Meanwhile, In Rohan - 1





Some scenic work through April has produced this charming little farm for my Dux Rohirrim project.  As most Dark Ages games seem to be focused on pillage and looting and other beastly acts, and seeing as a fair bit of beastliness goes on in Middle Earth, one needs things to pillage and to defend from pillage.

The haystacks are from a Canadian company, 6 Squared Studios, and were in hot demand at Hot Lead in March.  I grabbed the last two - yellow ochre base, wash with Army Painter Light Tone, and several successive dry brushes of light tans.   The fence sections are half a pack's worth of wattle fences by Renedra.   They do come with little feet  I have seen chaps use them to simply stand them on the table, but I am a stolid sort of fellow and wanted them to have proper bases, even if the result is that the section ends don't quite butt up against each other.  The pig is a happy little fellow I found in a toy store.   I know that Pegasus makes some plastic barnyard animals and I could use some for plunder purposes.  We all know how cranky orcs get when meat is off the menu. 

I confess I am happier with the pig than I am with the barn (if that is what it is).     It is a model kit from PlastCraft Games that Vincent from the local games store stocks.  All the cool kids are getting these, Vincent told me.   Since it was under $10, I thought it wouldn't hurt and would give me a quick medieval / Rohanish / old timey building.

What I got for my $10 came inside a ziplock bag and was rather disappointing: Two sheets of precut plasticard pieces for the walls and roof, and a hard plastic doorframe and door made from some sort of injection moulding.  You got taken, Rabbitman wisely observed when he saw it under construction.   There was no scoring or any kind of feature on the walls and doors as suggested in the illustration - likewise the bits of wood shown on the exterior roof in the photo were missing.   I used a craft knife to score the walls and roof to suggest planking, and I cut the bottom edges of the roof pieces to make it look more like the photo.   Since the top roof pieces didn't join perfectly (I can't be sure if I should blame the model or my rotten skills), I glopped some plastic wood on top to look like a thatched crown to the roof.

I cut some balsawood for the outside of the roof, painted it a black, heavy dark brown drybrushing and a lighter gray drybush to suggest weathering.  Since there is no chimney or opening for one, I am guessing this building is used as a barn or as storage.  It's rough and ready, but I think it will go reasonably well with my MDF Sarissa house.

The next step is to populate the village.  For that I have this pack of Wargames Foundry Dark Ages Saxon Civilians who are next in the queue for the painting table.   I like the young bow third from left, he looks like he will be the one running to the village to warn that the orcs are on the way.

I think these figures will blend in fairly well with the scenery.

The talented and eclectic Paul from Paul's Bods blog recently showed some whimsical 20mm medieval civilians chasing geese, which I would dearly love in this scale.



Besides painting the peasants, I have some other ideas to pursue on this project.  One is building a watch tower - I think I have the plans for one from an old White Dwarf when LOTR was the big thing with GW.   Also, Rabbitman has just sent me a link to another fellow's DIY longhouse prject which looks very tempting.  Finally, there's the thought that if I was the headman of a village out on the edges of the Riddermark, with orc raids a constant source of dread, would I build some sort of palisade or stronghold at the very centre of the village for my people to take refuge in?  And, if so, would it be of stone or of wood?   I must think on this.

For my own purposes, I am going to count all the fencing sections as one terrain feature, and the two haystacks as another.  These models bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 38; Mounted Figures: 3; Buildings: 2;  Terrain Features: 2

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2





Thatch Patch and Rohan Defenders

Thanks to all the folks who responded to my crowd-sourced request for advice on some Dark Ages thatch roofing for my Sarissa model.  The consensus of the hive-mind was that my roof, made of chopped up bits of washcloth, looked too white.  I had saved some bits so used your advice and test-painted a strip, using a base coat of dlluted Brown Umber craft paint, and then, once dried, a heavy dry brush of yellow ochre.  It looked pretty good, so I went for it.

 My faithful reader Dai Dead sent me a photo of his mum’s thatched cottage in the UK, which made me think I was on the right path.   The photo reminded me of Madame Padre’s favourite mystery series, Midsomer Murders, a Netflix staple chez nous, where half of England seems to live in quaint thatched cottages, when they’re not murdering one another.   I would never venture into the English countryside, as judging by that show, the murder rate must be catastrophic. Mind you, it’s all nasty toffs killing toffs, so I guess Canadian tourists are safe.

 I now have a cottage to form the nucleus of a village to defend in my Dux Rohirrim project.   Here are two finished Rohan defenders to protect it.  These are two of the three figures I gratefully received from my 2015 Secret Santa, from the Foundry Casting Room Miniatures Dark Ages Saxon line.  I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t be Rohan Royal Guardsman or part of the retinue of a Lord of the Riddermark.

 The chap on the right, with his more ornate cloak and helmet, seems a likely captain of an elite eored (a company of 120 men) and the lancer one of the captain’s hearth guards.  They are a little more armoured than the GW Riders of Rohan models I’ve seen, but none the worse for it.  The horses are big, substantial brutes, with long bases, too long to fit on the GW plastic bases that ship with their cavalry models, so they will stand out in base width from my GW Rohirrim, but I’m not too worried about that.  Likewise their shields are bigger than ones the GW sculpts carry, and they are missing the quivers and bows that the GW Riders carry, but since these are elite shock cavalry, I can live without those features.

 I’ve tried to follow the greens and browns that distinguish my other Rohirrim, which I admit is the same palette that characterizes the Rohirrim in the SirPJ films.

 Nice embroidery on the captain’s cloak.    Makes him look suitably important.

Blessings to your brushes!

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 29; Mounted Figures: 3; Buildings: 1

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2