What's on the table now!

Why is it that life takes over and ruins your well laid plans. I had this idea to focus myself on my Lord of The Rings project, getting my Rohan and Isengard forces organised and playing out the scenarios I’d planned. Then my planned opponents drift over to other things, problems arise in my real-world life and I have to re-task myself there and to top it all it turns out that the Games Workshop LoTR plastics have the tensile strength of a wet tissue and break if you sneeze near them.

Let me explain. I decided on Rohan because I love the imagery of the Rohirrim, both in the Peter Jackson films but also in literature and art. Obviously the iconic opponents to the noble horselords would be the Fighting Uruk Hai and as both these ranges are covered by GW plastics I started there. Now the Uruk Hai equipped with pikes are great looking and simple to paint however that’s where the good stuff ends. A pike is typically from 3 to 7.5 metres (10 to 25 feet) long and to ensure that this does not break when made in plastic it is relatively thick in comparison to the hands of the model. Not a problem as most of scale at 28mm is skewed anyway. The problem arises when GW use plastic with the consistency of cheese and no matter what I do the damn things keep breaking. Then there’s the Rohan cavalry. A Rohan force should predominantly be made of cavalry, in fact the force defeated at the Fords of Isen was all cavalry, some of which was dismounted. As a consequence I’ve managed to source 30 Rohirrim which should do nicely. However when you model dynamic cavalry with the aforementioned cheese plastic the result is lots of horseless bases and broken legs.

Now I could wax lyrical about my thoughts on the reasoning behind GW’s “best fantasy models in the world” and why they’re pants (acquiring a licence to produce models and then using cheap crappy plastic for the molds to maximise on profits), but that’s been done by many other blogs of a more intellectual nature than mine. The one thing I will say is that my Lord of The Rings project is going on the back burner so that I don’t lose my mind with the quantity of broken spears, legs, swords, scabbards etc.

So where does that leave my hobbying?

Well I’m going back to something that I started a little half heartedly about 5 years ago - Flames of War. I know there are plenty of things wrong with the game however there is also so much right with it too. And it allows me to do something that I’ve wanted to do for many a long year and that is to wargame with E Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. Yes that’s right I’ve started on Band of Brothers!

So here’s my current haul to get me started, this should set me up with first and second platoon and some relevant supports. I’m basing it on the first combat experiences of the company in Normandy rather than their more famous exploits as part of the defence of Bastogne, mainly because I don’t like the winter bases.

I’ve ordered the new allied D-Day book Overlord and should have my first game this week so I’ll pop up a review later.

Oh and never fear the LoTR project is still alive, its just going slowly. Current model count is 4 cavalry painted so only 26 to go (along with 50 Uruks and 6 Warg riders!)