Correspondence From Limbo

Hello, and welcome to what is hopefully going to be a new weekly column on this blog. My name is Casey, and this is the Year of the Horse; arguably the stupidest hobby project I have ever done. This will be a weekly blog as I talk about my progress getting into the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop, buying, building and painting an army worthy of the horse lords of Rohan. Every week, I will (hopefully) be sharing my hobby progress as I go from MESBG novice to Middle Earth master someone with at least a modicum of knowledge on how to play the game well.

Background

For some background, I got into Warhammer at the age of 11 when I went to secondary school. There, I joined the Warhammer club with my friends Callum, Jacob and Lewis – the three of them were very into the Lord of the Rings and MESBG, while I was more of a Warhammer 40,000 fan. However, I have been MESGB curious for a long time, with Nick Baynton’s old “Diary of a Horse Lord” series on the Warhammer Community website making me want to take the plunge into the system back in 2019. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting, well, everything, I never pulled the trigger on the project. Until now.

I told Jake in December that I was hoping to get a Rohan army built and painted, but it was not until the new year that I realised that, in the Chinese Zodiac Calendar, 2026 is the Year of the Horse. Taking that as a sure sign of success, I have decided to leap into this project with gusto.

Goals

Before we go much further, let’s set out some goals for this project. When I was initially pitched this to Jake, back before I knew this was the Year of the Horse and decided to go all in on this, I initially wanted to just make a Rohan list and start playing some games to see where I could get. But now I want to be a little more ambitious (although I am fully aware that this might not be a good thing and could backfire on me horribly).

My goals are:

• Build and paint at least 1,000 points worth of Rohan models. This should allow me to field the vast majority of the Rohan army lists from both Lord of the Rings and War of the Rohirrim. I might expand the scope on this slightly, depending on how quickly or slowly I get through painting models, as well as how badly I burn out from painting all the horses. I will probably also paint some Galadhrim elves as well to run in the Defenders of Helm’s Deep army list – these will probably not count towards the overall points total, but we will see. I’m a slow painter, so it’s possible that this will be the hardest goal to complete, but it will also depend on how quickly painting goes and whether or not I get distracted.
• Play at least 10 games. This should be a relatively easy one. My local club, the Hampshire Hammerers, has a pretty active MESBG community, so getting games in should be pretty easy. A bonus goal is to win at least one game. That might not seem like a particularly lofty challenge, but I’m a beginner to MESBG, and not a great player of wargames to begin with. So, I’d be pretty happy if I could bring home at least one victory this year.
• Attend at least three events. Again, this should be pretty easy – the Hampshire Hammerers already have four events scheduled for this year. If I attend all of them (which is potentially doable), I will be able to cross this goal off my list pretty quickly. There are also more events across the UK I can attend as well, with Jake having already invited me to play some games in Littlebourne.
• Have a working knowledge of the rules. I think this will be the hardest part of this journey. As I said, I’m not great at wargames, and MESBG is a very different beast from Warhammer 40,000 or Age of Sigmar. I’ve been reading the rulebook, but it will still take a little bit of time for all the information to settle into my bowling ball-smooth brain. But we still have plenty of time for me to learn the rules.

Hobby Progress

So, going into this project, how are things looking? Jake gave me the Rohan half of the Battle of Edoras box for my birthday last year, so I have two leaders and a range of (unmounted) warriors of Rohan to start my army with. I have also picked up Helm Hammerhand, Theoden and Eomer, as well as a trio of on-foot commanders to help kick this project off. Helm, Theoden and Eomer are still in their boxes, but I’ve managed to make a good start on the Battle of Edoras box.

At time of writing, I have assembled both Haleth and Hama, the princes of Rohan, on horse and on foot. These two will be the leaders of the initial force I put together, which will likely be an Army of Edoras list. I like both of these minis, although I did mess up the mounted Haleth model. I really love the Hama on horse model, though; it has a great sense of momentum.

I have also put together eight Warriors of Rohan. Rohan really wants you to run cavalry (to the surprise of absolutely no one), but the Battle of Edoras box doesn’t come with any Riders of Rohan. For now, I’m looking at assembling a Defenders of Helm’s Deep list to buff and take advantage of my foot warriors. Riders and Rohan Royal Guard will come later in the project.

Lastly, I have put together a captain, banner bearer and hornblower, all on foot. These are some fantastic metal sculpts, and I have a lot of time for them. The captain is one of my favourite models, and I have memories of it being released when I was first getting into the hobby in 2010.

Now, I just have to find the time to build some more models and get painting!

Stats

In each update, I will give a quick update on the number of models built and painted, the number of games played and how many points I have accrued. These will be at the end of every article.

Models assembled (total): 15

Models painted: 0

Horses painted: 0

Games played: 0

Total points assembled: 389

There we are, we’re off to a pretty good start already. Now I just need to get some paint on these models, although that might have to wait until the weather improves and I can prime more reliably (damn rattlecans!).

Here’s hoping things warm up soon! I’m looking forward to this project, and I hope you enjoy reading along.

See you next week!