Build me an army worthy of Mordor...

"Build me an army worthy of Mordor!" commanded Sauron, and the traitor Saruman does just this. Working from a stock of goblins and orcs he breeds a larger, fiercer orc warrior, able to tolerate daylight and travel great distances at need, and still fight. Thus Uruk-Hai of Isengard have come to Middle-Earth, to destroy the race of men.

Saruman the White, also known as Curunir to the elves. Once the greatest of the Istari; Maiar sent down by the Valar in the guise of old men, as wizards, to help the fair races of Middle-Earth in their ongoing battle with Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor. Saruman, over many years, centuries indeed, comes to feel the battle against Sauron, cannot be won, and thus over time, and also through using the Palantir of Orthanc, he is seduced into joining forces with Sauron.


Saruman and Grima Wormtongue inspect their troops, with encouragment from an Uruk-Hai shaman.


The Fighting Uruk-Hai, clad in heavy harness of war and wielding long pikes. Although Tolkien never specifically mentions pikes in his descriptions of the Uruk-Hai, Peter Jackson and and his team, came up with the idea, as it seemed logical based on their immediate foes; The Rohirrim, a mainly mounted force of cavalry. History tells us that the horse was countered with the pike, and thus pikes would be the ideal weapons to defeat Rohan in open battle.



However, the forces of Rohan retreat from this threat to the fortress of Helms Deep. Here normal soldiery wielding swords and shields, will contribute ably to the fight. PJ's designers also hypothesized that a long pike might also be useful in such a siege, being able to "hook" the defenders from the walls, and allow a ladder assault to be easier for the Uruks. I know of no historical precedent for this, but it makes for great theatre...



Regular orcs of Isengard also pour forth from the pits below Orthanc, and swell the ranks. Here led by a captain, drummer, taskmaster with whip and banner bearing the White-Hand of Saruman.
To help scale the walls of Helms Deep, an Uruk-Hai siege assault ballista, hurls its huge missiles to erect tall scaling ladders against the Hornburg. Again more ideas from PJ, but it makes for great drama during the siege.


Warg riders, lend speed and mobility to the attack of Isengard, acting as forward scouts, and engaging the flanks of the enemy during the crossing of the Isen, and hastening the demise of the Westfold and retreat from the River Isen.

Wild Isengard berserkers lead the assault up the scaling ladders, to bring death and destruction with their huge and fearsome two-handed swords. Driven to a berserk rage, their helmets are first filled with the blood of their enemies before the helm is placed on their heads, dripping blood down their bodies and filling their nostrils with the scent of their enemies. Truly fearsome warriors.

A great troll of Isengard. This is again not in the explicit canon of Tolkien, nor is it one of PJ's inventions. It appears, from what I can tell, to have been driven by the desires of the gaming fraternity, who wanted a troll to add to Isengards forces. I believe Tolkien always wanted others to develop further his world of Middle-Earth and the creatures therein, and stories there-from. As such, I feel it is within the bounds of possibility, that Saruman could have bent the will of trolls, simple creatures at best, to his command. The voice of Saruman was all powerful...

I still have many more units to add to this force, including Uruk-Hai scouts, crossbowmen, and Dunlendings.

I will hope to update this blog post in due course.

Warhammer English Civil War - Parliament

This project started late 2005 / early 2006 (I think?), shortly after I had first moved to New Zealand. The small town I had moved to, Whakatane, did not appear to have any local wargamers, but after doing a bit internet surfing I came across a chap in the next town over, Rotorua, called Nathan Ward.

I was interested in playing Warhammer Historical, at the time I was finishing off a medieval army. Nathan was considering Warhammer but for the English Civil War supplement. So we mutually decided to give this period and rule-set a whirl. I had previously picked up a set of rules from E-bay, but not done anything with them at that point.

Next we had to get some miniatures. My first port of call normally for figures is Foundry. However, having checked out the Foundry range I was not overly impressed with some of the poses; the musketeers looked oddly crouched over which did not appeal. Also the price of Foundry figures plus postage to New Zealand, was prohibitive.

