and according to the plan I charged with the cavalry against the opponent archers. In the meanwhile, the foot soldiers had as a task to stop the Mumak. So I forced them to make a barrier against the oncoming beast. Unfortunately, Imrahil proved to be the main target of the Haradrims' shoots and he lost his horse at first turns. Additionaly to this, SKoDA had heavy loses, they were speedily slain by the Haradrim archers. Half of them did not even reach the enemy lines, they fell during the glorious charge!  Below you can see what I mean:

The cavalry charges

The rest force advances

The Harad moves

The barrier against the Mumak

KoMT and Imrahil (at the back) without his horse 

SKoDA's numbers are reducing 

Mumak charges

The rest Harad follows

Finally, the cavalry reaches the enemy lines!

Charge!

Hold the lines!

Gondor (at the back) and Mumak charge

A view from the top of the howdah

Keep calm!

War Mumak approaches!

A panoramic view from the good side. Imrahil runs

to catch the rest of the Knights.

A panoramic view from the evil side

A panoramic view of the battlefield

   At last, the time of the fights came. This is the moment when all the tactics move aside and the warriors clash each other with furious force. At the next fight turns, it was obvious that the Gondor cavalry previous serious loses from the Harad arrows turned the tide and for that reason they were overwhelmed by the enemy and died one after another. Additionaly, the lack of a strong Good bowmen unit, except for the sixteen rangers, did not do much harm to the enemy numbers. On the contrary, the strong heavy Good infantry managed to kill the War Mumak but not without "bleeding". 

The clash. Imrahil still runs!

The clash inside the ruined castle

War Mumak death

Forrest-Imrahil-Gump still runs...

And finally dies not so gloriously!

   When the SKoDA and KoMT died all, their opponents turned to reinforce the rest of the Harad army, which fought against the Good infantry. In contrast to the Harad, the later did not have any reinforcements, so they were vastly outnumbered. It was a matter of time for Harad to prevail. High Courage values did not allowed the SKoDA on foot to leave the battle and they fought and died to the last one.

Harad gathers its forces

The last Knight dies surrounded by the enemies

   Lessons learned: Arrogancy is a bad leader. I did not respect the enemy archers and I overestimated the abilities of my cavalry. Princes of the Blood did the same mistake on the morning of October 25, 1415.

  

Warg Riders WIP

   My new project is an army of famous Mordor Warg Riders. The army consists of twenty mounted orcs, among whom there are named heroes, such as Gothmog and Golfimbul, a shaman, a taskmaster, a kettledrummer, a banner-bearer, spearmen and swordsmen.

   I plan to divide the mounts in four groups and paint each one of them with different colours to avoid the monotony of the brown warg pack. The army does not have archers. I used the warg rider archers' upper body to increase the number of my orc archers on foot, while the lower parts were used to convert the captain, the kettledrummer and the banner-bearer. The taskmaster is a conversion as well. I used a second mounted Golfimbul for this reason. Anyway, he is fat enough to be a taskmaster!

   You can see the twenty warg riders on the photo below. There you can see also the Orc Captain "The widowmaker" and Golfimbul on foot. I converted the second Golfimbul on foot to a Dunlending Warriors banner-bearer. 

   I have some of the Warg riders for a long time but I never managed to complete their painting scheme. I used them in games as you see them, half painted. Some months ago, I bought another box to make the Orc Chariots, so four more wargs were added to the army (they are the black ones on the following photo). Now I have to paint all twenty of them. I will show this painting procedure step by step in the next posts with a few words about the conversions. In the meanwhile, I am waiting some beautiful cataphract horses that I have ordered for another project, "The Khandish Chariots". At the same time my based Goblins are on the queue for painting. Too many things to do, no rush and I will manage them all!  

    

The whole wargpack in a box!

Warg riders charge under the sound of kettledrum.

A WotR Mordor army (wargs are on the far left).

The unlucky opponents of the above army.



   That's it, stay tuned for more.