The Siege of Minis Tirith 40mm style

[PaulRPetri]

As a way of keeping my nose to the grind stone I thought I would document some of my progress on a very large LOTR project. The genesis of this idea was first planted in 2005 at the Little Wars convention held yearly outside of Chicago. My wargame brother Brian and I were attending the convention with our older son's. The boys got into a large game depicting the siege of Minis Tirith. What intigue both Brian and myself was that the game was using prepainted 40mm LOTR collectable combat click figures. It was at this time that the LOTR movies were at their apex of popularity. The market was saturated with all things LOTR. The guy running this game had left the figures on their green click bases and had just used unfinished foam to increase the height of his Games Workshop Minis Tirith wall sections. It looked good but Brian and I were convinced we could do better. This began a buying spree of any and all 40mm LOTR click figures we could find. The first two movies had large number of these click figures dumped onto the market. We were able to obtain large numbers of figures for very low cost, some as low as 25 US cents! Ultimatly we wanted to do the siege portion of the battle but the Pellenor field action took hold of us and we instead headed in that direction. In 2018 we were able to stage Pelennor fields on a six foot by twenty five foot table with over 3000 40mm miniatures and 16 players. Unfortunatly I was far too bust to take any pictures but below is a few images of practice games which lead up to the big event.



The Mumakils I discovered in Toy' R' Us which was abig toy store chain here in the USA. They are just big rubber elephants and I saw the potential to turn them into some useful Mumakils.


A marx toy set gate surronded by elements of GW's The Mighty Fortress was pushed into service as we wanted to represent a portion of Minis Tirith on one six foot side of the table.


Brian attempts to hide behind some Mumakils.


In the background of this picture is my first attempt at Minis Tirith.



Rohan cavalry making the charge.


Brian and I had run numerous games over the years building up to the big Pellenor Field battle and that game took the steam out of me and I lost motivation to continue towards the siege game.

For some unknown reason while attending the Little Wars convention just afew weeks ago the discussion to do the siege was raised and it was decided to go forward with the project. Brian ever the bargain hunter had scored two more additional Mighty Fortresses giving us three in total. These had been gathering dust in my garage for the last few years.

The first obstacle to overcome was that the siege towers that we boght were from the Armies Of Middle Earth, (AOME) toy sets which are roughly 54mm in scale. These were used in the original game we witnessed in 2005. I had bought three of these and Brian the over the top guy bought 8!


So after pulling out all of the Mighty Fortresses from my garage I needed to raise them 4" so the big siege towers could be used. Here is ashot of the "Short" Mighty Fortresses with siege tower in the background.


Not a very good picture, out of focus, and I failed to show just the 4" foam insulation was glued in two 2" sections to the bottome of the Mighty Fortress walls.


I must recommend using this stuff to glue foam together.


So to make the stone work I decided to use sculptamold rolled out with a roller from Green Stuff. The stone work is different but I will accept this.




The walls all lined up.


Toweres lined up.


After I filled in the doorways on the walls I had to add a walkway otherwise the figures would bestepping out into space. Would look stupid.


Digging out all of the terrain items I had in storage for this project I pulled out these Project bricks to build additional toweres to hold war machines.




I am a bit nervous about one part as the Sculptamold is not drying solid yet and it has been afew days??! My thought was to cover the plaster with Mod Lodge. I will report back on my findings.

Thanks for having look.

[Peter]

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting!

[Bessiere]

The care you put in to preparation is a thing to behold. That is one lovely gaming area to use as well. Your Pelennor fields was very impressive, I love the books and the movies though the Mumakil were a tad large for my tastes and Legolas' ability to scale and kill them then skate off the trunk rather silly. Small complaints on fantastic movies otherwise that eerily matched the visual images I had from reading LOTR. Perhaps it was because Tolkien was so adept at describing things all the main elements were already there for Jackson to pick up.

[PaulRPetri]

Thanks Bessiere for your kind comments but the action game shots were taken at a friends house that we used to game at. Sadly he has given up the hobby. The construction shots are in my dungeon play area.

[Minuteman]

Wow, LoTR gaming on an epic scale! This all looks most inspiring.

[PaulRPetri]

Thank you minuteman I feel the same way! One of the earliest games we ran at a convention was a recreation of the Rohan cavalry attack on the Isengarders holding Mary and Pippen captive by Fangorn forest. We had a number of gamers stop by and just stare at the table for a minute then would turn to us and ask "What scale is this?". They thought it was a 28mm game but they knew something wasn't quite right. They were fairly shocked when we told them 40mm.

[PaulRPetri]

Just a small update on this project. For some odd reason the Sculptamold was not drying. Usually it is as hard as a rock in under 30 minutes. For some unknown reason, perhaps the unseasonal cold and rain we have been having in the midewest it was taking days. Being impatient and foolish I attached the balsa wood walk ways with hot glue. A horrible failure. I pulled off all of the walkways and gave the walls a quick coat of paint, flat white ceiling paint I had left over. Finally the walls hardened and I drilled in wood match sticks into the castle wall, secured with super glue and my walk ways are underway! Horah!


Failed walkway section.


I also decided to attach each tower to one wall section. I used wood skewers and the construction adhesive which seemed to work. I then started adding the Sculptamold to the tower bases and attempted to blend it in with the wall sections.


Painted wall sections.


Unfortunatly I ran out of Sculptamold and I am awaiting its arrival to continue working on the tower bases. I have to give thought of building the gate section and completing the artillery towers.
Thanks for looking.

[PaulRPetri]

A short update on my progress.
I was able to get some paint on the walls and do some washes in grey and brown using the floor wax method. I was going to try making my washes with oil paints and thinned with turpintine or mineral spirits as I have seen on Youtube but there is a good chance any exposed foam would be dissolved by the thinner. So I panicked and ditched that method.

A painted wall with ceiling paint.


A wall that has had the grey wash over it.


The next few shots are completed wall sections, except for the flat coat of varnish I have yet to apply. These won't win any terrain awards but I think they will do fine for my large game purposes.


The plastic dragon in the background seems to be laughing at my attempts! Damn him!



I still have to finish painting four towers that the defenders catapults will be on. I also have to finish the right side of the wall which will be the mirror of this section, so another 6 feet.

I have yet to start the gate but I do have an idea for that. I hope it works.
Thanks for looking!

[PaulRPetri]

Here are afew shots with some defenders on the walls.



Not entirely happy with my weathering. May try some other things out. Time will tell.
Thanks for looking.

[Minuteman]

Great progress, thanks for the images...and ignore the laughing dragon!

[Peter]

Is that castle fireproof with that laughing dragon? What will happen when he stops laughing?

Nice work!