From Curt: The Final Post of AHPC XI - 'A Sword Day, A Red Day!' (168 Points)

My last entry starts yet another project for me. Really, can we ever have too many hobby projects? Heavens, I hope not.

Ever since I first read 'Lord of the Rings', I have been enthralled by Tolkien's description of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, always wanting to see it arrayed on the games table in miniature. So after spending this past year reading Tolkien's work, I've decided to start the journey to see if I could achieve this.

For me, one of the highlights of the battle was when Theoden looked upon the mighty enemy host in front of Minas Tirith, turns to his Rohirrim, and calls out:

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!

Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,

a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

With this in mind I thought I'd start this project with Theoden and some of his riders of Rohan.

Okay, with a subject and some figures in mind, what rules would I use? Well, thankfully GW has their excellent 'War of the Ring', which has a small, but dedicated fan base still supporting it.

While 'War of the Ring' is a great set of rules, I have a couple criticisms. First is with GW's  extortionate pricing, as the cost in figures for two good-sized forces is prohibitive for most hobbyists, except perhaps if done as a club project. 

The second is that I just don't like how cavalry formations look in the game. Sure, it allows people to fit their existing LotR cavalry into sabots, but due to the large circular bases, they only can fit two models per sabot base. While I quite like the large basing for LotR skirmish, it really doesn't translate well for massed ranks of cavalry. 

So after giving it a bit of thought, I decided I'd use the same base dimensions provided in the game, but I'd use 10mm figures in order to give a greater sense of mass.

These models are from the excellent Copplestone Castings range. I absolutely love them as they capture all the Tolkienesque spirit, while also being rather minimal in their design, and so quite easy to paint. I've put them on large acrylic bases as an experiment to see how it works with massed ranks - I think I like it.

I know these are not that much of a 'battle host', as trio of bases represents just one formation, and I want six for the entire Rohirrim contingent. I have a suspicion I will be serving this out to commission painters to finish up for me...

I've decided to put the various heroes on separate bases, so here is Theoden on his mount, Snowmane, riding with his household banner bearers. 

The Mumakil were a bit of a problem to source at first. A have a few different variants as test models. One you see here is a mastodon from Eureka miniatures, another (not shown as I didn't get him done) is a 3D print of a Chaos mastodon, which has a good look as well. I'll have to post him up later. 

Finally, the pick of the litter is this Mumakil from Eaglemoss magazine. This was part of their long out of print LotR chess set series. He's quite hefty, being in white metal, and is an almost perfect fit for 10mm. His stock paintjob wasn't bad, but I wanted him to blend in with my other figures, so I primed him up and gave him a fresh lick of paint.

These Eaglemoss Mumakil are rare as hen's teeth, so if you ever come across one for sale, please let me know as I'd like a few more. Sorry, I have no crew for the howdas as they are still coming in from Pendraken (Persian archers). Sigh, another task for another day.

As to points, each base of cavalry has 24 models and Theoden's base has 4, so there's 76 figures in total. The Mumakil are about the size of a 15mm vehicle so I'll claim 8 each for them. That will give me a grand total of 168 points, just getting me over 1K for this year's outing. 

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So, here we are at last, with the close of the eleventh edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. For my part, it was a wonderful way to spend the winter, providing me a much needed distraction from the troubles and drama of the outside world. 

I wish to thank our minions, Greg, Tamsin, Paul, Miles, Nick, Phil and Byron for helping me keep the Challenge clipping along. I simply couldn't have done it without the you folks. Again, *doffs cap* thank you so much!  

Last but not least, I wish to thank all of our participants who laboured at their hobby desks, made submissions and left encouraging comments for their fellow Challengers. It is our friendly, open-hearted community which keeps me coming back to do this each year.

As per tradition, I ask all participants and followers to email me their top 3 picks for Challengers' Choice. From that list I will put up a poll in a weeks time so we can vote for our favourites. On April 18th I will post up the top three selections for Challengers' Choice, along with my Judge's Choice and Sarah's Choice.

Finally, I invite all the participants to submit picture of themselves along with the work they managed to get done over the three months of the Challenge. I think it's always nice to show off what we've managed to accomplish and to be able to put faces to names.

Thanks again everyone for making this another excellent Challenge!

- Curt