The Easterlings were painted for an army to play in Terry Webb's Good Bad and Ugly HotT tournament held recently in Nashville as well as Coventry? England. The theme was Lord of the Rings so I did my best to honor Tolkien's description of these servants of Sauron. Fortunately or unfortunately his descriptions leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Tolkien mentions wain riders and brazen plates for armor as well as a formidable group of axemen. Sauron being fond of mechanization, well at least Saruman was, I thought the inclusion of a massive ballista would be appropriate.
The Rider General in his Chariot is pictured below. I tried to give the army that consists of figures from various manufacturers a unifying color them. Red equipment and clothing with bronze armor and olive green cloth as an under layer.
Donnington Sarmations as the knight and rider elements.
Testudo Celts as the shooters and hordes.
Khurusan Tang Chinese with Ji Halbards serve as the axemen. The halbards were originally extraordinarily long so I cut off the blades and remounted them on shorter wire poles. That took a lot of precision drilling!
The Testudo Celts given alternative weapons and shields to make them look less Celt-like and more of a fantasy Asian look.
Lastly some shots of the stronghold, meant to represent one of the fortresses of Mordor. This was originally a small aquarium piece that I won at last years Good Bad and Ugly tournament. I fashioned a more elaborate base for it and added the pointy crenelations and rivets on the turrets. I gave the castle fots of washes, the last of which were various shades of green to try and give it a sickly pale color reminiscent of Minas Morgul in the Jackson films.
Of course no fortress of Mordor would be complete without the severed heads and discarded equipment of the enemy. At the bottom right is a shield of Gondor, and just for Terry Webb who painted the Riders of Rohan, a shield from a defeated warrior of Rohan top left in the background.
Many thanks to Terry Webb for organizing the tournament and to all the players and sponsors who made it such a wonderful event.
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