One of my goals for 2024 was to finish my Middle Earth figures. I have, as with most projects, both sides. So Rohan and Isengard. Today I completed the last of my Rohan figures. They are a mix of GW figures and some 3D printed variations. It was nice to get them done. Not huge, but significant.

At the present time I’m playing GW’s Middle Earth Strategy Battle System (MESBG.) I’ve played the rules a four or five times. They are enjoyable enough, but require regular play to pound them into my head. If I could cobble together some rules that were just a bit more accessible that would be great. However, MESBG does a super job of recognizing the power of Middle Earth characters in LOTR, so at least at the present time that’s what I’m playing.

I think MESBG does a pretty good job of rating the army of Rohan. They are charging cavalry, but not lancers. They can throw their spears, but they get kind of a bonus for throwing them, and I feel like that’s a bit gamey. Their leaders have good ratings, and I like that. If I have a beef, it’s that they are also all bow-armed and that simply isn’t accurate. In the Two Towers at the defense of Helm’s Deep Legolas remarked “But even more would I give for a hundred good archers of Mirkwood. We shall need them. The Rohirrim have good bowmen after their fashion, but there are too few here, too few (pg. 137)” Even in the movies, while mounted bowmen are depicted, the vast majority are mounted spearmen. Everyone a bowmen seems pretty extreme.

MESBG is based on the Peter Jackson movies. They were great movies. I enjoyed them all. Not the Hobbit movies which were over done and departed spectacularly from the short children’s book it was based on. But, in many cases, Jackson departed from key elements of Tolkien’s story. Some, such as the omission of Tom Bombadil, the Old Forest and the incident on the Barrow Downs are kind of story dead-ends. A wise omission to save both time and money. And some things he adds illustrate aspects of the story Tolkien dismisses with a line or two such as Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog in The Two Towers. Others changes-the reforging of Narsil into Anduril happens at Rivendell in The Fellowship, Arwen, please save us from Arwen, and Aragorn’s beheading of The Mouth of Sauron, are inexplicable, but oh well.

But others are simply unfathomable to me. Eowyn did not lead refugees from Edoras to Helm’s Deep, she took them to the shelter of Dunharrow in the mountains. King Theoden led his guard to Helm’s Deep where he joined with the survivors of the Westfold, plus the trio of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas to defend his keep. Eomer, could not have led his warriors to charge into the back of the orc host, because he too was defending Helm’s Deep. Rather, Gandalf led Erkenbrand Lord of the Westfold and his men on foot to attack the hosts of Isengard. And most egregiously, there were no fuckin’ elves from Lothlorien at Helm’s Deep. They were too busy defending their forest home from invaders of their own.

This is just one of a series of examples from one key moment in Tolkien’s story that Jackson makes his own and runs with (don’t get me started on Faramir bringing Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath while Sean Astin screams “We’re not supposed to be here.”) My problem is not that Jackson has altered the story for the big screen. It is that Jackson’s story is so pervasive that many who have seen the movies and not read Tolkien see these changes as the Lord of the Rings instead of as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. We see that in the GW game, which frustrates me to no end. Haldir and his Galadrim appear in each of the many Helm’s Deep scenarios from the War in Rohan scenario book.

I’ve been called a snob because of my loyalty to the original work. I know a game has to work. I know a movie has to be saleable. But I still think that where possible telling Tolkien’s story is important. In The Two Towers, the defense of Helm’s Deep was pretty serious stuff and a very dark moment in the tale. You could still have the torch bearer setting off the bomb that blows up the Deeping Wall, with dozens of additional exciting action shots, but adding elves to the defense–why, and how does it further the story? Where does it go while being 100 percent false? At the end of the story the elves are non-factors. Haldir and his mates are dead, they don’t go to Isengard, they don’t follow The Paths of the Dead, they don’t ride to the Pelennor Fields, they don’t contribute to the story arc. Why are they there? Yeah, I know, I’m a snob.

But I digress. My Rohirrim are finished. I have 73 painted figures. About half of those I’ve had since 2003 or so, so it was nice to get them done. Half are mounted, the rest are foot figures. 25 or so are 3D printed figures, which is a whole different story. With the exception of a few personality figures, they are all plastic, which presents their own difficulty. I’ve weighted them with washers and magnetized their bases, but they feel light and the horsemen mostly have one foot glued to their cursed slotta bases, so my fear is they could be wiped out by one act of clumsiness (likely my own.)

I still have the forces of Isengard to finish, and I’ll tackle them in 2025. I’ve included some trolls in my order to Proxy Wars, an awesome 3D printer in Portugal, and when they arrive I’ll have all the figures I need.