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Post by Obadiah on Jul 12, 2016 2:36:49 GMT
Hi all.
I am embarking on a project to put together some Tolkien armies in 6mm for D3H2.
First stop will be dwarves and I wanted to get the thoughts of the collective as to what their main element type should be. My gut feel was Blades, bu then the question of whether they were fast or solid came to mind. Dwarves do live in mountainous areas and so perhaps might be considered fast so they are not impacted by the terrain. But that then raises the question of whether they should be Warband?
Let me hear your thoughts.
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Post by timurilank on Jul 12, 2016 5:11:12 GMT
Hi all. I am embarking on a project to put together some Tolkien armies in 6mm for D3H2. First stop will be dwarves and I wanted to get the thoughts of the collective as to what their main element type should be. My gut feel was Blades, bu then the question of whether they were fast or solid came to mind. Dwarves do live in mountainous areas and so perhaps might be considered fast so they are not impacted by the terrain. But that then raises the question of whether they should be Warband? Let me hear your thoughts. I have adapted the III/40 Viking lists for my Dwarves. There is no need to restrict yourself to one type of blade. Your core group could comprise of 4Bd and a smaller group based as 3Bd may represent an allied contingent. Add a few Sp, 4Cb or 3Cb, and 3Wb (berserkers) as options to your list.
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Post by Piyan Glupak on Jul 12, 2016 6:29:25 GMT
A couple of random thoughts. Please excuse me if they are irrelevant.
I can't remember reading anything that implies dwarves used archery in warfare. Although Fili and Kili used bows for hunting in Mirkwood in The Hobbit, I got the impression that they weren't that wonderful with them. If I was using DBA for Middle Earth battles, I might allow one Psiloi on the basis that the author and commentators within the books would concentrate on the main high-status troop type.
When I did a scenario for the Battle of the Five Armies in standard HotT, I made Thoren Oakenshield and his remaining companions a Hero element.
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Post by Obadiah on Jul 12, 2016 11:49:18 GMT
True. There is no dwarven archery at the Battle of the Five Armies. And I can't recall honestly any reference to it in any other Tolkien literature. Having said that I feel there is a chance that they might have had 1 or 2 elements in a 12 element army at most. Thorin also refers to the use of bows as well. In my Battle of the five armies set up I am looking at one hero element and 2 Blades elements from Dain. The other elements would be Elven spears, and bows and spears from Dale. On the other side would be beasts (wargs), riders (warg riders), hordes, warband and bow.
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Post by Obadiah on Jul 12, 2016 23:40:12 GMT
Hi all. I am embarking on a project to put together some Tolkien armies in 6mm for D3H2. First stop will be dwarves and I wanted to get the thoughts of the collective as to what their main element type should be. My gut feel was Blades, bu then the question of whether they were fast or solid came to mind. Dwarves do live in mountainous areas and so perhaps might be considered fast so they are not impacted by the terrain. But that then raises the question of whether they should be Warband? Let me hear your thoughts. I have adapted the III/40 Viking lists for my Dwarves. There is no need to restrict yourself to one type of blade. Your core group could comprise of 4Bd and a smaller group based as 3Bd may represent an allied contingent. Add a few Sp, 4Cb or 3Cb, and 3Wb (berserkers) as options to your list. Funnily enough I actually hadn't thought about doing a mix of 4Bd and 3Bd.
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Post by timurilank on Jul 13, 2016 5:10:32 GMT
I have adapted the III/40 Viking lists for my Dwarves. There is no need to restrict yourself to one type of blade. Your core group could comprise of 4Bd and a smaller group based as 3Bd may represent an allied contingent. Add a few Sp, 4Cb or 3Cb, and 3Wb (berserkers) as options to your list. Funnily enough I actually hadn't thought about doing a mix of 4Bd and 3Bd. The 3Bd are the provincial cousins from the next valley.
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Post by Piyan Glupak on Jul 13, 2016 7:07:04 GMT
I don't know whether or not you have come across Luke Ueda-Sarson's web site. I don't always agree with everything he suggests, but I usually look at it for Middle Earth battles. He also has DBA and DBM army lists. lukeuedasarson.com/HotTME.htmlDavid Kuijt also did some DBA army lists a while ago: www.umiacs.umd.edu/~kuijt/orcs/TolkeinDBA.htmlAgain, I tend to look at the books carefully and make up my own mind, although I like to see what he thought about things.
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Post by weddier on Jul 15, 2016 22:26:41 GMT
True. There is no dwarven archery at the Battle of the Five Armies. And I can't recall honestly any reference to it in any other Tolkien literature. Having said that I feel there is a chance that they might have had 1 or 2 elements in a 12 element army at most. Thorin also refers to the use of bows as well. In my Battle of the five armies set up I am looking at one hero element and 2 Blades elements from Dain. The other elements would be Elven spears, and bows and spears from Dale. On the other side would be beasts (wargs), riders (warg riders), hordes, warband and bow. While Tolkein doesn't mention archery in either the Dwarf or Goblin armies in "The Hobbit", he does state that Beorn gave bows to the dwarves and that they used them in the Mirkwood to bring down squirrels in the dim woods, not an easy target. Ergo, some dwarves knew how to use bows. They will not be out of place in a Dwarven army. For Tolkienian armies, these ought to be self bows, not crossbows, but your favorite figure manufacturer may not cooperate.
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Post by markw on Sept 9, 2016 10:24:24 GMT
Don't forget the Men of Laketown (Dale had been reduced by Smaug to a barren waste) are cited as wielding longswords rather than spears. But it's often noted that Tolkien was pretty vague generally on military specifics so it does leave it open to interpretation/extrapolation as what other troop types one can include. It probably wasn't really uppermost in Tolkien's mind to cater in minute detail for obsessive wargamers over half a century later! :-) Luke Ueda-Sarson's site has been a fabulous resource since the 1990s. Similarly I haven't always agreed with his interpretations but the sheer work he undertook compiling the lists and providing specific textual references to his conclusions was very impressive! But there are others perhaps worth checking out too (or tracking down if you can find them!) which all give slightly different takes on composition etc. Some were aimed at DBM but provided lots of useful info and interpretations readily adaptable to HoTT or DBA etc. These included... "De Bellis Middle Earth" - Thane Maxwell, 2001: www.oocities.org/thanemaxwell/MIDDLE501.doc"DBF:HERE THERE BE DRAGONS" - this was a fully printed supplement for DBM by an independent author - so not WRG "official". Copies turn up occasionally online or offered up on wargaming forums etc. "De Bellis Fictionalis" - a set of lists compiled by Dave Brown of Evil Gong Miniatures (Oz) if I recall correctly. I seem to remember they had a substantially different feel to Sarson's and offered some interpretations I rather liked at the time (late '90s I think...). I used to have a copy but cannot now track it down either on or offline. Perhaps someone here still has a copy or can point to a suitable URL? Hope that's useful. Cheers! MarkW
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Post by txwargamer on Sept 10, 2016 2:24:43 GMT
Thanks for the links to the great sources.
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