Apart from obviously using figures for their intended era and nation, how are Forum members using their imagination to create new armies using tried and tested sets?

A while back, probably inspired by the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, I decided that I'd like to create some Middle Earth armies. This is a far cry from most of my 'mainstream historical' collecting but, hey, why not....

At first I contemplated the amazing but pricey figures produced for Games Workshop, and decided in the end that my budget would not stretch to buying the numbers I was aspiring to. Besides, as a life-long collector of 1/72 plastics, I wanted to stay on familiar ground and create some fairly large forces at a reasonable cost. So I started to look at what was/is around and used my imagination.

Certainly I found use for the various Caesar 'Fantasy' sets for Orcs, Dwarves and Elves. But the numerous human races of Middle earth - good and bad - can be modelled using the various Russian medieval sets, HaT El Cid Spanish etc. And HaT El Cid Moors are perfect for the Easterlings that feature in the LOTR, and their huge war elephants can be modelled using the larger Zvezda War elephants, with Moorish crew. I am even using HaT Sea Peoples, not one of the finest ever HaT sculpting jobs it has to be said, for Man Orcs...painted suitable non colours of course!

A distraction from the norm - yes of course. But fun to use the imagination all the same.

Bagration