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Author Topic: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth  (Read 25039 times)

Offline Will Bailie

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #15 on: April 11, 2016, 01:51:11 PM »
Amazing and evocative work  :o, thanks for sharing and inspiring!

Offline Malamute

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #16 on: April 11, 2016, 02:29:06 PM »
Impressive stuiff, especially the seige equipment. ;D
"These creatures do not die like the bee after the first sting, but go on age after age, feeding on the blood of the living"  - Abraham Van Helsing

Offline Vermis

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #17 on: April 11, 2016, 02:38:44 PM »
Wibble.  o_o

Offline Dilettante Gamer

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #18 on: April 11, 2016, 03:57:55 PM »
 :o :o :o :o :o

Gobsmacked with awe, delight, inspiration and envy.  

Thank you for sharing all this awesomeness.  Your scratch build siege equipment put my comparatively modest plans for a Pelennor Fields battle to shame.

Have you been working on this over years or is this a newly reinvigorated project?  Would make a great multi-player demo game for a show or convention!
« Last Edit: April 13, 2016, 04:10:05 PM by Dilettante Gamer »
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Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #19 on: April 11, 2016, 04:12:27 PM »
These have all been ticking over for a number of years, much of it well before the LoTR films came out, with a major flurry of activity after 2010 when I participated at a large demo game at Salute with 2 of my armies and 'Sahyun' fortress.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=9211.0

There were talks of another demo game, and my 'Rammas Echor' project, with siege equipment and extra oliphaunts for my Haradrim came out of that. However the anticipated demo game fell thru so I have 12 feet of fortification unbloodied :(
Many of these projects have since been ticking over gently...I'm more or less a solo gamer with grandiose schemes and not enough space...
« Last Edit: October 20, 2017, 11:07:43 AM by sukhe_bator »
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Offline Belgian

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #20 on: April 11, 2016, 04:57:50 PM »
Awesome Lord of the Rings is my favorite wargame setting! Like everything you have created and will surely grab your building methods and ideas to expand my mordor army.

Will certainly try to make some great beasts using the shown ones but would you happen to have ideas for draft animals for pulling smaller carts ( like the one shown in the movie at Minas Tirith when they are showing the orc catapults) as I can't think on what to use for that role.

But keep posting especially mordor and haradrim things with pictures, loads of them! Real source of inspiration.

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Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #21 on: April 11, 2016, 05:56:54 PM »
Great stuff  8)

Very inspiring.

cheers

James
cheers

James

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Offline Grumbledook

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #22 on: April 11, 2016, 06:23:55 PM »
............

Words pretty much fail me. Stunning and awe inspiring stuff, love the use of the toy rhino and hippo!

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #23 on: April 12, 2016, 07:47:03 AM »
Will certainly try to make some great beasts using the shown ones but would you happen to have ideas for draft animals for pulling smaller carts ( like the one shown in the movie at Minas Tirith when they are showing the orc catapults) as I can't think on what to use for that role.
I was thinking of using long horned cattle to stand in for Aurochs, or some other draught animal taken from Dark Ages/Medieval/siege ranges. At the high end of the scale (but requiring harness details adding)
http://eurekamin.com.au/news.php?newsid=EFlkkVpAluYQycrSSr
While other oxen are available
http://www.1stcorps.co.uk/buy-online/p/oxen/
http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/Roman_Ox_Carts--product--5198.html
And with some conversion these are always a good value fallback
http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/25mmRanges/25mmSiegeEquipment.htm

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #24 on: April 12, 2016, 08:11:23 AM »
Orcs of the White Hand
I'm afraid I'm a shameless fan of the concepts used in PJ's LoTR films. The combination of ancient tech reminiscent of Imperial Rome, the use of pikes etc etc. I thought was particularly well realized. Crossbows too are implicit in a world where torsion artillery is present, if only rarely. There is a sole reference to the use of 'darts' in the attack on Helm's Deep, a word usually associated with crossbows but intended as an artistic description of orkish archery. Although siege catapults were not mentioned in The Two Towers, grapnel hooks and hundreds of ladders were, and the use of Wizard fire tech for destructive purposes seems entirely in keeping when Gandalf was renowned for his fireworks...  
No surprises then that I've built up a fairly respectable army from GW figures amassed from Bring & Buys etc... 80 pike, 50 sword and shield and a dozen or so archers, plus about 40 sappers with rams, mines and ladders



Being 'off the shelf' so to speak, with only rebasing and some minor kitbashing and repairs to do, these inevitably have taken a back seat to the more creative proxy army-building of recent years. Just lately I started converting some sappers into crossbowmen using Perry WoTR and Fireforge crossbow parts, despairing of ever getting my hands on some metal crossbowmen (I now have 8 and 6 rough conversions)...
« Last Edit: October 20, 2017, 11:08:11 AM by sukhe_bator »

Offline emosbur

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #25 on: April 12, 2016, 09:07:56 AM »
Gorgeous terrain, man!! Please, keep posting!!

