Hey all!

So I've been sitting on my finished Uruk-Hai hordes for a few months now and I'm itching to play as some Good guys. After trying my damnedest to squeeze as much Strength 4 (S4 or bust says I!) out of the fiddly human folk I've finally come to grips I'm only going to be fielding S3 and settled on the Fiefdoms (With some mixed in Gondor and perhaps Arnor) themed on the Men of Dale (As my younger brother has gobloads of Easterlings to throw at me I thought it would be appropriate).

However, I don't want to invest in the expensive official miniatures. Nor do I particularly like the molds for many of the Fiefdom infantry. Considering that the LOTR figures are sculpted by none other than the Perry Bros, I realize that using their or many other historical miniature lines would land me with perfectly scaled (And more importantly cheaper figures of equal quality or better) miniatures. However, I don't want to completely annihilate the fluff out of the game.

Thankfully however, I stumbled across quite a bit of pre-movie artwork and I quite like the dedicated low-fantasy of the kingdoms of men. Particularly that of the pre-Hobbit Men of Dale (Who are essentially Norman knights). So after all this blathering, I really only have a few questions:

How do you feel about alternate figures themed on the LOTR fluff strictly from the book? Would you sneer at seeing Norman knights bedecked in blue and bearing the symbol of the black arrow? Or perhaps footslogging, plate-armored warriors from the War of the Roses hefting halberds to take the place of Axemen of Lossnarch?

What figures do you think best work for different units for the Kingdoms of Men in particular? I've found good Men of Dale to make up my rank-and-file infantry as well as cavalry, but what do you think would make good Rangers, Blackroot Vale Archers, or even Dol Amroth knights?

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Army Lists
Isengard - 750
Mordor - 500
Haradrim - 300

Certainly wouldn't mind - not least because my Arnor force is entirely made from Normans.

One thing i would suggest is to try to stick to an era (more or less). Norman knights, backed up by WotR era English Billmen, supported by Roman Legionaries (all of which i considered at one point as Gondor, Axemen and numenoreans respectively) are going to look a bit daft, no matter how they're painted. But by sticking to a general theme, with occasional exceptions, then you can get smashing results and a cohesive collection. So my Arnor (and any other army I build from that era) would be predominantly chain with simple shield designs - but elites might have some more flashy shields, helms or plated chests. For more modern forces, I'd probably be willing to be more lenient, but try to stick to the design themes of the films whenever possible.

I considered using the Perry Men at Arms kit for Arnor originally as those models are stunning, but had trouble rationalising them into the setting as anything other than an elite Fiefdoms unit, or something. Even then, I'd try to convert them a bit to make them more 'Gondor Heavy Infantry' and less 'English Bills'.

Ultimately, though, if you think you can make it work, I'm all for it. A middle earth entirely built around late medieval arms and armour could be fascinating, as would one based entirely on the low fantasy "we took some dark age minis and painted the heraldry in LotR colours" idea i've seen before.

For the Rangers, I have some of the Perry men at Arms Longbowmen that I sculpted very rough cloaks onto for a long abandoned "Nights Watch" project. They were really effective, so that's an idea.

Im partial to the Rangers models they already make. As to substituting other ranges in, I'm not opposed to it personally so long as they fit the "feel" of LOTR.
For example I hate the Khandish models but I'm planning on eventually purchasing some historic samurai models to sub in for them.
As I often do I'd highly recommend at least looking at Warlord Games "Hail Ceaser" line for alternate models. They are to scale with GW as they are 28mm, great quality sculpts, and have good variety for much cheaper than GW

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Currently working on an Arnor army without any 'official' GW models, so yeah, I can see why you would do something similiar, and definitely wouldn't mind playing against it!
You'll find that plastics aren't as widespread in historicals (yet), but some interesting companies (if you hadn't found them yet) include:
-Fireforge Games
-Perry Miniatures (generally a bit too modern to my taste - for LotR at least)
-Warlord Games
-Gripping Beast (generic unarmoured guys are great, otherwise range is mostly metal)
-Conquest Games
For metals, there are dozens more, like Crusader Miniatures, Musketeer Miniatures, Ebob, Artizan Designs, Wargames Foundry etc.
Seeing how GW plastics are approaching a point where they are twice the price of historical metals, even those start to look very decently priced.
Perhaps more importantly, however, is that anybody would advice you to start an army you like the look and feel of, and I don't see why that wouldn't extent to other ranges of models.
Be it because of the descriptions in the books, artwork you always loved or simply own imagination, there are many possibilites for most armies. Models with a strongly deviating appearance may cause some issues with your opponents, definitely make sure the equipment is right.

Dol Amroth could be Fireforge Knights with Ebob's famous swan heads, for Blackroot Vale I'd simply take archers from whatever range/era other miniatures are from and I can't think of many good Ranger alternatives, simply because most historical peoples didn't run around with hoods over their heads.. and few will beat the original metal Rangers of Gondor.

I've been toying with the idea of using Fireforge miniatures but I hear they're slightly larger than that of Perry/LoTR. I've seen cavalry comparisons and they certainly look bigger but I cannot for the life of me find a side-by-side infantry comparison.

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Army Lists
Isengard - 750
Mordor - 500
Haradrim - 300

Have a look at eBob's clansmen miniatures, from his Rebellion range. They are very well sculpted and suit the concept of Gondor Feifdoms nicely.

http://www.ebobminiatures.com/products/rebellion.htm

£12 for 9 figures, can't complain!

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Dagster

Search my posts and you will find plenty of alternatives to GW figures.

I used Fireforge, Ebob, Conquest and many, many others.

Oh boy those Ebob alternate heads are absolute gold. I feel like I can turn damn near anything into a Fiefdom soldier, thanks!

Would anyone happen to know about alternative baddies? I actually quite like the Black Guard official figures but I really can't afford to field them. And everyone who makes any sort of Orc scales them for alternate Orks WHFB/40k style which is quite irritating.

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Army Lists
Isengard - 750
Mordor - 500
Haradrim - 300

You could try to get hold of these: http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore ... rc-warband

I don't have any personal experience with them, but the style is very Tolkien-esque. And plastic.

Yeah, the WGF orcs that Creaky posted seem to be pretty popular, generally speaking. I've always thought you could also pull off orcs relatively well with some more barbaric bodies (Celts/Germans seem like a go-to), but with orc or goblin heads from Hasselfree:

http://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=o ... converting

http://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=g ... converting

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Well, that's my 2 cents.