A new project: the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in 15mm (and a kitbashed troll)

Heartened by the completion of my Five Armies project, I'm now embarking on another Middle-earth scheme: the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in 15mm (using Hordes of the Things or perhaps DBF - or both for different games, perhaps). 

The Pelennor is an obvious choice for a big battle from Tolkien's works. It has a pleasing variety of troop types on both sides, with notably more varied forces of evil than some other battles, in that there are plenty of diverse human troop types alongside the orcs, trolls and Ringwraiths, along with some that could be interpreted as either wholly or partially human (the "men like half-trolls", who are later referred to simply as "troll-men"). And there are lots of varied goodies too, with plenty of scope for characterful leaders, from Gandalf to Forlong the Fat. 

And the Pelennor also has nice historical echoes, including the Cautalanian Fields (aka the Battle of Chalons) and various sieges of Constantinople. 

Alas, while 15mm is great for affordable historical analogues for Middle-earth troop types, it largely precludes the kitbashing of orcs, which was one of the great joys of the Five Armies project. But it does open up the possibility of kitbashing some trolls. 

 Most obviously, the great battering ram Grond is wielded by trolls. And trolls are mentioned in the rout of the Witch-king's army too, if I remember correctly.

What do Tolkien's trolls look like? Well, the consistent theme - from JRRT's own illustrations for The Hobbit to the cave troll in Moria to the hill trolls at the Morannon (who must be Olog-hai) - is that they're scaly. To that end, I kitbashed one using a Frostgrave snakeman body and various dwarf and goblin parts. I'm quite pleased with how he looks - a fairly original take on a much-depicted monster - and he's bang on scale with 15mm figures (Tolkien indicates that trolls were around 12' tall):

The Battle of the Five Armies with Hordes of the Things

 

Over the past few months, I assembled and painted up a set of Hordes of the Things matched forces for the Battle of the Five Armies from The Hobbit. This was for a friend's kids; the armies were handed over at the weekend, and the inaugural battle was fought - largely according to the book, although Beorn was a notable casualty and Thorin survived. In the end, it was the stout Lake Men who put paid to Bolg.

Here are the HOTT elements involved:

Beorn:

Dain and his dwarves:

Thorin Oakenshield and his companions:

Gandalf, Bilbo, the Elf-king and the elves:

The Lake Men:

The forces of good (minus Beorn and the Eagle):

The goblin hordes:

Bolg of the North and his bodyguard:

The wargs:

Warg riders:

"They ride upon wolves, and the wargs are in their train":

The forces of evil:

The eagles:

The whole lot, more or less, including the bat clouds at the back.

Thorin, Dain and their dwarves

 These are some Blade elements for Hordes of the Things, to represent Thorin and company and Dan and the dwarves of the Iron Hills in the Battle of the Five Armies.

In the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, Dain is described as wielding a red axe (though whether that's the haft, the blade or just its bloody state is unclear). Here (much later on at the Battle of the Five Armies), he's upgraded to a red spear. 

These ex-Grenadier EM4 dwarves are the best fit for Dain's dwarves, I think. They don't quite have mattocks, but their axes are sufficiently mattocky to count. And they're suitably grim and tough-looking.

That's the dwarves done. Next up are the Men of Laketown (Spear elements) and Thranduil's Elves (Shooters).

Beorn for the Battle of the Five Armies

 

This is Beorn for the Battle of the Five Armies forces I'm painting up for a friend. He's a Reaper Bones bear painted with the appropriate black pelt and based for Hordes of the Things.

In Hordes of the Things terms, Beorn should be a God element, I think: arriving late on the battlefield and able to move very quickly and destructively. 

The Battle of the Five Armies for Hordes of the Things

 A little project I'm working on at the moment consists of opposing forces to fight the Battle of the Five Armies with the Hordes of the Things rules, for a friend.

These are the first few elements: a warband element for Bolg and his bodyguard, and a couple of goblin horde elements (many more to come ...). 

