My pick for the evil Hillmen of Rhudaur.

The evil Hillmen of Rhudaur are the human allies of the Witchking of Angmar. The Hillmen are lesser men who have inhabited the West before the coming of the Numenoreans. During the Time of Darkness in the 2nd Age when Sauron held sway over most of Middle Earth the Hillmen worshiped Sauron as a god like most of the men of Middle Earth at that time. The Numenoreans pushed these "lesser" people out of the plains into the hills in the north where they take their name from. You'll find several LOTR sites mentioning the Hillmen as "allies" of the Witchking but does the Witchking have allies? I think not when one falls into the sphere of influence of the Witchking you simply become another one of his servants whether you realize it or not.

 The figures I've come up with to represent these uncouth but strong warriors are Gaels from I-Kore's old Celtos range of fantasy miniatures. I like these figure because first they wear kilts not loincloths. So many fantasy figures are sculpted wearing loincloths the peoples of Middle Earth don't wear loincloths! Second because the Celtos range has a equal amount of female warriors in their unit packs. The Celtos figures don't seem too bulky next to the GW LOTR figures to me.

From left to right GW Last Alliance Elf. Celtos Gael, Mordor Uruk-hai, Celtos Gael

Again the Last Alliance Elf next to several Celtos Gaels.

Again the Mordor Uruk-hai next to several Celtos Gaels.

Here you can see that I have two full war bands of Hillmen with a mix of spears, 2 handed weapons and hand weapons with shield. The shields have not been attached in this picture. You can see the Hillwoman captain out in front of the warbands I believe I have another captain and possible one more full warband of Hillmen unbased in my lead pile. When I say warband I'm using the term used in the GW LOTR SBG where units are called "warbands" a grouping of 12 troop models lead by one hero model for a total of 13 models per unit.

Terrain Table Woes

I've failed to paint anything this weekend so I will take a moment tell you my readers of a tale terrain misfortunes. You may have notice my new title picture for the blog that is a picture of my 4'x4' Mountain Valley Table. (pictured above) I have always wanted to make a 4'x4' table to play LOTR on so when a local store was hosting a convention I deiced this was the moment for me to build my table. I had cut the 4 2'x2' tiles long ago to make a Plains of Rohan table, but at the last minute I felt that just wasn't exciting enough so I opted for a Mountain Valley on the edge of the Misty Mountains. Now so far this all sounds great but this was a spur of the moment thing I had 6 weeks to  complete the table from start to finish. I was literally adding the final layers of flock the night before.

So what's the problem you might ask it looks beautiful and it really does in person, I used several different shades of green flock to give it a natural appearance. In my mad rush to build it at night after work I failed to continually check the fitting of the tiles edges the North/South edges I seemed to have check regularly but when I fitted everything together the night before transporting it I discovered that the East/West edges don't fit together!

This I suspect was partly do to the fact that I am an apartment dweller without a table large enough to fit all of it together all at once. From the pictures below you can see how this project took over the tiny living room of my 1 bedroom apartment.

Well this more of a ramble than an article but since this is a blog of my LOTR endeavors I guess that's ok.

Following new LOTR Blog

I didn't get any painting in this weekend but I have found an new LOTR blog to follow middle earth minis where a gentlemen from Portugal is painting every one of the GW LOTR sets released in Portugal on his blog there are 65 sets.

You may have noticed the title picture that's a close up of my mountain valley table I made 2 years ago, now its just collection dust. I will have a post up on how I made it very soon.