Middle Earth Mega Project
Recommendations: 998
About the Project
When the first Lord of the Rings film came out I was looking for a tabletop miniatures game to get into. I had recently finished reading the Lord of the Rings and was expecting the film to be rubbish. Happily I was completely wrong and the 'Fellowship of the Ring' was BRILLIANT. I then had an happy decade and a half collecting and painting the miniatures whilst running a gaming group. After that I jumped ship to Historical/Military Gaming I now have a load of mates who want to get into the game, some with kids who are equally enthusiastic and effectively give them an excuse to get back involved. I have a frankly massive collection of painted miniatures for the Lord of the Rings and to a lesser extent the Hobbit, and after recruiting a few newbies and retired players, I have started playing again with what I believe is the best gaming system out there! It's time to dust off (in a very real sense!) my collection, get more miniatures and scenery assembled, painted and on the gaming table. Partially inspired by the OTT 'Spring Clean Challenge' to photograph miniatures in unusual external locations, each article in this project comprises of a vignette of miniatures and scenery depicting a different location in Middle Earth, many of which recreating my favourite scenes from the books and films.
Related Game: Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
Related Company: Games Workshop
Related Genre: Fantasy
Related Contest: Spring Clean Hobby Challenge 2023
This Project is Active
Converted Hobbit Archer.
A simple yet effective conversion with the addition of a plastic bow to an old and sadly OOP model of Merry, from the ‘Merry and Pippin vs Grishnakh’ blister pack.
I love the look of shock on the miniatures face that adds a great deal of drama to my Hobbit Archers unit. He looks horrified at perhaps an enemy monster, or has he just taken down a Goblin and is ducking an incoming arrow?
My God Daughter Sophie used him in our recent game and he took down a Goblin archer and jointly saw off a few swordsmen (with help from several Dunedain, who were in the Shire purely as peace-keeping advisors!) and it was great to use him in a game.
He’s not going to win any prises, but I am really happy with the result and the conversion end result really looks convincing in terms of stance, feel and stands out amongst a unit of archers in regular poses.
Farmer Maggot and His Dogs.
Always a fun and visually striking addition to an Hobbit force is Farmer Maggot and his loyal hounds.
Quite capable of slowing down or even seeing off a Ring Wraith at starting stats. I have even seen one of his jammy dogs bit and wound an Oliphant with full crew in the Howda and have it stampede off the table!
My God Daughter Sophie used him in a recent game and he and his dogs managed to take down a couple of warg riders and keep their corn crop free of malefactors.
Arnor Objective Marker.
These two pieces of scenery came with the first starter set with the first run of releases from Games Workshop.
Simple and easy to paint, I use them as objective markers, but with an added twist to add more jeopardy to the game. When I use them as a single objective marker, with the standing statue on the table being worth 1 victory point, but I give it a defence of 6 and 3 wound, and anyone trying to destroy it must start in base contact and not move, then strikes automatic hits in the fight phase. If it gets destroyed, I then use the toppled and smashed version, which is then worth zero victory points. This allows a losing player to enact a “scorched Middle Earth” strategy (just like a certain ‘Sharky’ from the books), which means that a quick last minute bit of vandalism can chip away at a soon to be victorious enemies victory. Also if all is going South and you can’t hold this objective, you can permanently prevent it from falling to the enemy.
It’s a great and underrated bit of scenery, and my solution adds further fun allowing it to be used in games.
