Farmer Maggot by Citadel

One of the most famously unsung heroes of Middle Earth is Farmer Maggot, the borderlands hobbit who turned away a Nazgûl, and who bravely transported Frodo and his friends (in the book, but not the movie) to the ferry to ensure they had safe passage on their journey. I've been stocking up on hobbits lately because I'm excited to play the Shire hexcrawl as found on the Rise up Comus blog by Joshua McCrowell. This is my review of the Farmer Maggot miniature by Citadel.

To build a quick hobbit army, I could get 40(!) very nice looking halfling warriors from Wargames Atlantic for a very reasonable price, but I have to admit that it's hard to resist the civilian charm of early Citadel hobbits. Besides that, I don't really want a hobbit army, I want feisty and quirky hobbit civilians, and that's what Citadel focuses on for its Shire folk. Most hobbits by Citadel were designed for the Scouring of the Shire battles, one of those late chapters in the books in which [no spoilers] the residents of the Shire must drive away a brigand named Sharkey, so most of them are ready for battle. But they all look like they're just out of the pub, having grabbed any object close at hand that could pass for a weapon. There's real character to these miniatures, so I'm favouring them for named characters, and I'll use the halfling warriors from Wargames Atlantic as a hobbit militia as needed.

Miniature design

Farmer Maggot lives in the Marish, and he's ready to fight off Nazgûl, brigands, and mushroom thieves. He's got his scythe (or whatever that tool is, I'm not a farmer) raised high above his head, plus he's got his hounds Grip, Fang, and Wolf by his side! Yes, the Farmer Maggot model kit comes with 4 miniatures in total: Farmer Maggot himself and 3 fierce hounds.

I'm a little confused by the proportions of the models. The hounds look a lot smaller than Farmer Maggot, but Farmer Maggot is a halfling himself. Luckily, Citadel does a really good job of relative proportions, and somehow the hounds look equally as right-sized next to Farmer Maggot as they do next to Aragorn or Boromir or any other tall folk.

In the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book for Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, Farmer Maggot's profile is pretty good, for what he is. His Strength (S) and Defence (D) are 3, which isn't as good as an actual warrior but then again his Strength is better than Merry's. He gets 2 Attacks (A) and has 2 Wounds (W) plus some Might, Will, and Fate points to spend. His hounds each have an Attack, too, with the same Strength and Defence.

In addition to those respectable (for a farmer, anyway) numbers, he's got Resistant to Magic (use an extra dice on saves against magic), Throw Stones, and gains the Woodland Creature (move through woodlands as if it were not difficult terrain) special rule.

Metal miniatures

I call the box a model kit, but actually Farmer Maggot and his hounds are metal miniatures. I enjoy a metal miniature now and again, but I have to admit that metal miniatures seem a lot less fun than plastic ones. There's not much by way of building, so there are no options and few opportunities for kitbashing or conversion. Luckily I had no intention to mod Farmer Maggot, and in practise it was kind of nice to just pop the box open and get to painting.

The box itself was a blister pack with minimal artwork. I really don't know why Games Workshop doesn't just use cardboard to package these things.

The gathering of the Shire

I have my eye on several more named hobbits from Citadel, but they don't come cheap so it'll likely take me a while to get all the ones I want. I don't particularly want to build a miniature Hobbiton, because I have no place to store it, so I'm anticipating a lot of flat outdoorsy battle maps for this hex crawl.

The nice thing about gathering miniatures for the Shire is that a lot (maybe all?) of them are metal. That's not necessarily a good thing from the perspective of detail, especially when compared to modern Citadel sculpts, but somehow it feels appropriate for Middle Earth. I have the fellowship in plastic, from Battle in Balin's Tomb , and they look great. But those are hobbits that got out to the wider world. Having the homely hobbits of the Shire as "old fashioned" metal miniatures feels appropriately quaint.