And.....he's back in the game!

 

Outriders of Rohan

And……he’s back in the game!

Covid is a b*st*rd and no mistake! I can heartily recommend that you avoid it. For four and half months I have lived in a world of fog with no physical or mental energy and in constant pain but now, although far from well,  I am finally recovered enough to get back into my hobby.

And that’s all I will say about it here, if you want to know more about how I nearly died from the killer disease you can find my blog about it here

https://www.twelvedaysofcovid.com/

Meanwhile, there are games to play. I have been kit bashing and painting quite a few figures. My family have been playing Rangers of Shadow deep but are now getting into Frostgrave so I have been knocking up some war bands, more about that later…

I have been starting to build my Wars of the Roses Army for Never Mind the Billhooks, again more about that in another post…

I have discovered a great little game called Fantastic Battles which I will review later this week…

Meanwhile here is my latest kit bash the Rohirrim Outriders, scouts for the Eoreds of Rohan

Body and the horses are Gripping Beast Dark Age Cavalry. This rider has a head from Gripping Beast Saxon Thegns with a green stuff horse skull in gold and some extra hair. The bow is from Victrix Dacians as is the right arm and arrow 

 

 

I am not a great sculptor and I admit I was pleased with this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not too sure where this head came from , may have been Frostgrave Knights, the right arm and spear are from a Victrix Dacian. The horse skull I thought would make a good unit emblem for the Rohirrim, they were further embellished with a crest/plume of horse hair. I may use the colour of the hair to distinguish unts. Grey for Outriders, White for Kings Guard, chestnut for Westfold etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This chap has a Gripping Beast Dark Age Cavalry head with a magnificent moustache. His right arm is from a Frostgrave wizard, his left is from Perry War of the Roses Infantry. I had to use quite a blob of GS under his right arm pit to get the arm at the right angle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like the idea of Rohirrim being “Anglo Saxons on horseback” so the paint scheme is pretty much that. Tunics have borders that are decorated with strips of coloured woven silk. The tunics have been stained with mostly plant based dyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Rohirrim were not "medieval", in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chainmail of small rings” Tolkien Letters No 211

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This figure will be the leader, I  nearly always represent the leaders of my units as bareheaded.

"Outriders" are only mentioned a couple of times in the books and no description is given. It is likely that they are not a designated unit or troop type but simply some riders who have been given the scouting role. However, I like to imagine a light cavalry type, lightly equipped, no armour, adept at skirmishing with a mix of bows and throwing spears.

 

I am not aware that Tolkien ever describes the Rohirrim as all wearing green, as they seem to in the films, as far as I can recall, the only mention of the colour green associated with them is the description of the emblem of the house of Eorl “a white horse upon green”

 I guess that may have been done in the films for the effect of a mass of riders all in the same colour so I have assumed a lack of uniform. 

 

 The bow strings are cut from an old paint brush, a cheap decorating one from Wilko

Although looking at the pictures I have used a lot of green! The shield designs are my own kind of based on Anglo Saxon art (a bit)

This is my first attempt at using a light box to photograph figures, I think I should find something other than brown wrapping paper as a background!

 

 

 

 

Ambush!