I love the scene of Pellenor Fields in Peter Jackson´s The Return of the King..
The charge of the Haradrim on their "oliphants" is overwhelming. I wanted to do something like that with my 1/72 figures
First idea could be using the GW Mumak Massive model..but....too expensive and no much originality in this plan..
So I searched for my own mumakil :)
These are the selected candidates: some plastic toy elephants (2 from Papo and Schleich: around 7 eur each) and one ultra cheap made in China elephant- 2eur
They all are African species kind, and all in around 1:35 scale, which towers around 8cm over poor 1/72 warriors
Last one is a beautiful model from Plastoy named "War Elephant", which is a heavily armoured asian elephant, It was actually more expensive (30 eur) and slightly smaller than the other three, but was too good not to take it home..
It came with a crew of two 54mm tartar-like warriors which I shoud keep for another use (i accept suggestions..)...It was also already painted from factory (good painting work)
Since 3 of them were "African" species, and I prefered the smaller ears of the mumakil in film and my own asian elephant, i cut a bit in the africans´ears (I have to improve the surfaces still in those areas)
Now I must think how to deseign and manufacture all the towers and warfare equipment on the beasts.. As wel as warpintings and so on (and selecting of the right crew and mahouts.. these last will serve probably on foot instead seated, exactly as the films shows)...
Here some more details on the armoured one.. I put 3 HAT Moorish men into the tower, which will serve as Haradrim crew. I hope you can check the size comparison (not a good pic this time)
Fianally, i took some men form the "HAT moorish command an converted them by legs-swap as an easy way to gain more variety: A foot trumpeteer (original figure is mounted) and a mounted standard bearer (original comes as foot)
I think it was a mistake of HAT no giving a mounted standard beared in this set for a muslim army... The Christian set give both posibilities (foot and moutned) which you can use as musician, standard beared or just single knight..
To be continued...
