The Fellowship is broken!

 

from Zorpazorp- great graphic!

  After all the work, it was finally time to push some models and roll some dice.  We played four scenarios, representing the end of the Fellowship of the Ring and the beginning of the Two Towers.  We even played them as 'linked', which means that the outcomes affected the next battle each time.  

Aragorn's Stand

It is on the slopes of Amon Hen that disaster overtakes the Fellowship.  It is late afternoon when the travellers halt, resting upon the shore with the intention of crossing the river at night and working their way down through Emyn Muil.  Unfortunately, two calamities befall the small company in quick succession.  Boromir, his mind broken by the terrible influence of the Ring, has tried to seize it from Frodo.  Though his madness was fleeting, it was enough to convince Frodo that he must flee from his companions and make his own way to Mordor.  Even as this happens, Saruman's Uruk-hai , led by Lurtz, have found the Fellowship and are preparing to ambush their prey.  It is as Frodo says farewell to Aragorn atop Amon Hen that the Uruak-hai launch their attack.  Forewarned by Sting, Aragorn sends Frodo away and prepares to meet the Uruk-hai attack though he is outnumbered many times over.  All he can do is hope to endure until help arrives, but with his companions scattered across the hilltop, the outlook seems bleak.  Can the son of Arathorn buy time for Frodo to escape and continue his quest, or has the Fellowship failed in its goal?  (pg. 85)

 

   With the orcs pouring through the trees, Aragorn valiantly stood as Frodo made his escape.  It took 9 turns for the hobbit to get away and Aragorn expended quite a few of his heroic abilities to stay alive.  Luckily, the elf and dwarf burst in to help just in time.  

Boromir' Redemption

  Even as Aragorn struggles with dozens of Uruk-hai at the top of Amon Hen, yet more of the foul creatures stream through the trees and undergrowth of the lower slopes.  Shielded by the enchantment of his Elven cloak for much of his scramble down the hill, Frodo threads his way past the searching Uruk-hai, making for the boats moored far below.  Careful as he is, the Uruk-hai are too many to be avoided indefinitely, and only a chance distraction, by Merry and Pippin saves him.  Unable to tell one hobbit from another, the Uruk-hai begin to chase Merry and Pippin, thinking one of them to be Frodo.  As the two hobbits flee their pursuers, their fate seems certain- they cannot stand and fight several dozen Uruk-hai- yet just as the lead Uruks are upon them, Boromir comes to their rescue.  Stricken and haunted by the memory of his recent betrayal, the son of Denetheor resolves to fight to the last in Merry and Pippin's defense, no matter the cost to himself.  WIhin seconds, Boromir is in the fight of his life- only his skill and tenacity can save the hobbits now.  (pg. 86)

  Boromir fought like a demon and destroyed every Uruk-hai that he could, but the hobbits were captured.  It took all of his passion and skill to chase and rescue Pippin, only to watch Merry disappear on an Uruk's shoulder and another sneak to steal Pippin anyway!  Boromir did all he could, but it wasn't enough as the orcs succeeded in their mission (they think)!

The Breaking of the Fellowship

  The Fellowship is now all but scattered, Frodo and Sam have taken one of the boats and continued on their quest.  Merry and Pippen have been seized by Uruk-hai and even now are carried back to Isengard to face torture and death at the hands of Saruman's followers.  Boromir, wounded by arrow and blade, is bleeding his life away into the dark soil of Amon Hen, surrounded by those he has slain.  Each time he winded the Horn of Gondor, it was not help that arrived, but more Uruk-hai hungry for his blood.  Though death reaches out to claim this mighty warrior, still he fights on in defiance of those who would take his life, yet he cannot endure for much longer.  When his strength fails for the last time, the Uruk-hai will fall upon him with renewed fury and scatter the pieces of his despoiled corpse across the hilltop. Boromir's only hope lies in the arrival of his remaining companions, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.  Fortunately, these last three have finally managed to fight their way to the son of Gondor's side, but are they in time save him? (pg. 88)

  In this scenario, Pippen was saved and Boromir didn't suffer any wounds previously, so the Fellowship was in much better shape.  Unfortunately, each member of the Fellowship fell on-by-one as the orcs continued to pour in.  First, the surviving hobbit was stolen again, then Legolas fell to the black arrows of the Uruk-hai, then Boromir and Aragon each lost duels that resulted in their death.  With only Gimli surviving this battle, the Fellowship was truly broken and all hope for Middle Earth was fading...

