Conversion Updates: THRO 2014 List and New Arrivals

Hello readers,

When I got back from vacation Saturday morning, my family all went to sleep and I stayed up and hobbied around (because once I'm up, I'm up). For today's rather eclectic post, we're going to be focusing on some conversions and new arrivals that will be seen in the upcoming THRO tournament and quite possibly the next GT...we'll have to see.



1) White Council List Preview

My list is finalized on the tournament post (see link above) and with the exception of Elrond (borrowing him from Glenstorm), I now have all the models in the army. Here's a quick look at them:

Nothing new with Glorfindel or Arwen - they've been seen in a few of the White Council batreps and tactica. You'll notice that my Rivendell characters favor white and blue, though. This plays into the newest addition to the army: Erestor.

Every game I've played with Erestor, I've proxied someone in for him. As I noticed how often he showed up in my sample lists, I decided I should probably get him. Now that I own him, I'm really excited to use him in the upcoming THRO tournament. Hard-core GW gamers will recognize, however, that this model isn't the GW Erestor model. He's actually purchased from a company called Dark Sword Miniatures - they sell single models who are only slightly larger than the GW LOTR collection for slightly less money. The detail is incredible, as can be see in this picture and I hope many more. Erestor wields throwing daggers that have bonuses to wound in melee and range combats, and also has the ability to wield an Elven blade if he chooses - very versatile and I like the pose that the model came with.

Celeborn isn't new, but the sword addition is. I had a sword taken from one of my Sentinels, but I lost it (broke off sometime and now I can't find it). So, I borrowed the sword from my Theoden model (more on him next). This makes the sword he wields honkin' big and I plan to make it glow the same color as his clothes. I have a shield that I'm converting, though I haven't decided how I want to do the armor...hopefully more on that in a later post. Whatever I choose to do with both shield and heavy armor, I'm not making these adjustments permanent - I believe that Celeborn should never be run without an Elven blade (being unarmed is rough when you're a combat hero), but you can legitimately add just the shield to this set-up or just the heavy armor (or both). I don't want to constrain myself, so we're going to leave those two pieces modular.

2) Theoden to Eorl the Young Conversion

One of my buddies at this tournament is borrowing my Rohan riders and converted Eorl model. You can see a work-in-progress image of the mounted model on another post on the blog, but I've been taking my time deciding how to convert this one. Theoden is a great hero and all, but I didn't see his role in the Rohan-Fiefdoms list that I'm building (target date is Christmas for completion, more on that list after THRO). Thanks to a spare spear model from Glenstorm, my Eorl model just needs an awesome shield and he's good to go.

3) New Arrival: King's Champion Conversion

So I have long believed that the King's Champion is one of the best priced heroes in the game: you get two banner models (who have shields) and a super captain model for 125 points - making the cost of the champion effectively the cost of a normal captain. Having two banners included in the cost basically means you don't need to buy banners elsewhere in your army and should your opponent try to kill them, you have 2 Fate points on each of them (that can be rolled over to protect the King's Champion if required and if they are in base contact with the champion. All of these guys have the ability to become D8 if one of the banners and the King's Champion (or both banners) are touching each other - not bad for resiliency, right?

The set began as a standard Dwarf Warrior metal blister, with two warriors with shields and one warrior with two-handed weapon. The heralds lost their hand weapons and got half a tooth pick instead, which is going to be the basis for the standards that they will carry. One had to have his arm rotated, but I think they turned out okay.

The champion received the weapons from his buddies and lost the two-hander he started with. The resulting pose is a classic two-axe approach: one blade swings at the shield/hand weapon to knock it out of the way while the other rips into the exposed enemy defenses in one impressive flourish. I'm really looking forward to using this guy and taking advantage of the carnage he can cause. Those who were following the conversions, though, will note that the two-hander axe head has not been listed at all...where did that go?

Oh, it was requisitioned for basing additions...yeah, you're not getting any more info on this guy until after THRO. :)

In the next few weeks, I'm hoping to get a few games in with some buddies before the tournament - don't know if the full write-up will be on the blog, but we'll see. After THRO, we'll be doing some in-depth tactica on dragons and providing some final product updates on the units you've seen in this post. Until next time, happy hobbying!