Yet more internet searching revealed Renegade miniatures, who had at the time, a post free worldwide deal on their army deals. I gleefully ordered the foot and horse army packs. These came through a little while later and I set to work; filing, basing and undercoating so that we could get a feel for the rules, with based figures. The figures were nicely sculpted and slightly larger than the Foundry figures I was used to.

The only problem at the time was that Renegade were only offering the foot and horse, with no other figures available; no artillery, dragoons and other desirable figures. More internet searching revealed that compatible ranges in style and scale were Bicorne and Redoubt. I liked the look of the Bicorne figures and found helpful responses from Andrew Barrett at Bicorne, with questions about the ranges on offer.

I have to say I was put off going with Redoubt, who may have had a wider range but a lot of their figures came with separate heads and to be honest I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of having to glue them all into place.

So Bicorne won my business and some artillery and dragoons and militia etc were finally ordered.

Just as things were starting to progress nicely, our plans for New Zealand changed, and my family and I moved south to Kapiti Coast. Not finding anyone playing WECW locally, but meeting up with guys at the Wellington Warlords who were playing Warhammer Ancients, I decided to start an ancient germanic barbarian army.(See separate post for full details of this venture!)

So my poor old WECW army got put on the back burner...

During the time of painting up my Barbarians I had met with the local Kapiti Fusiliers and Fusilier Steve Sands was interested in the ECW period and had an army, although based for WRG. Over time, Steve very sportingly decided to give these WECW rules a go, and gradually re-based his army and off I went again with my WECW painting project.

I still have a ways to go but heres whats done so far (Dec 07):




This is the first regiment of foote I painted. All Renegade, painted in acrylics, on magnetized bases and movement trays. The pikes are 100mm Foundry spears/pikes, and very sharp they are too! The flag is hand-made and painted, but I may replace this with a commercially available one from GMB.



The second regiment of foote painted. Again all Renegade. I still need to sort out the flag for the ensign of this regiment.



Some spare Renegade musketeers were painted in general, non-uniformed colours, to act as a separate Forlorn Hope, or add some extra figures to the other foote regiments shot sleeves.

It was at about this point that my ECW painting stalled to go on to the Barbarians.



When painting finally resumed, I decided to "let myself in gradually" to the period again (and not be scared off by having to face painting big units!), and started with some artillery and crews. These are Falconets, light guns, from Bicorne.



These are Sakers, medium guns, again from Bicorne.



Well I guess an army needs someone to lead it into battle, so here are the Parliament Commanders. From left to right, William Waller, Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Figures from Bicorne.



There was no putting it off any longer. I had to make a start on the cavalry. I tend to prefer painting infantry to cavalry, as the individual models paint faster. Consequently I tend to find cavalry a bit of a slog, but there was nothing for it but to press on. These are heavy horse, with breast and backplate and gauntlet on left arm. Figures from Renegade.



And then I decided to place another little order with Bicorne to fill another few gaps in my force. A mortar and crew duly arrived and were painted up as a nice interlude to the cavalry. The mortar, shells and red jacketed crew member are Bicorne, the other crew are spare cannon crew, also from Bicorne. There is a nice little pair of mortar crew I am still busy with who are carrying a mortar shell between them. I'll post a picture when finished.



Having decided to turn our ECW games into a campaign, where armies would march with baggage trains, I needed to get some carts and wagons to represent this on the table top. Again Bicorne came through with some nice figures. This is their cart and driver. This was a multi-part piece that needed assembling. The parts were well sculpted but a little fiddly to assemble. I used Araldite for glue (a two part epoxy) and used Blu-tac to hold pieces together while glue sets. I prefer Araldite to super-glue as it makes a stronger less brittle bond, although does have the nuisance of taking a little while to set. The base is several GW cavalry bases glued long edge to long edge, and the sloped edges filled with glue and sand.



And finally the four wheeled wagon again from Bicorne.

Of course it has to be said both cart and wagon are empty of supplies! I will have to sculpt some sacks with Greenstuff, and add them later.

No doubt these carts and wagons will see a lot of service in my future gaming as they will probably do service in many armies, medieval onwards, either as baggage trains or perhaps just battlefield decoration.

Well thats enough distraction, back to painting those horses!