3DS Max; Modelling Help

OK, so I've been working on my own house Roman rules mini mod and its going smashingly. I've added most of the unit slots, added germanic invasion spawns, changed the map a tad, added an Iberian invasion spawn of hybernia, Hannibal spawn in Italy, and gave a tons of AOR changes.

The only thing I've yet to do a lot of is modelling. I've changed textures and skeletons around, and have edited textures in photoshop; but this is tricky and only takes you so far.

I appear to be limited to the fact that I don't have 3ds max; and I believe the licesnse is several thousand. Anyone know an easy solution for modelling to get around this issue? What does everyone else model with?