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #26 on: April 12, 2016, 09:22:24 AM »
On the basis that you can never have too many orcs and realizing that my venerable horde of Nick Lund Chronicle and Greandier orcs were now outnumbered by my Haradrim, I cast about to see if I could raise another horde in a similar style cheaply... Seen on another thread, but repeated here for completeness, my 150 strong horde of heavily converted Lund-esque Em4 plastic orcs...
They started life as bags of 50 plastic figures in just 3 poses...

and with some minor conversion work

and some major conversion work

ended up as this...



« Last Edit: October 20, 2017, 11:08:59 AM by sukhe_bator »

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #27 on: April 12, 2016, 12:39:32 PM »
Army of the White Tree
I always envisaged the tech and look of Gondor set in a late C12 to C13 setting, firmly in the era of mail, and visually rooted in the military orders of the Crusades with the predominance of black and white... I started collecting when the first plastic GW 5th Ed Bretonnians became available, and these were leavened with a healthy smattering of metal Feudal troops.
This all predated the LoTR films and I was disappointed to see the rendition of Gondorian troops as plate armoured troops, with shields, riding unbarded horses. Plate armoured archers also seemed completely incongruous. I did however like some of the visual motifs, so my first serious attempts to create a Gondorian force reflected a hybrid look...

While the troops of Dol Amroth developed a distinct Blue/White look of their own.

The woodsmen of Ithilien seemed to me archetypal 'Robin Hood' esque inspired forresters, so the figure choices reflected this...

Though I will be incorporating about a dozen cloaked GW Ithilien Rangers in due course...
My first attempts at incorporating the Bretonnian mounted knights using this limited palette met with limited success, given the mix of flamboyant tourney armour and ott heraldic motifs in use.

They worked far better for the knights of Dol Amroth than the Gondorian Roquen, who looked more like policemen on horseback! :? :( so much so I used to make siren sounds when gaming with them! The Bretonnian knights have since been relegated...

The heraldry concocted to match the figures only went so far... The figure in the foreground is intended to represent Hurin the Tall, warden of the keys of Minas Tirith.
Far better and more menacing in appearance are their replacements, drawn from Gripping Beast crusading orders...


In the last few years I have incorporated medieval figures from Black Tree Design into the mix, and developed a sub-heraldry based on C17 company devices. The reasoning behind it is that the Militia defending Minas Tirith would likely be divided into wards based on the seven levels of the city, with companies derived from watches or areas within each ward. The number of charges on the shield represents the level and the device used the particular watch reflecting the part of the city the troops are drawn from. This has now been extended into the foot troops, and reinforcements for the Dol Amroth men at arms have a similar system. I can't bring myself to paint over the C13 heraldry I first used on the foot knights...

The mounted Knights of Dol Amroth are drawn entirely from GW, and have yet to be assembled...
I have also fielded other contingents such as the archers from Lebennin with a stag's head emblem

And varangian/viking inspired axemen from Lossarnach, led by Forlong the Fat (who moonlight as Westfolders when not slaying orcs on the borders of Gondor).

The full battle array as it now stands...




My main problem now is that having poached so far and wide from historical ranges for LoTR proxies I am loathe to reuse the same sculpts for my ASOIAF collections!
« Last Edit: October 20, 2017, 11:10:14 AM by sukhe_bator »

Offline Dilettante Gamer

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #28 on: April 12, 2016, 01:11:59 PM »
There were talks of another demo game, and my 'Rammas Echor' project, with siege equipment and extra oliphaunts for my Haradrim came out of that. However the anticipated demo game fell thru so I have 12 feet of fortification unbloodied :(
Many of these projects have since been ticking over gently...I'm more or less a solo gamer with grandiose schemes and not enough space...

Were I anywhere close to "Darkest Surrey" and not way over in Northern California, I'd love to collaborate on bringing that Rammas project to a demo game. I have fair pile of LotR that I could push against both sides of the battle. I'll share that here later with my plans for a much more modest Pelennor Fields demo game for a local game convention.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful trove!

Offline Mr.J

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Re: Sukhe's Armies of Middle Earth
« Reply #29 on: April 12, 2016, 01:12:48 PM »
Yep, this is what I was hoping to see in this thread. Your Gondorian army is absolutely superb. I keep toying with the idea of doing similar in 15mm but can never see to find suitable figures.

 

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