Grimbold's Helmingas

This unit of Rohan foot soldiers have been treated to a set of the shields I had made by a professional sculptor. I was going to go for a converted all hand-weapon and/or spear armed unit (this may still happen as I still have a few boxes of Rohan figures to prep in my plastic pile) but to get through this phase of the LotR preparation project I just added shields to those that have the lugs for them. I will be using the riders mentioned from my plastic pile above and the remaining foot figures for Erkenbrand's Redshields along with another of the shield sets from the sculptor.

Grimbold was quite a renowned captain of Rohan, occasionally serving as a Marshal when needs or situation dictated. He rode with Theodred and preserved his almost-dead body from being captured by Saruman's uruk-hai at the First Battle of the Isen. During the Second Battle of the Isen he formed a shield wall to enable others to escape in an orderly manner. I imagine the foot version of Grimbold released by Games Workshop was to represent this situation even though most of the time he would have ridden to war. I guess this is also where I got my idea of a unit of foot under his command.

Grimbold's unit will consist of Grimbold, a banner bearer, a horn blower (from the War of the Ring sets) and a dozen foot Warriors of Rohan. I don't think there is much difference stats wise between these troops and normal Warriors of Rohan (an extra point of Fight maybe? I can't remember. That said, do they even appear in the latest version of the Middle Earth : Strategy Battle Games rules that I do not yet own - I only have The One Ring rulebook and an earlier Return of the King book). They will make for a bit of variety on the tabletop when I paint them slightly differently to the normal Warriors and Riders of Rohan though.

This small unit would make an ideal addition to an army used in any of the other tabletop gaming rulesets I will be looking at playing. I am wondering whether to further differentiate these chaps from the standard Eorlingas with brown capes as opposed to the usual drab green? Likewise, I may do something similar for Erkenbrand's Redshields; other than red shield backgrounds, perhaps red capes or clothing too? I have stuck to film canon with my painting so far, but I want to make each of these armies my own. So, a few minor conversions and slightly differing paint jobs should suffice to differentiate certain elite units and so forth.