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.

A Dixon bakemono goblin

 

Dixon Miniatures' Legends of Nippon range is a marvel - especially the superb oni and "bakemono goblins". I gather these figures were designed by Mark Copplestone; they certainly hold up well today.

As far as I can tell, the "bakemono goblin" concept is essentially the creation of Western games designers; Japanese goblins - bakemono or yokai - are weird and wonderfully varied beings, not the smaller oni-like creatures of Bushido and Oriental Adventures. 

But no matter! The Dixon figures are terrific and are perfect for the oni-inflected hobgoblins of D&D and Warhammer's Old World. 

A great big goblin

 This is a very simple conversion of a Reaper Bones orc, with the original small head replaced by a much larger GW goblin one and a bowstring added with thread. 

He's quite a sizeable fellow - that's a 30mm base - so he'll make a good leader or enforcer for the goblin band I've been working on. 

Ghosts and goblins

 Here's the latest member of my growing troupe of night goblins. With these creatures, I'm aiming for a folkloric approach: eerie creatures of the Otherworld rather than mundane subterranean soldiers. 

In light with that approach, I kitbashed a leader for the goblins from a Games Workshop ghost and some night-goblin parts. In folklore, the distinction between ghosts and goblins isn't necessarily clear, so I thought a sinister fairy might benefit from appearing rather ethereal. 

I've got a few other conversions and kitbashes awaiting paint; some of these have tails or animal heads. I'm also planning a few larger bases of two or three figures for use in "large skirmish" games. 

The People of the Toadstools - the and some very old dwarfs

 

I'm planning a goblin warband in a wild variety of colours: like Arthur Rackham's goblins, in all their variety, but with much brighter hues. I always liked this line from CS Lewis's White Witch: 

"Call the Cruels, the Hags, the Spectres, and the People of the Toadstools."

These nasty little sprites could be Cruels or the People of the Toadstools/

I also recently finished some very old Citadel dwarfs: Fantasy Tribes figures from the early 80s:

Giant goblins old and even older

These two miniatures were designed within a year or so of each other, both by Tom Meier. Both are "giant goblins" (i.e. Uruk-hai), the elder from the Wizards, Warriors and Warlocks range, and the latter from 1979's Fantasy Collector Series. 

The right-hand figure is obviously much more advanced sculpturally and is part of a classic range. But I rather like the cruder but charming earlier figure. For roleplaying games especially, I think simpler, older miniatures are often better than their modern equivalents: they leave more room for the imagination.

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Some starter warbands: orcs and dwarves

One thing I've done a fair bit of over the years is paint up some 'starter sets' for friends' kids - often by painting up a few extras when painting stuff for use with my own kids or other gaming friends. These little warbands are the seventh batch of this sort I've done, I think, using the same paint scheme as the eighth, which is a Hordes of the Things set for the Battle of the Five Armies.

I put together these warbands for use with Echidna Games' Fantasy Forces. In the past, I've accompanied rules with Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes, but this time, I went for something simpler (Song of Blades would be the natural progression).

The dwarves are from EM4, with a leader converted with some Oathmark and Frostgrave parts.

These, and their Nick Lund metal counterparts, are my favourite dwarf miniatures - especially (barring the crossbows) for Middle-earth.

Anyway, Merry Christmas!

C14 Lesser Goblins as a 15mm warband

 

Here are some Citadel lesser goblins painted up for use in 15mm skirmish games. These six will form the basis of a Frostgrave warband: wizard and two thugs at the front; apprentice and two thieves at the back.

Citadel produced two kinds of lesser goblin: these fellows and their ilk, who were lesser versions of the great goblins (or gnolls); and the hooded lesser night goblins. Both types work fine in 15mm as large goblin-types (hobgoblins or man-sized trolls or whatever). The 'great' breed are especially good for Frostgrave, as most of them have either a large one-handed mace (good for thugs) or a short club (fine for thieves in Frostgrave). 

A Tin Soldier orc in a retro style

 Here's an orc from Tin Soldier painted in a somewhat retro style with heavy blacklining in ink. 

Although I had originally based many of them on pennies, I've decided to put all the 25mm RPG figures I've been hoarding on 20mm square MDF bases (if the figures are roughly human sized). That renders them more easily usable in wargames too, and means that groups of figures can be bluetacked neatly to larger bases for Hordes of the Things and Kings of War and the like: so six of these orcs could fill a 60 x 40mm base to be a 'horde' element. 

Having most figures based in the same way means more versatility and cross-compatability. So hobgoblins in 25mm can be mere goblins in 28mm, and brightly painted 25mm knights might serve as diminutive elf-knights in 28mm, and so on. I find square bases a bit more useful than round bases, all things considered. I can't think of any game system in which round bases are mechanically significant. The same's not true of squares.

I'm also increasingly interested in the idea of switching between RPG and wargame modes in the same campaign (using a 1:10 or 1:20 figure scale for the latter), something that square bases facilitate. So square MDF bases all round it is - with the exception of plastic rounds for 28mm sci-fi and plastic fantasy skirmish figures, and pennies for 15mm sci-fi.

Orcs for Mordheim

 

These are the first figures for a Mordheim orc warband, for an all-day campaign next weekend. The crossbowman is the 'boss', an old Citadel C15 armoured orc tooled up with some extra armaments and a quiver of bolts for his crossbow. He's not the biggest or meanest of the C15 orcs, but he's one of the ugliest, which must count for something!

The smaller fellow is a Marauder orc. The first wave of Marauder orcs are pleasingly short and squat, which means that older Citadel orcs work well as leader types alongside them. Despite his short stature, this chap might see service as a 'big un', given his melee-focused gear and high-end armour. 

I'm painting this warband in a D&D or Gamorrean scheme: essentially the same thing. Citadel orcs were originally D&D orcs (and possibly even closer to Gary Gygax's vision than the Monster Manual illustration; Gygax said at one point that he'd envisaged upturned snouts rather than full-on pig heads), so it seems appropriate. I'm painting the orcs a variety of greens, greenish-blues and browns, with the pink snouts and ears the unifying constant. 

Kitbashed Skaven slingers

 

We've been playing a bit of Mordheim recently. Skaven slingers are handy in that game, and I had but one metal original painted up. So I've started converting some from Oathmark goblin slaves, using Plague Monk and Mordheim Skaven heads and greenstuff tails. 

I painted these guys up pretty quickly, relying on washes over a burnt umber/grey/ivory base for the most part, with a few bits treated with more care.