Elven Battle Company - Mission 2 Battle Report

Mission 2!

I stole the idea for this mission from Don's very excellent series of Battle Company reports that you can watch here on YouTube: OSBGL Battle Report.

Ithilgalad and her team travel north to locate the missing Hobbit and his friends. Travelling through the woodlands they make excellent time due to their woodland skills. After a few days they hear shouts off in the distance!

The missing adventurers mentioned by the Hobbit in the pub have put together a hasty barricade and it is under attack by some Ruffadrim! Some of the scruffy men continue their back and forth attack at the makeshift defences while the others note the bright white horse and head down to investigate. (These guys won't actually participate in the battle as they're all tied up with the adventurers.)

With their woodland skills, the Elves decide to use the terrain to their advantage and head into some rough ground. (They get full movement in rough terrain rather than half - except for the horse, which is slowed right down until Ithilgalad gets some bonus rules.)

The three Elven archers take aim at the incoming Ruffadrim and launch their shots. The accurate Elven archery swiftly claims two victims, one Ruffadrim...

And one horse! The only mounted enemy is de-horsed! (Well that was my attempt at making the mission at least a little difficult!)

The arrows from the Ruffadrim continually bounce and ricochet off Celeb-galadh's armour plating. He took arrow after arrow as the Wood Elves have Elven Cloaks and can't be fired at while obscured by scenery - making the Galadhrim the prime targets!)

Col-galadh and Ecthel-galadh charge forward and Col-galadh wins the battle due to his fighting prowess (won on a tie!). One more Ruffadrim spearman goes down! (In this mission, to increase the difficulty a little at a time for my son, I let these guys use their spears and bows, along with the arrow poison.)

Ithilgalad boldly spurs Legrinsul forward and smashes down two more Ruffadrim, narrowly winning the duel, knocking them to the ground with the momentum of her steed and then striking both of them down!

The Elven archers continue whittling down the enemy before they can get into close combat, thanks to the rough woodland terrain! (The poor Ruffadrim move at half speed in the rough terrain and the archers managed to pepper most of them before they could get into close combat!)

Col-galadh continues his relentless march forward, Ecthel-galadh ably assisting him with some spear support!

At this point the Ruffadrim are losing men rapidly and the elves have yet to take any injuries! Those attacking the adventurer party are starting to cast nervous glances around!

The last evil man in the south puts up a terrific fight, winning against the three elven archers and pushing them back temporarily, but failing to wound any, before they gang up on him again and this time strike him down.

Col-galadh's cockatoo swoops in to help trap another Ruffadrim, ready for Ithilgalad to strike down from horseback. However, the two remaining Ruffadrim archers shoot into the combat! One of them takes out their own trapped companion! The other manages to roll many sixes and wounds Col-galadh!

But it's too little, too late and the remaining Ruffadrim leg it, chased by arrows as they scurry away!

And the Elven team meets up with the adventurers, who are very grateful for the save and contribute resources to Ithilgalad's cause - allowing her to attain a Rallying Horn (which gives plus one to rolls for reinforcements).

Col-galadh makes a full recovery, though is becoming annoyed at the taunts from his friends given that he doesn't seem to be able to make it through a mission without being knocked out (he has failed all of his Fate rolls!

The adventurers confess that they have received a treasure map, but that they may be underprepared for the task and offer the map to Ithilgalad if she grants them a finders fee if she is successful in obtaining the treasure! Sounds like more missions are in the future!

Golden King of Abrakhan and Entourage

The Golden King and Entourage project is now complete (actually it's been complete for a bit, but I haven't posted it until now!)

The King is supported by his two "robust" guards and accompanied by seven "tough chicks" as my wife and son like to call them. Given there's no female representation I had to source these from a range of companies and adjust their bases etc. to try and get them relatively sized correctly. They're not perfect, but I think they came up well enough and the colours blend them in with the rest of the Harad army.

So here are the first three. I've kept the same dark skin colour and used some putty to make turbans and head scarves for them all.

A mix of female barbarians and warriors from a variety of companies.

And from the back...

The tough chicks generally have the same oversized weapons that the Games Workshop Abrakhan Guard models have, they've always been almost silly and cartoony reminding me of an old Looney Tunes cartoon (these are the guys carrying the King).

On some of the head scarves I did a little bit of freehand in gold. I used scarabs as the motif as they're what are on the King's banner above his head.

At some stage I'll do another whole army photo with the Haradrim, but the spare time I have at the moment (hint - almost none thanks to having to do home schooling thanks to COVID-19) is on getting the Elven battle company ready for reinforcements!

Elven Battle Company - First Report

My son asked for an Elven battle company so at Christmas (and his birthday which comes just after) we got a whole heap of elves. It has taken since then for me to get them painted up! He's super into Lord of the Rings and we even got out a Sindarin dictionary (well, looked it up online) so he could come up with names for his elves.

