The Lord of the Rings: Armies of Middle Earth: Gondor Captain

Thursday 1 January 2009

Gondor Captain

I painted this Gondor Captain today to represent the lieutenant hero leader that you need for a battle company.

I am planning a Battle Companies game with my little boy (we only seem to play one game a year!) before the end of the holiday and rather than use our normal Rohan v Uruk Hai forces we are going to have a Gondor v Moria Goblins game (not very likely in Middle Earth I know!).

It should be interesting as the forces are very different. We will be using the starting forces for each company.

The Gondor Battle Company starting force.

Gondor gets 7 heavily armoured troops (2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows, 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with hand weapons and shields and 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with spears and shields)

Goblin starting force

Moria gets more figures (12) but they are a lot weaker (4 Moria Goblins with bows, 4 Moria Goblins with spears and 4 Moria Goblins with hand weapons and shields).

I've not used a Goblin Battle company before but we did do a game at the club and John, who was playing Goblins did win his battle but I can't remember his opponents!

Guy wants to be Gondor so I think my tactics will be to surround each Minas Tirith soldier with the maximum number of Goblins possible giving me the best chance to win the combat. We'll see what happend on Sunday!

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Wargaming Middle Earth

I confess that I had never been a fan of The Lord of the Rings until Peter Jackson's monumental films came out. I had never read the books and had, years before, given up on The Hobbit half way through. Now I have read most of them (I am still struggling to finish the Return of the King) and whilst acknowledging their influence and scope still don't think they are particularly readable.

No, for me , it was the fantastic images created by the film that inspired me. Oddly, when Games Workshop came out with their Fellowship of the Ring boxed set I didn't buy it as I couldn't see how you could turn a film featuring largely invincible heroes into a satisfactory game.

It wasn't until D'Agostini came out with their Battlegames in Middle Earth part-work that I got interested, at the prompting of my little boy, Guy, and subsequently subscribed to the magazine; eventually collecting every issue.

I painted the 12 goblins included in the first issue in a day and my little boy and I immediately played a game using these and the cardboard Aragorn included as well.

Since then I must have acquired hundreds of figures, although very few are painted. Most are designed by the Perry brothers and are, as a result, completely gorgeous. Some of them are truly remarkable portraits, in 25mm, of the actors who played the parts in the films.

Occasionally, LotR games are played at Guildford but the main driver for me in getting more figures done is Guy, who loves playing the game.

So over the next year or so I will see how many more of these splendid figures I can get onto the gaming table and even have a go at making some scenic items.