Bilbo's Birthday Bash 2013: Monster Mash

After finishing my Lord of the Rings Dwarven army a couple of years ago I've not had the motivation to get started on a new force.  That changed with last years B3 tournament as I was totally inspired by the great armies I saw on display. That, coupled with every game going to full time made me certain that I needed a smaller force.  I lose way more than I win and using Dwarves and Minas Tirith seemed to often prolong the inevitable and make me miss out on the fun downtime you often get at tournaments.

One of the forces I faced was a cool monster themed list with spiders, bats and dwellers.  I had always envisioned doing a monster list from Angmar but after some suggestions from Johnathan (the owner of the monster list I faced) I decided on basing it from the Moria list and using the two special character goblins that work well with monsters (Ashrak and Druzhag).  With the move to 750 points for this year I had to slightly tweak my list by adding some "ghosts" in the form of Barrow Wights and Spectres from the Angmar list (I'm trying to use the models I own and not purchase more).

My first model for my evil force is a wild warg.  In an attempt to match my Dwarves bases and to adhere to a theme of decline/death/winter for the corrupting evil force I went with a rocky base containing dead grasses and snow.  My inspiration for the decay theme came from the recent Hobbit film and the way they portray the evil and corrupting effects of The Necromancer on the forest of Mirkwood.

 

My final force will be a combination of creatures including wargs, spiders, bats, and a cave troll all lead by the goblin heroes and the Spider Queen.  Allied in will be some Barrow Wights and Spectres representing some of the non-animal creatures in the Dark Lord's service.

 

I'm not going to the extreme lengths that some of my fellow Lord of the Rings friends are

(i.e. check out the FUBAD group at one of the member's blogs: http://chefofwar.blogspot.com/)

Yet, I have used this project as a chance to try some small things I've always thought looked cool.  One is to sculpt the bases a bit so they have that raised look to them. I've seen this done by lots of folks and even with basic sand and flock it always looks cool.  In my case I also added slate and other large rocks plus bits of terrain blocks for elevation.

 

 

So that is the start and I have 5 months to pull it together.  Of course, this is only one of the two armies I will need to field.  What force will oppose the spread of this evil in the wilds of Middle-earth?

 

Stay tuned.