Rohan proxies?

Bofur The Dwarf · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 9:40 am

Scouting about for some alternative minis for my upcoming Rohan army. I haven't really come across any Rohirric looking minis I like.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (:

Valadorn · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 1:31 pm

Most of the viking themed 28mm minis ^_^

jdizzy001 · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 2:45 pm

I was looking for this very Thing yesterday.
Gripping beast
http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=2431
Wargames factory
http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore ... f-the-gods
Warlord games
http://us-store.warlordgames.com/collec ... ts/plastic

These last ones are probably more suited for dunlnders

Perry bros
https://www.perry-miniatures.com/produc ... vl2boj8313
These, as we've seen, make great mahud proxies. Perry bros also have a large metal line, but i don't know from what material they're made (lead or otherwise). Does anyone know? do the perry brothers cast from lead?

Anyways, hope this helps.

Highlordell · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 3:10 pm

Jdizzy has got it in the bag really. The gripping beast ones are better from what I've heard, though some of the body parts might be slightly out of proportion.
Either way they're both better than the GW Warriors of Rohan.

LordElrond · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 5:00 pm

Warriors of Rohan are so cheap on ebay that there's no need to proxy.

Highlordell · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 5:14 pm

LordElrond wrote:

Warriors of Rohan are so cheap on ebay that there's no need to proxy.

Its not the cost that's the issue. Warriors of Rohan were some of the first sculpts made for the range, around 10 years ago. Moulding technology, particularly plastic, has advanced leaps and bounds since then, and these alternate minis look a lot more realistic, and have a lot more options aswell.

At the end of the day its personal preference, but I can completely understand why someone would want to use alternative models for sculpts like that.

Bofur The Dwarf · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 6:15 pm

LordElrond wrote:

Warriors of Rohan are so cheap on ebay that there's no need to proxy.

I've seen and picked up many. However I'm just looking to add variation to my force.

LordElrond · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 8:21 pm

Sorry I forgot. I just presumed that everyone was like me- always playing games in gw abd thinking about tournaments. :-)

Highlordell · **Posted:** Mon May 26, 2014 9:13 pm

LordElrond wrote:

Sorry I forgot. I just presumed that everyone was like me- always playing games in gw abd thinking about tournaments. :-)

No probs dude.

Thurin · **Joined:** Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:10 am **Posts:** 40

If you're looking for cavalry as well, you could try the Conquest Games plastic Norman Knights. The sprue has round shields on it, so you don't have to use the norman kite shields. They won't look like peter Jackson's Rohirrim, but it's a reasonably authentic set for dark ages cavalry. Anyway I'm not sure the Eored from the movies sits well with me. Tolkien wrote the Rohirrim as culturally Saxon but with a Frankish fighting style. I would have been happier if the film dressed them in sutton-hoo accoutrements. Instead you get a strange mix of lacquered plate (lorica?) cuirasses, and bronze age Yetholm spearheads.

LordElrond · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 5:45 am

Yes. They do indeed wear lorica segmentata, just like the romans. A bit odd really?

daersalon · **Joined:** Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:34 am **Posts:** 265

To me the Warriors/Riders of Rohan seem perfectly acceptable models even now, 10-12 years after the original release. GW were on the leading edge of using plastics, and indeed some don't look great, but on the other hand, sometimes the plastic box set has better variety and detail then the metals! (I am thinking of ones like the Morannons).

The GW ones also do best resemble the ones from the films and a good feel for those as portrayed in the books by Prof. Tolkien. Their relative ubiquity and low cost on ebay means often I use them to convert to other models: Royal Knights of rohan (two mounted rohirrim look already almost like royal knights. Suitable shield and a green stuff plume on the helmet and maybe reposition the spear/lance...) or Knights of Numenor (slightly bigger job, cut the rider in half and the numenorean in half... join... greenstuff the gap and cloak.. and add a lance...)

But as for alternatives... that would be harder, as if you keep close to Tolkien's vision, he thought of them as mounted Anglo-saxons. And historically they were not really a cavalry bunch...

daersalon · **Joined:** Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:34 am **Posts:** 265

To be more helpful though...

