Lord of the Ring Dice Tower

   Some months ago, Wargames Illustrated magazine (issue WI285) published plans for building a Dice Tower. A friend, following these plans, made two such towers. The plans you can find here: 

 http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/Documents/WargamesIllustrated/DiceTowerPlans.pdf

Below you can see one of these Dice Towers. The symbols on each of the four sides are taken from various Lord of the Rings relative sites: 

   That's it for today. Stay tuned for more! Purplesounds welcome onboard!

Dwarf Mine Workings WIP

   Dwarf Mine Workings are found throughout the Dwarven realm. Their platforms are an ideal firing position and with such a high Defence you can easily use them as a stronghold point. Below I post some photos of my last WIP the Dwarf Mine Workings. Next will be the Mirrors.

   That's it. Stay tuned for more. Fishos8 welcome onboard.

Gothmog's boys! (Morannon Orcs)

      Morannon Orcs were a stronger strain of Orcs. Their armour is thick and strong, providing them additional resilience. This enhanced wargear, coupled with the Morannon Orcs' increased strength, makes them ideal shock troops.

   Morannon Orcs were similar in size to Uruk-Hai that appeared in the late Third Age. They were Sauron's primary infantry at the Battle of Osgiliath, Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Battle of Cair Andros and the Battle of the Morannon.These orcs also knew how to operate siege engines, like catapults and battering rams. They were heavy infantry troops and wore heavy thick black armor of sharpened plate steel and were actually taught how to fight and defend. They used the same weapons as all of the other orcs but due to their training, they fought much better and could anticipate enemy attacks much faster than the rest of the orcs. The troops invading Osgiliath and laying seige to Minas Tirith appear to be a mixture of many breeds, mostly Morannon orcs, some Mordor Uruk-hai and large factions of lesser orcs. Morannon Orcs' skill in battle is very comparable to that of the Uruk-hai, however, they are NOT Uruks. They are merely Orcs superior to normal ones in every way.

   Below you can see four companies, one of them is the Gothmog's command  company. I used the Captains as warriors and some hounds to fill the empty slots.

 

Gothmog

Morannon Drummer

   Morannon Drummer has a body of a Uruk-hai warrior, the head of a Rohan Outrider and a fur made of greenstuff. 

   The Banner bearer is an old Ral Partha miniature. The banner is made of aluminium foil.

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

Dwarf Parade

   Great news for me. The blog reached 5000 pageviews a couple of days ago. For this reason I would like to thank each one of you who spent time and visited it. It is very supportive for me to continue the effort.

   The other day I counted all my Dwarves and they are 136 miniatures in total. I took a few photos of the whole army and also a photo of my recent six Iron Guards WIP. I decided to paint them with blue colours like Ancients. These six will be the last of my Dwarves. I have already an idea how to display them but I will speak about it in a future post. Here are the  photos: 

Dwarf Parade

A panoramic view of the army

Another view (not so different from the first actually)

And "The last of the Dwarves"

Flying Eagles

   Do you remember the post about Gwaihir (aka Gwaihir the Windlord), the greatest of the Great Eagles? A friend bought two of that miniatures, cut the woods and put them on flying bases. They look nice and you have the feeling that they are flying.

   Finally, I would like to welcome James who joined our company.

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

Orc Captain "The Widowmaker"

   A friend of mine gave me this strange Orc figure some time ago. I didn't really know what to do with it until one day when I had an idea. The position of his body is perfect to depict an enemy's decapitation. The unlucky victim is a Minas Tirith Warrior, whom I gave a Corsair head for two reasons. First, he has his mouth open as if he is trying to scream from fear. And second, he hasn't a helmet, so it is easy for the Orc Captain to pull him by his long hair! The final scene has a lot of tension. Of course it is violent but that was the target to reenact the tremendous moment of the battle. I wanted also to show Orc Captain's complete prevalence over his opponent. That's why I called him "The Widowmaker". Now I have to use greenstuff to fix all the details and to paint them as well!

   I visited also my friend today and I took a couple of photos of the converted Beregond and the Galadhrim Banner Bearer. Here are the ready miniatures. He painted them really nice as you can see by yourselves.



      That's it for today. Stay tuned for the progress of "The Widowmaker"!

Kettledrums

   When "War of the Ring" was released on April 4th, 2009 lack of drummers and hornblowers made me to convert some figures to dress the lines of my armies with such warriors.  The question was "What I will use to make a drum?", a kettledrum to be exact. The answer was simple and cheap: a cover of a pen! Here some photos of ready, as well as WIP models. The "drum skin" is aluminium foil.

Warg Rider Drummer WIP

A common pen

The cover (The red line shows where it has to be cut) 

A target Kettledrum

Dunlending Drummer

The cover-drum and aluminium-skin

Morannon Drummer WIP

Uruk-hai Scout Drummer



   That's it for today. Enjoy!

Mordor vs Gondor

   A few weeks ago we played a simple, fast and fun game. Each player had an army of 1000 points, with which he had to hold two of the three objectives, or even better, all three of them, if it was possible. The objectives were the three red bright stones, you can see them forming a triangle in the middle of the table. We had a limit of turns to play, which were eight if I remember well. When the eighth turn was over, we had to count the objectives that we possessed. Who had the more was the winner.

   I thought that it would be a piece of cake for my Mordor army accompanied with their allies, the Easterlings, to defeat the Gondor's warriors. Unfortunately, that was not true. Each one of us managed to occupy a red stone easily, but when we started to fight for the third one, the terrain was proved a disadvantage for me because I could not move the mass of my army as I had planned. So, I lost precious time to make my move and to surround them. Below you can see the three red stones. The one in the blue circle I considered lost from the beginning. The left one I occupied easily. But for the right one my army had to fight hard. The red arrows show the moves I was planning to do.

   When finally I succeeded, completed my move and surrounded my enemies, the game was over and I lost! Anyway it was a fun to control heroes such as Shagrat, Shadow Lord, etc. and next time I hope Mordor will be victorious!     

 The terrain of the battle. Evil force is on the right. 

Gondor's forces

 Mordor's forces

 

The battlefield from the side of the good forces

  

The fight for the left red stone

The fight for the middle red stone

The trial to flank the enemy

   That's it for today. In a future post I will show you my Black Numenoreans that are ready now.  Enjoy!