LotR Easterling/Harad Army

Lord of the Rings Easterling/Harad Army (Prepped and/or Undercoated)

I managed to get a lot of this work done yesterday alongside the Isengard stuff, so an early post today.

I have decided to combine these two factions into one post as I think they ally very well. I will be painting them so that they can be used either separately as Haradrim and Easterlings, or together as some kind of combined force that is tied together with the paint scheme.

These two factions combined make for a great themed army, with the Eeasterlings offering up the heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, whilst the Haradrim offer lightly armed and armoured skirmishers and mounted raiders, as well as some interesting one-offs in the form of half-trolls and hasharin.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the two factions pre-prep...

I did include some EBob Mongols and a couple of other Citadel miniatures I thought might fit in, but have decded now to do away with those in order to streamline the army to just GW LotR products...

This force is made up of the following miniatures...

Plastic:
6 Easterling kataphrakts
42 Easterling warriors
6 Haradrim raiders
36 Haradrim warriors

Metal:
2 Khamul the Ringwraith
12 Easterling kataphracts
8 Easterling heroes (capatins, banners, war priest etc.)
15 Easterling warriors
5 Haradrim heroes
3 Haradrim raiders
2 Half trolls

This gives a total of 137 evil mannish troops, consisting of 85 Easterlings and 52 Haradrim.

I have a short list of figures I would like to add to these factions just to round out a couple of units, but I am also wondering whether it would be possible to add some kind of artillery to the Easterling forces and perhaps scratch build some oliphaunts with riders?

I envisage the Easterlings as being quite advanced in field warfare, so I think artillery wouldn't look out of place - some kind of large siege/warbows, chariots of some kind (I am not keen on using the GW Khandish, but may appropriate the chariots for an Easterling crew) etc.

With regards the oliphaunts in the movies and what GW subsequently produced I am not able to get around their exaggerated size. Not sure if I am misremembering the first time Sam saw oliphaunts in the books, but I recall it as saying that the elephants were actually of a normal size, but due to Sam being practically half the size of a normal man they would appear twice as big. I will stick with my possibly misremembered theory and try to use some toy elephants that scale in and try to scratch build a howdah of some kind on them.

Legions of Rhun III

Today turned out to be rather more intersting than I originally anticipated. I started out working on my plastic box set of Kataphracts and then did a side-step onto a quick conversion of one of my eBay bought halberd armed Easterling warriors.

First up is the command for the Kataphracts. I decided to only create a drummer and banner bearer this time as, when I eventually get a second box set, I will create a suitable captain for them. Hopefully I will have read the rules by then to see if a halberd armed one will be allowed.

Next up are four Kataphracts. I did these all armed with falchions.

I really enjoyed putting these together. As mentioned in a previous post, the Easterlings really are one of my favourite factions cultural looks wise. They have interesting armour and weapon choices and make for a force to be reckoned with that even Gondor would find hard to defeat.

My final piece of work today was just something I did on a whim. I had already cut the second banner in the box set from the sprue for some unknown reason and decided to try to use it. I snipped the arm off of one of my eBay purchased halberdiers, trimmed the flag staff down a little and this is what I came up with. Simple conversion, but I think it is extremely effective.

Now to look for a  foot figure or two that can be converted into a drummer, captain and perhaps a warpriest or dragon warrior?

Legions of Rhun II

I spent nearly two hours on these Kataphracts - there was a lot more to them than I anticpated. The plastic horses were almost there and just needed their two halves glueing together and then basing, but the metal ones were extremely fiddly and needed a lot of patience.

As mentioned in the post yesterday, I still have a lot of procrastinating to do on the plastic warriors that will sit upon the plastic mounts. Should I make a command unit out of them and use any spares to try to create some foot versions or do I just go for six mounted warrior types? I think this is where I add another box set to the wanted list. Anyway, with regards the horses, there are three left and right halves to make up quite a few variants. I tried to make mine all different. Here are the completed horses in all their glory...

Next up were the metal Kataphracts - I already have one box set made up and semi-painted but I also had another box set to build as well as a couple of eBay purchases to make the unit up to a round dozen.

As mentioned above, some of these were extremely fiddly to build; some of the front legs are separate and are quite a bother to get to fit in between body and base. Glue went everywhere, fingers got stuck together, but I think I eventually got there with them. I just hope they don't start to fall apart when I get around to painting them.

