Return to Middle Earth

What started out as a restructuring of my old orc army has quickly escalated in a whole Middle Earth revival.

Likeminded spirits on the book of faces have created a group for Wargaming in Middle Earth. A very inspiring group of people willing to discuss anything from historical equivalents to ME armies and suitable miniatures, the colour of orcs and wheter or not the Balrog had wings. It made me paint this old Grenadier Balrog. At the moment I'm of the opinion that the wings on a Balrog may either be real or an illusion, but being a supernatural creature it would not matter too much. He may be able to fly anyway.

 A while ago I got myself some West Wind Arthurian miniatures. This range comes with separate heads and I really like the style. They fit well with both  Copplestone and Mark Simms' Crusader miniatures. While the original idea was to do a unit useful for Arthurian Britain, generic mainland late Roman AND the Men of Arnor, it occurred to me that using the seperate Picts heads the work very well as Dúnedain rangers of the North. A small guerilla unit fighting the evils of Angmar but also Sarumans Uruk Hai on the southern border.

Which reminded me I made the Rohan footsoldiers/Ostrogoths years ago:

And while reading on the Rangers of the North and Angmar, I decided I could use my Ancient Germans as Hillmen of Angmar. For years I was tempted to use thes as Dunlendings, but Tolkien made a point that Dunlending were dark haired while the Rohirrim were fair haired. As such Dunlendings would be better represented by dark ages Welsh, Irish or Scots.
Now 'Hillmen' is a generic term for tribes of 'savages', and there were also hillmen at Angmar. I read somewhere that the men of Rohan were related to the men of Dale and Laketown. It's quite plausible then that other related tribes moved west past Mount Gundabad into Angmar to become servants of the Witch King.

At last, a Werewolf. 
Gandalf mentions to Frodo at Rivendell: "not all of Sauron's servants and chattels are wraiths; there are Orcs and Trolls, there are Wargs and werewolves."
Now, JRRT mostly describes his werewolves as giant, sentient wolves. Created by Sauron, he even took the form of a werewolf himself at one point. So they wouldn't be humanoid shapeshifting lycanthropes walking on their hind legs. But this miniature from North Star was too nice not to include. Maybe I'll even use him as a leader, instead of the usual Ringwraith or Balrog.