Warriors of Rohan (Redux)

 

Over the years, I have made several attempts at painting a Rohan force, but I've never been completely satisfied with any of them. Late last year, I bought the War of the Rohirrim box set from Games Workshop, and had a go at that. It is filled with lovely figures, but I didn't enjoy painting them. They were just too small, which was exacerbated by their more realistic proportions, which made their heads and hands seem incredibly small. So, I gave up on them. I've painted enough minis now to realize, I just like the slightly chunker variety.

I have now returned to an old idea with a few new twists. I bought some metal Goths and late Roman figures from Footsore Miniatures. I cut them off their integral metal bases and glued them onto GW ones. They come with open hands to hold wire spears, but I cut off the hands and replaced them with plastic ones holding hand weapons. Finally, I gave them shields from the unused portion of the above mentioned box set.

I can honestly say, these are the Rohirrim I've always wanted. The ones that fight in my imagination when I read The Lord of the Rings. 

This is probably more work than most people are going to want to do, but the work is part of the fun. Now I've got some really unique figures. Yes, at some point I will run out of GW shields, and I still need to work out how to handle cavalry, but these are bridges to cross later.

Interestingly, my new figs scale pretty well with the older, metal Rohan sculpts from Games workshop, so that I would have no problem mixing them in the same force.