Sauron's Armies

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Originally Posted by Mansun

Any idea how big Sauron's armies were in size? The movies suggest about 30,000 took to the Pellenor Fields, while another 10,000 remaining in Mordor. The book however suggests that about ten times the number which Gandalf & his 10,000 soldiers sent to the gates of Mordor was the remaining Mordor army. It also seems odd to me that Saruman was able to build an army of 10,000 ferocious Uruk-Hai, while Sauron's orcs were just mere goblins.

Where did you observe the "30,000" number? When PJ talks about the army that attacks Minas Tirith, he says something like there are at least 200,000 orcs (of the various tribes) there. You can verify his number by counting individuals in one of their formations, then multipying by the number of those formations.

It's definitely more than 30,000. Why, any backwoods maia could show as many....