Correspondence From Limbo

Hello, and welcome back to the Year of the Horse. In this semi-regular feature I share my journey learning how to play the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game.

Last time, I had played my first game of MESBG, learning a lot about where I need to improve as the slow grow league continues. This time, I’m talking a bit more about my hobby progress and what comes next.

Hobby Progress

I must admit that this update is pretty light on hobby progress. I ended up assembling Aldor, Haleth, son of Hama, Legolas, and a single Warrior of Rohan, painting them all up quite quickly along with a banner bearer who will be standing in for Gamling (one day I will get over my fear of freehanding, but that day is not today).

The majority of the models painted quite quickly – the Rohan models are all wearing similar colours, which meant that I could simply batch paint them. I put some more time into Aldor and Haleth, due to their status as special characters (even if they are only usable in Defenders of Helm’s Deep), painting their skin the same way as when I painted Aragorn and Theoden. I’m very happy with how Aldor’s hair came out – in the end it was just Corax White with a wash of Apothecary White Contrast paint over the top. The effect worked really well, and I was able to more or less leave it as that – I could have done some highlights over the top, but I did not see the need.

The banner took a bit longer to paint. This will represent the Royal Standard of Rohan in game, so I wanted it to look a bit different from the cloth of my other models. Instead of using olive green, I decided to go with a richer, dark green, before layering up with the Two Thin Coats Emerald Green. I think it helps the model to stand out, beyond being a big, fuck-off banner.

The last model I painted was Legolas. This model comes from the Three Hunters box, alongside Gimli and another version of Aragorn which is armed with Andúril. To be honest, the vast majority of Legolas’s models look quite boring, but that’s mostly due to how difficult it is to make someone firing a bow look unique – and I did not want to use one of the versions from The Hobbit where he’s posed a bit differently.

Legolas was a pretty fun model to paint. He has similar colours to the Rohan part of my army, using greens, whites and sharing blonde hair, but I wanted to make him a bit different to separate him from Men since he is an elf of Murkwood. To do this, I painted his jerkin with TTC’s Wyvern Green, before washing it with Nuln Oil and highlighting with Emerald Green. The wood of his bow was painted with Steel Legion Drab and washed with Agrax Earthshade (the Rohan part of the force instead has wood details painted with Dryad Bark and then shaded with Agrax). This resulted in a model that doesn’t look too out of place with the rest of my Rohan force, but is still notably different. I’m adding a good chunk of elves to my army (as Defenders of Helm’s Deep can take quite a few warriors from Lothlorian), so painting Legolas allowed me to work out what materials these warriors would use and how they would differ from the Men of Rohan.

The last bit of hobby progress I did for this army was building a couple of Galadhrim Warriors to run alongside Legolas. These will be interesting to paint up as they have an almost completely different colour scheme to the rest of the force, but I’m sure they will be quite quick to paint.

Where do we go now?

With Aldor, Gamling, Haleth and that extra Warrior of Rohan all painted, I now have everything I need for my 500pt list for the slow grow league – and with Legolas painted I’m now well on my way to having everything ready for the 650pt list as well before handling the rather daunting task of finishing everything off with the 800pt list.

Once the slow grow league is finished, who knows? I will be the majority of the way towards hitting my 1,000pt target and well on my way towards hitting the target of games played as well. It’s possible I’ll continue expanding my Defender’s of Helm’s Deep force, or I might pivot towards Army of Rohan.

One of the things that has complicated my plans is the reveal of new Riders of Rohan at Adepticon. People have been clamoring for them for a while, and seeing them finally revealed is really exciting – I can’t wait to get my hands on them. When they finally get released, it will go a long way towards me hopefully completing one of the other army lists that Rohan has access to, such as Riders of Theoden, Riders of Eomer or the Army of Rohan (or Edoras, if I get my Hama, Haleth and Helm painted up). GW also showed off new captain models for Rohan – while I already have the old metal versions, I do like how the classic versions have been translated into plastic, especially the captain with the axe and the more modest bow. I think I will have to pick up all of the new reveals when they are released.

Regardless, it seems to be a pretty good time to be a Rohan player.

Stats

Models assembled (total): 29

Models painted: 19

Horses painted: 0

Games played: 1

Total points assembled: 775

Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.