Let's Hunt Some Orc

  The Fellowship is broken.  After the attack of the Uruk-hai at Amon Hen, Boromir lies slain, Sam and Frodo have chosen their own path to Mordor, and Merry and Pippin have been captured by Saruman's Uruk-hai.  Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli resolve that they shall not fail their friends and set out to rescue the hobbits from the clutches of the Uruk-hai.  The Uruk-hai have a head start on Aragorn and his companions, and have dispatched a force of warriors to ambush any that dare pursue.  Can Aragorn's company break through to save Merry and Pippin?  (pg. 14)

  While the Fellowship was all slain in the last battle, we still wanted to play the scenario that kicks off the second movie.  Resetting everyone's heroic abilities, we put the "three hunters" down and mobbed them with orcs, only to watch as the heroes destroyed everything that came at them.  It was bloody and brutal and definitely a good reset...

  Whew, that's it!  We played four scenarios in a row, mastered the rules, and had a blast discussing the story and outcomes.  The group really enjoyed the game so we have the opportunity to play more.  Now to see what hobbying I'll need to do for next time...

As always, Happy Gaming!

A place of power in no time

   For my Lord of the Rings game night, I had to build a themed terrain piece to reflect the scenario and setting straight from the campaign.  Because I was focused on the transition between the Fellowship and the Two Towers, I determined that the Ambush at Amon Hen was the best choice.  There's a couple of reasons for that, and one of them just happened to be that the terrain is easy to build.  This is especially useful if you only have a couple of days and a lack of sharp blades...

  Admittedy, the instructions, templates, and measurements are right out of the Fellowship of the Ring campaign book published by GW in 2005 (these three books are still the best!).  The only changes I made were the columns (I have a few cake columns laying about, so I used them instead) and the statues around the seat (I do want them, but I would need sharper blades to avoid complete catastrophe).  Otherwise, this is almost step-by-step.

  

  The foamboard was not happy and cutting each of the layers to be 4mm shorter for the stairs (did I mention that the measurements are all in milimeters?!) turned out to be a long and error-filled task.  This was three days before gameday and it would now be two days to put it all together.  

  Next was gluing everything together.  This involved some superglue for the pillars on the base and lots of white glue for the foamboard.  That same white glue was then coated onto the base and some other necessary areas for the good 'ol sand-dump!  This was the day before gameday...

  I woke up on gameday with a paintbrush in my hand and a mission to complete.  After priming the models with black spray (I'm out of time, so I'm trying to find the quickest approaches to everything) and then grey spray, I immediately doused the base of the building and all other sandy areas with that coffee brown (the only craft paint brown color we own, and that wasn't ideal).

  Then we went crazy with the white glue and green flock, the white glue and blobs of static grass, and then the superglue for the clump foliage.  

  And finally, I pulled out a cream colour (I wanted white, but my hobby supplies betrayed me often for this project) and drybrushed and dappled around all the groundwork and across all the stone.  It game it that depth that it needed to mostly hide it.  By now, it's time to leave for gameday.  Like, 'wash the brush off and take the terrain to the car' time to leave.  But i finished it.

  This is obviously not the highest quality of work and certainly not what the Emperor would allow me to get away with in his shops, but I was satisfied and my gaming group really dug it!  I'm always excited to build and paint terrain, but getting this one done in just a few hours spread over three days while working on other stuff...  Damn, I'm good!

