Show me your Dunlendings!

[Nord]

I am pondering what to use as Dunlendings, thinking perhaps Celts or Britons, even Germanic tribes. Warlord Games do plastic kits of all these figures that might be good.

As ever though, I am happy to copy others if they have good ideas. So yeah, get em out, show me your Dunlendings. 

[Timbor]

I found a box set of the 'official' GW ones at a convention for half price a while ago... gonna use those, they just aren't painted yet!    The GW ones look pretty much like vikings to me, however my impression of them in the books was that they would be more primitive than that.  I would likely use a mixture of GB dark age warriors and viking hirdmen if I were to make my own.

[killshot]

I combined some gripping beast Vikings with the warlord celts for these:

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

I haven't personally done this, but if you want to get close to the Weta/GW aesthetic, then I think the Warlord Ancient Germans are your best bet if you want a mixture of Dunlendings and Wild Men.  That set will give you a handful of chain-mailed bodies for Dunlendings, and comes with plenty of furs, unlike the Celts or Dacians, which is represented in most of the Wild Man models.

If you just want Dunlendings, none of the lightly armed and armored Wild Men, then personally I'd go for either the GB Viking Hirdmen or Saxon Thegn set.

[Hobgoblin]

On the other hand, Tolkien says (in The Battle of the Fords of the Isen) that the Dunlendings were unarmoured, as Isengard produced only the "heavy and clumsy mail" of the orcs. The half-orc axemen wore mail (orcish, presumably), and they seem to have been the real shock troops.

Given that, Killshot's Dunlendings (with only the leader in armour) look spot on to me.

[Vermis]

Given the original descriptions and Tolkien's anglo-saxon influences on the rohirrim, I'd use dark age welsh, scots and/or picts for dunlendings. Even irish. That what I plan to do if I ever get round to cleaning up this lot of ebayed uruk-hai. If I wanted to stick to plastic kits, I'd look at GB's dark age warriors, WGF's viking bondi, and maybe some bits and pieces from celts.

[Nord]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I'm still leaning more towards the Celtic influence rather than Norse/viking, partly because of the descriptions in the text, more because I'm not that keen on the GB stuff. I did have a look at Perry Sudan Madhists, they might be decent as they are mostly unarmoured with spears and some nice basic shields - just not very hairy is a problem.

[Arthadan]

May I suggest Mierce Miniatures' Albainn? The rank and file looks good as does the shaman.

[Duncan McDane]

You might like to Google "Dunlendings" pictures. There are quite some nice takings on them. I especially like the FFG ccg cards, like Dunlending Raiders:



Edit: and of course this John Howe drawing:

[Hobgoblin]

The Celtic warriors on that card look spot on, but I wonder if the John Howe drawing (along with those be-tusked Oghu chaps) goes a bit far - or conflates the Dunlendings with the half-orcs. There's that great description of the two sorts in "Flotsam and Jetsam":

"He emptied Isengard. I saw the enemy go: endless lines of marching Orcs [uruk-hai]; and troops of them mounted on great wolves. And there were battalions of Men, too. Many of them carried torches, and in the flare I could see their faces. Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some other that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed. Do you know, they reminded me of that Southener at Bree; only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were."

The half-orcs seem to have been culturally distinct from the Dunlendings; they used mail and spoke the Common Speech like the Isengard orcs, but they had the size and height of the Dunlendings. Obviously, they were related to the Dunlendings, but they seemed to have formed separate troops and looked and behaved very differently. And the Dunlendings don't seem to have liked those with Orcish blood very much. The Southern spy was "a ruffianly fellow, an outlaw driven from Dunland, where many said that he had Orc-blood" ("The Hunt for the Ring", Unfinished Tales)

Emphasis mine in both cases.

[Elbows]

(reads thread title)

This is a public forum, and there could be children! (slap)

[Duncan McDane]

Hobgoblin, I agree, but the Howe drawing I just added since it really struck me. I didn't know the man but ever since he did a special survivor set for Zombicide season 4 I'm a big fan of his artwork  .

[Hobgoblin]

Hobgoblin, I agree, but the Howe drawing I just added since it really struck me. I didn't know the man but ever since he did a special survivor set for Zombicide season 4 I'm a big fan of his artwork  .

I like the marching orcs (and hobbits) he did for LotR (at the top of this insanely brilliant post by the Middenmurk chap).

[v_lazy_dragon]

I just thought about these chaps for another thread, when it occurred to me that they might make good Dunlendings (possibly with different shields?)
http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/Tribal_Warriors--category--150.html

[Nord]

Wow, those GB figures are truly bad. Chunky, clunky, huge hands and awful poses. 

The Mierce minis are very nice, I have pledged on that KS for 2 hosts and will be choosing the Albainn and the Eirann - Picts and Irish I think are the inspiration. So they might be useable, but I suspect the scale will be far larger than Lotr figures. I already have GW uruk hai, orcs, Rohan, etc so it would be nice if they were near to that scale. I guess I should wait and see, then if the MM are too big I can go back to the Warlord idea.

Thanks for the input guys, always good to get ideas on these things.