The picture above shows the box set of Kataphracts - you get five metal ones in a box but six plastic ones. They are all nice and shiny and ready for an undercoat. There are a few gaps that will need to be green-stuffed to smooth them out, but I will get around to that when I get to actually work on this faction in earnest.

The next picture shows the two eBay purchases. These took a lot of cleaning as the previous owner had just stuck blobs of greenstuff in to stick the legs on. These were a bit of a mess and I had to remove the legs and then scrape them clean to enable me to start again. Luckily the previous owner did not mix the putty very well so it came off relatively easily.

As mentioned in a previous post, I may see how easy it is to convert one or two of these metal figures into command types - I really want a captain armed with a halberd and shield that fights from horseback. I think it would make for a nice conversion even if not legal gaming wise (still haven't checked yet as my rules are boxed up in the garage).

Again, due to numbers, these figures can go a long way towards creating decent sized units for Saga and Dragon Rampant. I am so looking forward to slowly building up these forces in order to maybe first play Battle Companies (rumour has it that there is an updated version due out sometime soon), then move onto some small (500 points?) SBG skirmishes, then perhaps Saga skirmishes and then onto full blown SBG and Dragon Rampant armies.


I think that will be it for the Easterlings for a few days whilst I think my way through what I want to do with the plastic box set riders. When I had finished the modelling for today, I went through what I have left to do in the LotR lead and plastic piles (there are still many, many hundreds of non-LotR minis that need some tlc). I have:

• some Gondor and Dol Amroth cavalry
• loads of Rohan stuff (dozens more of these to still get through)
• the Fellowship
• a few one-off dwarf heroes (I may use these doubles as RPG figures)
• Shelob
• some cave trolls
• and the remainder of the Easterlings.

Most of these should get completed by the end of next week, so I hope the weather improves just a little more so that I can get into the garden and begin undercoating them all.

Legions of Rhun

This faction seems to have spawned a life of its own. What started as just a single box of 20 Easterling Warriors has burgeoned into quite a force to be reckoned with. EBay was my friend for this faction as almost everything bar the initial purchase was from there.

Here is the original photo from two years ago detailing what I had in my faction at that time...

First up are a bunch of metal Easterling warriors armed with halberds and swords. These round out my inital small force of metal minis that can be used as dismounted versions of Kataphracts or just on their own as is. I may even use them as Black Dragon elites as they look slightly different to the plastic Easterling warriors, but I need to find out more about that particular troop type just in case they are too different to be used (I only know them by name at the moment). I will have to think about paint jobs and so forth to differentiate them, but then again the slightly different look and feel to the plastic miniatures may do that anyway.

The next bunch are a set of command figures: a captain, a dismounted Dragon Knight, a banner bearer and a warpriest. I managed to get hold of these in metal before they went to Finecast. There are several other elite/command figures that I missed but I am not a great fan of resin miniatures so will most likely not buy them going forward as I have more than enough to be getting on with. The leader of my little legion will be Khamul - the Ringwraith, supported by any one of the captains or, indeed, the Dragon Knight.

The final part of this army that needed to be prepped was the mounted contingent - plastic and metal kataphracts. I really like these miniatures - they have been firm favourites of mine for a long time. I already have some metal kataphracts prepped and part painted to add them to, and together they make up a couple of decent sized mounted contingents to rub up against my Rohan and Gondor cavalry.

Unfortunately, time ran away with me today and this is as far as I could get with the mounted miniatures. The usual cut off the sprues and filled with Plasticene shot follows...

The plastic horses should be finished tomorrow and I should also hopefully get to work on the metal kataphracts. Hopefully I can also get the plastic riders completed too but there are a lot of decisions to be made as to how I want them to look. There is a drummer and a banner bearer as well as heads and a cape to make up a leader.

I will also look and see how the spare parts (there are lots of them) can go towards creating some decent foot conversions - maybe a drummer, banner bearer and captain in plastic? Also, I may look at converting a metal kataphract into a captain bearing a halberd (if that is possible - I need to check the rules). Also a foot captain (I have three of this particular miniature) can be armed with a spare shield as I have a couple of plastic ones in my bits box to be used. As I said, lots to think about so this force may be a little while longer completing than originally envisaged.


Like with my other factions with several sprues worth of foot troops, these will make for a reasonable sized Dragon Rampant and/or Saga force. It is great that I will be able to use so many of my Lord of the Rings miniatures for alternative wargames, as well as the Adventures in Middle Earth role playing game I picked up a few years back.