Beginning an Empire of Rhûn

I began Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings hobby with a box of 20 plastic Easterlings and a copy of the A Shadow in the East sourcebook. Since then, I have been a dedicated person to building an enormous army cohort, for the Men of the East. I have smiled as the Easterling army grew so enormously from then to now. In 2005, they were just swordsmen, archers, pikemen, kataphrakts, captains, and a Ringwraith named Khamûl, who is second among the Nazgûl and the only one of those nine that Tolkien actually named. Tolkien also gave the Easterlings chariots, but GW decided to give a group Tolkien wrote the least about of anything in his world, The Variags of Khand, the chariots. This meant I had to use the Khandish chariot rules whenever I wanted to included chariots (like I can't use chariot scythes). Then, in 2007, Legions of Middle-earth added a King unit, a Guard unit, and a Ballista unit to this faction. In 2009, a whole new mode called War of the Ring added a Drummer unit, a Shaman unit called the War Priests, a faction exclusive unit called the Dragon Knights, two named human Heroes called Amdûr, Lord of Blades and Queen Berúthiel; and the two Blue Wizards going by the names Nárandir and Súlrandir. Then came the Fallen Realms Sourcebook and four other Skirmish mode rewrite books, which translated the first four War of the Ring additions I mentioned above into Skirmish mode format, and also gave Warrior-level infantry and cavalry the option of becoming "Black Dragons", units with a +1 bonus to fight and courage, and who cost 2 extra points each.

I had also assembled an army of Minas Tirith and an army of Dale, a kingdom of Men just south of Gimli's home of the Lonely Mountain, starting each of these also with a couple boxes each of infantry and cavalry, so I had three factions of Humans that I could have started. It was a tough choice and I was even considering a Haradrim army as a fourth route, and was also thinking Dwarves. But then I re-watched the Easterling scenes from The Two Towers and from The Return of the King, and looked at the craftiness of each human army's uniform, and realized this "Warhosts" book I owned contained a Gondor article, and a Rohan article and Dwarves article (close enough, in my eyes, to Men of Dale) but nothing even that close to Men of Rhûn. Then my eyes fell on the phalanxes, Kataphrakts, and Charioteers offered by the Rhûn faction; and I decided: Easterlings it is.

Tomorrow I show some images while also discussing how I paint such an army.