And now for something completely different…

As a little side project, I have painted a few LOTR miniatures. They are old ones, sculpted by the Perry brothers. Ive had my eye on these for some time. Warhammer figures seem to have degenerated somewhat these days, but the old LOTR range includes many great figures. A friend has started painting some of these, so I decided to get on the bandwagon too. I took the opportunity to buy some of the older sculpts before they go OOP, as the newer figures are not in the same style – and much more difficult to put together. These guys come from a very simple plastic set. You just glue the shield to the figure and the figure to the base, and thats it. The newer figures that are just coming out have a ridiculus amount of parts, which really put me off. A new-style Eomer character figure was included in the start set that I got – Ill probably not bother with it as I have older, metal, character figures I can use instead.

Basically, the figures are sculpted in the same style as the Perrys’ historical miniatures. The painting was pretty straightforward. I did do more highlighting on these than I would standard rank and file Napoleonic figures. But I only have less than 50 figures, so its not a huge project. There are two main drawbacks with the GW LOTR figures. First, they are bizarrely expensive. Considering the fact that they are sculpted by the Perrys, the ridiculousness becomes all the more apparent! At the local hobby store, these sell for just under twice the cost per figure compared to standard Perry Napoleonic plastics. And the figures are really quite comparable: same size, same sculptors, same level of detail, etc. However, the plastics are very cheap compared to the character/hero figures. There is a command set including two foot figures and one mounted. This is comparable to a set of Perry Napoleonic generals. The GW set costs almost exactly three times as much as the Perry set. Again, same material, same sculptors, equivalent quality, etc.

Apart from the financial setback, I am reasonably happy with how the first batch turned out and looking forward to doing the cavalry and character figures.