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But there were some who resisted - A Last Alliance painting blog

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the great rings: three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf Lords; great miners and craftsman of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made: in the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the dark lord Sauron forged, in secret, a master ring to control all others. And into this ring, he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life.

One Ring to Rule Them All.

One by one the free lands of Middle Earth fell to the power of the Ring. But there were some who resisted. A last alliance of Men and Elves marched against the armies of Mordor. And on the slopes of Mount Doom, they fought for the freedom of Middle Earth. The victory was near, but the power of the Ring could not be undone.

It all started when I was persuaded to go to Ardacon 2019, having barely painted any Lord of the Rings models since I first got into the game as a kid I new I would need to paint an army for the event. Realistically there was only one army that could be, the one which had been my favourite since the original Fellowship of the Ring boxed game, High Elves. Some experiments with the new Contrast paint range and one awesome tournament later I was once again hooked on the awesome Middle Earth SBG and had realised that painting armies for it really wasn't that painful a process.

Now one of the most epic scenes of the film trilogy is the Battle of the Last Alliance and having read the Silmarillion I really wanted to recreate something approaching the epic battles of the Noldor against the hordes of evil. The solution was clear, why not start with their last gasp, the Siege of Barad Dur when the Last Alliance defeated Sauron and the Second Age came to an end. Recruiting a friend to this idea we agreed to each paint the necessary forces to play the Last Alliance scenario. But not using the SBG rules, instead we would play the scenario from the War of the Ring book as it is far more suited for mass battles.

My aim over the next year and a half or so is therefore to paint about 8000 points (using the War of the Ring system) of Lord of the Rings models. We shall be taking a fairly permissive view to the forces present, modifying some rules and adding in a few more options to each force. So for instance you can expect a contingent from the Numenorean outpost of Dol Amroth while a Balrog or two may join the forces of Sauron.

The benefit of this is it will lead to both a more interesting game and a far more interesting painting project that should also leave me with several completed SBG armies. It also meant i could paint new armies for different tournaments to help break the project into bite size chunks. When it came to what to paint for the first tournament of 2020, Into the West hosted at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, there was only one choice. I'd already painted a force of the Noldor so it was time for the Men of Numenor to join the alliance!

And here they are, 450 points of Numenor's finest!


The Army of Numenor


Elendil the Tall


The standard of Numenor

For those interested the full list is:

Numenor

Warband 1
Elendil w. Shield, Horse - 200
Warrior of Numenor w. Banner, Shield, Spear - 35
6 Warriors of Numenor w. Shields - 54
7 Warriors of Numenor w, Shields & Spears - 70

Warband 2
Captain of Numenor w. Heavy Armour - 55
4 Warriors of Numenor w. Bows - 36

Total points - 450
Total models - 20

Of course it was the Last Alliance of Elves and Men so here they are joined by the Noldor.


The Last Alliance marches to war


The leaders of Elves and Men


Gil-Galad, Elendil and Isildur mounted for war


The host of Men


The host of Elves

Those of you familiar with the War of the Ring ruleset will know that this force has a LOT of growing to do, but this is a decent nucleus to grow from! Check back after the weekend to see how the Numenoreans get on at Cardiff.

This is awesome. Good luck in Cardiff and I look forward to seeing your progress. Also, welcome!

@youwashock: Thank you! I hope you enjoy the rest of the blog!

So Cardiff was a great time even if the Numenoreans didn't perform so well, in large part due to Elendil's ability to roll no higher than a three at crucial moments! I must say I missed the higher fight value of my usual elven force. Highlights of the weekend were three of my archers killing Bert the Troll in combat after their companion died jumping off a cliff and killing forty models in a game against some beautifully painted Sharkey's Ruffians. The crowning irony of the weekend was being obliterated by Gil-Galad led Rivendell played by none other than the friend I am planning to recreate the Battle of the Last Alliance with!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Game 1

Elendil drowns under a tide of Haradrim

Game 2

Elendil fights Bill the Troll


The Three Trolls

Game 3

The Numenoreans and Noldor hold war games in preparation for their march on Mordor





Game 4

A goblin horde descends from the mountains




Elendil leads his army to face them






Many are slain on both sides

Game 5

The men of Numenor are taken by surprise by a new stronger breed of Orc

Game 6

The basing on these guys was phenomenal

Game 7

The Kingdoms of Numenor and Erebor have a slight disagreement





Currently I'm working on something a bit more sylvan in nature to further bolster the fight against Sauron so you can expect pictures of that in my next post.

