Reinforcements have arrived! Check out the second installment of my hobby blog, getting ready for a 550 point MESBG tournament, were Faramir screws everythign up AGAIN!
Early last week the missing pieces of my army began to arrive. A little printing, a little eBaying and a huge helping hand from the Frontline Gaming Second Hand Shop and I have everything I need for my little army and more! 36 Warriors, evenly split between swords, spears and bows came in from FLG. One warrior was missing half his bow, but this was in the listing picture, and I still had more than I needed, so no worries there. I printed a second captain, and all that was left to source was Faramir. It turns out there were plenty of mint blisters listed on eBay for very reasonable prices, which made life quite easy.
Once everyone was assembled it was time to neaten up a lot of these minis. The mold lines on some of these 20+ year old minis are no joke. Hours and hours of scraping later and all 36 plastic minis, plus the 8 warriors and 4 knights from my original collection are looking great! Basing was next. I prefer to glue sand to my bases so it gets primed along with the mini. It takes paint better that way and gets an extra bit of adhesion thanks to the coat of primer. This went really quick, thankfully.
It was at this point that I ran into an issue with Faramir that would rearrange my army entirely. Nearly all the minis I could find were packaged with the horse in this picture, which has only the back left hoof on the base. This is fine for plastic minis, but Faramir is metal, and I would much prefer the weight of the metal model sit either between two hooves or directly over one or more hooves touching the base to avoid fatiguing the plastic over time. I didn’t have any spare horses, but my knights were assembled with super glue. Surely I could remove one from its horse and swap them, right? Unfortunately not. The horse came away unscathed and Faramir had a much better mount, but I tore the knight apart doing it. I’m sure I can repair him, but time is of the essence! What could I do in the meantime?
Thankfully, I now had loads of extra warriors to play with. It was time to revisit my army list and see what I could do. Faramir still had loads of space in his warband, but I had been hoping to keep him mobile, so I don’t want to put any of the troops meant for the shieldwall under his command. The other two warbands were full, but they were a little light on spears. The demise of the knight freed up 15 points, and a warrior of Minas Tirith with either a bow or sword and shield costs 9 points, with a spear costing one point more. Ultimately, I decided to put a single bowman in Faramir’s warband and use the remaining 6 points to turn several swordsmen and bowmen from the other warbands into spearmen. If anything I am now heavy on spears, but I don’t mind. With my ranks packed so densely I want to make sure I have supports.
So here we are. The list has been amended just as the glue is drying on the bases. Tonight the whole lot will be primed and then the batch painting can begin. Let me know what you think of the new incarnation of the list in the comments!
