Middle Earth...Another One of my Favourite Things

I have enjoyed the works of JRR Tolkien since I was in my early teens, and have found that it dovetails nicely with my interest in the Dark Ages.
My son has a goodly sized collection of GW Middle Earth figures based off the Jackson movies - which I quite liked but never jumped fully into. I have some converted GW Rohan figures in my Dark Ages collection, and have a number of Anglo-Saxons with rather Rohirrim looking shield designs. A number of years ago I purchased a box of plastic Rangers  but never finished painting them & consigned them to a drawer. For some time I have wanted to do a Dark Age/Middle Earth "mash up", for want of a better phrase.
My interest flourished as I re-read Tolkien's works and discovered that North Star were releasing some very Middle Earth inspired Dwarves & Goblins. These figures fitted my idea of how these characters looked, better in most cases than the films. Coupled with this, I discovered the excellent metal Dwarves from Conqueror Models, sculpted by the very talented Colin Patten.
Fast forward to today, and a box of the brand new Oathmark plastic goblins have arrived in the post from North Star (along with a free metal figure). In addition I have a unit of 32 metal Dwarves from Conqueror Models, which I have started painting, plus 6 Oathmark metal Dwarven Command figures. All this purchased with birthday loot I received in October.
While waiting for these figures to arrive I decided to finish & rebase the Middle Earth Rangers which had long been neglected:

Here is my first Conqueror Models Dwarf, a test figure, with hand-painted shield design.

Here is the Dwarf alongside a GW plastic Ranger for comparison:

Alongside a Saxon Miniatures Anglo-Saxon figure (also sculpted by Colin Patten):

Alongside a Dark Age figure from Eureka Miniatures:

Hopefully there will be more Middle Earth shenanigans in later blogposts. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what North Star & Conqueror Models release in the future.