Following on from Cardiff I've decided I should go back to what I'm good at, playing Elves! I've got a 500pts game tomorrow where I shall be taking a Numenor and Rivendell alliance. My list was completely painted except for the leader of the Rivendell contingent, Erestor. An evening of painting later and I now have a fully painted list.


Erestor, Counsellor of Elrond

I've also been working on some Galadhrim for the Elven half of the Helm's Deep Legendary Legion ahead of a doubles tournament in March.




Celeborn will be strictly limited to moral support.

Beautiful game shots. The new elves look great, too. Erestor is an awesome model.

"Wargs are amongst them, flight is a fool's errand."

"Then we shall fight them here Erestor. The ruins shall guard our flank." Elendil turned to the combined warband of Noldor and Numenoreans and drew Narsil from its sheath, "Sauron sees fit to send his orcs against us, let us take this opportunity to cull them and reduce the number of horrors in this world!"



Cheers erupted from his followers as they sorted themselves into formation with practiced familiarity, Elves and Men fighting as one. Surely Sauron would rue the day such a powerful alliance was formed thought Elendil. Erestor roused him from his musings, "It is not just orcs we face Ælfwine. There is a troll amongst them."

The king smiled grimly as he pulled himself into his saddle, "I shall handle the troll."



The orcs closed quickly, their ranks thinned only slightly by the keen eyed archers amongst the Elven contingent.



Elendil waited impassively as the minions of the dark lord drew closer and closer until there were scant feet separating the two forces. It was then that he spurred his horse into the charge, his warband's shieldwall surging forward behind him.



These orcs were different to those he'd fought before, their armour thicker, their blades swung with greater strength. Already his men were falling, he needed to end this quickly. Bellowing a warcry he spurred his mount directly at the great troll, if it fell hopefully the lesser orcs would lose heart and flee.



Ducking beneath the beast's swinging hammer Elendil struck with Narsil, slicing a thick gash in the creature's side causing it reel back bellowing in agony. Before he could capitalise on the opening a jagged spear plunged into his steed's flank. Jumping free of the dying beast's saddle Elendil struck down the spear's wielder and advanced once more on the troll. It was wary now, it knew the tall Numenorean king could hurt it. But patience was not a quality Sauron bred into his foul servants and the troll lashed out in its fear, bring its hammer crashing down in an overhead arc. Elendil sidestepped the meteoric strike and launched himself at the troll, blade levelled before him like a lance. Before the beast could pull free its hammer from the cratered ground, Narsil smote the troll in the breast, its tip bursting from the creature's back. The troll sank to its news, its dull eyes uncomprehending of why it's body no longer obeyed it's wishes. Twisting free his blade, the King of Numenor stepped back and struck the monster's head from its body.



Given a moment of space he surveyed the scene around him, many on both sides were dead but despite their vicious losses still the orcs did not run. His arm's ached from cutting through dark iron, his body was battered and bruised beneath his armour, but if the orcs would not break then he would have to kill them all. It was as he prepared to return to the fray that he saw him, the orcish general. This was why the creatures did not break, they feared their leader, a pale orc mounted atop a great warg, more than they feared the blades of their foe.



Narsil raised in challenge Elendil strode towards the foul creature, but it simply smiled and gestured with its blade. Three of its followers threw themselves at the king, who turned to defend himself from their slashing blades. It was then that the general made his move, goading his warg forward into the charge. Fully occupied with the orcs before him Elendil felt a great weight knock him to the floor and then everything went black.

Erestor plunged a dagger into into the neck of the orc captain he was dueling when he heard a cry of triumph from the orcs. Fearing the worst he cast round and saw a small group of orcs standing over Elendil, in their centre one mounted upon a warg who was resting a heavy paw on the fallen king's back. With a terrible cry the Elf ran forward, a dagger flying from his hand to smite one orc square in the face. Seeing the enraged elf lord bearing down on him the orc general called the retreat, the warrior's of this so called 'Last Alliance' would rue this day and he had no desire to end it spitted on the blade of an elf.

***

I had great game of Lords of Battle on Thursday, 500pts vs a Morranon list led by Gothmog. In the end it came down to the very final turn and final dice rolls. A dehorsed and mightless Elendil had been surrounded by Gothmog and some morannons, Gothmog struck but only managed a 1 leaving him on fight 6 compared to Elendil's 7. The orcs rolled first and only managed to secure a 5 highest, unfortunately Elendil himself could only secure a 3 and he was removed under a flurry of strength 4 attacks. The very final fight was an Elf spearmen against 2 morannons, as we were playing a friendly we did not calculate the balance of wounds going into the fight and I elected not to shield. Naturally the elf was killed and on totalling up the results we found that we'd both done 23 wounds, leaving it as a 2-0 victory to Mordor for killing my general.

