Classic-Castle.com

So as I'm trying to get my army in order I started looking for helmets and decided to get couple of the rohirrim helmets. I was highly surprised though to find out that
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=10054pb01
is cheaper then
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=10054

It seems that both are just as common in sets as both appear only once in one set (same). Could it be that as folks are building their "army's" they end up buying more of the plain ones and dumping the fancy ones????

I just assume that the "plain" ones are more universally useable, regardless of color scheme. For example, my LCC troops rarely use gold, as I like my troops' armor to be silver-based.

I did find the pricing to be interesting as well when I discovered this about a month ago. You typically think of printed parts as being more expensive.

Hmm, that's odd. I even see a single store (Queen Creek Bricks, the cheapest source of the plain helm in large quantity) that sells the plain helm for fifty cents more than the printed one. Your explanation is the only one that I can see. I could see that some people might want to have a small number of printed helms for officers and a larger number of plain ones for regular solders, but quite frankly I'd rather just have printed ones. It's not like the 'Eomer' helm is obviously set apart, like only wanting one Darth Vader but an army of Stormtroopers, or just one crown and a bunch of normal helms, etc. Heck, I think it would be fine to mix a bunch of Theoden helms into an army, if you're not completely set on following LEGO's direction on this.

Ooh, maybe this is the answer: Perhaps it is the Eomer fig as a whole that people only want one of, while they want a lot of the general soldier. And so people are buying up more of the general Rohirrim soldier as a whole unit, while more of the leftover Eomers are getting broken up into parts, driving down the prices of the various Eomer parts? As evidence, I note that in the Bricklink price guide, just taking the used fig average price for the last six months, Eomer goes for 5.35, while the soldier goes for 6.93. Also the soldier's torso is on average thirty cents more expensive than Eomer's.

IMO it would be perfectly fine to mix a bunch of Eomer torsos into a a general Rohirrim army. I don't imagine that an army such as that would be completely uniform (perhaps with an exception for the king's elite guard), so if I were trying to make a large Rohirrim army I'd mix it up. I'd put in both the Eomer and soldier torsos, swap around the arm colors to get some variation, throw in a few other castle torsos of similar color scheme, and vary up the helms a bit (use both of the official Rohan helms, maybe another helm that doesn't clash too much, give a few of the guys here or there a hood or just hair). Randomly give some figs capes of relevant colors. Change up the weaponry a bit - use different spears and bows, for instance. Give some shields and others not. I'd probably leave Theoden as the official fig to keep him distinct, and maybe to make Eomer stand out I'd have him without a helm - I think he's described as having long blonde hair, though I don't have the book here and I might be letting the PJ movies and/or various fan art influence my recollection here. I tend to give my 'hero' figs the big old-school chrome greatsword. I know it's a little cartoonishly large, but it makes them stand out.

Bruce

Those are good points, Bruce.

I think that the "Rohirrim Soldier" also sort of fits in with what I said earlier about being more generic. The cost difference between the two might be more along the lines of what you're saying (that people only want one Eomer), but for me, the red torso doesn't fit my color scheme, whereas the "soldier" torso is more color neutral and can be used in any faction.

That's a good point. The dark bley generic torso could mix in with a lot of factions, particularly if you swapped out arm colors appropriately. Even without doing that it mixes perfectly with the Green Dragons:



These vikings and the CMF elf would fit perfectly with those if you swapped in dark green arms and used different helms.



Hmm, now I feel like I have to get a couple of those figs and put them together as a faction.

Yeah, I used the Rohirrim along with both of those viking torsos in my "custom" northern faction (there are one or two of them hiding in the back rows)

Personally, I am fine with mixing printed and non printed helmets into an army (already am actually) and i actually really like Eomers printed legs significantly more then that rohan soldiers plain ones, and the faces and arms dont matter much to me either. However, I think Eomer's torso stands out much too much in a crowd. Which is fine for him, but not good as an army builder. Like Bruce said, there are plenty of other goos torsos though, such as viking and dragon knights, that I would be fine switching out. But then, I would take the extra Eomer torsos, keep 2 in case the other one on Eomer breaks, take maybe 5 other ones and file the printing off so I have a plain dark red torso, and sell the rest, cheap, which is I think the other peoples logic for the helmets. However, I also do prefer plain helmets because they can be used for many things, including Garhims.

I have found the Eomer torso especially useful, at least to me. The silver flower/star design works great for my Fangroth troops. You could also add a silver helm or black good and make them Loresii scouts.

As for the helms, I only have one (courtesy of AK_Brickster ) but I hope to get more soon and experiment with some combos.

They might work well for archers.

Just my two cents.

~RBC

Yes, they work great for lorisee or lion knight generals and stuff, but the other rohhirim torso can be used for amost anything knight related. It can be in all four factions, and can be used for dragon and lion knights, as well as older themes.

That's interesting that the printed is cheaper but Bruce and AK's explanations for it sound very likely.

I would suggest using Brasso on the printed ones and save some change.