Uruk Hai – Ouch!

For anyone that has played a certain sci-fi wargame where in the future there is only WAR the next phrase will make a lot of sense:

Uruk Hai are the Space Marines© (1) of LoTR SBG

Let me elaborate.

With a high starting Defence value of 5 which can be bumped up to 6 with the addition of a shield
they are nigh on impossible to kill by most races basic trooper. They are also the only race (I think)

that has access to the pike. Therefore if you adopt the turtle approach of 3 swords men backed up by 2 pikemen each you have a rock hard infantry blob that has 3 dice for each duel. That puts the bejesus into most Hero’s, nevermind your regular Rohan militiaman that a week earlier was harvesting his crops and wondering where his sheep had wandered off to.

So to put it bluntly they’re hard! I have often been on the receiving end of these walking tanks and unfortunately Theoden doesn’t issue tin openers as standard to his Rohan warriors so I have usually come off worst in every encounter. Anyway I recently played a game against Scott up at Kapiti Coast Wargamers, for which you can find a fine write up on Scotts blog here (.........link.......) and suffice it to say the Uruks performed as expected, walking around in their impenetrable blob staring angrily at the Riders of Rohan, who quite rightly stayed out of charge range and chucked all manner of pointy stuff at them.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game however its now got me thinking about how to beat them with
my own Rohan force, therefore stay tuned as I may come up with some stunningly original tactic ......(yeah right).

Anyway on the painting front these guys are sooooooo easy to paint. Black undercoat, chainmail
drybrush, brown skin, highlight red, pick out a few fabric and belt details and then wash. Easy! After all you really aren't trying to get a really neat and tidy finish on these guys and I've got another 30 to paint, and thats not to mention the 20 or so scouts I want so I may as well develop a nice fast paint method that looks good (ish).
Oh and I decided to deviate from my tried and tested brown basing with flock as I wanted to give the idea of these guys spreading their "industrialise nature" attitude so went with the scorched grey earth look.

(1) For obvious reasons I don’t want to confuse people with the use of this copyright as you may think I’m referring to a children’s story! For those of you who are now even more confused google ‘Spot the Space Marine and GW’.