GW has a treat for Lord of the Rings Warhammer lore buffs – or, indeed, anyone who’s ever watched The Two Towers and thought “gee, I wonder who that castle and massive horn are named after” – that’s right, ancient King of Rohan Helm Hammerhand is joining the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game for its brand new edition.
Revealed by Games Workshop’s Warhammer Community site on Monday, Helm Hammerhand, Wraith of the Hornburg is a new mono-pose character mini that’s not coming in the Battle of Edoras starter set, but will be sold separately thereafter.
GW doesn’t confirm if he’s resin or plastic, but resin is more likely, as most other standalone MESBG character kits are.
As standard, GW has not shared any release window or price details for Helm, but we’d expect the kit to cost somewhere around $25 (£15), based on the pricing for similar MESBG character models on the Warhammer Store.
WarCom’s Monday article barely spills any goods on how Helm will play on the tabletop – but we do get the amusing confirmation that, despite having no weapons, he’ll never have the Unarmed keyword (which normally gives weaponless models debuffs to their Fight rolls). You know, because of those hammer-like hands of his.
GW does also confirm two other rules for Helm – Berserk Rage and Horn of the Hammerhand – but leaves it up to us to imagine how they work.
We were expecting to see a version of Helm join the miniature wargame, as the Edoras starter set shown off by GW last month features his two sons, princes Háma and Haleth. And we already knew the game’s new edition was tying into the upcoming War of the Rohirrim animated movie, which follows Helm and his royal family.
But it’s still an exciting moment for Lord of the Rings fans in the Warhammer hobby – Helm is a bit of a ‘deep cut’ character in Middle-earth lore; everyone’s heard his name, as we see Helm’s Deep (the fortress named after him) and the famous Horn of Helm Hammerhand at the end of the Two Towers movie – but his actual story features nowhere in the movies or the main parts of the books.
Who is Helm Hammerhand?
In fact, the story of Helm – ninth King of Rohan – and his family is only found deep in Appendix A of the Lord of the Rings, and in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales. It takes place nearly 200 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings.
In (very) abridged terms: Helm was insulted and threatened by a rival noble, killed said rival with a single punch, and thereby reignited a war between Rohan and its neighbors the Dunlendings. Both Helm’s sons are eventually killed in the ensuing battles and the King, in his grief, ends up a rage-driven killing machine, ranging out from his besieged fortress (that’s Helm’s Deep, folks) to kill whole troops of Dunlending enemies, single handed, armed only with his fists.
We can’t wait to see how that hand-to-hand murderousness plays out on the tabletop – in the meantime, you can stay up to date with the latest news across the Warhammer worlds by following Wargamer on Google News. You can also dig deeper into Games Workshop’s other properties with our complete guides to the Warhammer 40k factions and Age of Sigmar armies.
Source: Wargamer
