After what was supposed to be a extra-restful recharge-friendly week, with a long weekend turned out to be an exceptionally brutal one instead, I’ve not gotten as much painted as I’d hoped. Funny dat. Anyway. I did manage to finish something in that time, and that was a trio of Monsters from the Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth board game, this time from the “Shadowed Paths” expansion. The Nameless Things.
Many have speculated over many years on what Tolkien might have meant or wanted to insinuate with his writings on the Nameless Things – and which “named” creatures might be amongst their number, like The Watcher in the Water, or Ungoliant. Luckily, Fantasy Flight has come to all our aid and filled in the blank for us. Question answered, everybody. You can go home now. They’re ground-worm-grub-things. Like in that movie, Tremors.
Here’s some I prepared earlier this week. I didn’t go full maggot with their paint, and instead tried to make them look a little more like something that could feasably exist, with the digging and the dirt… so at this point I’m not sure if these are 28mm models, or if they’re supposed to be gigantic like Dune’s sandworms and are just downscaled like those Siege Engines I got posted up in the last post. As such, once again I’m not entirely sure if they fit the criteria for Swordmaster’s Monster March Painting Challenge, but I’ll throw their little top hats into the ring anyway and see what he says.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great models
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Cheers, David! 🙂
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I wouldn’t want to try and think up a name for them, but at least I now know what they look like. Fun models, nice paintwork!
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Possibly something involving the word “worm” or maybe “grub” or “maggot” 😀
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Nicely done! 🙂 I think these are great!
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Thank you, John! 🙂
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Whatever scale they are, they are pretty darn cool mate! Hood choice to not go ‘full maggot’ 😁👍
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Cheers, Alex! Not every oversized grub model needs to look like something from my Nurgle force! 😉
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Excellent job mate, the colours you’ve used remind me of Tremors, which I think works perfectly
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I have to admit, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen that particular film! 😀
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Nice.
Cheers Roger.
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Cheers, Roger!
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You have to wonder if they weren’t channeling the final Hobbit movie with these. I wasn’t a fan of the Dune wurms showing up in that movie but oh well. The minis look quite nice and I like the “earthy” colors you chose for them too. They certainly would scare any hobbit, elf, dwarf, or man traveling Middle Earth!
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I have to admit, I don’t even remember that. I remember a bif of the final grand battle, and Legolas defying physics as he ran down (or up?) a set of collapsing stairs, but not all that much else. Not the best or most memorable film, but I guess I’ll need to rewatch it again one day…
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I think The Hobbit trilogy should have been two movies but you’re right that the final movie is not especially great. I like moments in it well enough but with so much superhero, fantasy, and Sci-Fi content we get now, it is fairly forgettable now which is a shame for such a great book!
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All too true. It could have been great as one longer film, or two normal-length ones without all of the silly filler and MCU-moments! A movie like that should help you suspend your disbelief and make you think “wow” rather than “well, he/they should be dead right there.”
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The problem with strange and unknowable shadowy things that lurk ominously in the periphery of an author’s work is that it’s terribly hard to capture them as miniatures! Personally I’m still not convinced that the worms managed to tunnel all the way from Dune to Middle Earth (and don’t get me wrong, I love Dune but it didn’t feel it was suffering from a lack of hobbits either). Still, giant worms bursting from the ground are always cool and you’ve done a great job with them.
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That’s very true, Wudu – but if the Watcher in the Water is one of the Nameless Things, then I’d expect them to look a lot more like random Cthulhuesque things than sandworms. I do have to admit that I have no recollection of the worms in the Hobbit films, though. Truth be told, I only recall snippets of those movies, and most of those were things that stood out as ridiculous or things that could have been done better…. 😀
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Yeah, I tend to think of the Hobbit as one good film padded out with two extra film’s worth of filler. A cut which parred down the trilogy into one (long) movie and cut out all the nonsense would be amazing but as it is there’s just too many duff moments.
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A very accurate description of that “trilogy” of films, I do so very reckon! It’s a wonder that the very thing doesn’t exist online somewhere (torrent sites, I’d guess) in the same way that the “Despecialized” Edition of Star Wars is floating around out there…
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It also seems to us that these giant worms clearly resume the appearance of the creatures seen in Jackson’s film “The Hobbit”. But in addition to what Gandalf says in LoTR about the nameless beings who dug tunnels under the Misty Mountains, some have also thought that Jackson was inspired by a passage from “The Hobbit” where “Were-worms in the Last Desert” are mentioned (ch. “An unexpected party”).
As for your painting work, we like the “earthy” aspect you wanted to give to these creatures, which – according to the film – should be at least ten times bigger!
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I don’t recall tha worms at all, but then, there’s a lot from those films that I don’t recall, having only seen them once each in the theatre and never having bothered to rewatch any of them since. It’s certainly in keeping with FFG and other licencees to crib from the films, though, so it makes sense in that aspect, though I’d think Nameless Things should be a lot more varied and mysterious (and possibly not boardgame fodder at all).
Makes sense that these are underscaled for this boardgame, though – aside from the obviously human-scaled models, the larger creatures and devices are all veru much shrunk down for board game purposes (as opposed to keeping them vaguely in scale with one another as we would for a wargame). They did the same thing for the Siege Engines, the Fell Beasts, the Balrog and the Mumakil as well…
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Those are great.
I really should run a termors- style wargame at some point.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! Or a Krayt Dragon game set in the Star Wars universe using much the same rules! 😉
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