Painting is continuing at pace on the Galadhrim so hopefully I should be able to show them off in the next update.

Thanks to a hectic week its taken a little longer than I was planning to get the Galadhrim finished but here they are in all their glory! And in the meantime I see this blog has racked up over 1000 views, hopefully that means I'm doing something right!


Celeborn commands the archers of the Galadhrim


Celeborn and his bodyguard


Galadhrim archers

Next on the painting table will be a few more Galadhrim, Haldir and then two of the Three Hunters, Aragorn and Legolas.

So moving to London and then getting fixated with painting my Titanicus collection (see the link in my sig) slightly slowed my progress on the Middle Earth Front but I am back with some updates! You'll notice that all of the following are missing the final touch of static grass added to their bases, unfortunately I'm out of PVA and it hardly counts as an essential to stock up on!


Another four Galadhrim archers, taking me up to twelve in total or one and a half companies worth for WoTR.



Cirdan, the Mariner. In the SBG this guy is perhaps one of the best support characters in the game, in WoTR he is a minor wizard who gives his formation a handy 6+ save.


Aragorn and Legolas. A bit of a break from the Last Alliance, these two were painted for the sadly cancelled doubles tournament at Incom Games.


Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood


Aragorn, Heir of Isildur

Nice new models. You really don't see enough of this stuff.

 youwashock wrote:
Nice new models. You really don't see enough of this stuff.

Thank you! I love the Lord of the Rings range and its nice to paint something that is more true scale than the mainstream heroic scale stuff.

So I've mainly been painting Epic scale models lately and working on a new 40k project that I will be blogging about in future, hence the lack of updates. However I did find time to squeeze out another 6 Numenoreans to round me up to 3 companies worth.



I've also granted my growing Last Alliance force a shelf of its own in my display cabinet.



As you can see there are a few partial formations in there so my midterm aim is to bulk everything out to multiples of 8 in between my other projects.

That's a shelf to be proud of. I have not followed gameplay since the original 3 movie boxed sets, but the minis have always been worth the look.

 youwashock wrote:
That's a shelf to be proud of. I have not followed gameplay since the original 3 movie boxed sets, but the minis have always been worth the look.

The current Middle Earth SBG is probably the best game GW produce at the moment. The old War of the Ring massed battle version was also a really solid system, although it did have some significant issues with magic and some of the profiles.

So Lord of the Rings models seem to have been relegated to the role of palette cleanser in my painting schedule which is somewhat sad but does mean that something does occasionally reach the front of the queue. In this case a High Elf Captain for my sword company.

So this is more of a proof of life post than an exciting update. I've painted another 5 sword elves which combined with the captain above gives me a whole two companies... Looks like I've still got a way to go!

You mentioned at the start of the thread you were building towards an 8k force - any chance of a current army list, with an idea of where you sit towards that goal?

 Dysartes wrote:
You mentioned at the start of the thread you were building towards an 8k force - any chance of a current army list, with an idea of where you sit towards that goal?

So including the updates in this post I currently have painted:

- Gil-Galad
- Elrond
- Elendil
- Isildur
- Cirdan
- Celeborn
- Glorfindel

- Rivendell Guard - 1 Company
- High Elf Swordsmen - 2 Companies, Captain
- High Elf Archers - 2 Companies
- High Elf Knights - 3 Companies

- Galdahrim Archers - 1 Company

- Numenorean Warriors - 3 Companies, Captain, Banner

Taken together that covers all of the mandatory characters and about 1200 points of further troops. To that I have another few half painted companies of troops, once I've finished those off I'll look at taking an army shot. But in the meantime here are today's reinforcements, including my favourite Elven character:

Glorfindel and Elven Archers

Having painted Rivendell and Lothlorien elves I felt the itch to complete the triumvirate of Elven realms and start on a Mirkwood contingent.

Tauriel





Although she is an integral part of the Mirkwood list I'm just not a fan of any of the official Tauriel sculpts so I decided to convert my own.

Mirkwood Elves with Glaives





Mirkwood Elves with Bows

It's been a while since I updated this but my paintbrush has been far from idle! Over the next few days I'll try and update this with pictures of everything I got painted in the latter half of the year.

To start things off here's a real departure for me, the first evil MESBG army I've ever painted! And I've been playing since the fellowship came out...

The forces of Harad are probably my favorite out of the evil armies, and you've done a great job with their colors and armor here.

Bold and bright while still threatening.