The idea of an LotR mod has been floating around since the moment Asophix introduced his SHL lord editor. Last year I even started some work on a mod. Though I've put it on hold eventually. The biggest hurdle was getting enough voice lines for each lord, as SHL skirmish lords have ~30 voice lines each. What I realized recently is that almost half of those are never used in the game. Unlike SHC or SHC2 there's no real way of communicating with your allies, so all those lines related to sending goods, requesting goods, thanking, helping, and so forth are completely irrelevant. I've also remembered that there is a decent source of already prepared LotR voice lines out there. The Battle for Middle-Earth strategy games from the early 2000s featured every major character as a unit, so their unit lines could be repurposed.

Lords

The initial work I've done last year was narrowing down how to distribute the six available lord slots. 

This was the breakdown I've settled on. It may be a bit basic.

The good lords Arthur and Lancelot would be replaced by Aragorn and Theoden.

The evil lords Vlad and Mordred would be replaced by Saruman and Sauron.

The ice lords Dietrich and Siegfried would be replaced by King Dain and the Witch-King. Ice featured units that can be seen as part of both the forces of good (dwarfs, bears) and evil (giants, wolves, dragons). So dividing it between good and evil seems logical. I've attached the old gamerules.dat where I've attempted to give each character a fitting unit roster.

Here's a breakdown of my train of thought. This is all from last year, so maybe I'd do things a little different now.

Now, all of these were just ideas I've been playing around with. Everything is subject to change and suggestions are welcome. I've not designed any new castle.

Orcs, trolls and other creatures of Middle-Earth

Middle-Earth wouldn't be what it is without its iconic creatures. I've discovered an entire unit reskin pack in the SH2 download section. If the creator gives his blessing, the orcs could definitely be reused. Units like the white wolves and hellhounds can get away with a name change, imho. Same with Merlin and the kights of the round table. Saxon warriors becoming orcs is pretty much given. Macemen are another unit that could also turn into orcs, though I'm not sure how popular this idea would be, since a player might want to use them when playing as a good faction. Again there are also the Battle for Middle-Earth games which have models for each unit from the movies, I don't know how easy/difficult it would be to port the models from that game into SHL.

Anyway, these are some thoughts I had about this project over the course of last summer/fall, which I've since forgotten to share. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome, as nothing here is final.

gamerules.dat