Saturday 15 May 2010

Lord of the Rings minis from White Dwarf 66 (June 1985)

First of a short and hopefully not too sporadic series of pieces highlighting the photos in White Dwarf relating to the 1980s Citadel Lord of the Rings Miniatures range.

ME 11: Gandalf on Shadowfax (P. Benson)
Nice choice of yellow accent colours, keeping the figure lively.

ME 23: Rohirrim on Mount (Peter Prowl)
This is the earlier of the two Rohirrim variants (a photo of the later variant can be seen here). However, the banner is somewhat different from that on the standard miniature, so this is either a minor conversion (which isn't noted in the article) or perhaps a painted prototype? The blazing sun device being modelled on the shield has always struck me as odd, as it was clearly Tolkiens poetic language rather than a description of the Rohirrims arms - however it gives this representation a certain quirk.

ME 73: Barrow Wights (Bill Sprint)
Speaking of quirks, why is wight lifting a dumb bell? "wight lifting"... groan... really - Games Workshops designers were full of puns in the old days (just look at the Slaan names), but I imagine its some kind of huge kingly sceptre, and the other two are just wight-ing around for him to drop it.  Sprints Diorama features a C11 Halfling (the one with dungarees and a knife and a bow) and a selection of treasure-chests. Not too sure about pink wights myself, but I suppose it's all-wight really. The smoothed stones are really impressive, a nice piece.

This is probably the largest presence of Lord of The Rings miniatures in the Tabletop Heroes column - published early on in the ranges release. It's a good mix of staple fantasy types - the wizard, the warrior, and the undead, appealing as much to the role-gamer and fantasy wargamer as the dyed in the wool Tolkien fan. Also in the same issue of White Dwarf is Grahame Staplehursts article-length review of ICE's Middle Earth Role Playing, and slightly more tangentially, the Fiend Factory features a mini-adventure set in Koss - the campaign world of the Dungeon Planner series (the Dungeon Planner series of floorplans are the same scale as those in GWs MERP Box. By god I'm geeking out today)

No comments:

Post a Comment