From MartijnN: Of Wargs and Men on Corsucant (116 points)

Finally able and authorized to proceed to the Middle Ring we find ourselves on Corsucant. This planet is hotly contested between Good and Evil. That is why I present to you some perfidious Wargs and some stalwart Men from Laketown.

Besides wargaming, my other great passion is Tolkien. I have been taken by Middle-earth ever since our teacher read us The Hobbit in 6th grade when I was 10 or 11 years old. I have a fair collection of books and games centering on Tolkiens work, and I daresay that every fantasy figure or ruleset I ever bought was ultimately meant to recreate the great battles from the War of the Ring of even from the Great Wars of the First Age. However, I never succeeded in advancing those dreams beyond that - dreams and plans, that is (although that is half the fun in wargaming, isn't it).

Come 2004, and Games Workshop brought out what was meant to be the first in a series of boxed games based on Tolkien's universe: the Battle of Five Armies!

Of course I had to buy it (two sets, even). But then they sat on my shelf for the next 15 years or so. Looking around my hobby room for something to get into for this Challenge I saw the box and decided to finally start painting this set.

The set contains some terrain (representing the slopes of the Lonely Mountain and the ruins of Dale), and two armies: Good, consisting of Men, Elves and Dwarves, and Evil, consisting of Wargs and Goblins. There are also a bunch of characters, like Bilbo, Gandalf, Beorn, and of course there are Eagles. These are nominally 10mm figures, although they are on the small side. The rules for the game are really the Warmaster rules, somewhat adapted, and thus units consist of three stands each. I started by painting up a unit of Wargs and the two units of Men, one each of spearmen and archers. I went for a simple yet recognizable colour scheme, mostly using Contrast paints and finishing off with a heavy wash of Agrax Earthshade. Since there are hundreds more of miniatures to paint I cut corners where I could; I painted the units, not the figures, so don't look too closely! I am moderately satisfied with the end result; they have however turned out a bit darker than I thought, so I may return to them and add some highlights later. For now I consider them done though!

GW did release some metal figures as add-ons to the game, but unfortunately I never acquired any of these. Apparently the game was not a great succes as GW never produced any subsequent titles, and of course they scrapped Warmaster altogether not very much later.

So that is 72 infantry and 12 Wargs. As the Wargs were really simple to paint I will claim them as infantry.

Points therefore:

96 10mm infantry @ 1 points =  96 points

Corsucant planet bonus = 20

Total 116 points. And a squirrel!

From DaveD

"I had to buy two sets" - right out my playbook alright :-)  . Great to see these well seasoned lads get some TLC. Though i think the oldest in the lead pile record was something like 38 years IIRC