I have been thinking about a 'proper' Middle Earth project for a long time.
A very long time, actually.
About twenty five years or more.
The only problem was the stuff that was out there did not fit my feel for what the inhabitants of Middle Earth should look like.
The Citadel range was too 'cartoony' for my liking (well, there were a couple of exceptions, and I will utilise the ones that I like, in fact I have one waiting for paint) and the Mithril range just did not sit right with me.
The other thing with Mithril were the proportions of the figures, which I always found difficult to paint.
Both of these ranges would cost a fortune to use now, anyway, so there is another solid reason to look elsewhere.
I have always seen Middle Earth as more 'realistic' than a lot of current fantasy trends, especially the more 'popular' ranges. The non-human elements are certainly not what I am looking for.
A 'modern' Orc is way off of my impression of how Tolkien described them.
Most modern offerings are huge in comparison to a human and that would not be right.
Where the non-humans are concerned there were a few oldskool figures from the eighties that would work nicely for my take on things though.
In fact, these seemed just about perfect at the time so I will be using them
Of course, the recent film trilogy brought yet another take on the genre but to me there were a lot of things in the recent Peter Jackson offerings that did not fit with my view on things either.
Dont take this the wrong way, I enjoyed watching the films (in fact I was pretty blown away by the first film) and own them on DVD and I still watch them occasionally.
They are another vision of Middle Earth, just not mine.
This meant that the new range of figures based on the films would be out (well, mostly, although, again, there are a couple of things that I may use...).
When it came to miniatures for this project I always felt that Dark Ages figures would be most in keeping with the books as the level of armour and weapons always seemed about right.
A recent thread by Finarfin earlier in the year pointed me in just the right direction.
He did some sterling conversion work on some Ebob Normans.
His thread is here, and well worth a read:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=51894.0Having read it, it made my mind up: This was the way to go!
So bearing that in mind, here is the start of the first faction;
GondorI saw the majority of these figures for sale on the Bazaar some time ago and the thought hit me then that they would work well for Gondorians with a little tweaking.
I thought about it and thought about it....and then thought some more.
I looked again and again over the next few days and they were still sitting there unclaimed, so I thought 'Sod it! Get 'em!'
I ended up with forty of them in various poses.
They look just 'uniform' enough to give the right feel that I was looking for for Gondor.
I have no idea who made them or even if they are still available, neither did the fella who sold them to me.
Anyway here they are with a little green stuff slapped on them:
I have not converted all of them, only a few to see how they turn out.
They have had cloaks added and one has some simple experimental wings on his helmet.
As I intend to try out the SAGA rules for these chaps later on they are organised in groups of eight.
I have four units of standard Warriors and four units of other types of troops (Hearthguard, Levy, Bow-Armed Warriors etc)
so I shall be swapping between them for a little variety.
Time to think about painting the little fellas now...
07 December 2010, 12:33:20 AM
