I have recently begun collecting the LotR figures, but have been an avid miniatures collector and player for most of my life now, beginning with a small Hobgoblin fromArchive Miniatures back in 1978/79.

I really love the LotR miniatures, especially the Easterlings, Haradrim, Khandish (who really should have several different varieties of styles, since Khand was really more like the Asiatic steppes and some of the Nothern/Eastern Hoards who ravaged Europe in the middle of the second millennia AD - according to Weta/GW/Peter Jackson (and a few mentions by JRRT himself in a couple of his letters) at least. OH! and I am really fond of the Rohirrim, too...

But, I prefer a set of rules that gives more of a feel of a massed battle than the LotR SBG gives. It seems to be great for doing games where you only have a few hundred men on each side, maybe up to 1000, with each mini representing 5 to 10 guys. But, when you have each mini representing more than 10 men/orcs/whatever then the game just seems to not really reflect the realities of warfare at that scale (at least according to those who have studied such things in meticulous detail).

I have based my minis according to the historical gaming standard, which unfortunately happens to be called the WRG/DBx standard, even though more games now use this standard than those from WRG (or those who don't use it). I am able to reconstruct and fight battles like the Dagor Bragollach or the Nirnæth Arnœdiad of the first age (or even the Last Alliance or Pellinor Fields) with relative ease of not having to have many hundreds of minis to represent the possible 1000 minis per side needed per 10,000 men at a scale of 10:1 (although I do have several armies that, when completed, will have about 500 figures in them even after having a scale of 100:1: The Noldor & Sindarin of the First Age, Númenóre in the Second Age after falling under the sway of Sauron, and some of the Eastern Hoards of any age)...


So, has anyone else considered doing this?

I know that someone is going to recommend the use of sabot bases to do this, but unfortunately, it is not really possible with most non-GW standard games. The frontages for most infantry in these games at the 25/28mm scale is 15mm. This means that there are four figures on the Bases I use to every three on a GW base. It will tend to limit my opponents to those who are either using my minis or to players who are probably using historical armies based for DBM, Warrior, or some other game that uses this standard.

Matthew

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There exists nothing that can be changed without changing the equation to begin with