No pics this week, as I’ve painted next to nothing. I’ve made a great deal of progress on five Corsairs of Umbar (well, 4 Corsairs and a Corsair Captain), but that’s it, and they’re not quite done.

I have assembled a number of minis, though. I finished off assembling my second box of Corsairs (one more box to go), Gothmog (with the tiniest bit of conversion: a turban),four half-trolls, twelve Wargs and a Mumak.

The Wargs were something I agonized over.

Since I’ll be pulling them into my list anyway, I needed to compare the Mordor Warg Riders to the Misty Mountains Wargs (Isengard Warg Riders didn’t need a look, since they’re the same as Mordor Warg Riders… but they’re Rare). The Warg Riders are unquestionably better than the riderless Wargs: they’ve got 4-5 more unit options, come with Skilled Riders and throwing weapons, and can be upgraded to have shields or bows… but I’m working with a theme, here! The Wargs are perfectly hyena-ish, which is why I looked at them in the first place… but those goblins don’t fit at all, and on closer inspection looked pretty resistant to minor conversion to bring them in line.

Ultimately, I decided against the riders. I’m leaving them off. In game terms, I’m losing out on 2 attacks (throwing weapons) per company and a bunch of command options I’m extremely unlikely to take… but the army will look that much nicer and more cohesive as a result. Besides, given that we’ve got people using WHFB elves and dwarves in the league, I don’t mind just saying, “These are counts-as Warg Riders, not just Wargs. Their angry barks are their throwing weapons.” Or something.

The Mumak is pretty crazy. It went together relatively easy, but there were a number of gaps and uneven spots that needed green stuff to make things work. For a $65 ($75 as of today) model, this is a little disappointing. Also, the howdah was a huge pain to put together.

I was surprised to find that the Mumak is, ah, anatomically correct. It’s a little disconcerting. It’s also the size of a person. Madness.

At this point, all I’ve got left to assemble for War of the Ring are:

• 16 Corsairs
• 1 Giant Scorpion (Shelob)

I’ve also got a heap of Mahud that need attention, but since they appear to be so terrible in the game, I’m likely just going to leave them in the blister until I figure out what to do with them. The ones I’ve already assembled, I plan to use to leaven out Half-Troll units. It’s a shame, really.

I also need to pick up a second Nazgul at some point extremely soon.