His leader (Arwen model) is Ithilgalad, the sergeants are (Elrond) Col-galadh and (Haldir) Celeb-galadh. Then we have Brethil and Thaun the wood elf archers and Ecthel-galadh the Galadhrim with spear and shield. He chose all the colours and bases etc. and I painted them up to order =) We don't have hardly any wood elves (I just happened to have a couple that I'd obtained in random eBay finds) so it's a bit of a modified battle company!

We set up for the match with what he calls our Ruffadrim (we don't have ruffian models, but do have Haradrim). This is the mission where the battle company has to escape from a random board edge while the ruffians try to stop them. The story is that a Hobbit says he has a friend in need and invites the Elves into the pub to explain his quandary to them. While meeting the hobbit the Elves notice a shady character slip out of the door. Going to the window, Brethil reports that there are some shady looking characters approaching. The Elves tell the Hobbits to stay put and that they'll lead the newcomers away from the little town...

And in the most unfortunate of all events, in the middle of a COVID-19 lockdown, having waited months and months to get the company painted and ready to play, on turn 1 he charged three Elves at a single Ruffadrim. The Elves all rolled 1s and 2s, the Ruffadrim rolled a 6. No worries, Elven heavy armour will block that... and another 6! Yikes! Col-galadh fell immediately. This caused some grief and almost tears, but we had a chat about how in the first mission there's no ill effects, no rolls on the wound chart etc. and with a few deep breaths we continued on playing.

Fortunately from there the other Elves made short work of three Ruffadrim!

Still, after the scary first turn, the Elves decided to hustle for the exit, keeping Ithilgalad safe and leading the Ruffadrim away from the Hobbits. They launched into the rotten Ruffadrim who caused so much angst and served him up some revenge!

The two wood Elves, Brethil and Thaun, bravely held the alleyway, forcing some Ruffadrim to go around the houses while they fought and defeated two more!

Meanwhile, the others bolted through the fields towards escape!

With some lucky priority rolls, Celeb-galadh fired arrows at the Ruffadrim while the brave rearguard wood Elves caught up with the rest of the group.

Finally, they all escaped and discovered that Col-galadh was merely knocked unconscious and recovered with no ill effects. Thanks to their excellent forestry skills they returned to the deserted hut in the woods where they recovered Ithilgalad's white elven horse, Legrinsul and Col-galadh was reunited with his loyal cockatoo (which they'd had to leave outdoors while inside the village). The remaining Ruffadrim all scattered, but the plot thickened! The Hobbit told a story about a friend of his who had been talked into going on an adventure (I know, I know, the shame!) with a Dwarf, a Human and an Elf! They hadn't been gone a very long time, but long enough that they're a bit worried. They pointed the Elves off in the direction they think they went and hope that the Elves can check on their friends. The Elves are very interested in what would make an Elf, Hobbit, Dwarf and Human all join together so will head off to investigate!

We're looking forward to more adventures from the Elves!

It's all about that base

I've taken a few days off to make for a long Easter break and help settle my son into a new home schooling system since COVID-19 has caused our schools to close up! So with all my new green grass and stuff we thought we'd rebase some of my miniatures.

We started with the ents and eagles as the ents in particular always looked a bit sad on grey stone bases!

So now they're on lovely brown and green bases!

There's also a hobbit and an Aragorn for scale, oh, and a cheeky cockatoo!

I put some trees around them, my tallest ones behind them and others to the sides.

And from the back you can see some more of the grasses, shrubs and flowers I added.

Next up were the eagles!

Again, I've left the hobbit and Aragorn (and cockatoo in the picture)

I painted these so long ago, I can imagine I'd do it very differently today, with washes etc.

And from the back you can see more how well the statues have added a nice contrast with the grass I reckon!

And finally, here's the Good Monster army!

The colours are all a bit washed out, but you get the general gist!
Here's the original crew (from an earlier post: old good monster army)

So there you go, plenty of other good guys who I'll rebase in green =) Nice quick work, just a few minutes and some glue. Easy to squeeze in from time to time when I've got a chance.

Golden King of Abrakhan

Another great eBay find before the world shut down due to COVID-19!
I've ordered lots of single miniatures on eBay, though many of them have not showed up, I'm sure there are transport difficulties in lots of places at the moment.
One that did show up was the Golden King of Abrakhan for my Harad army.
I'm also making him a "tough girl" harem using miniatures from other ranges (because there are almost no female LotR models.

So far I've got two, I carved off their hair and added some turbans.

I figured the Abrakhan Guard are ridiculously cartoony with their huge swords and huger guts so why not make my own Abrakhan Guard that are similarly silly.

So here you can see the King himself, flanked by two of his Harem (I haven't done any others yet) and some Watchers of Karna so you can see the same colour scheme I've used across the board for my Harad.

I tried to paint the flat sides and back as though they were wooden vertical planks. The lava base was fun, I put a stepping stone in the middle so that the poor guy at the back at least has something to try and step to! That amused me a lot =) The light is a bit bright on these photos!

So there you go, not a big deal, but a nice little project that I have spent a few minutes on here and there and a couple of weeks later it's done!