Middle-Earth Redux

I'm rather excited about GW supporting Lord of the Rings again! It was the game that first got me into the hobby and I'm really looking forward to jumping back in. The lacklustre (and overly expensive) Hobbit releases just didn't do it for me, but the promise of new Lord of the Rings releases has me wanting to gather together my old miniatures and make something of them. As I mentioned earlier in the year, I've decided to work on my LOTR stuff and I think I may see about doing some expanding of my collection as well.

I currently have three forces: Isengard, Eastern Kingdoms (Easterlings and Khand), and Harad. These are at about 1000 points each based on the old points costs. I also think from various spare pieces that I have lying around I could make small (500-750ish points) armies for Rohan, Mordor, Moria, and Angmar as well. At some point I plan on getting the 'Armies of the Lord of the Rings' book so I can work out what armies can take what units (the GW website has a few oddities like Angmar having Wild Wargs listed but not the Wild Warg Chieftain, and Moria vice versa, so I'm not using that as a reliable source of info), then I'm going to work out what armies I can make from various disparate miniatures I have laying around, write up some army lists, and get painting. I'm hoping that each force I put together can be a fun, relatively quick project to put together that will give me an excuse to get some of the miniatures I've always wanted to own, paint something different to my Sigmar and 40k stuff, and just dive right back into a world I love! I've got a lot of ideas (probably too many), and I'm very excited to be getting back into this game.

1985 Mouth of Sauron 

Funnily enough though, I'm not starting off with a new miniature at all. Instead I'm starting with a LOTR miniature produced by GW back in the 1980's. Citadel briefly had a license for LOTR miniatures back then and I'm afraid to say most of them aren't very good, and some are a little odd like a goatee-wearing Elrond. However, I did think that the 1985 Mouth of Sauron was quite charming in an odd way; looking like every sword & sorcery evil wizard mashed together that has then had an eye motif slapped on top of him. He looks kinda hammy and has a skeletal horse, but I quite like it, and I managed to get him fairly cheap off of eBay. Though I already have a Mouth of Sauron miniature, I just thought this would be a fun side-project to include with my evil forces.

Hopefully I'll soon be visiting my parents, and when I do I'll be able to pick up a force or two to bring back to uni with me so I can get some more progress done on my various LOTR armies. I'll certainly have the time to start indulging in Middle-Earth soon as my Talons of the Emperor are getting closer and closer to being completed. Though LOTR wasn't in my goals for this year (and I doubt its a project I'll wrap up in a year), I am more than happy to put other projects on the back burner, and dive back into a classic game and setting that is very close to my heart. Check back on the blog to see more Middle-Earth goodness soon!