Workbench Update: HORSES! (Minas Tirith & Numenor, Part II)

Good morning gamers,

So, let's begin by acknowledging that today in the US is Veterans Day - thanks vets!

Let's also acknowledge that despite a holiday weekend, my fellow admins are busy, so our collaboration post on skirmishers is slipping a week. Instead, we're doing next week's workbench update today (and, coincidentally, it's about Veterans of the Osgiliath variety).

In June/July of this year, we did two workbench updates on Minas Tirith and Numenor, showcasing some of the basing, painting, and converting we’ve been doing on the models I own. Today, we continue that work by looking at a few new acquisitions: painting up 8 more Warriors of Minas Tirith, further conversions on Osgiliath Veterans, adding spears and shields to some of my bowmen, purchasing six Knights of Minas Tirith, and painting up two Rangers of Gondor (and painting up two Aragorns and two spare Numenoreans - but we're getting ahead of ourselves).

Warriors of Minas Tirith: Making More Osgiliath Veterans
As I highlighted in my last post on Minas Tirith, I've been converting some into Osgiliath Veterans. I had 8 more Warriors of Minas Tirith to do (4 with shield, 4 with shield and spear) and after playing a few games, I knew I wanted the Warriors with shields only to remain their normal profile (need more shieldwall!). But after playing a few games of Battle Companies, I started looking into the Osgiliath Battle Company - and it turns out, that you need Osgiliath Veterans with spears (and possibly shields) for any Warriors with spears that advance on the unit chart. So...I got to work converting up four of these guys into OsVets to join the 7 OsVets with shields I did earlier.

On the left is a group of 7 converted OsVets with shields; in the center are four converted OsVets with shields and spears; on the right are four normal Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields.

The 7 OsVets we worked on last time all got a redo - I removed some of the putty they had (got a bit excessive) and cut off five of their shields, swapping them for shields I had from my Morannon Orcs to show that they've been fighting in a warzone for a while (picking up enemy weapons as they went). I found that this made them stand out on the board better too - which is good for clarity for any opponent who's facing converted models. The two who didn't get new shields got new heads complements of the new Theoden model (I wanted Theoden to keep his helm on - and the bare heads are perfect for this). The OsVets with spears and shields got bandages and some cuts and slices on their shields - I really only have these guys for Battle Companies (they cost the same as Fountain Court Guard in points match games, so go with them instead).

Five Minas Tirith shields and one Numenorean shield = some D6 bowmen for my battle line!

The 5 shields I got from the OsVets who got new shields (along with a spare Numenorean shield) went to my Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows - and some extra spear bits I had lying around, complements of the Saxon Thegn set I got from Warlord Games. These guys are great in a shieldwall formation, as they can pepper the enemy a little, then turn into melee troops that are D6 (so long as they keep the shieldwall formation). Not the best archers Gondor has to offer, but they provide slightly more flexibility for the warband for only +1 point/model.

Knights of Minas Tirith: Knights and Mounted Heroes

It was Rythbryt who convinced me getting some Knights would be a good idea – I’ve fought Tavros’ Knights of Minas Tirith before and the tendency with them is to see them ride into the enemy, run up against F4+ spear-supported foes, lose their fight, and see their horse die under them (or see themselves stabbed). In the end, never seemed worth it to pay nearly the same cost as two warriors to get a single (albeit fast and lance-equipped) warrior.

As part of a toolkit, however, the movement on these guys (and the way they can threaten enemy positions) is great. Since I run Gandalf the White, having a small cadre of mounted escorts is good for making sure the wizard has a proper screen for “doing his thing” (plus, since Gandalf can neutralize enemy models by knocking a few to the ground or immobilizing them, you can guarantee a few easy kills on your initial approach with the knights). I decided having a few of them wouldn’t hurt (and they were pre-owned and on sale). These knights came in pretty bad shape, so this is after quite a few repairs. 

I've owned horses before (I started collecting Rohan Riders, which I traded to The Black Prince for Mordor Orcs a while back), so when I started collecting riders again (Knights of Minas Tirith and some new Rohan Riders), I reached out to one of my good friends who's a great lover of horses for some pictures of some of her favorites (she also helped my good mate Zorro get some realistic painting schemes for his Haradhrim Raiders ages ago). Four of them were used as models for the Knights you're about to see.

Apparently, this is called a Blue Roan - I quite like the bits of white and black that show up amidst the grey.

Not a great picture, I know. The white patches on the legs were tricky to blend, but in the end, I found that painting the legs white first, then adding some grey, then blending with a watered-down grey helped to bring the contrast in colors together.

These horses are (from front to back) a Bay Tobiano Paint, a fuzzy pale Palomino, and a Chestnut.

The pale Palomino was the result of blending some yellow and white together - had to actually make the mix twice for touch-up work once I did the saddle. The other horses were very straight forward - though I am saddened that the mounts' headguards obscured the white blazes on the noses of the first and third horses (sigh).

Two of the Knights in the set (one that lacked a rider, one that had a lance leveled) got sent off to conversion land – one to Numenor, and one to the Fellowship.

Captains of Numenor: Mounting Captains

Captains of Numenor come in two basic varieties: the “cheap March” ones (vanilla Captain of Numenor with a shield, maybe heavy armor) and the “hit really hard” ones (Captain of Numenor with heavy armor, horse, lance, probably shield or bow). I already have a Captain mocked up as the former (great supporting Elendil), but I wanted one of the latter. So . . . I took one of the Knights of Minas Tirith with lance (but no shield) and gave him a bow. As with the Knights of Minas Tirith above, I used a real horse as the template for this one.

