After apparently being grounded from his xbox for a week, my nephew rediscovered the fun of playing GW's LoTR miniatures game.  He also found out a classmate is an LoTR gamer as well, and they've started hanging out together.

My neph is building up an Uruk Hai army (darn it!  oh well, I guess I need to collect "good guys" then), and got a box of 20 Uruks for his birthday last week. As part of my present, I gave him the Lurz figure I painted up some time ago to command his new battleforce.  He doesn't know it, but that figure is one of my best paint jobs, and I was a little reluctant to give it up.  But it's really the perfect command figure for his new army, and there's a better chance of him using it than me.  I also offered to paint his new Uruks, but he's rather taken with the idea of painting up his own army.  Good lad, that's the style!

He's at summer camp this week, but he's given me his box of 20 guys to get trimmed up and ready to paint.  They're plastic, which I don't prefer, but the detail is very crisp and the sculpting is good, so they're pretty cool.  I have them all "de-sprued", trimmed of flash, and where necessary glued together.  If the weather clears up, I'll prime them black, but otherwise my neph will have to handle that himself.

He already has a set of Orcs and Gondorians that I painted for him a few years ago when he first took an interest in wargaming.  The orcs will be a useful auxiliary force to his block of Uruks.  There is a new "Legions of Middle Earth" book coming out in a few weeks that will give more detailed army lists for different factions, so it will be interesting to see what additional figures he would need to field a serious Isengard army.  I suspect a few warg riders and another captain or two will do the trick.

Now the only question is, do I sell/give him my six other Uruk figures?  I have 3 archers and 3 berserkers, which I suspect he wouldn't mind getting his hands on.  They cost me around $16, and are already painted, so they're worth a bit more than that.  But he'd probably have more fun with them in the long run, and I don't have enough other Uruks to do anything that useful with them.  I can always leave them in the display I have them in right now though - they do look pretty cool.

My original plan for them was to use them in some "Fellowship of the Ring" scenario games, and also in the "Battle Companies" rules, but I was never able to score any warrior figures.  Now GW is coming out with an "Uruk Hai Scouts" box, which unfortunately is plastic but will fill the roll I was trying to fill.  I still have dreams of getting a full collection of "FoTR" era miniatures for some gaming, but it's not a high priority at the moment.

Eh, who knows?  I suspect I'll give them to my nephew in the end, but agonize about it for a few weeks first. :-)