Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King Windows game

Hello followers,

Today we are going to speak about something that has always been a fascination to me. Since we see the golden army of the Last Alliance and then again the Elven Army at Helm's Deep, I can never not be amazed of the splendor of their banners and general heraldry in general. It is something that has stuck with me since day one and even the producers themselves took care into transmitting this to the screen. So now, unapologetically, I always associate elves with beautiful heraldry.

Unfortunately, The Hobbit movies left a bit of a sour taste since the Woodland Realm heraldry shown in these films seems dry or even absent. There are some elements present but it really shows that this time, it was not on their priority.

Luckily, in a mod you can (almost) do whatever you wish! And so I embarked on a journey to try and bring life and some color to the Mirkwood army! These came into 4 steps:

1. Designing the heraldry of Mirkwood
2. Designing the Banner Carriers
3. Giving it a purpose in the game
4. Creating new animations to fit the design

Designing the heraldry of Mirkwood

The base inspiration for the heraldry was rooted in what we see in the movies and how Tolkien designed the devices for the elves (Which is also present in the mods main logo). Also took various inspiration from the art online and even from some other games. Then I played around with the shapes and tried to create banners that can be distinguished themselves and used for different roles of the faction.

Designing the Banner Carriers

Because I wanted to add my own touch of Mirkwood character design to the faction, I decided the banner carriers will be personal designs that will match the 3 armor types in the mod. All the designs are personal and inspired more by the LOTR trilogy movies and less by The Hobbit ones. Each type of banner will be present based on the armour upgrade of the battalion, so if you upgrade with Brass armor a battalion, the banner carrier will be upgraded with the respective armor (Right design).

The designs were also inspired by the seasons of Middle-Earth, a subtle nod to the crowns of Thranduil. The Light designs draws upon raw nature colors of the Spring (while still remaining a relatively stealthy palette), the Medium from mid-summer forests and the Heavy from the red leaves of the autumn oaks. The winter colors are represented by the current Palace Guard.

Giving it a purpose in the game

Naturally, the designs of the banner carriers were made with the armor system in mind, and so they have been attached to the corresponding battalion that reflects their design. However, their flags will be based on the unit type, so no matter what armor upgrade your battalion has, archers will always have their green banner with it's bow and quiver symbol. And so wardens and warriors also have their respective banners.

In total, this yields 9 possible combinations depending on the armor and unit type.

Also, the banners have been marked with weapon symbols. This has been made to relatively ease the player into better identify their troops on the battlefield. It's not the best way but it is a plus than without them.

Creating new animations to fit the design

You probably have noticed that the banner does not follow the standard, good-sided, banner carrier skeleton. Instead of being positioned horizontally, it's actually on vertical. What did this mean? You guessed it, a new custom animation set. While the base animation is taken from another unit in-game (Let's see if you guess it), it has been heavily customized with elements found on the new banner carrier designs, such as sleeves animations, cape animations and the actual banner animations. Obviously, many animations had be to adapted since, no animation set in the game has a pole and a sword in hand. In the end, I created a new animation set containing 22 new animations, for each state of the banner carrier.

Lastly, some of you might know that, in the spell book, there is an ability that will grant a battalion, a lieutenant, to hold the banner. Yes, he is still here (So that makes 10 possible combinations).

I hope this sparked a new curiosity for the mod,( and specifically for the Mirkwood faction) and I also hope that you enjoy these new ideas and designs that I try to implement, to make the Mirkwood faction, the best possible.

This is all for now but more news about Mirkwood will come in the coming weeks. You can share your thoughts in our discord channel you can find the link on the main moddb page or at the bottom of this article. Also, we share there bonus stuff in the #sneak-peek channel for the very curious ones.

Sincerely,
NewErr and the Wars of the Firstborn team