Journeys in Middle-Earth: Spreading War

I've finally painted all the figures from the 'Spreading War' expansion for Journeys in Middle-Earth, including the 'Scourges of the Wastes' villains. I used a lot of Contrast, and some of the painting was a bit of a mental slog. There was an issue with the primer being patchily hydrophobic and I had difficulty getting even coats. I placed the larger figures on MDF bases. The heroes have already been seen here.

Heroes

The otherwise nondescript 'Soldiers' received a thin coat of Vallejo sepia.

Soldiers

The Uruk-hai are nice beefy orcs. I didn't differentiate between all the details on their sculpts, its just browns.

Uruk-hai

I don't like the warg-riders all vaulting the same log, but it's not the end of the world. They're wielding slings, but two of them are broken and I'm not going to repair them.

Warg riders

I removed the flames from the top of the oliphaunt's howdah because they were starting to snap as well.

Oliphaunt

The flames on the siege towers, however, are quite durable.

Siege towers

I'm really happy with these beasts, the wings came out just right.

Fell beasts

I used some Vallejo Liquid Mask to cover the Witch King's flight stand before final matt varnishing. It hasn't quite all come off despite attacking it with a stiff brush and Blutac.

Witch King

I don't know anything about these two villains, as I have yet to encounter them in a campaign.

Lord Angon

Eadris

Glad to have them done.

"What is this, a siege tower for hobbits?"

The death of Gothmog

• 1955: Tolkien publishes The Return of the King, and does not specify Gothmog's fate
• 2003: Jackson releases The Return of the King, which also doesn't show Gothmog's end
• 2004: Jackson releases The Return of the King Extended Edition*, which includes the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Death of Gothmog:

• 2008: GW releases a vignette 'The Death of Gothmog'. I like to think this is a Perry.
• 2023: I paint said vignette.

The death of Gothmog

I got this off eBay, partially painted and broken. I had thoughts of making this into a piece with sabots for the figures, like my Sauron piece, but ultimately decided against it. I've got plenty of Éowyns and recently a plastic Gothmog. I stripped the pieces and reassembled it. I decided to place it on a nice oval MDF base from Knights of Dice. I bulked out a little bit of the groundwork with Milliput so that Éowyn and Gothmog are on solid ground.

Stripped and ready to go

Test fit on MDF base. Note the narrower metal
base before bulking it out with Milliput

I'd thought of doing the miniatures separately, but during a test fitting they got stuck in place so I painted them all together. It wasn't too hard. I started from black and then drybrushed browns and creams in the grisaille fashion, which the French call Le Slapchop.

My favourite part was painting the cloaks. The rohirrim cloaks are built up from Vallejo Russian Uniform, and the elven ones are built up from German Feldgrau.

The reverse of the scene

Gimli dual-wielding and has a two-handed axe
strapped to his back

Dying orc #738 is really dynamic with his helmet flying off
and sword leaping from open grasp.

Aragorn and Andúril

Gothmog

Éowyn desperately grasps for a sword from her dead comrade

I was slightly disappointed with it, but then I flocked it. I used some pretty dry colours to match the film- the Pelennor fields have been somewhat abused by hordes of orcs and stampeding mûmakil- and it really came to life. I haven't varnished it and am somewhat afraid to.

*251 glorious minutes!

The time of the orc has come

I've painted sixty orcs. These are a bit better equipped than your usual rabble, but still aren't elite troops.

I have also painted their leader, Gothmog. Tolkien never described Gothmog as orc, man or wraith, but Peter Jackson portrayed him as a memorable and charismatic orc. There is an engaging rumour that the prosthetics were based on Harvey Weinstein.

War comes to Rohan

25th March is Tolkien Reading Day, to commemorate the fall of Barad-dûr and the destruction of the One Ring. In my quest for the perfect Lord of the Rings ruleset, I tried Dragon Rampant for the first time. I threw together two forces, we agreed on a rough scenario, and had at it!

Rohan:

30 points; Defending the crossroads on foot with mounted forces to the rescue.

• Royal Guard (Elite Mounted with leader)
• Erkenbrand (Elite Mounted hero)
• Heavy Mounted
• Heavy Mounted
• Light Foot
• Light Foot
• Archers

Evil:

29 points; Attacking the crossroads

• Wargs (Heavy Mounted) with Leader
• Trolls (Bellicose Foot)
• Uruk-Hai (Bellicose Foot)
• Orcs (Heavy Foot)
• Orcs (Heavy Foot)
• Archers

We started with the Rohan foot around the crossroads, and all other units would move on from the short edges.

View from the orcs' deployment edge

The orcs approach

Distant hoofbeats

Orcs advance as his cavalry sweep to my left

Orc spears repulse the first charge

Cavalry take down the arrow-weakened troll

Orc situation is dire

Cavalry mop up the remnants

It was a pretty convincing victory to Rohan. My orcs bounced off his shieldwall and got peppered by bowshot and then mopped up by cavalry. The heroes and freshly painted Royal Guard never got involved, they just hung back failing their activation rolls!

I liked the variable bounds activation and the courage rules weren't too complex either. Leaders never came into it, and I didn't bother with Boasts. Shieldwalls are tough, and I'd probably tweak some of the units- orcs would be light foot, for example, and the trolls should have better armour. It was about the right level of complexity for the game I wanted to play. I thought the recommended 24 points would be too small, but it probably isn't. I'm keen to expand my experience with Dragon Rampant.

Journeys in Middle-earth: Dwellers in Darkness

 I picked up a few characters for JiME:

Supplicant of Morgoth

Ursa

Ollie the Cave Troll

Dwellers in Darkness

I think they came out OK and were quite nice to quickly paint up. I like the sculpts but I'm not sold on the names Ursa and Ollie.