The idea for doing this came to me about 32 years ago, when I was a beardless youth of 10, and I was given this book
along with a couple of school friends I spent hours poring over the pictures and descriptions in this great tome (still one of my favourite books). Those were the days of the emerging Dungeons and Dragons scene and the closest we could get to recreating Tolkien's epic was a few Minifigs pig faced orcs on some dungeon floor plans (ahh happy days of innocence). About that time I was taken to see the now slated Lord of the Rings cartoon, which despite it's myriad faults left a huge impression on me (favourable) with the massed ranks of orcs attacking Helms Deep (and singing stirringly at the same time). Along with these 2 pictures
The Fall of Gondolin by John Blanche
The Battle of Pelennor Fields by Ian Miller
I determined one day I might have enough pocket money to re-create one of Tolkien's battles in miniature. I particularly like John Blanche's work in the Tolkien bestiary (not so keen on some of his Games Workshop stuff), and Ian Miller's work I find fascinating (particularly his H P Lovecraft book covers).
With the advent of the new Lord of the Rings films about 10 years ago, I was finally galvanised into action and began painting over a 1000 15mm figures and building the terrain to recreate the huge siege and battle in the third part of The Lord of the Rings (I must have been barking mad...). I was keen to get my models finished before being influenced by Peter Jackson's films (as it turned out, although I thought the films were very good, they were nothing like how I imagined Middle-Earth and it's denizens, except for the Riders of Rohan which were spot on).
more soon.....
I have this book on my shelves here as I type and agree with all you say about it...
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the next post with great intersest. I love Tolkien and some of my first wargames figures armies were way back circa 1976 when I gamed with Minigfigs Mythical Earth range figures...