Angmar Shade

Just finished an Angmar Shade. Pretty happy with how it turned out.

Lots of nice detail on this mini for dry brushing.

Kings of War battle report... well sort of....

The good guy's

I have a stack of Lord of the Rings miniatures from various factions, namely Numenor, Elves of the Last Alliance, Dwarves, Goblins and Angmar / Mordor. I really love the models of the Last Alliance men and elves and also the Hobbit Dwarves. I also really like the Moria Goblins. And the LotR Trolls are fantastic as well. Mordor Orcs are pretty good also. These are really nice sets of miniatures.

The bad guy's

For some time now I have wanted to use them with the Kings of War rule set but I haven't wanted to rebase them. So how to solve my dilemma?

Trolling around on eBay I found some MDF movement trays that take 25mm round bases. These movement trays hold 10, 8 & 6 miniatures. Taking a punt, I bought a stack. I also have some War of the Ring cavalry movement trays for my Warg riders and cavalry. So far so good.

So how does this all translate to the table top using Kings of War (KoW)? Well, see for your self. The trays are bigger than the official bases for KoW, but given that both sides have the same movement tray base this isn't a problem.

A Cargul (Wraith) of Angmar leads the Angmarim

Casualties can be tracked too by simply removing miniatures off the tray, like in many other game systems, without compromising the unit's footprint due to its movement tray. So the only drawback is that the movement trays don't match the official base sizes. Anyway, below are a lot of images of the battle. Unfortunately time constraints didn't permit it to be fully played out. Still it looked impressive enough to warrant its own blog post.

So enjoy the battle...

Glorfindel leads the Alliance

Red Box War Trolls

Red Box from the Ukraine do some nice 1/72 scale fantasy plastic soldiers. I've shown in a previous post some of their Isengard style Uruk's before. Recently however they released some War Trolls.

Red Box War Trolls set 1

Putting on my thinking cap I decided that these may be useful as Olog-hai (Black Trolls) or as Half-Trolls. Olog's were, if I remember correctly, described by Tolkien as smaller than regular trolls but more cunning and dangerous. So I thought I would take a gamble and get some and see how they fair size-wise and also whether they could fit on a 40mm base for use in WotR cavalry movement trays.

So firstly, what do they look like? There are eight in a box and they come in four different molds (2 of each obviously).

They are pretty detailed for a softer plastic miniature. There is a bit of plastic "flashing" along to mold lines, but nothing too bad as to ruin the miniature. The plastic is thick enough to prevent too much bending. So they should be robust enough for the gaming table. They aren't as strong as the GW plastic miniatures, but will stand a little rough and tumble. So that's a bonus. They are also cheap if you look around on eBay, so that's a second bonus. Finally, the four types you can see above are also rather nice. So another bonus in my book.

OK, so far so good. So how do they compare to the GW LotR / WotR size miniatures. Well, as you can see below, not too bad. They are taller than the average human / elf / orc. So that's excellent news. They would certainly tower above the 1/72 scale miniatures that Reb Box also produce.

One elf vs. four trolls. My money is on the elf!

So how do they compare to the GW Trolls. They are roughly the size of a GW Cave Troll, but smaller than GW's other trolls. Which is fine by me, especially considering that I will be using them for the smaller Olog-hai / Half-troll troops.

I haven't painted them yet. So no idea how well the paint will hold. But I will be toning them in the Army Painter shader Strong Tone and that tends to hold the paint on well with more flexible plastic miniatures.

I may even use these guys in a kit bash fashion for some Blood Bowl varieties. More on that idea in the future!

Magnetic Warg Riders!

I'll post in the future on how I painted these wargs, but I just wanted to show a nice trick I used to make these miniatures convertible to either wargs or warg riders.

First I made each of the wargs as strait wargs with full manes.

On each warg I then super glued a very small 20mm wide by 10mm deep rare earth magnet.

Doing this was a total pain in the backside. So in future I'll use a 30mm wide by 10mm  round magnet. Not the 20mm magnets. That will give more surface area to manipulate the magnet.

I then glued another magnet to the base of the warg riders. Again, this was a total pain as the magnet kept flipping in the drop of superglue or attempting to stay stuck to the tweezers I was using.

As such, I ended up with rider magnets not fitting to warg magnets. Despite this I did end up with proper magnet poles for each warg and rider (i.e. + and - poles). Odd riders could still sit on the same polarity side up magnets (i.e. + to +) as they would attach to the side of the magnet on the warg where the opposite pole was. But this made for an off center seated arrangement for the rider. Fortunatelly there was one warg for each rider to attach too. But using the 20mm magnets was a real pain. So be warned.

And that's how they finally turned out! So a nice trick if you want to use your wargs as both warg and warg rider.

Angmar Snow Troll for Kings of War

Glorfindel takes on a Snow Troll from the Grey Mountains on the fields of northern Arthedain

Eaglemoss make a number of figurines for the Lord of the Rings and some of these are a good size to match 28mm scale (some are good also for 10mm and I'll share that in another post).

The Snow Troll towering over the orcs of Angmar

I picked up an Eaglemoss Cave Troll on eBay a few months back with a view to turning it into a Snow Troll for my Kings of War Angmar army. Its larger than the GW Cave Troll and about a head taller that the Isengard/Morder Troll also by GW. But for a Snow Troll I thought that this figuring was a good size for what I was after and looks imposing on the battlefield.

PREPARATION
I used static grass and PVA glue to attach "fur" to the trolls shoulders and back. Once base coated, the grass would look like hair or fur on the figure.

Initially I based the figure on a square base for use with Kings of War. But given that all my other trolls were already on round bases from War of the Ring, I decided to rebase the figure on to a round base also. You will notice that later on in the images below.

PAINTING PROCESS
In short, I painted the troll in the following manner (images for this process follow below).

• Base coat in White Spray
• Ink in Nuln Oil
• When dry, ink in Blue Ink
• Drybrush heavily in Administration Grey
• Drybrush lightly in Space Wolves Grey
• Drybrush lightly in White Scar
• Paint eyes in Temple Guard Blue
• Paint teeth in Rakarth Flesh
• Paint neck chain in Boltgun Metal.
• Paint nails in Bestial Brown and when dry in highlight in Rakarth Flesh.
• I painted the loincloth in Bestial Brown and the metal in Bronze.

So there you have it. One very large and imposing Snow Troll from the Grey Mountains near Angmar.