Friday Fantasy: Thistle and Rose Barbarian Raider Cavalry

These four rough and smelly riders are finished and mustered into the ranks of the wild Dunlending hillmen opposing the Kingdom of Rohan for my Lord of the Rings gaming.   These are 28mm sculpts from the Vendel catalogue that was taken over a few years ago by Thistle and Rose miniatures.  I have quite a few of their hillmen foot counterparts, which I’ve collected to use as allies of my Isengard orc and Uruk army in the service of Saruman, so it’s nice to have a small mounted capability for my Dunlendings.

 These are very basic sculpts, with minimal detail, but they have their own old schoo charm, rather similar to Minifigs in style.    The horses supplied are likewise very basic, without a ton of detail.   Because they’re such simple minis, I painted them much more quickly and basically then I usually do for, say, Seven Years War figures.   I had to drill out the hands to fit the spears supplied with the minis.

 

I don’t imagine that the Dunlendings would have mustered many horsemen.   As I imagine it, they’ve been pushed into the hills  and lower mountains over the centuries by the Rohirrim, fighting a guerrilla war against Rohan’s border forts and garrisons, and retreating where the Horse Lords’ cavalry can’t reach them.  They would likely have a small number of sturdy, smaller horses suited to the rough country and useful for raiding the occasional village.  As you can see by the one shield, they have received some arms and pay from Isengard, who find the Dunlendings useful for keeping Rohan off guard.

One of the sets of rules I want to use for this sort of fighting is the Dux rules by Too Fat Lardies, and in the Dux the Raiders supplement there is some provision for small bands of raider cavalry, so these chaps will do nicely.  Those sheep a few posts back are now in a lot more danger!

 

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

#Fantasy Friday: Reaper Centaur Archer

 

 

 

I haven’t had many fantasy figures in the painting queue of late, but I recently finished a one-ff, a Reaper miniature of a centaur which will go to reinforce my army of the Elven Woodland Realm.  This army has a large number of female figures (including a dryad) so this figure is highly suitable.   

I will be doing some F2F Dragon Rampant gaming this weekend, so may get the itch to paint a few more of the centaurs in my lead pile and perhaps build this into a small unit.

I used Citadel contrast Green for her bodice, and tried a few attempts to develop the shading on the horse part, perhaps only partially successfully.

 

An interesting figure to paint.

Blessings to your brushes!  

MP+

#FantasyFriday: Oathmark / North Star Goblin Wolf Riders

Ready to storm out of the mountains and pillage the vales of Men, here is a unit of fifteen horrible 28mm goblin wolf-riders to add to my Middle Earth collection.   I’m not rally sure how a bunch of nasty ferocious wolves would consent to being hidden around by an even more horrible pack of smelly loutish goblins, nor for that matter do I understand how the goblins can ride them without saddles, harness, reigns, etc.  Maybe that’s the tradeoff.

Shooty types.   I like how the North Star Oathmark kits come with a wide variety of weapons and gear, and assemble easily.  Likewise the wolves are simple two part models and go together without too obvious joining lines.   They painted up well enough with some simple drybrushing.

Stabby types with their Sacred Skull of Whatsit Standard.  

Chopper types.

Quite pleased with them overall - generic enough for simple fantasy points battle, but atmospheric enough to be in the empty of either the White Hand or the Lidless Eye.   Maybe there’s an Osprey book, “Mordor’s Minor Allies”, to be written.   They should give the Rohirim cause for concern.

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

 

Friday Fantasy: GW Ringwraith on Fell Beast (or, Meanwhile, in Mordor)

As a rule I disapprove of super-monstrous units on the wargaming table.  My WW2 collection only has one 15mm and 1 20mm early-model Tiger tank, and you will search my collection in vain for a Maus, JSII, or King Tiger.   I confess I look askance at people who are all too ready to put such figures, or a French army consisting of just the Imperial Guard, on the table.  It’s just not right.   If you can’t eke out a win with PzIIIs, T34s or line infantry, then you aren’t really trying.   OK, I’ve confessed my prejudice, feel free to disagree.

However, if one is going to do the Lord of the Rings in a large way, then there are certain epic fights where you want a Nazgul lord on a horrid flappy mount, because if nothing else, you want to motivate your orc hordes to throw themselves onto the bright spears and swords of their noble foes.    When I found a Battle of the Pelennor Fields box set in my local games store at 50% off because, said the owner, no one wants this stuff anymore, I jumped at the opportunity, because it included a number of large models in plastic, including this guy.

I didn’t put a massive amount of work into the painting.  I started with an undercoat of Vallejo German Grey primer and then drybrushed with several lighter shades of grey craft store paint.  I picked out the veins in the wings with a medium grey.   The Ringwraith was black with successive shades of grey highlights on the folds of the robe, while his armour was Citadel Warplock Bronze, then a wash of Nuln Oil, then a dry brush of gunmetal.  I put the most work into the ringwraith’s sword.

 

I think most of my effort went into the detail on the base, to be honest.

This figure will mostly sit in my display cabinet, but if it ever makes it onto to the table, it would only be for a very large scale battle.   If using Dragon Rampant (my friend James and I really haven’t found a better set of rules for big fantasy battles), I would give him the Goader ability to make the two closest units move automatically, as well as make Good units within a certain radius (at least a foot, I would think) check for Fear unless an equivalent hero like Gandalf was on the table.   

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+