This is a "paint" horse - note all the white on the legs and some on the underbelly that we can see (as well as on the shoulder).

The body of the dismounted captain is a Warrior of Minas Tirith model and a bow from another model was given to the mounted version (that guy will be sent off to the conversion bench for the Bolt Thrower crew I'm making). The models both got head-swaps to keep with the Numenorean helmet style, but the rest of the work was pretty simple. As with my other Numenorean heroes, they got a red paint job so I don't mistake them on the battlefield for normal warriors (though it is admittedly easier to identify these guys over my base troops).

The head-swaps left two Warrior of Minas Tirith heads and two bodies of Numenoreans on the workbench, so we converted up . . .

Captains of Minas Tirith: Commanding Shieldwalls

Generic Captains of Minas Tirith are great – they can be D8 with Shieldwall and are blissfully cheap (55 points with just a shield, 70 points with a shield, horse, and lance, options for a bow in either build for +5 points). Like I wrote about in my recent post on Moria, while I think the profile is good, I’m not paying $10/model to get a captain, a banner, a war horn warrior, and a Knight of the White Tower (though they are good). Instead, I’ll convert up models I already have and make them distinct.

"Hey, we got capes!"

These are the head-swapped guys from the previous section – not much to write home about, except that they have the white tree of Gondor proudly on their chests. Very stark on the battlefield when surrounded by their warriors (which is a must if you're converting up captains - I've had one too many captain models be removed as casualties thinking they were normal warriors).

Aragorn Foot & Mounted: GIVE ME POWER!

While having lots of Knights of Minas Tirith is fun, I’ve REALLY been wanting a mounted Aragorn model for a while. The actual mounted Aragorn models are hard to come by (not available at the GW webstore, very expensive on ebay), so when I saw a reduced-price set of Knights of Minas Tirith with a lone horse and no one to ride him, I thought, “I think I’ve finally got my mount for Aragorn . . . now to get an Aragorn model to go with it . . .”

At about the same time as I was thinking this, I bid on a lot of Rangers that also came with a Gandalf the Grey, Frodo Baggins (who we’ll be turning into Lotho Sackville-Baggins), Old Bilbo Baggins (who I’ve also  wanted for a long time), the rare sculpt of Aragorn at Amon Hen (my favorite sculpt of Aragorn ever - and definitely the model I've wanted the longest), and the armored version of Aragorn from Helm’s Deep (which is one of the best poses GW ever made for Aragorn, behind – in my opinion – the Amon Hen Aragorn, the Weathertop Aragorn, and the new Three Hunters Aragorn in that order). I already acquired an Armored Aragorn model, so I decided to take one of these guys (the one that wasn’t already tacked to his base) and do some fiddling to get him to ride the horse properly. The results are below.

I've actually sneak-peaked this model before - Aragorn's horse is not based on any of the images that were sent to me, but I instead turned to Hasufel from the Two Towers movie. I like the result a lot - Aragorn sits high in the saddle (or races towards you), brandishing his sword aloft. It's everything I've ever wanted (now to play a game with him . . .).

My work in converting this model made my son ask for a mounted Aragorn model too. After telling him he couldn't have this one, I hacked up my first Aragorn I ever owned (the one from the Mines of Moria set, which is now the Fellowship of the Ring set) and a Rider of Rohan carrying a bow.

As you can see, I got the capes to align perfectly and magnetized their top and bottom halfs (which didn't bond as neatly as I wanted), which has lead to many a body-swap for mounted/dismounted Aragorn and "the guy who looks like Legolas."

Rangers of Gondor

As I mentioned above, I picked up a bunch of Rangers recently and have a few of them that I’ve started painting. These join the six Rangers I already owned, but brings in an important element: spear-support. While I needed a few of these guys for my Wanderers in the Wild Battle Company (because why not give them spears in their base build?!?!?!), they’re also needed for my Minas Tirith list (aiding Faramir, Damrod, and the OsVets under their command).

My Ogryn Flesh wash has been running low, so the pigment got really dark - need to fix that. I'll be redeeming more Rangers at Christmas and others at the start of next year, bringing my total to 21 Rangers of Gondor (enough to fill the warbands of Faramir and Damrod should I wish to play a small game with the Rangers of Ithilien Legendary Legion - though with two generic captains now, I could run a larger force...hmmm...). 

What’s Next?

Besides the Rangers we’ll be redeeming over the next few months, I’ve thought about getting Citadel Guard or Guards of the Fountain Court, but neither of these are anywhere near the horizon for me. King Aragorn is slated for procurement "soon", so we’ll see when he arrives to bolster the offensive firepower of Gondor (and open up an allied contingent with the Dead of Dunharrow). The model I'm picking up is just the mounted version, so I'll be using the Amon Hen version of Aragorn (or I guess the Aragorn I showed here would work too) as the dismounted version (though hopefully he stays mounted for a while). Besides that, I think I'm good for Gondor (at least for the moment).

A special thanks once again to The Raven's Landing for all of her help - you can follow her web serial blog at https://zarecaspian.com/, buy her stuff on Redbubble, or just follow her work on The Raven's Landing. If you like supporting Indie artists doing what they do, consider supporting the Zare Caspian web serial on Patreon or purchasing her artwork.

Our next post takes us to the depths of Middle-Earth where we’ll check in on what's going on in Moria and the Dwarves who live there. Until then, happy hobbying!