For my Breton army for SAGA system, I used those Conquest Norman Knights above for the Hearthguard, and for the standard Warriors/Sergeants I used the Warlord Games Celtic cavalry.

http://store.warlordgames.com/collectio ... y-regiment

From the pic it might look a bit too Celtic indeed. But don't be put off from that picture! I used round shields from another source and was carefully selective over the bodies and heads I used to make a nice set of 8 Dark Age Bretons. For Rohan, why not use GW Rohan shields they have the right designs. The Warlord set comes with a variety of head and torso options. So you could be selective in assembly to make something closer. these models are (or were when I bought them 2 years ago) metal horses and plastic torsos etc.

In fact the warrior sprue is the standard one Warlord use for infantry... and Germans, Celts etc, and they just add a few metal extras to differentiate each box. I used a box of the standard Celtic warriors for my men of Carn Dum. And you end up with plenty of heads and weapon extras for other conversion projects!

mertaal · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 12:12 pm

It's easy to forget that in the 8th/9th century you'd probably have a hard time telling a Saxon from a Viking from a Frank from a Norman, etc.

Highlordell · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 12:48 pm

mertaal wrote:

It's easy to forget that in the 8th/9th century you'd probably have a hard time telling a Saxon from a Viking from a Frank from a Norman, etc.

James is right. The only difference would be if they were cavalry or not I guess, and even then Vikings and Saxons would look near identical.
My preferred era is 6-7th century Anglo-Saxons, its alot easier to distinguish them from, say Franks, back then.
That said I think Rohan is meant to be broadly based on Mercia, as apprently they were the biggest cavalry users. (Eomer was a King of East Anglia)

daersalon · **Joined:** Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:34 am **Posts:** 265

Celts, Germans, and Saxons may indeed be similar. That is why Warlord seem to use the same base models/sprues for each after all.

However Normans are rather more distinctive. And the Norman Conquest Knights for example posted above really don't feel very 'Rohan'

mertaal · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 4:12 pm

1066 Normans are usually depicted wearing chain mail coifs like the above horsemen, and i think most of us associate that as more early Medieval than Dark Age (I do).

Highlordell · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 5:05 pm

Yeh I wouldn't really want to use those Norman knights personally, but it all depends on your personal image of Tolkein's. Rohan screams 'Mid-Anglo-Saxons on horses' to me. Then again perhaps the horse bit reflects mixture of Norman fighting tactics with and AS appearance. Not sure where I'm going with this...

Varangian · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2014 7:32 pm

LordElrond wrote:

Yes. They do indeed wear lorica segmentata, just like the romans. A bit odd really?

They're not loricas. Theoden at the very least is wearing Italian Segmented plate for cavalry. The plates are cut differently and are layered differently as well, so that thrusts and cuts coming from below sweep off the armor without sticking in creases. His is made of leather, and it actually looks like they layered it the opposite from how it was done historically. They look significantly similar, until you've been around them both for a while.

Most of them don't even have that much. They mostly wear solid leather plates (likely boiled) and bits of mail. In many scenes you can see a bunch wearing "scale mail" in different places from on the body to over their legs. You see just as much "chain mail" though.

From that perspective, just about anything COULD be used for the Rohirrim. The big thing to watch for would be steel plate armor, they just don't wear it in the movies, that's very much left for Gondor. If the paint job creates unity (particularly in shield designs and cloth details) it should work well.

Thurin · **Joined:** Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:10 am **Posts:** 40

mertaal wrote:

It's easy to forget that in the 8th/9th century you'd probably have a hard time telling a Saxon from a Viking from a Frank from a Norman, etc.

I play saga, and one of the things that makes me chuckle is that fights often look more like scrums between time travelers than fights between foreigners. I had that thought in mind when I recently put together a welsh warband, which will most often be fighting against my friend's Normans. Most of the warband consists of unarmored troops, but I depicted my few hearthguard with chainmail and nasal helms, rather than a more indigenous looking helmet. My reasoning is that by the time the Welsh had Norman neighbors to fight with, that's how the wealthiest welshmen would have dressed.

Highlordell wrote:

Yeh I wouldn't really want to use those Norman knights personally, but it all depends on your personal image of Tolkein's. Rohan screams 'Mid-Anglo-Saxons on horses' to me.

There's always the Saxon or Romano British heads that West wind productions sells. Putting west wind heads on Conquest Games normans would have the desired effect, and still cost half as much as metal cavalry. If you greenstuffed cloaks onto them they'd look great.

Rohan proxies?

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