I'm using a mix of miniatures for the goblins: EM4, Wargames Factory, Oathmark, BattleMasters, Citadel, Warlord Games and Wargames Atlantic, at least. I'm kitbashing a lot of the EM4 figures to vary the three poses as much as I can. 

Other elements are close to completion too: Beorn (a god in HOTT terms), two bases of wolf riders and one of wargs, Dain's dwarves and Thorin and company. The other elements have been procured, so it's jut a question of working through them all now ...

Moorcockian chaos horde 2

 Here's the second chaos horde element for HOTT/DBF. They're all kitbashes to some extent, barring the skeletal dog. 

The bits come from Oathmark, GW, Mantic, RDG, Shieldwolf and Wargames Atlantic sprues.

One of the things I like about the DBA/HOTT/DBF family of games is that you can include as many banners as you want - which helps to create a mass effect from relatively few figures. I've got at least one more banner among the kitbashes awaiting painting and will look to add a few more.

It's a little tricky to photograph these elements, given the variety of focal points ...

... but I'll aim to sharpen my skills in that regard as the series continues. There are still another ten elements to go, with two more nearing completion.

Moorcockian chaos horde 1

 

This is the first of many Moorcockian chaos horde elements for Hordes of the Things and DBF. I've kitbashed a dozen of these elements; this is the first one I've finished. 

Each of them has, typically, five beastmen, which gives me about 60 to paint for just half of a HOTT army. 

Very few of the beastmen aren't kitbashed (I think there may be about five among the five dozen that are straight builds or unconverted metal figures). So there won't be many other armies that look too similar. 

Orcs speed-painted with markers

 

Here are four Blades elements for Hordes of the Things and De Bellis Fantasiae. I did these mainly with paint markers - a mix of very cheap Funnasting brush pens and slighly more expensive AK Interactive markers.

The skin was done entirely with markers, barring a glaze of Athonian Camoshade at the end. The armour was done with AK gun metal and then washed in Dark Star Murky Mire (Agrax, basically) before highlights with a silver brushpen. Then the eyes, teeth and tongues were painted with a brush. 

These Mantic figures are quite soft on detail, and the teeth and eyes are very hard to paint. With hindsight, I'd have drybrushed silver over the metal after the brown wash - but no matter: they're done!

Sabot basing for De Bellis Fantasiae (DBF)

 

I recently picked up the new De Bellis Fantasiae (DBF) from Wargames Research Group. It essentially combines Hordes of the Things (HOTT) and De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) into a large-scale mass-battle game. 

As an HOTT enthusiast, the game's right up my street. It does need a lot of elements, though, so I decided to get some sabot bases so that I could use individually based figures in DBF battles. A custom order from the excellent Oshiro Models sorted me out with a range of sabots at a very reasonable cost, so I now have a a range of 60mm square bases that can hold two, three or four figures based on 25mm squares and two mounted figures or animals on 25 x 50mm bases.

Originally, I'd planned to use these either for Beast elements (wolves, wolf riders and the like) or Great Beasts (ogres, trolls, bugbears, gnolls, etc.). That lets me keep the largeish creatures on fairly small 25mm bases for RPGs and skirmishes. But I tried out some old Citadel orcs on the four-base sabots and thought they'd work nicely as 'fast' Blade units in DBF.

It's much quicker to paint up a sabot base than an individual figure, so I now have scope for vast armies with very little effort, given the numbers of painted humanoid monsters that I have to hand. I'm also working on some fixed element bases with multiple figures too, including some lively chaos hordes. The great paradox of HOTT and DBF is that Horde elements are the most fun to paint and the most time-consuming - but also very cheap in game points. So one needs to do lots of them ...

Works in progress ...

Some 15mm orcs

 Some 15mm orcs from Alternative Armies. These are to be based on a 40mm square for maximal massed-battle flexibility. I'm unsure whether to keep them as a group of skirmishers or to mix them in with some of the other orcs I'm working on (Eureka, Chariot, Tin Soldier, etc).