  Do you have a speedy '3-out-of-5' project that you've pulled off lately?  Do you have a project that you followed step-by-step from a good source and still nearly destroyed?  Comment below (I do read them)!

Happy Hobbying!

The hunt is on!

   I've been like a machine these last couple of weeks- executing project after project.  And somehow, I ended up pulling out the ol' Lord of the Rings miniatures for a game/movie night with my DnD group.  It's been almost two decades since I painted a LotR miniature (that can't be right, but I've been slipping for long time now...), so this was a bit of fun that I didn't expect.  

  In this previous post, I noted that point of these guys.  The group is partially assembling just to 'get out of the house' (no matter how old guys get, we still want to play with our friends!) and maybe watching the Two Towers.  We already watched The Fellowship, so a transition between those two would be awesome for these noobs, and I have the miniatures to play those scenarios.  But I also have to paint them, so I got to work!

These models took far longer to paint than I planned (and I forgot to do the cleaning for flash and mold lines and texture, so...), but I finally got them done.  Below are all the colors that I used- remember that I'm just using what I have and am not really following any colour-schemes.  

  The Three Hunters (Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli) just needed to be based.  But I also had to paint up the most important models for the Ambush at Amon Hen- the Uruk-hai carrying Merry and Pippin away!  I knocked those out very quickly (I've painted so many Uruk in my time that I don't even try anymore- hopefully it doesn't show!), and then got to basing all those models.  

  And with that, I have all the models for the scenarios painted and ready to play.  Now I just have to build the Seeing Chair ruins for the terrain...

Let me know what you think and whether you're into the LotR stuff at all yourself!  Most importantly- Happy Hobbing!

  

The ruins of Only War

 

  A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I'm working on a some terrain and that a good buddy sent me a set to work on.  I promised that I would blog about it, but I got smacked in the face by real life and I had to put it on pause for way too long.  I've finally started working on it and this is both to show it off and my work-in-progress.  

  Only War terrain is specifically designed for 40k, but it isn't rife with the skulls that decorate the grimdark setting, meaning that the ruins can be system-agnostic.  This matters if you happen to play other mini wargames but still want to fight through the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world.  If you are a 40k player, this terrain is perfect for the newest scenario packs (Pariah Nexus, I think) as well as meeting the cover standards for the tournaments.  For the more casual player, these are awesomely-detailed ruins that can really create that setting that drives a narrative.  

  After washing and priming the buildings, I decided to take some pictures to show off the detail.  Now these are definitely 'printed' and you can see some the 'ribbing' if you look up close.  But the detail is crisp and the printed aspects are almost impossible to see.  My favorite aspect of these is the non-symmetrical aspect of everything.  The bricks of the buildings are not just a grid patter, the decorations aren't just 'mirrored' from one side of the ruin to the other, and there is 'volume' to it all.  Unlike the GW buildings- these aren't super-thin and actually represent how thick brick walls would be.  These are very well-designed!

  At this point, I had to decide how I wanted to paint these ruins.  Everyone does the trusty gray (including myself , especially in that last post about Cityfight terrain), and these buildings were certainly modeled on the old GW Cityfight terrain already, so the choice is normally obvious.  But I wanted to be different.  I figured to paint these buildings in a sandstone color- something that could still be gray but have a different enough tone to even stand out from the concrete grounds they stand on.  So I busted out the airbrush, knowing that I need more practice and planning on it here.  So far, I've simply based the buildings with the Coffee color (11344) from Anita's All-Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint.  My next steps are to concoct a wash using Crayola powder (and probably around 60 years aold by now) and some kind of flow agent to weather the walls and then to start the tedious process of brush-basecoating the details.  I must admit that these are far less work than the GW versions...

  I will return with even more progress pictures.  I'm still painting Lord of the Rings minis and have to build some terrain for that as well, so this project will have to marinate for a bit.  But I'll be back with it sooner than you think!  Be sure to check out Only War terrain- I haven't even finished it yet and I'm loving it!  It might even be a fun project for you too.  

As always- Happy Hobbying and check out Only War!!!