So, I'm wondering if anyone actually has pockets deep enough to own a full formation of easterling pikemen. They seem like a great unit stats wise but then when you look at the cost of actually fielding a unit of these...it seems completely impractical.

A box of easterling warriors is $27.25 and you get 4 pikemen per box. Yes, 4. So for a full formation of 48 warriors you are looking at $327! Okay, even if you get them off ebay or something, you are easily going to drop $250+ on that unit.

Am I missing something? Is there another way to field a unit like this? Because if this is the only way, I'm not even going to bother starting. I'll just pick another army.

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To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face.

i have also realised that...
its possible to convert swordsman by giving them brass rod spears, but yes it is impractical to field pikemen unless you have a massive army (and a lot of money). especially seeing as you would want more pikemen than swordsmen

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Hello.

You could try to trade off other Easterlings ine xchange for pikemen or try to buy blisters that have 2 pikemen to each swordsmen. The problem is there that they cost £8 for 3 models, so you get 9 for the price of plastics, but you'd have two more pikemen for it. Conversions or casting spear arms are probably your best bet, lol

I played a guy last week who just intends to run his Easterlings as all Pikemen using all the figures in a mixed formation.

Somehow, we found a way to go on...

WOTR is fig heavy and so I wouldn't begrude anyone doing it. Also, you would find that the sort of units you are modelling (it's not 1:1 scale) would have units mixed in to support Pikeblock in the case of their RL analogues.

I was able to buy 3x 2nd hand Easterling forces on local wargames forums.
This gave me enough to make 4 companies of pikemen, 5 companies of swordsmen and 5 companies of archers for about $100 (Australian).
There are photos of the force in my gallery.

I used them as the core of a 2500pt War of the Ring army at a recent tournament (finished 2nd ).

Be patient and keep an eye out for bargains (it took me 6 months to find these Easterlings).

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My Hobby site.

I have a single formation of 32 pike, and that includes 4 conversions and a further 4 command figures. That took 6 boxes of easterlings, plus the command to put together.

Converting really is your friend here, and brass rod/ green stuff on normal warriors is probably the way to go.

I would accept this if I was playing someone who wanted to do this.

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Better, though difficult, the right way to go, than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress

A common convention my friends have is that we have the front row modeled as to what the unit is and the back rows can be filler--so my orcs with swords and shields can have guys in the back ranks with spears and no shields and no players ever get confused as they're looking at the front row to see what that unit is. This is handy when if you plan on playing pike formations and sword formations. Yes, as the pikemen expand their frontage during the game, the chance of confusing your opponent rises (slightly) but it'll never be an issue.