A matter of bases

 In my last post regarding the Nazgûl and Arwen minis by GW, I mentioned that I’d realised I’d never actually shown my LoTR figures here before. I’ve had them all painted since they first came out, we’re talking late 2001 to 2003. I didn’t buy much beyond that (well, probably a few bits here and there, but I couldn’t tell you exactly when). I picked up the starter boxes and added a few extras, but I never aimed to build full legions for massive battles.

Back in the day I played quite a bit, but the minis have been sitting in storage for years. That’s why I’ve shown so little of them here: a diorama, a repainted Balrog… but never the core collection, as they were painted long before I even started this blog.

Anyway, what matters now is that the kids have taken an interest in the books, the films… and the minis! So we’ve been playing a few simple games to get them used to the system. I thought about taking some photos and showing you what I’ve got, but there was a small underlying issue: the bases are all “themed”, meaning they’re modelled to match the exact moment that character appears in the film. I’ve got dark Mordor earth, very dark Moria depths, very pale Osgiliath ruins… You get the idea. At the time it seemed like a brilliant way to recreate scenes from the trilogy, but in reality, you always end up playing on a fairly generic grass-and-earth board… where none of those bases quite fit!

This is what I mean!

 Of course there is only a reasonable solution... which is to build proper themed boards for each game and only play with the appropiate minis for each scenario! LOL

But I'm afraid I have to be practical. It was quite easier for me to do exactly what I’d done with the Nazgûl and rework all the bases a bit to unify them, so they’d work better on my gaming boards. We can happily accept the idea of a Moria goblin hunting party venturing up to the surface, or some men of Gondor fighting out in the open. It’ll have to do.

With no particular order in mind, I started with whatever I had closest to hand, in this case, Rohan. And if you look at teh pic below, it’s almost painful: not even within the same army do the minis have any consistency in their bases!

Aye, Theoden always carries a bit of Helm's Deep with him wherever he goes

 

My plan with all this is simply to unify the bases, without touching the paintwork on the figures themselves. Yes, they’re over twenty years old, and they would undoubtedly benefit from a repaint. But I’m prepared to endure the public scrutiny of showing my old minis and submit myself to your judgement.

I’ve only made one exception, and that’s with Rohan. If you look at the picabove, I think we can all agree those cloaks were crying out for a wash of Agrax Earthshade. That’s genuinely the only thing I’ve added or retouched: just giving the Rohirrim cloaks a bit more depth. It felt like a manageable amount of work for very little effort.

So this is what I got with the characters:

I counted little fella Merry into the Rohan host

Can you spot them among all the infantry minis?

Agrax on the cloaks

Now the riding characters:

Riding through the Pelennor Fields

And all of my mounted host:

Deeeeeaaaaath!

You can see roughly what the work involved. I’ve unified the colours, peeled off the radioactive green flock they originally had (cut from those railway grass mats that used to be sold in sheets!) and replaced it with more natural grass and tufts.

As for the latter, I had to remove those old plastic grass tufts that were meant to represent tall vegetation (Remember those? The ones where you had to drill a hole in the base and stick them in). Back then, 25 years ago, they were cutting-edge stuff, the peak of realism! Now I’ve swapped them out for this newer option, and I think the minis are better off for it.

 

Besides the Rohirrim, I also managed to work on the bases of the Moria goblins. No repainting at all here, I’m showing them exactly as I painted them back in… December 2001, was it? The only additional work I’ve done is on the troll. More specifically, on his weapon.

On that model, the weapon arm comes in two parts, with the front part of the spear attaching at the hand. Over the years that piece must have fallen off a hundred times. For the first time, I finally felt confident enough to drill into both the spear and the hand and insert a bit of wire to pin it properly in place. And now, at long last, it’s not going anywhere.

These are goblins. Not that thing we saw at the Hobbit movie

 This is it for now. I have the Uruk-hai on my bench as I post this, so I think you can expect more updates anytime soon!