Making Middle Earth in 1/72: The Armies of Isengard

I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings in the early 80's as a student at an exclusive Catholic school run by Jesuits. It was prompted by a stage play that adapted "The Hobbit" as well as the trilogy into a musical. Here, Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry join Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Thorin and company plus a solo Legolas as they seek the treasure of Smaug for different reasons. As the quest progresses they are hunted by 9 Ring Wraiths, a lost Frodo wins a riddle game against Gollum as well as a magical ring, and get rescued by Gwaihir. A shaky start I know, but it did lead to my parents giving me the books as a christmas present. I hungrily dove into it. Suffice it to say, I discovered high fantasy and a world that continues to enthrall me all these years.

Which brings me to my latest project in miniature -- the armies of Middle-Earth in 1/72 scale. I was prompted to explore the idea when Caesar Miniatures released a fantasy line in 1/72. Previously, I had been trying to amass armies from Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings line, with 28mm miniatures based on Peter jackson's movies. I have managed to cobble up units of Gondor, Rohan, Mordor, Moria, Harad and the Dwarves but mainly for skirmish gaming. Costs and availability prohibited me from purchasing more. Moreover, I found that I wanted to game with companies and regiments, rather than just warbands of men.

I wanted to come up with armies that could be used with mass-battle rules, primarily AD&D Battlesystem 2nd ed and Warmaster. To this end, I began a thread at The Miniatures Page asking for plastic figure suggestions that can be used to depict the armies depicted in Tolkien's books. At first, I wanted to come up with armies composed exclusively of plastic figures but soon realized through discussions with the people at TMP that there are 20mm metal models available that are more suitable than conversions from plastic.

A lot of helpful suggestions came from this thread and I've been considering them for a while now with help from the Lord of plastic reviews, Plastic Soldier Review. The various army lists written by gamers such as Luke Sarson Ueda, Dan Brown of Evil Gong ( whose site seems to have disappeared...) and the Middle Earth Warmaster lists at Yahoo Groups were very helpful in coming up with the different units that composed each army. I still have to decide which ruleset to finally use with these figures with Battlesystem and Warmaster being initial favorites. Here are my initial plastic figure selections for the armies:

The Armies of Isengard:
Notice that I used the plural to describe Saruman's "Hosts" during the War of the Ring. An essay in wiki titled Armies and Hosts of Middle-Earth charts and describes the military formations and organizations described by Tolkien and how these relate to specific or estimated strengths in battles throughout the history of Middle-earth. Here, it is presented that Isengard had two armies comprising Saruman's Hosts -- an East Isen army comprised of Uruk-hai, Dunlending cavalry & wolfrider auxilliaries, as well as a western army of Uruk-hai, lesser orcs,"half-orcs and goblin-men" and allied Dunlending foot and cavalry. I haven't decided yet on how to represent Saruman's "blasting fire" nor Orthanc's scorching properties.

• The Fighting Uruk Hai = HaT Industrie Set 8078 "Sea Peoples"
  

From wiki: "Aragorn comments that the Uruk-hai of Saruman the White were not equipped in the manner of other Orcs at all. Instead of curved scimitars, they used short, broad-bladed swords. They also wore iron helms marked with the Elf-rune which had the value of "S". It was clear the "S" stood for Saruman, considering Sauron's general desire not to have his name written or spoken. Saruman's Uruks also used black shields emblazoned with a white hand - a symbol of Saruman, as opposed to the Red Eye emblem of Sauron."

I've written my impressions of this set here and I believe that these would make perfect candidates for these orcs. For the Dunlendings, I had to look for foot and cavalry figures that looked more "barbaric" and less civilized than the figures I plan to use for Rohan and Gondor and the reviews at PSR helped a lot in my final decision.

• Dunlending Auxilliaries = Orion Set 72028 "Slavic Warriors" & HaT Industrie Set 8085 Gothic Cavalry

From wiki: "These Men were tall, somewhat swarthy and dark-haired, and were descended from the same ancient stock as the House of Haleth making them distantly related to the Dúnedain. Dunland and Dunlendings are names given by the Rohirrim after these people, because of their being swarthy and dark-haired (Appendix F to the Lord of the Rings). The Old English (which represents Rohirric in the novel) word dunn means "brown"... Saruman used the historical hostility against outlanders to tempt the Dunlendings into supporting him during the War of the Ring...After the battle at Helm's Deep, the Rohirrim allowed the surviving Dunlendings to return to their homes. The Rohirrim required that all hostilities cease and that the Dunlendings again retreat behind the Isen."

• Lesser Orcs = Caesar Miniature Goblins

• Orc Wolfriders = Eureka Miniatures 18mm Orcs on Fell Beasts (option 1); Splintered Light 15mm Orcs on wolves (option 2); Caesar Goblin conversions (option 3)

Next, the figures are organized into army lists for Ad&D Battlesystem & Warmaster.