Renovation of Rhûn

I was first thinking of typing "Restoration of Rhûn" but that would've sounded too interesting. This project is not even started and is not especially interesting yet. Yet... The intention here is to repaint all the easterlings and the khandish warriors. Again, I am uncertain of the English spelling rules: Should one write Easterlings with a capital first letter like in Swedes and Portugese or is it just plainly easterlings? Then what about Elves/elves?
     With the help of google or duckduckgo, I could probably find an answer, but I prefer to guess and live in darkness until I decide what is correct. You could of course help me on this matter, but it is not certain I will appreciate it (reverse psychology to get an answer, lazy me).

The army that will be renovated consists of only Easterlings and Khandish warriors. In my little project to make WotR more enjoyable (well, for me at least), I have separated the army Fallen Realms into Rhûn (consists of Rhûn and Khand) and Harad which contains Harad and Far Harad - possibly also parts of Umbar... I removed all the Morgul and Mournedain to Mordor, which also got a little trim... But that's another post wholly. Here's what is on the Rhûn platter:

- 16 Easterling phalangists. Four of these are converted archers which will be repositioned.
- 16 Easterling archers. Remember, the Easterling box used to come with two sprues, each sprue had 2 phalangists, 4 archers and 4 swordsmen. A total of 20 models (not 24, which were more or less the standard for Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game, at the time).
- 24 Easterling swordsmen.

56 soldiers. So, where's the missing 4 from the three boxes? They were converted into:

- 1 Amdûr - King of Blades.
- 1 Easterling War Priest.
- 1 Easterling Drummer.
- 1 Easterling Banner Bearer.

Other Rhûnish warriors in the army are:

- 1 Easterling Captain.

- 13 Easterling kataphracts. I love these models. They look heavy and "real", and the official paint-scheme feels vulgar-rich and pagan which IMO feels perfect for the Easterlings. Wich is reflected, maybe a little to much, in the palanquin/carpet of the Crazy King...
- 1 Crazy King of Rhûn (this is possibly a workname, it has kind of stuck though... ).


Furthermore, in the Khandish part of the army we have:

- 3 Khandish Charioteers. The chariots are scratch-built, and the charioteers are white metal.
- 1 Khandish Chieftain. In a chariot.
- 8 Khandish Horsemen. These are such nice sculpts... but they came just five in one box. So, with the help of our favourite sculptors Alan and Michael Perry, I got me from the very nice webshop Perry Miniatures a little box with three Korean horsemen which fit in really good. It was easy to see where they got the inspiration when sculpting the Khandish warriors.

There aren't movement trays for all the squadrons of cavalry which will be corrected, existing bases and trays will be touched up - or severly rescued from boredom, to be honest... All the models needs to be repainted. Etcetera, etcetera... (yes, I know the original phrase is "et cetera" but it is totally unnecessary to type it in classic Latin since it is now a word of its own, we do not need to go into the etymology of the word, everybody knows what it means anyway).

As stated earlier, this is a busy time of the year, and with the lay-offs we are severly undermanned at my company so work is prioritized this whole month. Work on the Fraggel-rock must continue... this means that the above project will not get any love until the 24-25th of February, but in the meantime I will try to update this blog a little more often.

Thank you for reading and all the best!