Mercurius Atticus: MINAS TIRITH

Thursday, 18 August 2011

MINAS TIRITH

One of the most impractical pieces of terrain I own is this little baby I made for my Battle of Pelennor Fields game in 15mm. I had to work out how to simulate Minas Tirith on a 6'x4' table without filling up the entire board, and also the living room (we were living in a 2 bedroom cottage at the time of making with our first new baby, Thing 1 filling the spare room).

Happily, I remembered reading an old White Dwarf article in issue 50 (I think) which suggested just making the gateway. That was all very well, but Tolkien's description implies that the huge keel of stone protrudes to right behind the main gate, so it would be necessary to make that and at least part of the first 3 (of the 7 ) walls. Any how with a few sheets of ply and copious amounts of polystyrene and filler, all was well.

A view of the street on the entrance level.

and the next level

from the other side showing a statue of Isildur (28mm Black Tree figure).

A vertigo shot of the rock keel and tower which stands a ridiculous 1.35m. I was perversely smug to note that Peter Jackson's superb model of the White City in his films had a white outer wall. It was built of black Numenorean stone, the same as Orthanc, Saruman's tower. By the way on the subject of pedantic geeks (like myself) when I started this project, I was eating breathing and sleeping The Lord of the Rings, and tried to get everything as accurate as possible. Since then 9 years or so have passed and I have forgotten a good deal of Tolkien lore, so apologies if I commit the heinous crime of mis-naming a hobbit or similar.

Here is the city gateway on the table, with the Rammas Echor (the wall surrounding the Pelennor Fields) on the left, 2 roads lead to the gateway, one from Osgiliath (which has a grassy riding track down it's right hand side) and the all stone road from the Harlond, which goes through the Rammas Echor gateway (Aragorn arrives along this at the height of the battle to save the day). There are piles of masonry next to the wall, as the defenders of Minas Tirith belatedly start to repair it before the forces of Mordor arrive.